I think one of the reasons I don’t belong to a “queer” community is because I didn’t feel I had the right to. After i made a commitment to my male partner, I felt like i “let the side down” or “betrayed the cause” and so no longer had a right to spend time with other non heterosexual people. Why should I feel that? why should I feel more of a fraud, more of a failure being in a relationship with a man than I would if i were in a relationship with a woman.
And partly I think its because radical feminists talk so much about not giving our energies to men, about being woman identified about not collaborating with the patriarchy
often heterosexual radical feminists have frankly odd conversations about weather they should leave their partners and become lesbians because that would be more feminist of them, somewhere along the line I swallowed this whole without thinking and started to think that if it was expected of het women wasn’t it even more expected of bisexual women? (except it isn’t expected of het women, they rarely do it they just talk about it)
But i think that’s ridiculous, surely part of feminism is upholding women’s rights to have relationships with whoever they want, It also makes me think that many heterosexual feminists have no idea how power struggles and infighting play out in lesbian communities and relationships. It seems some heterosexual women don’t know that lots of lesbians are not feminists, that lots of lesbians perceive themselves and express themselves through certain sorts of masculinities, (in fact almost all of the women that make me go ooohh her! do this) that are often seen as the antithesis of radical feminism
And it feels like these women are downplaying and have no idea of the lived realities of lesbians or women in lesbian relationships, the prejudice, the danger, the fear the heterocentricsims of the world, the rejection from friends and family.
And that lesbian sex is not all sugar drops and rainbows, that there are as many different ways of having sex as their are lesbians and some of those ways do not gel with narrow focused radical feminism.
I find the whole self flagellation of “oh I’m in a heterosexual relationship, what a bad feminist I am” really disturbing. Seriously If you don’t want to be with him leave him, but if you want to stay don’t witter about it on the Internet its disrespectful to those of us who are attracted to women on a gut physical and emotional level and it disrepects your partner who presumably you have made a commitment to.
I find it totally possible to be in a heterosexual relationship and be woman focused but maybe that is because of my sexuality, while having a conversation the other day i realised that maybe the reason women only spaces are so important to me is not because I’m a feminist but because I’m bisexual and I need that deep connection to women, without it I get sick, I get restless, i feel like I’m missing part of myself. So maybe I make more space for women in my life than most heterosexual women do because I need it more. And maybe I need to stop feeling guilty about being bi and just be bi with all the glorious messy complications that entails
