ThreeWay: The Plight of the Straight Lesbian
K.L.: The other night I was bartending and this lesbian couple came in. We started talking about lesbian bars, or lack thereof, in the city. NYC, that is.
Julia: That problem exists now everywhere.
K.L.: The louder one said she thought it was fucked up that all her straight male friends weren't allowed to come into certain girl parties with her.
Julia: Ew.
K.L.: I said, "I beg to differ." The conversation progressed angrily, as any good angry lesbians would, at which point her girlfriend said, “She and I don't really do the girl scene.” I said, “What does that mean?” She said, “We don't go to gay bars, we don't listen to lesbian musicians, we don't read lesbian authors. All of our friends are straight.”
Amy: Ooooooh. That's where she lost me.
Julia: WTF?!
Angry-lesbian-in-training.
K.L.: Which is fine if that's the case, to each her own... BUT she said it with this kind of smug pride, as if to say, “We're above all that."
Julia: That's so weird to me that anyone could have that attitude.
K.L.: And I find that most lesbians who claim to entirely remove themselves from lesbian culture do have this sense of self-loathing pride. Like, pride in being non-lesbian lesbians.
Julia: But it's such a privileged stance to even be able to take, ON TOP of the obvious self-loathing stuff... If you don't feel the need for any kind of queer community you must be very comfortably assimilated into heteronormative life and mainstream culture...
Amy: When I first heard K.L. say she wanted to punch these lesbians who said they don't identify with lez culture, I thought of it from the perspective of... someone within the queer community who doesn't identify with a lot of "lesbian" things, which I can get with. Cuz there is a lot of L culture that I dismiss. BUT… Now that I know it's more like they're more straight than lesbian, that's a whole other story. I hate that.
K.L.: I know. But we're all at fault too. Sometimes I think that because we're all so butch/ femme, we tend to think that we're not a part of the whole Melissa Etheridge/hairy armpit/same outfit-wearing culture. But let's face it, we are. It's internalized homophobia.
Julia: I dunno. I kinda grew up a Melissa Etheridge/same outfit wearing dyke, and only later came into my femme
Comments [94]
I heart this post.
I just got out of a long term relationship in which my partner was completely indifferent to queer issues. She "forgot" to vote on Ref 71 (WA), the "everything but marriage" law expanding all rights to same-sex couples (except marriage -- we'll get to that later). She didn't want to watch gay movies, listen to gay music, or hang around any gay people except her one gay friend from work. I tried to deal with this, because I felt like this was all her choice and who was I to impose my (our) culture on her. And I was right about that -- if I had tried to force her to like my music and hang out with more gay people, then I would be no different than the people trying to force us to not have marriage rights.
However, it got to the point where I could no longer live with her indifference. There were other catalysts in the dissolution of our relationship, but her "*shrug* are you surprised?" after Prop 8 was definitely a huge factor.
So next week, I am going to my first Pride in over four years, and y'all, I am EXCITED!
Thanks for the post!
“Some women can't say the word lesbian... even when their mouth is full of one.”
-Kate Clinton
@cerise77
hello everyone
I knew everyone here are friendly, articulate individual , some are very openly gay and that 's what I like, I learned a lot of LGTB words or jargon ,dyke culture and sexuality although English is not my first language and I really dont know who are my fellow Asian in this community ,the only Asian are the 2 Japanesse -American CHEF who are here in VPark ., but being here , I tried to have guts to communicate though Im not that good in my grammar but I tried myself to mingle and mix in this community because what I believe without participation in some comments it is like I'm just watching here lol >>>>>..... I found out this community are good especially for the gays who are looking for some social interaction on which in our everyday life were working with our fellow straight co worker friends,mix up crowd but my personal opinion related to the main topic is...
It doesn't matter if those people are Gay Lesbian who are acting straight but does not want or dont want to participate or apply the lesbian culture in their life because they wanted their way.I have a lesbian internet friends ,who are frustrated in meeting right partner because of her shy personality ,not articulate or talkative to share their personal stuff . Straight lesbian who acts like straight maybe they still in their denial stage [ in hesitant to show their freedom of being who they are?] hiding themselves on which they still in the process on when they're going to come out .... having a problem where they can meet their ideal girl, due to individual differences some people are like that .
In my old country where I grew up, and I have some fellow who look straight but their sexual orientation is 'CLOSET" they trapped in a woman's body, they wear women's clothes, act like a real girl next door but they're sexual orientation is very Lesbian .They never show their sexual orientation and very careful to which person they wanted to confide their real background and sexuality because they afraid about the rejection especially with their peers , family,their social status especially in their job and profession .
Through Julia and K.L.conversation with my understanding its seem they talked about Queer ? We could classify them like they're gay but no definite gender or they like a neuter ? Unlike femme or butch nor lesbian sexuality they have a classification?
WOW, sometimes same as in Butchness or we have some classification too we have STUD, hard Butch/ soft Butch, Femme or Lesbians [ but in this class they might click or attract to each other] but their are some lesbian that they only like lesbian only ? hmmmmm
With your conversation it's look like there are some straight woman [ some are single, married, divorce and their relationship with real guys when they become frustrated with their abusive relationship , most of them are end up to turned to......... comfort love from lesbian- straight woman, butch-straight woman but as far as I believe and experienced they still straight although they enjoying the sexuality without any commitment unlike with femme or butch or stud in their culture they belong for sure to someone.
So to avoid confusion, everybody are excuse from Lesbian culture if they only enjoying the benefit of recieving sex but not to celebrate that they belong to our culture but they love to have us [gay] for pleasure , sexcapades, they used us for their emotional well being as an outlet or comfort ? Maybe this is my personal opinion , no wonder me as a Butch ,maybe I have a tendency to give my free love if its like it but ooops Im getting Old like a duck now ....I still have my dyke butch culture etiquette.
So if some people are still wondering what group or they dont have culture dyke or lesbian butch culture .....I bet there is no place in this world why are we participating in this community forum.....
BuggleM the dmd
Hey buggleM
I have another term for you that many use here in the states. It is Bi, or Bisexual though many of us also go by just plain queer. There are a lot of people out here for whom the biology isn't really the major point. The first person I ever fell in love with was a girl and everyone I have been interested in since reminded me of her in some way. I was married to a guy and had a child with him, the old fashioned way. It wasn't because I was in the closet, or afraid to be who I am. I was in love. It ended badly, but that didn't make me turn to women; I was already interested in women, too. I haven't fallen for a man in a very long time, but that doesn't mean it couldn't happen again. I'm not a straight woman playing at being a lesbian or running away from a bad relationship. I'm Queer. I'm me, and for me it doesn't really matter what hangs and where. I fall in love with a person, not hir body parts.
This stuff gets confusing and is cause for plenty of disagreement with folks who are all speaking the same language. Props for putting yourself out here while learning another one. I just wanted you to hear this particular definition from another perspective.
Peace
hi not2taem thanks for the definition :)
thanks at least i have another word that i can add up in my vocabulary :) , i knew about Bi but for Queer ,I was like an ignorant about their orientation but now i got it thanks lol and peace be with you too. .....
BuggleM the dmd
Queer
It is a tricky one. People use it to mean a lot of different things. Welcome to the gayborhood.
Why did you repeat Grace's comment?
This comment was originally: Submitted by Grace Moon on Mon, 2009-10-26 19:43
Why did you repeat it here with no indication and elucidation?
Probably because it's spam...
Probably because it's spam... (note the link at the end).
Duh!
I should have realized that. I hardly ever go to links in people's signature lines, so I tend not to notice them. Thanks for the clue.
Tae, I don't either--and
Tae, I don't either--and didn't in this case, so thanks to MacLass for confirming. What first tipped me off was you saying the comment was a repeat of Grace's, which is something spammers have done on here before. Then when I saw the link lightbulb!
heeee heeeeee, Mystics..... you made me look !!
I thought when it said... poker, it was sexual in nature! I'm a complete ass.
I declare
Tomorrow.....'Tasking Wednesday'
Please 'Task' before entering the park....it will make the ride more enjoyable!!
Lake
One more time!
Lake, this made me smile. Again! I got here via a comment on the side board. This little gem made it well worth the trip. Today is also wednesday.
I'll be watching Obama sign hate crimes bill into law...
... after I drive about 600 miles in what will start out as Santa Ana winds and later turn into snow.
LOL
Speaking of which, better get some sleep. Tomorrow promises to be quite an, um, interesting day.
This is really stupid....
Judging another woman's 'lesbian I.Q. quotient' is fucking ridiculous... There are women that live in all different types of environments and circumstances. And, their comfort level, is their business - not mine, or anyone else's.
Fuck, when will women just stop...stop being what we criticize others for - intolerant.
Just to clarify, the quoted
Just to clarify, the quoted phrase 'lesbian I.Q. quotient' didn't appear anywhere in the blog--that I could see--probably because it's redundant.
WTF
You know what Mystics.....not that I need to tell you this but, I posted and left my computer. I came back and I saw the redundancy and was going to fix it. But, you responded so I couldn't.
Nice. Very nice.
Sorry...
Sorry...
Thank you.
Thank you.
Seriously?
Good lord. You could protect all the corn in Iowa with all the strawmen strewn through the comments in this blog.
Nowhere in the original blog did anyone say that lesbians should not have straight friends. I saw nothing in the original blog that sounded as though the writers thought they were "superior." In fact, multiple times they stepped back and looked at the situation from other perspectives. For example:
K.L.: I know. But we're all at fault too. Sometimes I think that because we're all so butch/ femme, we tend to think that we're not a part of the whole Melissa Etheridge/hairy armpit/same outfit-wearing culture. But let's face it, we are. It's internalized homophobia.
Nowhere did Grace say anyone must "base the worth of a person or the things they do or create solely on whether or not they are a lesbian."
If people don't believe there's such as thing as lesbian or dyke culture then why come to this site? You come to this site because you get access to information about our politics, our references, our artists (musicians and fine artists, designers etc), our writers, our topics, our sexuality, our economics, our discussions, our points of agreement AND disagreement* that you don't get anywhere else.
*Grace's definition of our culture.
"When you look for the bad in mankind expecting to find it, you surely will." ~ Pollyanna
Hear hear!
Hear hear! Thank you Rusty for bringing us back down to earth--or at least to the blog itself.
There seems to be mucho projecting going on, because the only people in the blog who rejected anyone based solely on sexual orientation is the two women in question, not the authors. Since at one time in my life most of my friends were straight and now probably at least half are, I'm usually pretty sensitive to any straight-bashing.
Clearly we don't know enough from this short interaction to really judge, but the bloggers were questioning, not judging--trying to understand where these two women, or other women who might feel like them, are coming from. And that, in my humble opinion, is what being human is all about.
I.Call.Bullshit.
Thanks Mystics, I can't believe how far away from the original blog this discussion went. Usually, I don't have a problem with tangents. (I've led more than a few myself, here in the Park.) But when commenters accuse bloggers of writing things or supporting positions they never did — I.Call.Bullshit.
(Especially when it's clear they didn't bother reading the full blog, they're replying based on comments already posted. Lazy and unfair.)
"When you look for the bad in mankind expecting to find it, you surely will." ~ Pollyanna
Based on what?
Rusty,
I'll see your BS and call some good old fashioned nonsense. How could you possibly have any knowledge of what any poster has or has not read? I realize that you are communicating with a person with whom you often disagree, but when you start being contrary just for the sake of it, you are not doing this community any favors. By all means, go ahead and disagree on social issues, perspective, etc. But defend your stance with logical arguments, of which you are very capable, not suppositions about actions that you could not possibly have knowledge of.
If you can't trust a friend to grab a hold of you when you're about to step off the bridge...
fallacious reasoning
I called B.S. because some people made responses to points that they claimed were in the original blog that were not there. Either they didn't read the blog or they purposefully misrepresented the points that were made. That was the point of my earlier strawman comment.
Pointing out the use of the strawman fallacy is logical.
And now I'm off to go ice a few people on Mafia Wars.
"When you look for the bad in mankind expecting to find it, you surely will." ~ Pollyanna
Really? Which people would that be?
Because I took your generalized dismissiveness, false assumptions, and now accusations, to be directed at pretty much everyone here, myself included, who did not see things the way you did.
In doing so, you turned an otherwise informative and educational discussion on an issue that obviously hit a sensitive spot for more than a few of us into a discussion focused on you and your attitude towards some of us here.
Like I said, this WAS a good discussion.
Thanks a lot.
[EDITED FOR SPELLING, SO STUFF THE PARANOIA]
oh my.
Dismissive attitude and false assumptions
I read the original blog, as well as the various comments that had already been posted, more than once, before I chimed in. I'm not the only one, both who read it and reread it, and who drew similar conclusions about the way the discussion was going.
Please, do not assume I or others didn't think things through carefully, just because we don't see the world the way you do. Everyone posted their perceptions, and some asked questions, because that's what people do when they want to at least try to communicate where they're coming from, and to understand where others are coming from.
This was a fairly rational and relatively calm discussion.
I agree CMW....
I read the blog, and all of the comments twice. I appreciate all of the comments - those I agree with, and those that I may not agree with.
But, above all - I really enjoy when the comments express a wide variety of our communities experience, knowledge and opinions.
Maybe some people just get
all gayed out ...
You know, when you first come out you can't learn/know enough. You immerse yourself in culture, politics, the "fight" ... rainbow t-shirts.
I'm sure if someone has been doing that since forever or really intensely, they would get somewhat jaded? ... They see the 'faults' in the community ... and just want to go to a non exclusively gay bar.
I wonder if the The L Word cast and crew were over all things lesbian, by the end of that show
Just as there are straight people who don't get involved or are completely oblivious to causes that affect them, there are gays who just live their lives and probably wonder why they have to defend/prove themselves or get involved.
Great point Joanne. I think
Great point Joanne. I think you're spot on.
That's how it was for me anyway.
"Fight Prime Time. Read a Book"
Well hello there PK!!
Well hello there PK!!
Hello my sweet friend from
Hello my sweet friend from England.
How are you? Im home sick with some kind of bug.
"Fight Prime Time. Read a Book"
Oh no!! :-( Hope you feel
Oh no!! :-( Hope you feel better soon my love!
I am okay - sitting at Dublin airport waiting to fly back to London - what is interesting is that there is a "U.S Mail" aircraft parked at the gate - maybe I am going to fly home with bags of mail....!!
lucky new yorkers!
to the couple i would say.. try living in alabama. and maybe then u will truely appreciate lesbian culture and especially community. when you live in nyc i guess its easy to say that doing "straight" stuff is more enjoyable because you know good ol' hen's is just down the street whenever you need a pick-me-up.
Excellent point!
Excellent point, foamy. Let's face it, how 'straight' really is anything in NY?
I've often thought that all
I've often thought that all beings would benefit from occassionally blipping into another person's life with no prior notice or control.
Being an...
Irish blonde hair, blue eyed lesbian.....I think I'll just stay out of this one!
Lake
Aw, come on in and play, lol!
Jewish, Native American, pruple hair, blue-eyed, trans-lesbian.
Just jump right on in, the water's fine!
Hot tub?
LMAO!
No, asked my employer, and they said no hot tubs in the rig, something about the extra weight, lol.
Don't think I haven't tried to work that one out, though!
Nice pic
I was wondering who that little girl was.
Wonder Woman....
Thank you!!
Lake
being lesbian
isn't merely about sexuality or who you sleep with or "choices". it. is. a. culture. hence. this. website. When lesbians don't understand their culture or their history they do and say uninformed things and do not advance us as a people. infact they might as well be in the closet. I will say no more on this subject becuase its going to make me fucking nuts.
tweet tweet @gracemoon
The majority of Americans
The majority of Americans don't know their own culture, their own history--there's a decided lack of curiosity. These two strike me as that type. Like I said in a previous post, they just don't strike me as very evolved--rather than wanting to redefine what it might mean to be gay, they'd rather conform to a culture that already exists. Of course if you said to them 'oh, so you like hanging out with homophobes?' they'd probably say not all straights are homophobes. Well, ladies, not all lesbians are...whatever you think they are that you're so worried about identifying with.
Just one more thing?
What defines lesbian culture from your point of view, and where can I see (or hear) examples?
I'm not trying to be glib or argumentative here, and I do understand the history. It's just that I travel quite a bit, for certain more than most here, and I never see the same thing from one area of the country to the next, or even within the same state.
Maybe this would be a good topic for another discussion, I don't know. But I hear and see so many mentions about dyke culture, as it is somehow a cohesive concept, but the reality I see is so, well, divirse, fluid, ever changing.
Am I missing something?
its
our politics, our references, our artists (musicians and fine artists, designers etc), our writers, our topics, our sexuality, our economics, our discussions, our points of agreement AND disagreement.
I'm using lesbian in a loose way in terms of "identify" you could say queer women, womon or wimmin or women... I don't care.
I've traveled a lot too and I find lesbians/queers have much more in common than they don't.
but the point is we DO have a culture and it has to do with the threads of references we all share, whether someone accepts them or rejects them it is our culture.
tweet tweet @gracemoon
Okay, I understand now.
I guess I'm not a part of lesbian culture then, because I am incapable of basing the worth of a person or the things they do or create solely on whether or not they are a lesbian, let alone separating myself from everything else.
Thanks for the response, I've been trying to figure this one out for quite a while, and it explains some things I've had to deal with lately.
I've refrained from
I've refrained from commenting on this blog for a variety of reasons but since you took Grace's comments to some place she never even intimated I have to speak up. All she did was describe what makes up lesbian culture. Culture has nothing to do with a person's worth and certainly being part of a culture doesn't mean you have to separate yourself from others who are not a part of that culture. That's just a ridiculous leap from point A to... Well, somewhere in outer space.
There are certain aspects of lesbian culture that I enjoy and am a part of and others I don't or am not. I'm sure that's true for everyone. Like every other culture and every other person who considers themselves part of a particular culture.
Become a fan of "Sodomy: The Musical" on Facebook!
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sodomy-The-Musical/302006935414
I guess we now need the ability to sort comments?
I took Grace's comment where I did not based solely on the one comment, but on ALL the comments she made. The implication I drew from those comments was that, if we do not know every aspect of LGBT culture, we are self-loathing assimilationists with low self-esteem.
While that may be an apt description of Senator Larry Craig (R-ID), who rejects everything, including his own self, about LGBT culture, and then uses his position of power to persecute others like himself, I fail to see where that applies to any of us, or to the original story itself for that matter.
Like I said, by the time I chimed in well after the original story posted, those labels were being applied in such a way as to offend more than a few here. Having been the "focus" of such discussions as the original post, which I've read more than once, about who or what I am, and having carefully read ALL the responses to it, I formed my response, and subsequent comments.
If you read my other comments, you then know that this particular issue hit a sore spot in me, one I've been dealing with for too many decades now. The whole tone of the discussion and comments, the labels used, the dogma promoted, smacked of similar instances I continue to deal with to this day (well, yesterday anyway).
And, while I recognize that perhaps this discussion is not what the participants in the original post had in mind, this is the direction it went in. Obviously, if you look at the date-time stamps, more than a few wanted to take the discussion in this direction long before I even logged in.
"I guess I'm not a part of
"I guess I'm not a part of lesbian culture then, because I am incapable of basing the worth of a person or the things they do or create solely on whether or not they are a lesbian, let alone separating myself from everything else."
CMW....there's not much I can add to that.
You said it all and I totally agree with you.
VP--Dyke CULTURE in Bloom
Itty and CAMW I'd be curious to know how the heck you ended up here (in the Park) then. Have you had to separate yourself from 'everything else'?
And thankfully we have a 'here' because somebody cares about their culture.