still women
In Joe. My. God’s recent entry “Marriage: Is It a Dyke Thang?”, I was not a bit amazed with the statistics he presented that “gay men outnumber lesbians in the general population by a ratio of at least 3 to 1, and yet lesbians weddings are outnumbering gay men's weddings by at least 2 to 1”. It’s not really questionable because lesbians, even butches, are still women. They think like women, they feel like women, they are women.Marriage is not only a dyke thang. It is a women’s thing. It is what women crave for, even the ones who say that they cannot picture doing it. Every little girl dreams of walking down the aisle with flowers in her hands, her dad by her side, and the love of her life waiting. Every girl dreams of waking up with someone she loves beside her. Every girl dreams of growing old with someone she’d call the love of her life. Every girl. Even those who grow up and finds beauty in another girl’s every action. Even those who feels more comfortable in wearing baggy pants and loose shirts, and cutting their hair short. Every girl.
Janet Bing and Dana Heller’s article How Many Lesbians Does it Take to Screw in a Light Bulb?" also presented insights on why lesbians enter marriage instantly. By analyzing the infamous U-Haul joke, they were able to show what’s behind the joke and what it really means.
"Question: What does a lesbian bring on the second date?
Answer: A U-Haul.
When one of the authors told this joke to a group of self-identified
heterosexual academics, nobody in the group "got" the joke, and when
asked about how they interpreted it, one male reported that he assumed
that the purpose of the U-haul was so that one of the women could
leave her husband for a lesbian relationship. For him, clearly, the joke
was mystifying rather than funny.
This joke is funny to lesbians, and to anyone who is familiar with complex
emotional dynamics of lesbian courtship, because it challenges the tendency
to reduce lesbianism to physiology, redefining it instead in terms of
the emotional euphoria that often compels lesbian coupling. The joke plays
on the idea that lesbians tend to disregard bourgeois courtship rituals
and jump into "marriages" quickly and impulsively, acting on feeling
rather than reason. "
Digging deeper, I suppose it all boils down to the female instinct to care and nurture. According to “The Nurturing Instinct” by Jeanie Lerche Davis, “A woman is biologically hard-wired to nurture, provide comfort… Taylor writes. Our hormones, brain chemistry, and response to the world around us all reflect this natural instinct.” Lesbians perceive of marriage as taking care of someone you love whatever it takes (which should be the case) and that’s why lesbian marriage may seem instantaneous to other people.
Simply put, imagine this: a woman already feels that way about marriage. Take it to lesbians, and then you’ll have to multiply that feeling by two.
posted by gail @ 2:17 PM
1 Comments:
Gail, thanks very much for your insight. You've explained things exactly as I've suspected them to be, but was too afraid of my politidyke readers to say. :)
Post a Comment
<< Home