So I'm about to confess one of those things that I fear will make anyone who reads my blog hate me. I really hope it won't happen that way and it will be taken in the spirit in which it was intended, but I can't help but entertain a certain level of paranoia. Even more so than my Bennifer story, this could be taken the wrong way:
I am jealous of lesbian couples. Really, deeply, profoundly jealous. I have known this for awhile, but it was brought to mind again tonight. My intersex class met for a viewing of Hedwig, and one of the women in the class brought her partner. Watching the two of them together (not in a freaky stalkerish way, but just being exposed to their dynamic), I was able to pinpoint at least part of why I am so jealous of women in relationships with each other. They had both the romance and the comraderie. Mark may well be the best friend I've ever had, but there is still never going to be the sense of being on the same side between us as there can be between two women. I'm not talking about having a relationship and being friends--I can do that with a man, and I have--I'm talking about having a relationship and being the same species. I think it's socialization, rather than Mars and Venus, but I do think that women and men are profoundly different, and there are so many things that Mark is never going to understand, no matter how much he wants to and no matter how much I want him to. At the end of the day, he is my partner, but he is also, in a profound way that I can't shake no matter how hard I might try, my enemy.
When I was younger I thought my bisexuality was about my irrepressible sexual desire for women. I've said for a long time that I am more sexually attracted to women than I am to men, and in general I think that is true ( think that's also partially because as a citizen in this culture I am taught to be more sexually attracted to women than to men, but that's another tale for another time). But my jealousy of two women in love, spending their lives together has very little to do with sex. I've had sex with women. I have some concept of what it can be like. It's great, but I don't necessarily think it's better than sex with a man (and yes, my best sex has been with men). But I've never had a real relationship with a woman. Not as a grown-up. I've never lived with a woman I had a romantic attachment to, I've never shared my bed with a woman, etc. And that is what I am jealous of. I am jealous of having that feeling of partnership that I have with Mark with someone who has this shared set of woman's experiences with me.
I fear that I am making tons of generalizations about lesbian relationships, or that it is at least coming off like that's what I'm doing. That is in no way my intention. I am obviously not talking about every lesbian couple, or even every lesbian couple I know. I'm talking about potential. Part of it is the political potential of being able to exise men from your life and blah blah blah, but that isn't really the potential that interests me. The potential that interests me is the kind of bond you can have with someone who is like you in this fundamental way.
I think there might also be an element of lesbian couples (and I say lesbian and not "same-sex," because I can't think of a single gay male couple I know) not seeming to take each other for granted the way those in different-sex relationships can. I have no idea why that would be, and again, I know it's a generalization and not the way things actually are, but I've just seen a level of respect between two women that I don't think I usually see between a woman and a man. Perhaps it is that there aren't the same prescribed roles to buck up against and chafe? In a relationship with a man, I have to be the woman, but in a relationship with a woman, I could just be a woman? I have no idea. I just feel like it would be easier for my identity to be my own if I were in a relationship with a woman instead of a man.
The more I write the more this doesn't come out sounding like what I am actually trying to say. I'm afraid it's terribly offensive and I am totally misrepresenting myself. I am afraid I sound like the worst kind of "trendy bi." I'm afraid I'm not recognizing my own privledge. I'm afraid I am just missing the whole goddamn point. But I think I'm going to leave this up anyway, at least for tonight.
If this has been offensive, I am really really sorry. Please know it isn't meant to be, and please take the time to correct me. I really appreciate it.