arlene stein, from sex and sensibility: stories of a lesbian generation, university of california, 1997
[ID. Photos of pages of a book. Text transcribed below.
Lesbians Who Sleep with Men
If heterosexual involvements by lesbian-identified women were once taboo, by 19go, the time of my interviews, a greater tolerance for slippages of identity seemed to be in evidence. Many women I spoke with, including some of the most politically engaged lesbian feminists, acknowledged that lesbians occasionally stray from homosexuality, and they felt this to be acceptable, as long as it didn't happen so often as to threaten their lesbian identities. They had come to believe that behavioral inconsistencies do not necessarily pose a threat to lesbian identity, that a lesbian could sleep with men and still be a lesbian. Many acknowledged that the dividing line between homosexuality and heterosexuality was highly variable and subjective, and that for some women a sexual involvement with a man could actually confirm their lesbian identity.
Several women reported to me that they had had affairs with men long after they had come out as lesbians, sometimes out of curiosity about heterosexuality. This was particularly true if they had come out very young, when they had little or no prior heterosexual experience. Meg Dunn came out in south Florida when she was seventeen, and she quickly became part of the lesbian subculture. Fifteen years later, when she was in her early thirties, she began to wonder, "What is all the fuss about men?" By that time, she felt freer to experiment. "It was interesting," she said of her affair with a man, even if it only served to affirm her sense of lesbian self. "I found that I can't get emotionally close to men. I can sleep with them and have an okay time, but not great, and I can be friends with them, but I can't get any closer."
Sometimes it was precisely this lack of connection, coupled with the fact that men were more sexually available, that made such affairs attractive. It was easier to meet men than women, several interviewees observed. Lesbians were, after all, women first, and thus treated as potential sexual partners by men, particularly by strangers who assumed they were heterosexual. As they aged, life cycle changes drew more and more women, even those who had lived their early adulthood in a largely homosexual world, into mixed settings at work and into heterosexual networks. Taking advantage of these networks, sometimes lesbians had affairs with men because potential lesbian partners were difficult to find.
"Lesbians don't know how to date," forty-year-old Muriel Pepper, an office administrator, complained. "They're either too scared of rejection, or they want to marry you right away." This attitude is captured in an often-repeated lesbian joke: "What does a lesbian bring on her first date?" Answer: "A U-Haul." Gay men commonly had little trouble finding casual sex, but found it difficult to establish intimacy and long-term relationships. Lesbians generally had the opposite problem: they reported having difficulties initiating relationships, particularly casual ones. But once established, such relationships became intimate very rapidly." Indeed, lesbians who had affairs with men often reported that they found them enjoyable simply because they perceived them to be free of the emotional demands of relationships with women.
Meg Dunn told me that she often had short affairs with meneven at her "most extreme lesbian feminist stage," in the mid1970s-simply because "they were quick and easy." Throughout her twenties and thirties, she met men at bars about once or twice a year, particularly if she was between lesbian relationships. It is difficult to know exactly who among my interviewees pursued such affairs; my sense is that only a small minority had. But in view of the stigma attached to such activities-even if now somewhat lessened-it is unclear how many would have admitted to similar affairs, despite my efforts to let them know that I would in no way condemn them for such a revelation. While several women described having affairs with men "for the sex," a few had a rather different experience: they had a connection with men that was emotional and indeed largely devoid of sexual pleasure.
Muriel Pepper recounted how she had recently rekindled a relationship with a fellow she had dated when she was in her twenties. hen he visited from out of town, they ended up in bed together: "We didn't have intercourse, but we were kind of sexual with one another." Muriel was forced to reintegrate that experience into her sense of lesbian self. "I was totally flipped out for about a week after that. I felt that I had to turn my whole life around. I wondered, what does this mean? Does this mean I'm not a lesbian? It seemed to call into question who I was." But after a few days, Muriel said she began to realize that because they had known each other so long, and had gone through "so many changes" together, she and her friend had a "unique" relationship. The affair left her sexually dissatisfied but with deep emotional connections to him. Recognizing this, she "calmed down," because "it doesn't mean that you have to come out or go in or whatever." By thinking of a particular involvement as an aberration and labeling a particular man an "exception," some lesbians were able to integrate occasional involvements with men into their sense of lesbian self.
Though tolerating temporary violations of identity, most women I spoke with perceived a hierarchy of transgression; a high frequency of heterosexual involvements could threaten one's lesbian identity. When asked if women who sleep with men are in fact lesbians, Judy Orr responded, "It depends how many times. The people I knew did it once in ten years. If they're still relating to women, and they still feel very much inside that they're a woman's woman, then they're a lesbian.... In my heart of hearts, I'm a lesbian." For others, it was a matter of subjective experience. Sunny Connelly differentiated between her own experience of having occasional affairs with men and the experience of her ex-lover, who now identifies as a bisexual. Her ex-lover, she said, was "more open to her sexual feelings about men. ... For me, being sexual with men is about having sex. I don't want to cook breakfast for them in the morning. And I don't want to go to the movies with them, and I don't want to know their whole life story. I just want sex. That's not true with [my ex-lover]. She wants the whole package." In this understanding, valuing a man as a "whole person" threatens one's lesbianism, while objectifying men does not. However, few women admitted to telling close lesbian friends about these affairs until after they were over, a reticence that reveals the extent to which, among many lesbians, such behaviors continued to be stigmatized. Heterosexual involvements that happened suddenly and unexpectedly were more tolerated than those that resulted after women "went out looking for it." A particular spontaneous affair could be attributed to an attraction to a particular man or could be written off as situational, as "experimentation." But a prolonged affair with a particular man or discussions about attractions to men were viewed as more serious, as posing a possible threat to identity.
Can a lesbian sleep with men and still be a lesbian? By the late 198os, the answer seemed to be a qualified "yes." Several women managed to embrace a certain degree of inconsistency between sexual identification and behavior, if one or more of the following conditions were met: (i) such affairs were kept private, (2) they were isolated occurrences and not long-term liaisons, and (3) it was understood that individuals were "in it for the sex" only-and not emotionally attached. However, if those whose behavior demonstrated such occasional lapses were often tolerated, women who had a prolonged relationship with a man were generally not.
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