Thoughts on queerness
Click to read this wizard comic about being queer!
A few months ago I went on date with a genuine lesbian, which was roughly when I realized that all the women I’ve had sex with have been bisexuals or pansexuals or otherwise not lesbians.
Aside: Consider for a moment that Sappho, erotic poet from the island of Lesbos and entire reason we call women-loving-women lesbians, was almost certainly married to a man and had a daughter with him. Perhaps more telling, her writing pervs over men as well as women. Why she is the Ur Example and Trope Namer of a male-excluding sexual orientation? I do not know.
The date went well. We were both kind of nervous; we talked for hours about hip hop and families and law school and other entry-level topics. Then she told me that her lesbian friends thought it was super gross that she was on a date with a bisexual. They argued that bisexuals brought disease into the community, and were just generally icky because of touching penises or something.
Um. Okay.
I am not sure how rare that point of view is, but it sort of both introduced and answered the question of why I haven’t had a lot of sex with lesbians. Maybe, to an unknown number of them, I am tainted with penis and super icky and therefore unacceptable. And it is absolutely their right to feel that way.
When I say I’m queer I mean that I fit under the LGBTetc. umbrella. I mean that politically and personally, I deeply care about LGBTetc. issues. But that is the broadest possible meaning of queer (unless we’re going with queer=weird, in which case we are all in this boat together), and some people choose it as a more specific identity. I have considered doing so myself, sometimes even to get away from all the (largely inaccurate) negative perceptions that come with being a bisexual. When people ask me what I think the term “queer” means, I usually tell them how I think of it when other people use it in the more specific sense: “Whatever assumptions you’re about to make about this person’s gender, orientation, identity, they are asking you to think again.” And that might be a terrible definition, but it makes a certain kind of sense to me. If I identified as queer over bisexual/pansexual, to me that would mean that I’d prefer for people to keep going and push further after clocking me as straight (as they tend to do), or assuming that because I’m a bi chick I’m icky, and have a conversation with me about my orientation and identity, rather than just having a term that declares outright whom I like to bone.
That’s appealing, in its way. But then, some days I don’t want to be all didactic. A surprising number of days, really. Therein lies the trib…
Wouldn’t that same argument justify straight male homophobia?
@Lily
I wholeheartedly agree with your question. But I think, strictly from a far-outside perspective, that women either approach or are approached differently on a “how do I deal with/think about homophobia” scale. Granted, hard data’s difficult to come by, but that’s just my impression.
As a lesbian who’s slept with mostly bi women (and only ever been in love with bi women), I honestly think biphobic lesbians tend to get their just desserts. There are WAY more bi/pan/flexible women than there are lesbians, and it’s a pretty fucking small dating pool. Wanna be biphobic? Well, have fun not dating any of the gorgeous, brilliant, wonderful women that I’ve been with–or, for that matter, me, because fuck that shit.
i’ve found lesbians to be overwhelmingly biased *against* bisexual women. in fact, i stopped going to SisterSpace (a camping weekend “for women who love women”) due to this bias. it’s pretty awful, and made me feel incredibly unwelcome. i’ve heard everything from “you’re diseased” to “you’re mentally unbalanced because you like men.”
i get it. many lesbians don’t want to have anything to do with women who like penis. they don’t have to be so mean about it, though.
@Molly
can you, like, clone the heck out of yourself and populate Baltimore? that would be awesome.
Seeing as how most of the unquestionably lesbian lesbians that I know are mothers and have been in relationships with men at some point in their lives, this confuses.
@Lily I think it’s absolutely a homophobic person’s right to feel as they do. I’m not in the business of trying to police anyone’s opinions or beliefs; I just expect them to act like adults about it.
@quizzical pussy
Would you extend that to racism, or anti-semitism? I find this genuinely puzzling.
@Lily Of course I would. People have a fundamental right to feel the feelings and think the thoughts they have, whether I agree with them or not. (Is there truly a point where you feel that a person should lose this right?) When they start behaving in harmful ways, that’s when I start having the desire to push back. I say it a lot on this blog, but I simply don’t believe in thought crime. My original statement was to make it clear that I’m not offended that people somewhere are thinking uncomplimentary or even incorrect things about me.
@Lily
Not that anyone’s asking me, but I’ve had to really think about how I felt regarding this question in the last few years.
A while ago, I would’ve argued with people who were racist, homophobic, and/or anti-semitic simply on the basis that I felt they were wrong to have those opinions. Now, however, I agree more with QP. It would be nice if people weren’t bigots, but they are. Besides, prejudicial feelings (IMHO) often come from upbringing or some traumatic experience, and any logical argument you could construct against them isn’t likely to actually change the person’s opinion anyway.
Now, when I figure out that someone is a bigot, I just don’t talk to him/her beyond that point. I’m happier that way. Bigots are entitled to feel the way they do just as much as I’m entitled to feel like their feelings are ignorant. As long as they aren’t actively out abusing people (or inciting others to do so with any level of success) or attempting to have their opinions legislated (I’m looking at you, gay marriage bans), I don’t feel the need to raise my voice against them.