What is it about sexuality and gender that gets everyone all in a tizzy? I often torment myself by reading the barbaric comments on equal rights articles about how people don’t want “gayness” shoved down their throats (no pun intended). They often say “I don’t care what you do, just keep it in your bedroom” or “Homosexuality is wrong, but I’m not a bigot because I have gay friends”.
What I don’t understand is how people can actually think that in fighting for equal rights that we’re trying to shove our sexuality in their face. Do those same people think twice about being on a date with their husband or wife? Or just a mindless, autonomous gesture like a man putting his hand on his wife’s back to guide her through a door? Or a woman being out with her child(ren) and it’s assumed that she has a husband at work while she runs errands?
And I’m guilty of it too. I see a woman with a big wedding band on with a tot in tow and I automatically assume she has a husband. Chances are I’m probably right but there are women with children who are married to another woman. I have a friend from HS who had 3 children with a man and she is now married to a woman and they’re raising her children together.
Hell, people see Sheri and I walking side by side and 99.9% of the time they either think to themselves, or ask us if, we’re mother and daughter. I don’t fault them for that necessarily, she is 17 years older than me and I do look suspiciously much like her oldest daughter (people mistake us for sisters a lot), but we laugh our awkward laugh and say no, we’re together. And 100% of the time they stumble through an apology or give a knowing smile and nod.
A friend of mine recently wrote an entry speaking about how uncomfortable she is with the label “lesbian” just because she is involved with another woman. I have written about it here before and I feel the need to reiterate, not just to you, but to everyone I encounter.
I do not like being called a lesbian because I am in a relationship with a woman. In fact, I detest it. It’s really my family, from lack of understanding, who are determined to lump me into that category. And maybe it’s easier for them when they’re talking to someone Oh yeah, I have a sister who is a lesbian or My sister is gay. It’s the end of that conversation then, no further explanation is needed. It’s understood that I’m attracted to girls. But if they were to say I have a sister who is bisexual, there would be follow up questions. I have explained to them and friends, TIME AND TIME AGAIN, that I define myself as bisexual. Just because I am with a man does not make me straight, or if I am with a woman that does not make me a lesbian. I am physically attracted to both men and women. Sheri is the first woman I’ve been in a relationship with but is not the first woman I’ve encountered sexually.
I knew I was different when I was 11. I was watching “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” on VHS and I would pause and then run slow-mo through the scene where the chick strips on the diving board. I desperately wanted to see her titties, although I didn’t know quite why. My mother was in the kitchen and saw the scene on repeat about 5 times and yelled “JENNIFER! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”
A few years later it was NYE, my parents and uncle & aunt were downstairs and I was up in my parents’ room watching “Showgirls”. Remember that god-awful movie that Elizabeth Berkley did to break away from her good-girl image of Jessie from Saved by the Bell? Yeah. I apparently had no cinematic taste at 13 either but hell if it wasn’t hot. I heard my father’s footsteps coming up the stairs and I switched over to National Geographic where they were doing some special on snakes. He looked at me weird and hit the “last” button on the remote and it was the scene of her thrashing passionately in the pool. Queue most embarrassing, stumbling, stuttering explanation ever. It probably was as bad as a teenage boy caught masturbating by his mother.
Fast forward to my later teenage years when I had my first girl kiss (15), my first sexual encounter with a girl (also 15-not that I had ANY idea what I was doing) I kind of knew that I was into girls. But I was also ENTIRELY boy crazy. I had boyfriends left and right, throughout all of high school I was the “blow-job queen” (a nickname Sheri gave me when she learned of my love of giving BJs. It’s a power thing). I only lost my virginity at 18 but I was well experienced with how to handle the man-hood before that. I was labeled a “dyke” the first month into my freshman year of high school. And let me tell you, there was nothing more socially crippling than having seniors, who you have NO idea who the hell they were, calling you a dyke. That’s probably why I made it such a point to be such a flirt with boys and pull out their junk any chance I could get, even if it were on a baseball field or in the woods somewhere. I had to dispel those rumors and my reputation of being a slut be damned. If I was a slut with boys, then I couldn’t possibly be into girls.
But I was. I couldn’t deny that part of me no matter how hard I tried. I finally became comfortable in my own skin when I went to college. I started to accept the fact that I was attracted to other girls. Hell, I was 20 and on my first date with my first real boyfriend when I proudly announced that I was bi (because I thought that was a turn on for guys-how naïve I was). I explained to him, even though he didn’t ask, that I was only sexually attracted to girls. I’d NEVER be in a relationship with one. Oh God no, that was the worst thing I could have done. I told him I needed to be the girl in the relationship and I could never deal with the cattiness and bitchiness of another girl.
Fast forward 3 years and I meet Sheri. I fell for her emotionally before I did physically. I needed to be around her, I needed her like she was a drug. Our level of obsession with one another was unhealthy to say the least. We look back on our behavior then and wonder who the hell those two people were. But she opened me up to a world of possibilities that I never thought I’d even WANT to experience with another woman.
But to call me a lesbian because I’m marrying a woman is no more less than me calling you Spanish if you’re from Brazil. You’re not, so why would I call you that?
That’s what the majority of the population does not get in this country. Everyone is so quick to throw a label on to something they don’t understand. If a girl likes another girl she must be a lesbian. If a boy likes another boy he must gay. If you’re transgender then you’re just fucked up in the head. There is no in-between, there is no all-inclusiveness. We want to sort people into categories like they belong in a file cabinet. No one can be two things, or all things. And that drives me nuts, and makes me sad.
Don’t question my sexuality and what I identify with. I don’t question yours, nor does yours have any effect on mine. So the next time you say keep your preferences in the bedroom I’ll remind you that you don’t keep yours there, so why should I?
