Gay women and straight men

Hi Teal,

I think it depends on the man to be honest. In some cases, yes I think sex with a woman is just somewhere warm and wet to put it and there's no real connection between the act and the persons involved. But I don't think that is the case for most and I don't think it's a reason to be gay. Apologies if that's not what you mean.

There will also be abusive women out there who will not care for their partner just as some men don't. I don't think it's a gender or a sexuality issue, just a human one. Some people are nice, others not so much.

Maybe, try to stop thinking about the partner who would be having sex with you. Instead, think of who you would want to have sex with- male, female, both, neither? I think that disliking men/patriarchal society is secondary to who you naturally feel drawn to.

 

Huh. I can relate to what you said, but my situation is kind of on the other end of the spectrum.

First, my situation growing up was kind of the opposite of yours. I found the particular environment I grew up in to be very female-dominated, and I found that most of the females I grew up with, including my sister, female teachers, and even female friends, were always very demeaning and hostile towards men.

Next, I’m a gay male and back when I was in denial, planning on marrying/having sex with a woman for the rest of my life just to prove to myself and others that I’m straight, whenever I thought about a man and a woman having sex, I always felt like the woman was forcing the sex onto the man, who wasn’t exactly willing. I always felt like the woman was being oppressive to the man, forcing him to like her body, and forcing him to engage in acts that he didn’t want to engage in.

But once I stopped lying to myself and acknowledged (to myself) that I’m gay, my feelings about women “oppressing” men when having sex with them vanished. I started viewing heterosexual sex as a consensual, pleasurable, necessary act that both the man and the woman enjoy equally and in which both the man and the woman respect each other’s boundaries. In fact, I found myself more open to having experiences with women at this point. I don’t know why that is, but I guess I just felt like I wasn’t forcing myself to go against my natural instincts anymore. And the thing about growing up with demeaning, hostile women? I don't think that has anything to do with it. Although it did result in me feeling belittled and neglected as a male, which is contrary to what most of society claims being male is like, it's never prevented me from forming relationships with or admiring, respecting, or being friends with women.

That being said, however, you didn’t say much about your sexuality. Do you know who you’re sexually/romantically attracted to? I would start there and just go with the flow of things.

 

While I'm a feminist in the sense that I strongly believe in equality for the sexes, I don't hate men. There are definitely some real a-holes out there, like the ones you describe, but men, just like women, are all different. The can be sweet, sensitive and liberal minded but many of them feel they can't show it because society has deemed those attributes affeminite and therefore "weak" (which of course as we know, couldn't be further from the truth).

In my opinion, if you try to fight the sex division head-on, you just create more hatred. Instead, I make an effort to befriend men. I work in law and spend a great deal of time with arrogant middle aged white men. They put on all kinds of cocky shows for each other but when I sit alone with them, ask questions and really listen, I find they're not so different from you and I. Well, most of them anyway...

 

Yeah, this is something I've worried about (the OP) and whether that's what stops me from being bisexual as I 'should' be - I do feel I should be bi because it makes no sense to just love certain body parts, when it's actually people we love (etc etc).

Most men are socialized in a way that I find hard to put up with beyond a point. Even the 'nice' men often have big egos and take it for granted that it's okay to expect a woman to massage that ego. My interactions with certain women (I totally take the point raised earlier that not all women are amazing - definitely agree) are completely different. Just things like, when you're walking on the street, it's more likely that men will expect you to give way while women will give way automatically.

I know this is culturally specific, and there's a 'gentlemanly' way to do things - but that's the thing, when women do it, it's not gentlemanly, it's just how they do it. Yesterday I was driving into a gate from a curve and someone was driving out and without a pause, I basically stopped the car and turned back to reverse. When I turned around, I realized the other driver had actually backed up a bit too - without even looking at the driver, I already knew it was a woman.

It's not that every woman would do this but it was also the speed with which this happened, we both automatically gave way without thinking about it.

The thing is there are men who are 'different', who understand this stuff really well (and better than many women). But even then, the trouble is that sexual acts are so overridden with meaning about what it means for a man to penetrate a woman - how do you escape that? It's almost like if you've been abused as a child, then an act which LOOKS very similar is very hard to dissociate as a different thing, even when you trust and love and enter into that act with consent.

Unfortunately, while this isn't abuse, what it means to sexually engage a man IS overridden with meanings we don't like, and it's not easy to rearrange all that. I think it can and should be done though