I was recently informed that I was in need of “a good dicking.”
The self-styled gentleman was sipping on a rum and coke, having recently seated himself across from me without my permission. He just strode in there and placed himself unceremoniously in the chair across from me. I knew him, casually, and apparently this meant he considered himself at liberty to badger me and the young lady I was waiting with. The young lady herself was not even my date, rather a good friend, but he nonetheless felt that it would be prudent to “cure” me of my latent and obvious homosexuality by suggesting that what I really needed was a positive sexual experience with a “real man.” A “real man” so far as I can tell, based on the specimen before me, is judged by his testosterone levels, how rude he can be to a woman in three minutes or les, and the not-so-subtle rearrangement of certain bits of himself to draw attention to his “goods.”
Does this remind anyone else of Kevin Smith’s Chasing Amy?
It was convenient that he was there, since he seemed to have the market cornered on being a dick. I said as much to him. This was not enough to dislodge him from my table, however. I was trying to enjoy a quiet evening, drink a glass of shiraz and read Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. Apparently, part of being a “real man” is not knowing when you are not wanted, talking about yourself to the utterly disinterested for hours at a time and completely ignoring social cues.
I couldn’t get him off my mind (although not for the reasons he would prefer) and I got to thinking. I have a friend who identifies herself as “lesbian with heterosexual tendencies.” I have another who espouses the value of her “gold-star” — meaning that she has never, ever had any sexual relations with a male, as a point of honour. A very dear friend of mine is bisexual, and chooses to take partners from both the lesbian and heterosexual community.
As for me, my stance is that boys are yucky and may carry cooties. All of these friends partake in lesbian sexuality. More than once I have heard the phrase “Hasbian” (a lesbian who has “done a 180” and now pursues heterosexual relationships) used in a derogatory sense. The disdain associated with this phrase implies that a certain loyalty is expected of lesbians to the Sapphic community — a sexual loyalty, a strictly no-penis diet, although penis-shaped objects approved by the Canadian Sapphic Council (CSC) are acceptable.
Just so we’re all clear, there is no such thing as the Canadian Sapphic Council. Seriously. I’m working on it, though.
The question remains: if I were to go out to a bar tonight, get obliterated, and go home with a man, would that make me any less of a lesbian?
Well, if it happened to me, I would be confused. And there would be hell to pay once I made my way to a telephone to call whichever of my dumbass friends let me go home with him instead of tossing me a cab and dragging my drunk butt back to my apartment. But less of a lesbian? More of a heterosexual? How can you be more or less of a sexuality? Sexuality isn’t a measuring cup. You can’t fill it with quarter of a cup of homosexuality, half a cup heterosexuality and a quarter of a cup of undecided. Sexuality just is. And it’s best to let our desires do the choosing, not anyone’s expectations.
I’m a woman who loves women. I’m as much of a lesbian as a bisexual woman who loves both women and men, or a woman who has loved women. And we’re all women, every bit as much as heterosexual women are. The idea that sexuality is “one thing or another” is a fallacy, little more than a throwback from the heterosexual, male-female, black-white, yes-no dichotomy. They want you to pick a side and stay there. They don’t want you to experiment. Experimentation not only upsets the “us-them” balance, it creates a greater sense of liberation — perhaps even of community — which opens up different social patterns not conducive to the norm.
Call me trite, call me crazy, call me clichéd, but people — isn’t this supposed to be about love? Isn’t sex about what makes us, as women, happy? My desires, my body, my choice.
Still, that doesn’t mean I want a good dicking.
Why you can trust Xtra
