Lesbians On The March

I have noticed that you rarely publish letters by lesbian or bisexual women in your column. What’s up with that?
–Represent

Excellent question, grasshopper. It’s absolutely true, I don’t print very many questions from lesbian and bisexual women, primarily because I don’t get very many questions from lesbian and bisexual women. A good ninety percent of the e-mails I get are from men. I’ve wondered about this for a while, and my feeling is that despite the fact that I promise anonymity for all letter-writers, most women are simply too uncomfortable to send even a confidential letter to my column. And with good reason—if a woman sends me a letter about her sex life, she’s taking much more of a risk than a man. The consequences for a woman admitting to not always having pure, heterosexual thoughts and desires are far graver than for men, and I think the fear of being judged and punished is so ingrained in women that very little can make us feel safe.

So let me put this out there for all you women readers, particularly the lesbian and bisexual ones: your letters are safe with me. I do not reveal names, I usually try to remove all identifying markers from letters, and I will never show your letter or share your contact information with anyone else. I invite your letters and I will do everything I can to represent your concerns in the column. Also, I invite all my women readers to weigh in: why do you think that women don’t send in questions as frequently as men? Send in your responses and I’ll print them in next week’s column.

Naturally

Why do people become gays or lesbians? I mean, people are naturally attracted to the opposite sex, so what influences some people to be attracted towards to their own sex?
–What’s Natural?

Well, there’s your problem in a nutshell. People are not “naturally” attracted to the opposite sex. There’s nothing natural, inherent, or inevitable about sexual attraction or gender identity. These things are fabulously variable and fluid. I’ll give you a great example: just last week I attended a conference in Kathmandu about strategies for defending queer rights in South Asia (organized by the Blue Diamond Society of Nepal and LLH Norway), and there I met a lovely transgender woman who spoke at the conference about identifying as a heterosexual. Now, here’s an individual who was born as a biological male, but identifies and lives her life as a straight woman. Is that “natural”?  Who cares? And there are so many more varieties: trans individuals who desire with same-sex desires, trans individuals who desire other trans people, same-sex desiring individuals, bisexuals, pan-sexuals, straight people who don’t want kids (procreation, of course, being the usual rock with which heterosexists bludgeon others with the “unnaturalness” of same-sex desire), you name it. Just going by the sheer variety of ways that people express sexual desire and experience pleasure, I don’t think it’s possible to talk about what’s natural. Some people are born with their desires hardwired into their brains and others are not. Asking the question of why some people become gay or lesbian does not make any more sense than asking why some people become straight. A better question would be, “how do we, as a society, protect and celebrate the diversity of sexual and gender identities in our communities?” That’s not the question you asked, of course, but it’s a much more productive and inclusive one.

Gazing On Desire

I have often been asked about the nature of my desire as a lesbian woman. My budding feminist leanings have convinced me that community and desire go hand in hand for the average lesbian woman. Generations that have legitimized and propounded heterosexuality (and unequal power relations) have created one kind of desire, whereas a lesbian consciousness (which in India is largely created from individual self-reflection) has been built around silence and the social conditioning of being women. Thus lesbian desire is different from heterosexual desire. Can you please shed some light on this? How is the lesbian gaze different from the male gaze?
–Learning More

It’s really great that you’re reading and thinking critically about your sexuality. And I think that it’s very promising that you’re making the connections between patriarchical oppression and women’s sexual desires. However, I disagree with you that it is possible to make a clear distinction between lesbian desire and the heterosexual male desire. I can see why you came to that conclusion—heterosexual men and lesbian women both desire women but are clearly different from each other—but I think it’s very problematic to box yourself in because desire is fluid. For example, you may think that as a lesbian woman the only women you want are butch or androgynous women. So what happens if you suddenly find yourself attracted to a femme girl, the kind of person that heterosexual men are typically attracted to? What does it imply if a hetero man is primarily attracted to butch or gender-transgressive women? And what about gay men, bisexual women, straight women, and trans men and women? Do each one of us have desires and a sexual “gaze” that corresponds perfectly with our given sexual identity?

I wanted to open out the question to others, so I called Ponni Arasu, a queer activist and member of the Alternative Law Forum in Bangalore, and read her your question. “Oh dear,” she sighed,  “that’s such a large question. While I do see how these identities, such as ‘male’, ‘female’, ‘gay’, ‘lesbian’ and ‘straight’ can be great sources of strength, they can be enormously oppressive to different expressions of desire. The letter-writer should know from her readings of feminist texts that talking in terms of heterosexual versus gay desire can be very problematic—for example, do gay men and lesbian women experience desire in the same way? It’s very important to use these labels critically and with self-awareness.”

Agreed. I understand how having a strong sense of identity around sexuality can be empowering, but it’s also important to continually problematize the ways that identity and desire intersect. One of these days you might find yourself falling for the kind of woman that you think only straight men want, and then you’ll have to radically reassess the whole notion of a lesbian gaze. Desire can be a fluid and mutable thing, and it’s better to keep an open mind now than to face that kind of confusion later. You can still have a strong identity as a lesbian woman without necessarily painting yourself into a corner with regards to the kind of women you desire and in how you should desire them.