First off there's the discounting of lesbian sex, I can't tell you how many men tell me "It's not sex unless you're sticking a penis in a hole" oh puh-lease, not only is that offensive to lesbians, it totally discounts female pleasure (most women can't get off on penetration alone)
Then there's the duel pronged insulting "you're just doing it for attention" or "You're making out with another girl, you're trying to find a dude to fuck/have a threeway with, right? Cause you don't look like lesbians." When straight women say the first part I honestly hate hearing it, I'm genuinely sorry that many of your potential sexual partners are hairy grunting Neanderthals who can't grasp the concept that "gay means they have no interest in you" but don't take it out on me or my relationship. As for the men, I suppose I have Katy Perry and all the straight chicks jumping on the bisexuality bandwagon to thank for that one, but on the other hand it seems like this has been kind of a dichotomy that's existed for ages, where there are only two widely portrayed types of lesbian couples the "butch/earthy crunchy" type which feature women who don't conform to traditional beauty norms and thus are of little interest to heterosexual males, and the "pornographic/hot lesbians" which basically exist only in porn, and to fulfill male fantasies and are often really bisexual rather than completely gay.
Basically due to this portrayal it seems like the media is saying any woman who's attractive to men, is attracted to men, which is obviously untrue, but still ends up effecting the way my girlfriend and I are treated when we behave like a couple in public space. As well it seems like society can't accept a romantic relationship as complete without at least one masculine partner, be it a butch/butch relationship, a butch/femme relationship, or a menage au trois with two women and a man, there always seems to be a need for a masculine partner, people seem to think femme/femme relationships are like unbonded oxygen atoms always looking for someone to fill in the phallic blank, which I think really says something about the way our society views femininity.
It's a very clear message if you think about it, it's a way of implying that femininity is incomplete on its own, that in order to be fulfilled there has to be masculinity along with it. It's ingrained even in certain parts of the feminist movement, second wave feminism with its call for the abandonment of femininity for women so that they could be independent. I'm a high heel wearing, leg waxing, big haired high femme, and I'm fine on my own, I don't need masculinity in order to survive, I'm not weak or fragile in my femininity, for me this is strength, this is power and independence and my relationship is perfect and complete and fulfilling with no masculinity in sight.
It always feels like such a knock to our status as a couple, as if because we don't fit their pre-conceived image of what a gay woman looks like, even if we are clearly together, our relationship is open to advances. I like to ask guys how they'd feel if some random dude came up and started hitting on them and their girlfriend at the same time. Not that I object to situations where a couple invites a third, but I think that it has to be the couple that asks, as their relationship is theirs and there's something off about trying to insinuate yourself into someone else's romance without their consent... it's making an assumption that because we're two feminine women we're looking for that, and we're not.
This isn't intended to knock butch/butch or butch/femme couples, you guys have my full support, I just don't like the treatment femme/femme pairs get.
No comments:
Post a Comment