Lezzies For Marriage

I am male, aged 47, and a bachelor. It’s true. I have always wanted to marry a lesbian, although I cannot find one. Am I abnormal?
–Love The Lezzies

You’ve made a point of emphasizing the fact that you are 47 and a bachelor. However, you have made no mention of being gay, which is the usual reason why men ask me about marrying lesbian women. So I’m going to assume you’re straight unless you correct me. Now to the question at hand. Are you abnormal? Maybe so, maybe no. Are you a loser? Absolutely.

A lot of straight men (and lot of straight women, for that matter) get off on the idea of “lesbian” women doing their “lesbian” things with each other. I put that in quotes because they’re not actually interested actual, honest-to-God same-sex desiring women, but because what they really want to see is straight-acting women who are (in heteronormative imaginings) such nymphomaniacs that they’ll have sex with anyone, even (gasp!) another woman. Your letter isn’t really about getting know women with same-sex attractions because the fantasy isn’t about women and their desires at all—it’s about women performing a simulacrum of desire for straight men’s viewership and consumption. V.N. Deepa, a founding member of the Sahayatrika collective for same-sex desiring women in Kerala has plenty to say on this subject: “The cynical might say that the publicity that Sahayatrika has received has also been propelled by the commodification and hyper-sexualization of lesbian identity…The invisibility of women-loving women in daily life is countered by constructions of the ‘lesbian’ in the popular imagination; and a proportion of our (hotline) callers seem to imagine a lesbian not to be a woman with same-sex attractions, but instead a woman who will have sex with anyone. And our efforts to create safe, women-centered spaces are at risk of being overwhelmed by male sexual harassment/desire.” (That quote, by the way, is from Deepa’s fabulous essay titled “Queering Kerala: Reflections on Sahayatrika”, and you can find it in the 2005 anthology Because I Have A Voice: Queer Politics In India, edited by Arvind Narrain and Gautam Bhan. Holla peeps!) I have no idea why you want to marry a lesbian woman, but your reasons seem more sinister than honest, so for everyone’s sake, I hope you never find one.