Posts tagged gay ladies
The girl who mutilated the precious brownies
Why do good things never wanna stay?
In this crossroads of ambiguity, we might be able to get something really fascinating happening,” playwright Anna Deavere Smith once put it. Jennifer DeClue, a 37-year-old Los Angeles yoga teacher, agrees. “Having more options feels like the most natural thing in the world,” says DeClue, who fell for her first girlfriend in her early 20s while living in New York City. After moving to Los Angeles and starting film school, she dated one other woman, but at 27 became involved with a man. They moved in together, and she got pregnant. “I found pleasure with men,” she explains, “but I never liked the hierarchy of heterosexual relationships. And after sex, I usually felt empty and almost incidental, as if the man really didn’t see me for me, and I could have been anyone. I discovered that my gender and sexuality can be fluid, and that my role changes depending on who I’m with.” She broke up with her boyfriend when their daughter, Miles, was 9 months old, and DeClue focused on being a single mother, paying the rent, and pursuing her studies. In the fall of 2007, at a Buddhist gathering, she met Jian Chen, now a 36-year-old graduate student who identifies as a “boi,” a place somewhere between butch and transsexual. “I’m interested in androgyny,” DeClue says with a playful smile. “I like a masculine exterior and feminine interior.
O Magazine article from a couple years ago about women leaving men for other women. Some of the language could be better, but overall I continue to be impressed with a lot of the content I’ve seen from O.
Bonus: there is a section on what it’s like to date/be sexually pursued by/snuggle with Judith/Jack Halberstam.
(Source: oprah.com)
Tony, who got infected at the age of seventeen, was carrying on some semblance of heterosexuality, mostly for her mother’s benefit. She had been an out-and-about dyke living with five faggot friends for years before she had sex with the man who infected her. Since then life has been hell. Tony relates nightmares of dealing with HIV-negative lesbians: “They’re all hugs and stuff in our lesbian support group, then they’re totally terrified to do anything sexual with me.” She tells me that when they get close enough to kiss, the girl pulls away and says, “Are you sure this is okay?” Tony’s eyes roll. At that point, I’ve lost all of my desire. My clit is inverted, and the thing’s over before it started. Her dates, she continues, sometimes offer condolences. “They say, ‘You can cry if you want.’ God, I don’t wanna cry. I wanna get laid.
I sent her an apology letter — you know, because when you come out, you kind of lose your mind. You turn into a 13-year-old again. So I sent her this apology note. She was living her life, and I was living my life, and I didn’t expect things to happen. I was just saying, ‘Hey, I’m sorry, and I just wanted to let you know that I’m out now, and I think I’m more sane, and I just wanted you to know that and to say that I’m sorry.’ So I was just sort of cleaning up my stuff.
Nooooooo! Tara’s not boring! She’s patient and caring and understanding and a little shy at first but strong. Riley is the boring one ughhhhh.
Tara’s like the only unequivocally good character in the series. True, she’s not as fleshed out as the rest of them, but what we do see of her is wonderful (also they allude to her going through a reckless selfish period after her mom dies so she’s not perfect, and that time she sabotages a spell so she can hide what she thinks is her true evil nature from Willow and omg the episode about her family coming to take her away on her birthday is so sad but then at the end when she’s dancing with Willow I can’t even I’m gonna cry).
Tara and Willow’s relationship has a beautiful but quiet power. I love the way it starts off really delicately and is developed mostly off-screen with just the little moments of them smiling or holding hands or “I am, you know. Yours,” to let us know that it’s progressing well.
Maybe it’s just the actresses being super talented (which they are) or the writing and direction (which are also good) or I’m just projecting because their relationship is an Important Milestone in terms of representations of lesbians/queer women on television but…
I feel like you can just feel their love for each other way more than any other couple on the show, or really any couple I’ve seen on other tv shows. It’s a mature I got you, you got me kind of love. Not like the moody, dramatic (turned really creepy and abusive) Angel/Buffy stuff. Or even the cute “squeeee I found someone that really likes me!” Willow/Oz infatuation. Those relationships are important and exciting and formative and done well, but…
To me Willow and Tara is the real deal. We don’t really get to see how they would have worked long-term/whether they’d end up happily ever after but we see them falling in love and then their honeymoon period and then the beginnings of their difficult stage. Some of it is queer specific—the fight that they get in when Willow’s insecure about not being good enough at magic/not being out as long is so true to life it’s scary, but who hasn’t had that time in their relationship when they question why their partner wants to be with them/when you realize it’s going to take actual work and compromise and communication and building of trust and more than just affection and good feelings to hold on?
Also the fact that the network specifically forbade showing same-sex physical stuff (they don’t even get an on-screen kiss until they’ve been seriously dating for a full season!) made the writers/directors have to come up with these really ingenious ways of showing them falling in love and getting comfortable with each other and becoming more intimate and we (the audience) have to cling to those little moments. It’s fascinating from a storytelling and script writing point of view and of course it lends itself really well to a queer analysis and has all kinds of implications (see: Buffy Studies).
Also she’s just really really adorable.
Ok fiiiiiiiiiiiiiine, she reminds me a lot of my girlfriend so I love her by default.
New favorite book
They don’t. Well, not all the time. It’s been well-established that many women can’t orgasm from penetrative sex. I mean, let’s be honest. If you want to get the job done, have sex with a lesbian.
