From: laura@hoptoad.uucp (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: Re: How Egalitarian are Homosexual Relationships?
Date: 12 Sep 92 11:13:48 GMT
Reply-To: laura@hoptoad.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Organization: Nebula Consultants in San Francisco

In article <1992Sep7.121638.733@s1.gov> lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich) writes:
>	There was someone in another newsgroup who made the claim that
>even in homosexual relationships, there is essentially always a
>dominant and a submissive partner. Is that the rule or the exception?
>Are homosexual relationships generally egalitarian, in principle, if
>not in practice?
>

Some people want egalitarian relationships.  Some don't.  As long
as they are mutually desired, I don't care.

There is a bad stereotype which goes ``one must be the dominant
one and one must be the passive one''.  The people who put out
and believe this stereotype, in general, also believe that women
are passive.

Thus there are always ``unnatural men'' who want to be ``passive''
and ``unnatural women'' who want to be ``dominant''.  We end up
in ``perverted'' relationships because we reject our ``natural
role'' as the ``natural dominater'' or the ``natural submissive''.

Me, I like relationship I have with my lover.  I don't want to
dominate him, and he does not want to dominate me.  We both
have lived under nagging  mothers who liked to dominate,
and we don't like that power-trip business at all.

We have 2 basic rules.

1 -- you can ask for *anything*
2 -- you must always be willing to accept *no* as an answer to
your request.

This has made things very civilised around here.  Nobody gets 
to ask the unreasonable, not get it, and then pout.  Pouting is
frowned upon here.  You ask for the trivial, and the serious.
Asking and grasping are not a way of life.

``Who is the man'' is part of the basic garbage that men
who expect women to be submissive ask Gay couples.  This betrays
their basic idea that, when they marry a woman, she will be
subservant to their will.  He gets to call the shots, she gets
to follow.

----------------------

When I was growing up, this was the total understanding I had
beaten into me as ``what was lesbian sex''.  You see there were
these two old lesbians who lived together for thirty years
in my neighbourhood. And we all knew that they were lesbians.  

And still the question was ``which one is the male'' --
something which titilated my six-year-old sensibilities.
But by the time I was 11, I figured out that what they meant
was that ``males were dominant, females were passive'' and
that there were no other roles or lives for people.  These
two were weird because they couldn't find out ``who was the
man''.

I never wanted any of this ``being passive'' stuff.
I went over to their house (all forbidden!) and
told them fairly up front that the fact that my
neighbourhood said that you were weird made me
want to figure out why, by talking to them.  They
liked up-front 11-year olds.

I discovered that the ``lesbian witches in the weird old
house'' were a couple of women, my mothers age, who
listened to my questions, didn't treat me like a
posession, didn't hassle each other when they disagreed,
respected each other ... and only later, after many
talks I was able to see that they *really loved
each other*.

And not only couldn't I tell ``who was the man'' in their
relationship -- I knew by all that was Sacred that this
was a stupid question.

For that I will be eternally grateful to them.

Thinking of this question, I was reminded of them.
They are both near 15 years dead.  But I want them to live
beyond my memory, in the general memory that we share of
brave souls who made a good life for themselves despite
great hardship.


-- 
	C unions never strike; they only work to rule.

Laura Creighton 
toad@toad.com
hoptoad!laura
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