The lesbian experience
A couple of years ago, I set my Tinder to men and women, after having pursued men (and only men) for my entire sexual/romantic life. I was beginning to get whiff of the many ways in which I have been culturally programmed to be a cisgender, heterosexual woman and how I’d never really considered if I desired women, just as I’d never really considered if I desired men. My desires were handed to me on a plate that looked very much like the women’s magazines of 2006 (consumed in secret by 12-year-old me).
I’d always found women sexy; I’d get turned on by watching women have sex, and by scrolling the Instagram accounts of sexy women. (I’m still unsure if this is due to my male gaze, my fluid sexual orientation or both.) I’d occasionally feel massive sparks of connection with IRL women, but I’d always assume the sparks meant that I wanted to be the woman, be her best friend, or both. (This was probably also the case for 90% of the sparks I’ve felt with men who I’ve then pursued sexually/romantically. Oops.) And it’s not as if my sexual experiences with men up until that point had been particularly mind-blowing—mostly consisting of PIV sex and a vague longing for something more, without quite knowing what that something was.
So, I reasoned, I might be into women instead of, or as well as, men and just not know it yet. My Tinder settings were an attempt to reprogram the existing programming and see if it did anything to me.
The first non-vanilla date I went on was with a couple. A man and a woman who had only just started dating each other. He was polyamorous and she was up for trying out a threesome or two, to keep him happy (it seemed). We went for a walk on the beach to get a feel for each other and plan our threesome. They held hands for most of the time while I walked beside them. I liked her more than him, but to be fair, I couldn’t understand most of what he said, because he spoke Norwegian and my Danish isn’t that good. We hugged goodbye and agreed to set a date for the threesome. As soon as I was alone, I started crying. It turned out I didn’t want to be a sexy accessory to their cosy, little relationship, I wanted what they had: a cosy, little relationship.
I didn’t rule out women though. Several months later, after moving to a new city, I started some actual (Tinder) conversations with actual women—amused to discover that a lot of what I wrote stank of confident, British man. One time, I opened with “Who are you? ❤”. She replied, a little flustered, and I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t comfortable being someone who makes others feel flustered. After several days of agonising over my reply, I (shamefully) unmatched her. With the next few women, I relaxed, becoming conversationally more myself and less man-chatting-up-women.
I went on a date—three dates in fact—with a woman. We got on great, talked and talked into the night and arranged our next date with excitement. Then my brain panicked when we kissed for the first time. Her soft caress of my cheek threw me into an unexpected shock. I’d never been kissed like this before, and I wondered if this is what men felt when I kissed them and wait a second, did that make me the “man” in this relationship? I was the taller, firmer, more outspoken one. I wasn’t quite ready to confront my masculinity right there and then. Also, our teeth clunked and it was a bit clumsy and awkward. I cycled home disappointed in myself for not being a better lesbian and for not being ready for a role I claimed (with my Tinder settings) to be ready for, because I liked her.
But it also occurred to me that if I’d had a toothy, role-challenging kiss with a man, I wouldn’t have been disappointed in myself for not being a good enough heterosexual. In other words, I still didn’t rule out women.
And now I’m a year-and-a-half into a relationship with a man and I still haven’t ruled out women. I probably never will. Unless I manage to date and have sex with all the women in the world and not enjoy any of them, it would be kind of unfair to rule out women. I like to think that my love is for people. That I fall in love with specific people and I’m sexually attracted to specific people. However, that kind of openness requires me to be pure in my attraction, rather than heavily influenced by 27 years of thinking that straight men are for sex and romance and women and gay men are for everything else. I need to get less binary.
Alternative interpretation: I’m as heterosexual as they come and I’m trying to wiggle out of it because bi/cupio/demi/homo/poly/pan-sexual would work waaaaaaay better with my norm-defying identity. Although this interpretation requires a belief that sexual orientation is a fixed state, rather than my fluffier “we can all just love everyone if we only throw off the shackles of society” interpretation above. Either way, here’s some related feminist jargon for you.
compulsory heterosexuality
Compulsory heterosexuality (or “compulsive heterosexuality” as I keep calling it) is what I go on about all the time in these newsletters: the idea that heterosexuality is a norm enforced by a heteronormative society—as opposed to the idea that most people are born heterosexual (an idea promoted by the very same heteronormative society). The idea of compulsory heterosexuality therefore suggests, as I do, that if we weren’t so influenced by the norms of society, there would be a lot less heterosexuality, and perhaps no need for any labels for sexual orientation. We’d all just be fluid and sexual and free, hurrah!
political lesbianism
Most women who date men (myself included) have been there. Tired of men who don’t realise (or pretend not to) that women can orgasm, men whose Tinder profiles contain nothing but a list of the things they expect you (the woman) to be, and a general feeling that dating is shit and the patriarchy (that thing often attributed to men) is to blame, we think, or say casually to our friends, “perhaps it’s time I became a lesbian.”
Political lesbianism is when a woman actually does that: she entirely rejects men and only has relationships with women, not because she has any particular desire for women, but because she hates men and everything they represent. It’s considered a pretty extreme form of radical feminism and it is arguably not very feminist at all to deprive yourself of men and men of you on purely political grounds.
The assumption behind political lesbianism is that sexual orientation is a choice. But of course, if sexual orientation is a choice (i.e. we’re all fluid deep down anyway) this doesn’t necessarily mean you can magic yourself to be attracted to people you’re not attracted to—see compulsory heterosexuality!
Love and logic don’t always go hand in hand. Notoriously, they don’t at all. I theorised my way to lesbian and ended up, several months after my first attempts at dating a woman, in a relationship with a man (he’s reading this so I’ll just pop in a little I love you). I resisted our relationship for as long as I could, but eventually I had to admit to myself, despite my political lesbianism leaning, that I wanted vanilla.
In my vanilla relationship, I’ve never felt so free to be myself. My masculine, feminine, silly, singing, not-showering, obsessive, overworking, hairy, nerdy, bitchy, lazy, farty, spotty self—all the parts of me I had fantasised about finally getting be in a relationship with a woman. The person I’m in a relationship with, who happens to be a man, makes me feel like that. So I guess that’s what I’m into, in people. And I guess I also ought to give men more credit. Just #notallmen, a lot of you are dicks.
Optional toppings
💤 The Long Awakening of Adrienne Rich, re: compulsory heterosexuality and political lesbianism, but also re: a genuinely fascinating and ahead-of-her-time person, this is one of my favourite New Yorker reads
📗 The Argonauts is a book by the wonderfully genre-defying, queer-theorising, story-spinning Maggie Nelson
💞 Feel Good on Netflix, about the early days of a relationship between two women: one an out-and-proud lesbian, the other still in the closet
🧂 @salty.world on Instagram
I love you. All of you!
— H. E.
Well, this was incredibly beautiful. Thank you for writing it <3