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Re: Celibacy: Everyday Presentations
Kathleen A. Gillogly (Kagillogly@AOL.COM)
Fri, 15 Dec 1995 14:42:08 -0500
In a message dated 95-12-14 12:41:59 EST, you write:
>I'm having some difficulty with these suggestions that lesbians are with
>other women simply as a "protest" against patriarchy. It would be fairly
>silly to suggest that heterosexuals are with members of the opposite sex
>as a "protest" against homosexuality, or even "matriarchy,"--each
>suggestion unfairly reduces human motives to one core cause. It seems to
>me that an (at least) equally important component of self-identifying as
>lesbian is an attraction to women--definitions in terms of what they *do*
>as opposed to what they *don't do*
Having first brought up the political aspect of lesbianism, let me say I
agree. Unfortunately, Bob passed over all of that in his discussion. I
brought it up more as one of several counterpoints to his discussion.
I am disappointed that so few people have made Donna's point. I live in a
predominantly gay/lesbian part of my city. Boy, my neighbors don't look or
act celibate to me. They don't assert celibacy. On the contrary, in this
neighborhood, glory in one's sexuality is the norm.
The political aspect of lesbianism seems to me to have been far more common
in the 1970s and early 1980s. Now it's more openly a matter of attraction to
women. Yet most people I know do put a 'political' spin on it: glorifying of
women and their sexuality and downplaying of heterosexuality. It's probably
just my friends, though; the lesbian and gay communities, like all others,
are not homogeneous [sorry for the weird sentence construction, but I'm
writing too fast!]
Kate Gillogly
Univ. of Michigan
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