Women kissing women

[Lux]

apparently, girl on girl action has not only become a trend in media, it's also become a wave of exploration for the younger generations of women. women are highly sexual creatures and many younger women are beginning to discover a side to them that is attracted to women. women, have been repressed for years on end, in a society where all the emphasis is placed on heterosexuality. it's no wonder that many women are afraid to explore, or just afraid of having that certain side to themselves. many women have been socialized and in short, culturally brainwashed to think attraction to other women is wrong/bad/sinful/unacceptable. for those of us who've explored and clarified who we are attracted to, the labeling of "bi" or "gay" has no longer become an issue. there's no need to fit ourselves into one category based on what sex we are attracted to. it's only a small part of who we are, and it is certainly not how we characterize ourselves on an individual basis.
as for tatu, they are not the new icons for international gay pride, or normalizing lesbianism/bisexuality.
however debatable their orientation is they are, nevertheless, a step towards the acceptance of something i call not straightness.
straight ppl don't go around saying "yeah im straight" gay ppl shouldnt either. they say "yeah im so repressed, i need more visibility" and that may be the case. but there are other ways of working progressively towards a society where labels are no longer used en masse. they should only be used for making ppl more comfortable with those who aren't straight. [you'd think i was going somewhere with this...]
the feminist in me can't sleep and i thought i'd throw this up for debate.
the younger generation that is *coming out*... of sorts. there's also the whole college theme of "gay until graduation" where men and women alike explore all they want [explore/indulge, same diff] until the college experience is over then they swear they are straight.
after the HIV scare in the early 90s this trend of female attraction to other females may be a backlash effect after how dangerous it was to have sexual intercourse.

anyone have any thoughts other than "hm. yeah..girl on girl.. i dig it"?

[PowerPuff Grrl]

Well you have to understand that homosexuality isn't so much of a spectrum but instead a continuum. Everybody, not just women, are very sexual creatures.

I think this has to do more with the external factors surrounding homosexuality in general than the traits and characteristics of women alone.
I feel that lesbianism isn't widely accepted because many women practice it, but it is widely accepted because straight males enjoy it and more importantly they see it as non-threatening. Lesbians are very misinterpreted as women who have not found the "right man" yet and of course the whole "gay until graduation" doesn't do much to defy this notion.

I think the real issue lies with gay men and other men exploring gay sex.
The problem is that society refers anything weak, stupid, ridiculous, etc as being gay. This has to have some heavy repercussions for a gay men growing up. Lesbians don't have that kind of treatment growing, even if they were tomboys.
I'm not sure were the animosity stems from but I think it has to do with how gay men objectify straight men. Straight men may feel threatened by other men objectify them the way they objectify women.
*whew, that was confusing

[ypsidan04]

RE: >>>culturally brainwashed to think attraction to other women is wrong/bad/sinful/unacceptable.<<<


This is pretty long, and its not just about lesbians, but bare with me. It is really a shame that this is the case. I'm not gay, but I do know people who are, and I think that anyone who is homosexual should be able to live their life without criticism or discrimination. I once read a fan fiction story about t.A.T.u. (based on the lyrics of 'Not Gonna Get Us"), and I felt kind of sad that they had to hide their relationship because it was considered unacceptable. And sometimes I can get a little depressed by the lyrics from some of their songs ("Stars" mostly) because it talks about how they can't let people know that they feel that way towards each other, and they have to run off because they are not accepted. I was thinking "Why do they have to do this? It shouldn't have to be like that." It just makes me sick sometimes to know that people in the world who don't approve of homosexuality don't care how they are making homosexuals feel. There's no reason on Earth why anyone should be put down just because of what they feel or believe. There was a proposal in my area last November that, if it had passed, would remove "Sexual orientation" from the list of things that could not be discriminated against. Thankfully, it was defeated by about a 70-30 margin. If that had passed, then restaurants could refuse to serve homosexuals, businesses could refuse to hire homosexuals, and many other similar discriminatory acts would have been legal. And there were about 25 or 30 percent of the voters who actually voted for this to pass! That's kind of scary, that there are that many people around where I live that wouldn't mind that happening. And it really ticks me off when people use "gay" (or "ghetto" for that matter) as an adjective meaning weird, or abnormal, or funny. And then people say that any male who acts/dresses "less than masculine" is automatically gay! It just makes me angry.

[Lux]

Powerpuff Girl - im glad you mentioned "continuum," cause it dredged up all my women's studies learnings. yes, a continuum of sorts and no one should be fit, snugly into a label, just for the comfort of strangers not understanding the individual for who they are, not what they are. it's a growing trend, women waking up to their own sexuality and not being locked into one certain way. maybe i should stop ranting. ah that'll do.

[Veritas]

People are afraid of what they don't know

so how do you "handle" the unknown?

By rejecting it

[LenochkaO]

Originally posted by PowerPuff Grrl
Straight men may feel threatened by other men objectify them the way they objectify women.

That makes a lot of sense to me, at least...

[Charles]

There is more to it than just objectification. Think of men as a pack of animals. In the pack, there is a hierarchy. Many factors go into determining one's rank is in that hierarchy. A major factor is what other people think of a someone. When a straight man is objectified by women, some men consider that to be a positive factor. However, when a straight man is objectivied by a gay man, it calls into question his status as a macho man, and thus calls into question his status in the hierarchy.

There is a series of beer commercials that play on this status hierarchy. One shows a man just at his wedding reception. His friends a suggest his wife will be dominant. Then the groom regains his pack status by opening a beer with his wedding ring. Another commercial shows several men at a bar, with one of them dancing with a woman. The narrator says something about how the man dancing must dance well enough to impress the woman, but not too well or his friends will think less of him. If appealing to a woman calls into question a man's status, then appealing to a gay man would cast even more doubt on his status.

Another factor is self image. Take a straight man with a poor self image who desperately wants to impress women. Now if a gay man were to objectify him, what does that say about the straight man's image? It lower the straight man's self image even more.

As chance would have it, I just talked to my wife about this. She said she and her friends years ago would rate men as they walked by to see their reactions (this was more or less at parties where everyone knew everyone). She said the men who were most upset were those men who were most likely in turn to rate women. This was her idea of a litmus test: if a man could laugh at this, he could laugh at himself.