Love Lesbian Love
Some ramblings on the importance of lesbian love and romance this Valentine’s Day.
Intro
My perspective on romance has changed.
That can be a scary thing to admit in general, but it’s especially scary for me seeing as I had the exact opposite view for so long.
I didn’t have the words for it, but I definitely would’ve ID’d as romance repulsed or possibly aromantic.
I had no crushes, none towards my classmates or celebrities, I hated romance-themed books on Wattpad, Episode and in general, avoiding them like the plague. If I did end up reading a romance book on there, I’d be rolling my eyes the entire time. I always said romance was my least favourite genre. Whenever my Catholic school upbringing told me everyone experiences romantic love to the opposite gender, I was going ‘not me’ in my head each and every single time. Whenever my Catholic teachers said we’d all get married to men one day, I always thought ‘I hope not!’
With the way cisheteronormativity dictates romance, it’s no wonder young me was so uncomfortable by it. A woman losing control of all her senses, critical thinking and emotion for a man, reduced to nothing but a man’s wife, a man’s girlfriend, a man’s mrs, was horrifying. Watching narratives of straight romance as a child was honestly like watching a horror movie. I remember watching Hollyoaks, either Maxine or Texas’ wedding as one of them walked down the aisle and as I watched the TV screen, I froze in fear, sitting there thinking ‘I have to do that one day’ feeling pure chills across my body. In their defences, Maxine and Texas’ husbands are terrible people in-universe, but the point still remains. Seeing them and other characters getting married in big puffy white dresses they could barely move in, walking down long aisles with a thousand eyes on them, ‘given away’ by her father like she was property, to say she is permanently with this man until the day she dies and making that promise to God himself. That couldn’t be my fate, right? That couldn’t be all that womanhood was? I’m on a ticking clock, counting down until a man sweeps me off my feet and traps me? Fuck no!
Whilst romance repulsion is real, what I personally thought was repulsion to romance and love as a whole was actually a repulsion of heteronormativity, lesbophobia and misogyny. Because discussions and depictions of romance were deeply heteronormative in my upbringing, saying I was disinterested in and against romance as a whole for myself acted as a defence mechanism. If I was to talk about my romantic interest, my options would be to tell the lesbophobic cishet people I shared the classroom with that I liked other girls, facing their bigotry or continue being closeted, lie about liking boys again, continue to choke myself in the closet, again. Being the hard-working girl who didn’t have time for boys was my only real socially acceptable way to disengage from heteronormative romance and even then, I still had to ‘promise’ to be interested in men, get married and have kids in my 30-somethings. My options were an enforced romance I didn’t want or to have no romance at all and for the longest time, the latter was better.
And in a cliché movie fashion, I got my first crush on a girl and things did change. Best way I can describe it would be a warm fuzzy feeling, a ‘I need her to notice me’, feeling, a ‘I hope she thinks I’m attractive’ feeling, a ‘I want to kiss her’ feeling. Now, I’ve had a lot of intense feelings with friends, but never this. This was something different. I was now on the path of questioning my romantic attraction as a baby asexual who just said she swore off it.
Romance vs Love
Whilst romance was still a big question mark, I still knew what love was because I felt it. I loved my best friends in primary school, regardless of gender and they meant the world to me. I loved my childhood pets with all my heart. I love my family members and I always want to keep them safe. I love my craft, getting better at drawing, writing, reading and more and making work I’m proud of. The intense feeling of excitement for something or someone, I know that very feeling.
But to experience that feeling about a person romantically, to not view them as a friend or found family member, but to want affection and show it after spending so long not feeling it, is scary, especially when the aspec community, despite it’s mantras of ‘you can be asexual and __romantic!’ and ‘asexuals can still love!’, doesn’t really accommodate or help you navigate coming to terms with romantic attraction to the same gender as an asexual person, especially as an asexual lesbian.
When lesbian romance and love was so heavily demonised in my Catholic upbringing, admitting this romantic attraction became harder. It taught me that to be a lesbian was to be disgusting, perverted, sinful. As most lesbians did, I found myself feeling ashamed in the PE changing room, thinking the bodies of the girls of my class were beautiful, but no one could ever know that I thought that. I always looked away, at myself, to the floor at my clothes but never at anyone else. I can’t be called a lesbian, can I?
And this policing was consistent. If I’m with a friend and we mess about, we can touch, but not for too long. We can hold hands, but not for too long. We can hug, but not for too long. We can look at each other, but not for too long. If the nightmare that was secondary school PE wasn’t bad enough, I had to practice suppressing myself each lesson too. Every changing time would end with my stuffing my sweaty PE kit back into my bag along with my desires, taking that bag back home and refusing to touch it again until later.
Straight romance however, stayed a mystery to me in terms of feeling. I felt like I should be positive about playing the role of the conventionally feminine cishet woman in a romantic relationship, but genuine desire, love, of being in that role just wouldn’t arrive. Man approaches, woman waits to be approached. Man buys the roses and woman waits for roses. Man wears the suit on the date and the woman wears the dress. Man pays for the food, woman has the food paid for her. Man takes out the bins, woman cooks the meals at home. Man is the breadwinner, woman bakes the loaf. Man leads, woman follows. If straight romance didn’t scare me, it bored the shit out of me too.
Romance, to me, follows a set of rules, a script to follow and specific actions within specific couples or units but love is flexible, not exclusively one or the other and applies to so many facets of life. I’m more likely to be a lover, than a romantic in that sense. In a way, I am a WLW, woman-loving-woman in the original sense, tracing back to Black lesbians of the Harlem Renaissance. A Black woman who loves Black women.
My love isn’t hopelessly romantic or traditionally romantic, but it’s still lesbian. I love when femmes pout their lips. I love when butches flex their arms, I love when studs smile. I love when stemmes pose and strut. I love lesbians and sapphics and I want to be loved in return. I might not break into song and dance, write an Austen-style series of handwritten letters or start sprinkling rose petals about the place like it’s parsley, but that feeling is there. And that feeling is real. And again, when we live in a world that oppresses, restricts and kills women for admitting this, it’s scary.
Some might say this is aesthetic, sensual or emotional attraction instead. I think to me, romantic attraction is the combination of all these things. In aspec contexts, aesthetic attraction is the appreciation for someone’s appearance, but not having any feeling to act on anything with that person. Sensual attraction is the desire for physical affection, but doesn’t necessarily mean sex.
Of course, I feel this for my friends too. I admire my friends’ unique styles, I love their personalities, extroverted or introverted, I like hanging out with them and I do like hugging them. But I don’t want to kiss my friends, make them my primary partners or life companions or be sensual with them. I only get that for a certain few lesbians and sapphics. Addressing my thoughts on romance means addressing my thoughts on friendship too. Asexuals are often assumed to be open to QPRs or close friendships as an alternative to romance, but as an asexual lesbian with romantic attraction, there is a venue in lesbian romance that a QPR can’t satisfy for me. It also means addressing what makes my platonic love different from my romantic love, especially as lesbian romance is often mislabelled, accidentally and intentionally, as friendship between women. In that sense, I find myself having a limited way of expressing my lesbianism if my romantic attraction and love is interpreted as platonic and if my desires for physical non-sexual intimacy are only ever allowed to be classed as platonic within asexual spaces.
Lesbian romantic attraction to women, or at least mine anyway, is that admiration for women’s appearances, bodies, personalities and having the desire to act on it with affection, intimacy and physical touch, whether that touch is sexual or not.
Appreciation of studfemme and butchfemme
Even then, when has lesbian romance ever been traditional? When has lesbian romance ever followed the rules? When has any lesbian, if we’re being honest?
My interest in masc4masc, stud4stud and butch4butch is tied to why lesbian love and romance feels so distinct and way more freeing than heteronormative romance could ever be. I don’t have to be a perfectly feminine person to attract a man because I don’t want to attract men to begin with. I can take on masculine roles within romance. I can love masculinity and androgyny inwardly and outwardly and have my masculinity and androgyny loved in return.
Entering both online and offline lesbian spaces, making lesbian friends and making lesbian community has given me exposure to a form of love I could never access, a form of love I was never allowed to access. Seeing studs holding their femmes, a butch resting their head on a femme’s lap, two studs holding each other in tight embrace, two butches with carabiners interlocking. I look at them in admiration and I think ‘that’s where I need to be’.
Mainstream lesbian romance tends to be very fem, very fem4fem, very white and very light. I don’t see myself in the pink lace, rosy cheeks, red lips, honey dripping, flowery imagery. I don’t feel like a follower of Sappho or a divine daughter of Aphrodite, but instead more like Tracey Chapman’s younger cousin who sometimes shows up to the family reunion if she can be asked to go.
Lesbian love and romance can also be messy, ugly, complicated and rugged. Embracing lesbian love and romance also means embracing the nuance and complexity. It means addressing the jealousy of wanting a woman who isn’t available, the intensity of an attraction that overshadows everything else, the rage of losing a woman you wanted to be yours, the vulgarity of looking at a woman and admitting that you want her. Lesbian love is messy, but I don’t want to be clean.
The point is if lesbians of old and new can proudly say they wanna fuck women, proudly fuck said women, if lesbians can head to the bar pressed on each others bodies, sweat dripping, base pounding, if the high femme and the stone butch can openly say how they want to fuck and be fucked, if glossy shiny lesbian influencers can sloppily makeout on the pavement in broad daylight, then I as one asexual lesbian can say I want to hold a girl’s hand without the feeling like I’m gonna get sent to hell and I can tell that young girl in the changing room to stop being ashamed of her gaze. And that might not sound mindblowing or important to a lot of non-asexual queer people, but it’s pretty damn special to me.
Lesbians who love unapologetically, obnoxiously, loudly and boldy, I love you all and I thank you.