Source: CinemaMontreal.com
*Name has been changed to ensure privacy
A few weeks ago I came across the movie Pariah. It was one of those vague, but poignant IFC network films that I’m always waking up on the end of in the middle of the night. Before the credits begin to roll there’s a dark-skinned girl staring out of a bus window with a vacant look of relief which had me like, “Wonder what the hell that was about?” So I did a search and set for it to record the next day. The movie begins in a seedy strip club. Our main character stands a bit behind the crowd shy, but in awe of this mocha-colored beauty doing some kind of butterfly thigh move on the pole. And soon it hits me that this person in a fitted cap looking confused, amazed and about a “Drake” on a comfort level of saint to sinner in the strip club is wait…a girl. Pariah is the story of a young African-American woman dealing with discovering her own blossoming sexuality and self-expression while confronting the expectations of her traditional church-going parents who have skeletons of their own. Even more so, it’s a story of a butch African-American lesbian teenage girl.
Over the past twenty-years and so, America has hesitantly swallowed the shock value of gay America and in the past decade or so even slowly infused it into our popular culture in a social understanding that LGBTQ is American culture too whether we like it or not. But as familiar as some of us have become with Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and LOGO TV, we’ve forgotten that lesbians are about that life too. And not the lesbians that Lil’ Wayne glorifies and America likes to see. I’m talking about the lesbians that we don’t completely understand, so we think if we don’t discuss them, they’ll go away: the butch lesbians.
Because I honestly must say, I don’t get it. When I watched Pariah I had the same question I’m sure everyone else does when they see a beautiful woman holding hands with someone at first glance you think is a guy, until something that would otherwise go unnoticed gives it away only because you ARE staring so hard, “Why is she with her when she could just get a real man?”
“That’s not a question that’s easy to answer,” I was told Friday evening. See because the fact that I didn’t “get it,”bothered me. So instead of making assumptions I wanted to talk to someone who could give me a glimpse into what life is like for the “lesbians straight people don’t understand.” I decided to call up Jazz*, a friend I hadn’t talked to since high school. In fact she was someone I had liked a lot, my best friend since grade school. So of course I felt like a complete jerk that my first phone call to her in over ten years was to interrogate her about her sexual status. It was nothing personal, just one of those situations where life stuff makes you lose touch. Luckily the whole conversation wasn’t just about who she was sleeping with, and she was still the great friend I had from all of those years ago.
For as long as I knew, Jazz and I never had much in common. In fact I’m pretty sure our friendship blossomed from always being grouped together for some kind of seating arrangement or project in grade school because our names were close together in the alphabet. We always enjoyed each other’s company and even when I’d come over she’d be playing basketball in the back of the house and I’d be upstairs playing Barbies with her younger sisters. But it was further proof that friendship is more than just all of the activities you have in common; it’s about inside jokes, common enemies and the fact that someone who is not obligated to love you, does for whatever reason that may be.
When I vaguely learned that Jazz was dating women through a random Facebook update, I can’t say I was super surprised, but apparently it wasn’t anything she ever really entertained when we were younger. Here I was marching around with my LGBTQ ally flag singing, Baby I was Born This Way when Jazz quickly corrected, she really doesn’t think she was, “Some people say they’re born gay and I don’t know if I agree with that. I’m not even going to say I wasn’t ever attracted to men. Even you know when me and you were younger we talked about boys we thought were cute.” It made me think of the notes we’d pass in eight grade bickering over who Batman from Immature (or was it IMX by then) belonged to. It wasn’t a front or her fighting any feelings she was ashamed of. She was just blindly navigating her sexuality like the rest of us adolescents. It just further confirmed to me how sexuality isn’t as black and white as we’d like it to be, whether you’re gay or straight. We may not be all pushing any boundaries on gender representation and who were attracted to, but sexuality and emotions are confusing for everyone.
Besides the fact that maybe butch lesbians dress a little better than straight men, any imagined competition ends there. All of the women Jazz had been in serious relationships with since her teenage years revealed that it was the first lesbian relationship they had been involved in. “When we’d break up, I’d always ask them, ‘What made you go out with me? Like, why were you attracted to me?’ And they’d always reply it was the way I made them feel. I made them feel really comfortable than an average person would make them feel. That can be a positive and a negative.”
Most men focus on the physical because that’s easy. It’s easy to justify why or why not a woman likes you if your criteria consists of how much money you have, how flat your stomach is or how “big” your package is. But when you truly begin to take a look at how you treat a woman and make her feel and how that might be lacking, it can make you wonder, can a man compete with a woman on that level? I think so, but it takes a whole lot of maturity and some brutally offensive honesty that it takes many men a long time to gain.
Masculinity isn’t as simple as dirty fingernails, a genetic excuse to be promiscuous and knowing how to change oil. I think as more and more men begin to feel threatened by the pliable definition that masculinity seems to be taking with skinny jeans, the lack of employment that many men define themselves by and this imagined threat by butch lesbians, they become more aggressive in their efforts to claim their territory. Jazz mentions that her relationships with most men are solid, but there are men who take it personally when she is seen with a pretty female. “Men are getting more aggressive and disrespectful. Society is aggressive in general. I am not the type to go up to some guy if he’s trying to holla at my girl because I know she’s coming home with me.” I remember a day when a woman could walk down the street with her man and another guy would keep it moving, now men don’t care who you’re with or even if you want to talk to them. That’s not a straight or lesbian problem, that’s a disrespect problem.
When a woman comes out as a lesbian, it can cause her peers to question what they’re working with but male family members to wonder where they went wrong. I can’t claim to know how homosexuality is handled in white households across America, but it’s no secret that within the African-American community any threat to traditional male and female gender roles is met with shame and sometimes even hostility. Coming from a bi-racial household, Jazz mentions that when it comes to accepting homosexuality, African-Americans and Latinos still have a long way to go. “Men can see two women doing it. Lesbian women are more acceptable in the Latino community, it’s physically more attractive. Two guys are just narsty. It’s about pleasing your man.” It’s a somber reminder that as with many things in our society, what’s generally accepted when it comes to sexuality is determined by what gets it up for a guy. Luckily, in Jazz’s case the men in her family loved and accepted her regardless, and even with an abuelo who may not directly mention her sexuality, he still makes it a point to remind her and everyone else at every family function that he loves his grand-daughter regardless of whom she’s sleeping with. “It’s not about your image, your image doesn’t define your personality. That daughter you raised is our same daughter, she just chooses to wear different clothes. Who I choose to lay up in the bed with is my personal choice.” Still I find myself wanting a world where it isn’t applauded when we choose to love our family members despite their sexual status, because that should be a given.
If you removed the pronouns from our conversation about romance and relationships, the truth is it didn’t sound like anything any other twenty-year old doesn’t experience when juggling serious relationships, the realization you may have met “the one” that all of the relationships you’ve been through played a part in preparing you for that person. What most mature women want in a partner is someone who understands that love is about more than wallet and private part size, but someone who can really invest the time and emotion to love them at their best and worst after realizing exactly what that looks like. When men make love and sex as simple as reproductive anatomy and whose jeans cost the most, they’ll lose their woman to someone who’s about more than that every time, whether that person is straight from the “L-Word” cast or another man. It’s not as easy as wondering why someone wants a dildo over the real thing. Give women some credit. It’s not like we see a private part and everything else fades from sight. Like Jazz says, “There are other body parts too.”
Toya Sharee is a community health educator and parenting education coordinator who has a passion for helping young women build their self-esteem and make well-informed choices about their sexual health. She also advocates for women’s reproductive rights and blogs about everything from beauty to love and relationships. Follow her on Twitter @TheTrueTSharee or visit her blog Bullets and Blessings .
