Category — Ask a Gay

Thanks for the question, Carl.  Before I start, this is a good time for me to remind everyone that I’m not an expert, per se.  I am a lesbian, but I don’t have a degree in gender studies, and I’m not a doctor of psychology.  What I have to say comes from my own experience, or the experience of friends, when noted.

Let’s take a minute and flip the script.  Is there a difference, for you, between being married to a woman or a flamingly effeminate man?  Even someone who dresses in women’s clothes?  Someone with long hair and a soft body?

The plumbing is pretty important to me, and I’d wager it’s pretty important to you.  What we’re talking about here, though, more than sexuality, is gender norms.

I’ve said for a long time that it’s not the sleeping with people of the same sex that gets the gays into trouble, it’s the messing with gender norms.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked, “which one of you is the boy?”

For me, the answer has always been, “neither,” but the fact that I keep getting the question shows that there’s an expectation that a relationship will have a male-acting partner, and a female-acting partner.  Even if both partners are the same sex.

Let’s break down your question:

I’ve known and worked with a few [butch dykes], and I view them as another man.

Do you really?  Or do you view them as capable workers, equal to doing the same job a man would.  Do you work in a field that is traditionally dominated by male workers?  Women in those types of jobs, whether gay or straight often act in a manner similar to their male equivalents, either out of physical necessity, or out of social necessity.  Women doing construction work will develop the same muscles as men, and it wouldn’t make sense for a female construction worker to show up to a job site in a skirt.  Even long hair can be a safety concern.  Equally, it’s a heck of a lot easier for her to relate as “one of the guys” than to be seen as the wife or girlfriend or secretary, or anything secondary to her male counterparts.

Even in law school, women were generally and directly instructed to emulate men when interviewing for jobs, inasmuch as we should lower the pitch of our voices – but not too much – to appear stronger, more masculine.  (The lesbians, however, were instructed to become a bit more feminine.)

But, when it comes to the lesbians that love them….what’s the difference between a very masculine woman and a slightly effeminate man? Other than the obvious plumbing?

I think that you actually hit the nail on the head.  The obvious plumbing is the difference.  It makes all the difference.

You see, I want to be with a woman, physically.  Even if that’s with a strap-on and a pair of motorcycle boots.  When it gets down to brass tacks, it’s the plumbing that matters in the sexual part of the homosexual relationship.  In the emotional part of the relationship, it matters, too.  But even if the gentle, tender emotional side of a woman is something I might be able to find in a man, it wouldn’t be enough for me.  I would still want to be with a woman.  And a woman who sees herself as a woman.

Gender expression can get a little sticky, because there are so many variations that can occur.  What does it mean, exactly to be a woman?  What does it mean to act like a woman?   Does it mean having long hair?  Wearing dresses?  Cooking and cleaning?  Having children?  Does it mean tending a garden, and liking to knit.  Does it mean having large breasts and a big collection of shoes?

Some women like wearing suits, and some like wearing skirts.  Some like ties and some like scarves.  We are as different as any group of people o this planet.  Some women identify as “butch” because they feel most comfortable in their skin when they’re wearing work boots.  That makes them no less a woman than those who prefer the term “femme” and a case of lipstick.  It doesn’t change their gender – just their gender expression.

For example, I have short hair.  Sometimes extremely so.  I also play softball, wear fairly androgynous clothing, love a good pair of motorcycle boots, and enjoy knitting as well as gardening and cooking.  Most of my friends would say that my expression tends to the butch side, though I think I’m darn close to the middle.  My head is turned far more often by girls with short hair and jeans hanging on athletic builds, than women in skirts and heels.   But that’s not the case for everyone.  We all have different tastes – for ourselves and for the women we’re attracted to.

I think there’s something generational going on, as well.  The butch/femme dynamic seems much more common in older generations – that is to say older than me.  For a long time, there have been no real visible role models for gay people.  Books and movies and popular culture have been devoid of our presence, except in specific, formulaic ways.  So we had to figure out what it meant to be in homosexual relationships outside of any real community.  It makes sense that we would emulate our parents, our grandparents, and everyone we saw portrayed around us.  It makes sense that it would be more accepted for two women to be together in a familiar-looking situation.   If most relationships consist of one male partner and one female partner, it’s not a far leap to say that there are two definitions of a lesbian:  one male-acting, one female-acting.

It’s clear, however, that things have changed from a binary definition of what it is to be a lesbian to a nearly completely open definition.

I had it easy, really.  Yes, I grew up in Idaho, which was not the hotbed of lesbian community that you might expect, but I still had people like Martina Navratilova, and Ellen, and a few other women to look to.  And gay-straight alliances started popping up when I was in college.  In a safe environment, I was able to explore what a lesbian relationship might look like for me.  And I quickly discovered that it wasn’t a butch/femme dynamic that interested me most.  My definition was softer, more fluid, as were the definitions of many of the women around me.

And now, the youngest generation of queer kids not only explores what it is to be gay or lesbian, they also explore what it is to identify as a man or woman, or as both or neither.  Each day.

Again, this is my experience.  The butch/femme dynamic is so cliché, and such a part of the psyche of the lesbian community that some people have careers based on it.  It’s a handy shorthand, and a punchline, but in the end, a woman gets to define herself in whatever way she likes.  And no matter what she wears or how she acts, the expression of her gender makes her no less a woman.  At least, in my eyes.

Curious George,

This is a frequently asked question, for sure.  And the answer may require some people to go look at kittens instead.

My general rule in answering these questions is to ask the person asking the question to flip the script.  That is to say, reverse the question and ask it of yourself.  So, let’s try that here.  I’m assuming that you’re a straight woman, or that you prefer sex with a man.  That said:

If straight women like penetration with a penis, why don’t they like penetration by a dildo – from a woman?

As you’ve identified, there is a difference between the two.  Your preference is for a penis.  My preference is for a dildo.  And for a woman.  That’s all.  It’s not that I don’t like penetration.  It’s that I like sex with a  woman, and everything that comes with it.

Well spotted, Heather.

The short answer:  Yes, it gets old.  More than that, the lack of authentic GLBT stories in literature, movies, television and pop culture generally make it really difficult for GLBT people to identify with the images of our community.  The vacuum of positive images and role models can make us cling to the caricatures and clichés presented as our lives.

And that can be very defeating when, as a teenager, you are told that you will either be a spinster, a bull-dyke, or die a hideous death.

The long answer:

Earlier this week, a friend of mine posted about a piece of lesbian fiction that will be coming out this month.  In it, she referred back to a book called, “Sweat,” one of the author’s earlier works.  It was like reading about an old friend.  I flashed back to high school when my girlfriend and I would pull the book out from under my bed and read it hungrily, finding in it a sense of belonging.  A sense of understanding that we weren’t alone.  That we weren’t freaks.  That there were others like us:   softball players who liked girls.

There were also the tattered copies of Rita May Brown novels, and Martina Navratilova biographies.  Books that were legitimate enough to buy at second-hand book stores without completely freaking out the people I was shopping with.

I live in Portland now, where I can get my hands on any kind of lesbian-centered literature, history, or humor I want.  But it’s still not mainstream.  I have to look for it.  Like a book on Malaysian cooking.  It’s there, but it’s not something I run across.  It’s rare that I pick up a book from the bestseller rack and find that there’s a lesbian sub-plot.  (Who am I kidding, it’s rare that I pick up a book from the bestseller rack at all.)

And it’s not just in books that this is the case.  In movies, and in television; in any part of pop culture, the existence of a homo plot is out-of-the ordinary.  It’s something to comment on.  Take a look at the reaction to “Brokeback Mountain”.  From protests, to discussions of whether the roles would ruin the careers of the actors who took them, the movie was totally controversial, even though it had more nominations than any other movie at the academy awards that year.  Had it been a movie about a heterosexual relationship, it would have been no big deal.  But it was out-of -the-ordinary, because it was two men.

In the rare instances where gay sub-plots appear, I find myself, and a lot of other queer folks, clinging to them like lifelines.  Take ER.  I didn’t watch ER.  Until Kerry and Lopez got together.  It was tender, and passionate and beautiful.  In the time that they were together on the show, every conversation I had with another lesbian included a discussion of the program.

And how about Ellen?  And Rosie.  Even when they weren’t out, we were watching.  We were supporting.  We were waiting.  Waiting for the funny inside jokes that they might make.  Supporting them so that they might find the courage to give us the out-front role models and popular images that would make our existence more normal.  I still won’t shop at JCPenny, because they pulled their marketing dollars from the Ellen show when she kissed another woman on-air.  I remember the parental warning that flashed on the screen before the show and during every commercial break – a great black screen with stark white lettering, letting the country know that it was okay to protect their kids from the deviancy, the depravity of two women expressing physical love for each other.  From me.

Ellen’s show (the sit-com) didn’t last very long after she came out.  Neither did Rosie’s.  Yes, Rosie has gone off the deep end, and Ellen had that whole unfortunate Anne Heche thing.  But still.  ER went on just fine.  “Brokeback Mountain” was a run-away success.  “Boys Don’t Cry” won the Best Actress Oscar.

Anytime someone tells me about a “great” gay film, I ask them two things:  “Does anyone get brutally murdered?” and “is it a ‘dick saves the day’ movie?”  Because it’s usually one of the two.  I know it’s not terribly politically correct, but it’s the sad pattern that I’ve come to expect.  Either a tomboy is “saved” by a man who is able to see through her rough exterior, or a beautiful relationship between two gays is cut short by some horribly tragic event:  the “God hates fags” scenario.  These plot formulas allow for the mainstream  telling of realistic gay stories, followed by such brutality that it makes clear what happens to those who choose such a lifestyle.

For example:  ER:  After a lovingly treated depiction of a lesbian relationship, Lopez, who is a firefighter, dies on the job.  Boys Don’t Cry:  after I watched the main character raped and beaten to death, I made my mother promise me that she would never watch the movie.  Brokeback Mountain:  a beautiful movie that ends with the not-so-subtle insinuation that, after years of pining away for his one, true love, one of the characters is clubbed to death by his father with a tire iron.  Fried Green Tomatoes:  Marriage interrupts the love of two women, but it’s a violent one, so there’s an excuse for the women to love each other.  Until one of them dies a long, painful death.  Boys on the Side:  Bad relationship results in death of a husband, a beautiful, tortured love between two women, and the AIDS-related death of one of them.  Thelma and Louise (I know this isn’t overtly lesbian, but it’s emotionally lesbian, and follows the pattern):  Bad marriage, rape, revenge, dick saves the day (but it’s Brad Pitt, so it’s almost excusable), betrayal, and a flying leap off of a cliff.

There’s a great movie I’d recommend putting on your NetFlix queue:  The Celluloid Closet.  It’s seriously good and looks at the images of queer people in the movies, since the days of the silent film.

And then there’s Will & Grace.  For a long time I wouldn’t watch this show.  Because, although it showed gay people, front and center, it showed us a caricatures of ourselves.  It was okay to make super-gay jokes, so long as they came from a flaming, queeny man or his chemically-dependent fag hag.  Or in the form of a totally unhealthy co-dependent relationship.  For too long, the only way gay men have been able to be accepted on tv or in the movies is as super-effeminate portrayals of themselves.  They exist as the joke itself, non-threatening and clownlike.  I got over it and watch the show now.  But I still have a really hard time with the movie “The Bird Cage”.

So, yes, it’s frustrating that GLBT life isn’t often portrayed in books and movies and television, and even when it is, it’s not usually my life.  Or anything close to it.  It’s frustrating that, in college, I spent hours and hours looking through the foreign film sections of Blockbuster and Hollywood video trying to figure out if there were lesbian themes in the subtitled movies.  It’s frustrating that, growing up, what I thought it meant to be a lesbian was to be a leather-clad, buzz-cut butch, or a clandestine married woman who would get clubbed to death while suffering from cancer.

It’s hard enough to develop an image of yourself as a powerful, healthy individual.  When surrounded by images that reinforce only the negative, it can be incredibly defeating.

I remember being 16 and  telling my family I wanted to record the 1993 March on Washington because of its cultural and historical significance.  I crouched in front of the tv and marveled, chin in my hands.  They were probably able to write it off as part of my unnatural my love of C-SPAN.  I watched and rewatched that 6 hours of VHS footage, looking for images of myself in the performers and activists that filed across the stage.  Real people who looked nothing like the clichés I’d been clinging to.

Fortunately, we’re moving forward.  Ellen has a new show.  And she’s out all the time.  She makes gay jokes on American Idol.  Good ones.  Funny ones that are smart and challenging.  Adam Lambert got more votes than anyone else on the show.  Country music stars are coming out.  Our stories are being told more fully.  And that’s more than a luxury.  It’s more than nice to have a book to read at the beach.  It’s important if we are going to reverse things like teenage suicide in the gay community – something that’s 5 times more likely than for straight teens.

It’s important that the lifelines we’re clinging to are real.  And that they lead us to a place of empowerment.

This came from a comment on the what is sex? post.  I think it merits its own topic.

Again, if you can’t handle it, please look away now.

The short answer: I’m a lawyer, so I like tests.  I use this “two part test” to determine whether something is sex:

First:  Based on what you’re doing, is it possible for one of the parties to come?

Second:  Is it the intention of the parties involved for someone to come?

If the answer is “yes” to both, then it’s sex.  Other than that, I’m not sure.

So, is breast play sex?  It depends.

The long answer:

I was considering this question as I headed out on a bike ride this afternoon.  I immediately thought of the time a couple of years ago when I was body surfing in Hawaii.  I saw a hornet drowning out in the water.  So, I scooped it up and brought it back to shore.  On my return to the ocean, one of his brothers, clearly unaware of my recent heroism, swam into my bikini and stung my nipple.  Uncool.

Now I’ve been known to manifest some freaky shit.  And I wondered if it was folly to be thinking about the bees.  But I quickly dismissed any concern and got on with my ride and deeper consideration of the breast play issue.

But Oregon bugs have pride.  Not to be outdone, 1/4 mile from my destination, a flying ant flew into my bra and bit me.  Repeatedly.  He bit my nipple.  He bit my areola.  He bit my breast.

(Now, I know what some of you are thinking.  “Wait!  Maybe it will swell!”  Very funny.  It hurts like hell.)

So, let me say this:  are breasts sensitive enough to have sex with them?  Y-E-S.  The icepack on mine is proof.

Like the “what is sex?” question, though, I’m not sure it’s so straight forward.

Is breast play (fondling, both digitally – that’s hands, people – and orally), by itself, sex?  I think it can be.  Does it matter if it’s clothed or naked?  As Tribe of One so eloquently stated, “If someone comes, it’s sex.  I don’t care how many clothes there are.”  I agree.  And, in my experience, breast play can lead to orgasm.  As can tribbing.

But what if nobody comes?  What if it’s not the intention at all?  It’s certainly sexual.  Foreplay is sexual.  Kissing can be sexual.

I agree with Amanda that orgasm isn’t the magic bullet that will answer the question.  Any of my girlfriends can tell you (and there aren’t that many, so be cool), I’m an endurance sport.  So if I sit on a woman’s face for an hour and don’t get there, it doesn’t mean it’s not sex.

More and more, I’m thinking the answer to these questions really does depend on intention and personal view.  For me, digital sex is sex.  For some of my straight friends, it’s not.  For other of my straight friends, it is.

The takeaway for me is that it’s really important to talk about these things.  Maybe not on a blog that your mom reads, but certainly with a potential partner, a current partner, and with yourself.  Thanks for the questions!  Keep them coming!  (Yeah, I totally said that.)

WARNING:  This post contains explicit language.  If you don’t want to think about me in compromising situations, please go look at pictures of kittens.

Questions about sex are the ones asked most often.  They’re also the questions that don’t get asked.  They linger under the surface in the too-long silence after I tell people I’m willing to answer any questions they have about the gayness.  It’s kind of like in elementary school when we all wanted to ask, “how does an astronaut pee if there’s no gravity?”  Nobody wanted to be the one to put their hand up, but we were all thinking it.

Just last night I was asked, “when does it become sex?”  My answer then was, “don’t worry, honey, we’re not there yet.”   Still, it’s a good question.

Like in the heterosexual world, the answer to this question depends on the person.  Just ask Bill “is” Clinton.  Here’s the answer for me:  Penetration=sex.  Also, oral sex=sex.  Also, direct clitoral stimulation=sex.  Let’s break that down.

Penetration

Penetration with tongue, fingers or toy (dildo, etc) is pretty clearly sex in my book.  (Don’t worry, I know there are all sorts of questions out there about this topic.  I’ll explore this more on its own.)

Oral sex

If your mouth is on my clit, or your tongue is in me, it’s sex.

Direct clitoral stimulation

If your hand, mouth, or anything else is on my clit without something other than a safety material in between, it’s sex.

That’s what it is for me.  Believe me, honey it leaves lots of room for spirited disagreement.  For instance, does orgasm=sex?  Damn good question.  What do you all think?

Also, I want to be sure to say that I don’t want anyone using this post to argue with their significant other that what they did wasn’t cheating.  Cheating and sex are two totally different, if related, things.  One of my friends, when defining sex asked the question, “if your husband was doing that, would you consider it sex?”  Careful there.  If my husband was kissing another person, I’d consider it cheating.  I wouldn’t consider it sex.  Also, if my husband was kissing me, I’d wonder what the hell kind of messed up dream I was having.