Always Look on the Bright Side of Gay

The rainbow's looking bright Source

Ladies, gentlemen, variations thereof and none of the above, I admit that I have fallen into a dangerous way of thinking . On innumerable occasions has yours truly been described as a "zealot", "radical", "angry", "future all-powerful lesbian overlord", et cetera. Now, righteous anger is to me as gasoline is to my car. It puts the life back into my blood and the cynical humor into my writing. If left to my own devices, I will wax lyrical about justified rage indefinitely, as I am starting to do now. But I have learned that there is a time and place for everything. LGBTQ folk in the forefront of the Culture Wars spend so much time trying to explain why queer sexuality is not wrong that we forget to dwell on the ways in which it is right. We need to set aside time not only to defend our way of loving others, but to celebrate it. And what better time than Pride Month? I'd like to share one of my personal favorite parts of being a lesbian.

Many modern societies (I will be speaking specifically of American society, out of simple experience) have a rigid script to which the genders must conform. Failing to account for the variety of individual differences, the culture shoehorn men and women into unforgiving pigeonholes of blue and pink. Even cisgendered folk don't buy the entire ludicrously specific, all encompassing bill of goods that the Gender Police are selling. And of course, as for the gender-nonconforming part of the queer menagerie, well, let's just pretend they don't exist, shall we?

Baby's First Gender Dichotomy Primer

To add insult to injury, nurture routinely tries to enlist nature as a co-conspirator in creating the prevailing gender code. Take this ludicrous claim from Current Biology as reported by Time Magazine having to do with gendered color preferences:

Ling speculates that the color preference and women's ability to better discriminate red from green could have evolved due to sex-specific divisions of labor: while men hunted, women gathered, and they had to be able to spot ripe berries and fruits. Another theory suggests that women, as caregivers who need to be particularly sensitive to, say, a child flushed with fever, have developed a sensitivity to reddish changes in skin color, a skill that enhances their abilities as the “emphathizer.” [sic]

All very well and good, except that until the 1940s blue was the "female" color, and pink the "male" color. Don't worry, I'm sure our good friends at the cutting edge of evolutionary psychology can explain for us how this inconvenient fact proves that gender equality is unscientific.

The Gender Script influences every aspect of human life, but most chronically in intimate relationships. It creates a caricature more worthy of Barbie and Ken's dream house than actual human beings. As witnessed by yours truly, the unrealistic expectations of the culture allows intense resentment to fester in the minds of both ~~victims~~ participants in a heteronormative relationship, creating a veritable boil of hatred. After all, while the woman is obviously most harmed in today's view on gender, even rad fems like me will admit it's not a cakewalk for the guy either. The only cure and prevention of this resentment in heterosexual pairings is for the pair to expose the hidden resentments to the sun and work towards a sensible policy of equality, where we stop treating each other like delicate, fragile ladies and virile Neanderthals, and start treating each other like fucking human beings. As the much more eloquent Simone de Beauvoir put it:

"On the day when it will be possible for woman to love not in her weakness but in strength, not to escape herself but to find herself, not to abase herself but to assert herself -- on that day love will become for her, as for man, a source of life..."

In other words, the patriarchy, in harming women, poisons romance, subverts decent parenting, sullies cooperation, and generally turns what could be harmonious human interaction into a clusterfuck of oppression. Any of you with breeder friends, conservative married relatives, and subscriptions to Cosmopolitan can testify that if both parties don't hammer out some sensible discussion on feminism, consciously or unconsciously, the woman's inevitable unacknowledged anger at her status will exact horrible vengeance on the man. But as I've mentioned before...

You don't have to follow society's bullshit gender dichotomy if you're both of the same gender. You don't have to cede your authority to the man of the house if there's no man in the house.

As dykes, we don't have to do all that hard work to make our relationships bearable. That conversation goes more like,

"Sweetie, I'm a woman, and I should have the same rights as everyone else."

"You called me here to tell me that? Let's fuck."

I've always wondered how Rachel Maddow can be so coolly polite with anti-feminists on her show. She mocks them, sure, and has a grand ole time doing it. But if you look carefully, there's no hatred, no resentment, no hurt on her gorgeous face when she does so. Only pity. Sexy, sexy pity.

"Who's got adorably outdated notions about women's rights? YOU'VE GOT ADORABLY OUTDATED NOTIONS ABOUT WOMEN'S RIGHTS!"

I think I've figured it out. (Maybe.) She doesn't take it personally because it isn't personal for her (and by extension, for the rest of us dykes). We may have to deal with patronizing in the workplace, belittling comments in school, sexual harassment and demeaning remarks, but at the end of the day, we go home to other goddamned women. As a lesbian, I get an oasis of sanity in a man's world. Even if I don't live with a woman, I'm guaranteed that the person I love and trust the most will not attempt to pick away at my rights as a human being, no matter how bad things get out there in the Real World. Of course I understand that plenty of straight women with feminist lovers get that break. But a lot of them don't. A good deal of them, as dictated by biology, are forced to sleep with The Enemy. We don't need to hate them for it. After all, they were born that way.

And that, ladies, gentlemen, variations thereof, and none of the above, is my favorite part of being a lesbian today.