Lesbian

Sexuality is influenced by the cultural, social, and political customs of a society. It refers to values and attitudes, gender roles, body image, sexual relationships, language, and even clothing. The sexuality of heterosexual women involves both pleasure and danger. Women's experience of autonomous desire is important because their sexual pleasure has been taboo in many cultures worldwide. It is dangerous because women's sexuality has often been a domain of sexual violence and oppression. In a patriarchal culture, heterosexual social relations shape sexuality and may even invalidate consent to heterosexual sex. Traditional assumptions consider lesbians asexual because of the dominance of heterosexuality, which requires a penis and a vagina. By this criterion, lesbians do not have sex. Pepper Schwartz, coining the term “lesbian bed death,” implied that lesbians have sex less frequently than others. Researchers, using the concept of lesbian merger, meaning intimate relationships between women, have suggested that lesbian relationships are inherently flawed because they lack [Page 486]the difference of heterosexual relationships. Other discourses propose that by desiring women, lesbians are masculine and sexually predatory.

This discursive context framed debates about lesbian sexuality during the so-called lesbian sex wars. Two opposing positions emerged: sex radicals and lesbian feminists (sometimes called “sex perverts” and “sex puritans”). Sex radicals advocated pushing the boundaries of pleasure and desire and considered that sadomasochism (SM) could be included in an egalitarian relationship. They opposed a hierarchy of sexuality that privileges heterosexuality and condemns SM. They sought to eroticize lesbian sexuality, arguing that all sexual practices are normal and that lesbians should explore their own and others' fantasies and desires. In this way, SM becomes a manifestation of trust and a powerful lesbian sexuality. By contrast, lesbian feminists argue that sexual desire should be reformulated from an eroticization of difference to an intimacy of equals. Domination and subordination reflect a power differential, epitomized by SM, where danger makes difference erotic. Many black lesbians argue that sexualized power relationships cannot be separated from wider social relations and the legacy of slavery; SM relies upon bondage and enslavement and cannot genuinely be a source of sexual pleasure.

Lesbian sexuality also found expression in butch/femme relationships, which have existed within lesbian communities from the early 20th century. Until the 1980s, butch/femme sexualities regulated clothing, gender role, and behavior, particularly for working-class lesbians. To be butch meant adopting stereotypically masculine appearance and behavior, while femmes were expected to be emotionally supportive. Some feminists argued that butch/femme roles imitated heterosexuality. By contrast, Joan Nestle contended that butches signaled through their dress and behavior their ability to take erotic responsibility. Butch/femme relationships forged a lesbian sexuality based on stance, gesture, love, courage, and autonomy. Although these debates do not have the salience they once had, they continue to be played out in relation to lesbian chic (feminine and het-erosexually attractive), the queering of lesbian identities (e.g., drag kings), and debates about the place and kinds of sex in lesbian relationships.