#9) Strap It On!

Who is having more fun in bed?

Reese Witherspoon and Julianna Margulies in “The Morning Show”

LGBTQ women’s representation in popular culture has come a long way since the 1980s and Personal Best, yet the portrayal of lesbian women remains confined by the limited knowledge and insights of the predominantly straight men and women writing and directing our stories. Lesbian and bisexual characters on screen often lack dimension, and are left with an aura of mystery, instead of being properly developed and capturing the true intimacy of lesbian relationships. Take “The Morning Show,” which had no problem graphically depicting date rape by the main male character, while the sexual intimacy between two women was restricted to awkward kissing, being seen in bathrobes, and waking up in the same bed. So much of what we see portrayed in movies and television is a loop of straight people being fed back the stereotypes of what they imagine lesbian intimacy to be by other straight people.

LGBTQ intimacy, like relationships between women, is complex and only remotely resembles the tropes we have been exposed to in popular culture. As with everything else in life there are a range of possibilities. Some gay and bisexual women I have been intimate with are definitely more, how to best put it, talented in bed than others, but there is commonality among all, and that is the desire to bring each other to orgasm. That desire, coupled with firsthand knowledge of the female anatomy might account for part of the reasons that lesbians, as we discussed in story #5, have the most orgasms. The other element in the mix is the feelings of intimacy and connection that exists between two women—for some couples this happens their very first time, and with others as the relationship develops. When all three ingredients are put in the pot, the love making and orgasms are just out of this world. With the right partner, when you can shut off your mind and allow your bodies to do what comes naturally, you can feel like you are looking into her soul as you orgasm, sometimes together, and it can be best described as an out of body experience!  

One of the stereotypes that persists in our culture, despite all our progress, is that LGBTQ women either secretly want to be men, or settled for women because they couldn’t get the right man. If you read my hate mail, the lesbian harassment is centered on these themes: I haven’t had sex with the right man (more explicitly, the right dick), or I must secretly want to be a man—the undertone of course being that all sexual intimacy between two people must involve a phallus, real or otherwise. Let’s dispel that trope! I am a gay woman who loved sex with men, but nonetheless prefer sex with women, because of its dimensions and intimacy. I will try to do that experience justice with words in this newsletter.

I don’t purport to speak for all LGBTQ women in my stories, only my experiences and those of other women whose paths I have crossed. As I noted in last week’s story, LGBTQ women are a wondrously diverse community. Within our community are transgender individuals, whose gender identity differs from the sex they were assigned to at birth. In this story, I am more narrowly speaking of cisgender gay and bisexual women, and within that group, there is a range from being more masculine or butch, to more feminine or femme. There are women who identify as butch, and embrace their masculine side by strapping it on, along with femme women who enjoy this too. There are butch and femme women who get off on penetration the most, and find sex toys enhance that pleasure. To each, her own!

My first experience with a strap on happened almost a decade after coming out. In my first long term relationship with Lauren, the one thing that did work consistently was the great sex. It never got boring for us—we were able to keep it fresh in a variety of ways, but sex toys was not one of them. While spending a romantic weekend at the Soho Grand Hotel, we did, for the first and only time, visit a sex toy store, but left empty handed. The furthest we got in our six years together was toy handcuffs from CVS! We found plenty of ways to keep our romance hot, including that weekend picking out special candles to light alongside the bathtub in our suite. Even the ‘career lesbian’ Jenny in story #4 never suggested a strap on, despite being the author of the Lesbian Handbook and all {insert sarcasm emoji}.

In 2009, I met Pamela, who lived in Manhattan and worked in branding. She came up to Westchester for our first date, and from the moment I sat down at the table across from her, had the energy of a race horse at the starting gate, raring to go! Pamela came straight from work, and was in a business dress and pearls, with a perfectly coiffed brown bob, and deep brown eyes. She was extremely engaging and interesting, and we had loads in common, including our passions around women’s issues and representation. On that first date, she mentioned that she was looking for a long-term relationship and a wife. Poof! Just like that. Even though I was relatively new to lesbian dating, being that forthright about intentions was new to me.