Lesbians exposed!

Some SEO for you, there.

In case any of you are unfamiliar with the insane background to this story, last week Avaaz, fresh from their silly campaign to “protect” herbal medicines that don’t work, wrote to me again asking me to help them free “Amina”, the author of a blog called “Gay Girl in Damascus”, who had been kidnapped by the Syrian government. Amina promptly turned out to be a man living in Scotland with his wife and beard. This story was apparently broken by Paula Brooks on her blog, LezGetReal, before she too turned out to be a married man.

Anyway. That is the situation, whether you want to believe such madness or not, and my beef with it is only to do with the response piece in the Guardian, by Julie Bindel — who claims to be a lesbian herself but one can never apparently be too careful these days. Her main thesis is that “heterosexual men are deeply fascinated and wildly confused by gay women,” and “need a man’s guide to being a lesbian”. This seems somewhat at odds with the evidence since apparently two of us had infiltrated their ranks quite successfully, so she illustrates the culture gap from the other side by utterly failing to understand men.

For example, she says

I have lost count of the number of times men have asked me what I "do in bed". They can't imagine sex without a penis being around somewhere, which is presumably why so many lesbian-fanciers offer to help out in the bedroom. … Male fascination with things Sapphic is usually born out of total indignation that we do not desire the male form.

No, it isn’t. I’ll grant you the “can’t imagine sex without a penis” bit — I couldn’t imagine how that worked when I first discovered that lesbianism was a thing. It’s like trying to connect an iPod to your stereo: you need to buy a male-to-male adapter or it just doesn’t work. But that’s just reasonable curiosity; it doesn’t mean we’re indignant about being excluded. If anything, I’m more indignant if someone I fancy is with another man. If I look at a lesbian and ask “what’s she got that I haven’t” then I think of several rather lovely things almost immediately and I’m forced to conclude fair play. Frankly, I expect most men think lesbians are onto something: we don’t fancy men and neither do we understand why anyone else would. Even the jokey, sit-com explanation of “male fascination with things Sapphic” is that we want to see naked women having sex without our gaze inadventently landing on a throbbing, erect penis. In fact, sexuality is just a bit more complicated than Bindel seems to appreciate, and for some reason, homosexual sex is hot.

It’s absurd to ask why men like lesbians. Why do we like women? There’s no practical reason in our heads. We don’t look at a gorgeous young lady and think “now there’s an efficient vehicle for my genetic code”. It’s not rational; it’s just built in. Accept it and move on.

After explaining how and why she reckons us men don’t understand lesbians, Bindel attempts to educate us, with her own list of Lesbian-Approved Stereotypes, which include

Pour scorn over The Killing of Sister George, Notes on a Scandal and The Kids Are All Right (because Julianne Moore – who you must fancy, by the way – slept with a man)

Buy a turkey baster. Do not use for basting turkey.

and

Do not bring flowers on your first date: bring your toothbrush and your cat.

and is illustrated with the following image, captioned “what lesbians like”:

I get that she’s joking, although I don’t know if the joke is ‘aren’t lesbians funny with their turkey basters’ or ‘look what those idiot men think about lesbians’, because nowhere in the article has she demonstrated the slightest insight into either of womankind’s major target markets. But either way, it’s still a list of sexual stereotypes, which is a shit joke in anyone’s book. But more than that, I think that if this exact column had been written under the pseudonym “Bill Graber”, it would have been immediately ripped to shreds by a mob of offended feminists, who quite frankly would have had a point. To be honest, I think it probably will anyway, but it’s straight out of the “it’s OK for me to say it because I am one” school of comedy. Well, I don’t think it is OK for you to say it, but more to the point, if men “don’t understand”, but lesbians can post lists of insulting stereotypes and expect it to be taken in good humour, then of course male bloggers of lesbian issues will do so under female pseudonyms! It’s apparently the only way to be taken seriously.

Of course, maybe I’ve got this all wrong. Maybe I, a mere heterosexual man, don’t understand the clever lesbian journalism. But see, here’s what I think: I think straight men and lesbians have pretty similar drives and emotions and the differences within each group dwarf the ones between them. So I think the question is not whether straight men “understand lesbians” as if they’re another species, but whether we understand what it’s like to be a minority. And I think I can say that quite safely, because I can only think of one person who could possibly make that comparison.

And since she’s described Bindel as “a homophobic… moron”, maybe I haven’t got it all wrong.