I’m worried about these “straight” women who fall in love with other women.
Recently, we’ve seen them on Oprah and on Tyra. We hear them say things like Chris did on Oprah, after her heart was broken by the woman she left her husband for: “If I’m capable of having intimacy with a man, then that means probably that I’m not gay,” she said. “However, when it comes to relationships and where I’m most comfortable, I prefer to be with women.”
Um, the word for that is “bisexual.”
It’s interesting to me that — like men who sleep with other men but deny they are gay — women, too, seem to have their own version of being on the down low. That is, they fall in love with other women, they sleep with other women, they have relationships with other women, and yet they insist they are straight.
The media loves this story. They say it’s a “trend.” In hushed tones, they lionize these women who are “brave” enough to cross over into Lesbos without living there permanently.
Of course, some of them, like Oprah’s guest Chris, do indeed return to dating men exclusively. “It’s less complicated,” she told Oprah.
And, yep, it sure is. A woman in a straight couple only needs to worry about guest lists and seating charts, not whether the state in which she plans to marry will let her legally wed or adopt children.
But I doubt it is the complicated legality that makes women like Chris hesitant to call themselves gay or bisexual.
What I worry about is that they think that labeling themselves “gay” or “bisexual” will make them residents of a country in which they don’t want to settle permanently. They think that “lesbian” will mean they have to give up something about who they are, that they will have to fit in with some cultural stereotype of what it means to be a woman who is in love with a woman.
They are afraid they will label themselves and then be alone.
Instead, the opposite is true. Declaring oneself gay or lesbian, bisexual or queer is the most freeing feeling in the world. Better yet — it comes with an entrée into a vibrant, flourishing culture that provides emotional and social support.
I think the “complications” these women struggle with are the everyday difficulties that come from being part of a lesbian relationship in a straight world, where people might not understand that a woman loving another woman is to be celebrated, not vilified.
Labels may seem restricting, but we all have them. The wrong label is stultifying. But the right one can be a passport into a new life, a true life, an invitation into a community.
To be a woman in a relationship with a woman in the center of the gay community is a very different experience — a validating experience — than to be in a lesbian relationship with no one around you but straight people.
I am not saying there aren’t supportive straight people. There are hundreds of thousands of them — including all those heterosexuals who voted against Proposition 8. But still, in the big, straight world, the assumptions are different. A woman is assumed to be interested in men. People ask who the man is. People ask how it is possible for lesbians to have sex.
I’m worried for these “straight” women, because clearly, they’re not straight at all. Society has just given them the wrong label.
Jennifer Vanasco is an award-winning syndicated columnist. E-mail her at [email protected].