The era of Lesbian Bed Death is over, long live Lesbian Fuck Eye

The era of Lesbian Bed Death is over, long live Lesbian Fuck Eye

The era of Lesbian Bed Death is over, long live Lesbian Fuck Eye

Sex is an art. And one that lesbians in particular have apparently, according to myth, taken a few decades to get their heads and legs around. Let alone actually in their beds. Today however, lesbian women have more orgasms, better sex and sex that lasts longer than their heterosexual female counterparts. And they’ve also mastered Lesbian Fuck Eye.

Lesbian Fuck Eye is an extension of what Cheryl Nicholas calls the Gaydar gaze, but it’s not only a gaze of sexual identity recognition. It’s an eye that embodies sexual desire and identity in one fell swoop. Simon Baron-Cohen has identified the language of the eyes and discovered that the eyes alone can convey mental states, like desire, in the same way that a whole facial expression can. Don’t I know it. And if you’re queer you know Lesbian Fuck Eye too.

Despite these enactments of desire, there is a myth that still clings to lesbian sex: that of the dreaded Lesbian Bed Death, or, the idea that lesbians shack up and then stop having sex, that sexual desire is completely absent from lesbian relationships.

The exact origins of the term Lesbian Bed Death are debated and refuted, but whatever its beginnings, the cultural stigma of LBD remains. There are slews of articles on the topic – usually written in the hushed tones of a lower case whisper, that graduate to a blaring upper case acronym.

The term Lesbian Bed Death is often attributed to sociologists Philip Blumstein and Pepper Schwartz, as a result of their 1983 study American Couples: Money, Work. But they never actually uttered those three words. What they did find was that lesbians had sex far less frequently than their gay male or heterosexual counterparts.

Blumstein and Schwartz’s research showed that in the first two years of a lesbian relationship, 43% of lesbians were having sex between one and three times a week, and the rest were doing it even less often. Compare this to 67% of gay men who were having sex three or more times a week and 61% for heterosexual couples, and you can clearly see the origins of this idea that lesbian desire dies in bed.

The stats get increasingly dire for lesbian desire as the years pass, with almost half of lesbians surveyed having sex less than once a month by the 10 year mark compared to 33%, of gay men, 15% of married couples and 7% of heterosexual couples living together.

Orgasm isn’t mentioned, not even in the index of their book. Pretty prudish really, even for the 80s.

Fast forward to 2014 and a new study (again, it’s American) focuses away from sex as an act and hones in on frequency of orgasm. The research found that lesbian women orgasm 74.7% of the time while heterosexual women orgasm 61.6% of the time, and bisexual women 58% of the time. Heterosexual men reign at 85.5%, gay men follow closely behind at 84.7%, and bisexual men lag behind at 77.6%. It appears that lesbian desire has come out of a death bed and into a bed laced with fuck eye. Add to this a 2009 study by Holmberg and Blair that found lesbians had higher sexual desire than men and women in heterosexual relationships, and it’s well and truly time to cut the cultural baggage of LBD.

 

The lesbian in popular culture is the always ready, sexually fluid, object of desire just waiting for a big cock to turn her straight. Think Chasing Amy, Gigli, The Kids Are All Right. Or else she’s dying in bed, presumably from boredom with her girlfriend and her devotion to the kitty-litter tray.

The lesbian, we are told, suffers not only from LBD but also the other mythical experience, made popular in the early 2000s by Showtime’s The L Word: the lesbian urge to merge. This is the idea that two women couldn’t possibly maintain sexual attraction for each other because they are two women, and instead all women in relationships want to do is to become one. Like a bad Spice Girls song.

But the studies show we’re desiring more and orgasming more – so what the actual fuck is going on with all the pop cultural LBD bullshit?

The answer: the still prevalent pathologisation of female desire as a lack, something that will fade, some thing that is so fragile and so potent all at once that only using the ominous word ‘death’ can do it justice.

 

But in reality, LFE is everywhere. It’s the glance you give a woman on the street, loaded with desire and the knowing that says, I see you, you see me. Yes, I feel you.

It’s the gaze that dares to last longer than a glimpse. The held gaze often goes hand in hand with short fingernails, and comes with a smirk. A rush of desire originating somewhere in the realm of the cunt region, with a throb of a clit, or an organ you don’t wish to identify or name.

It’s a much needed code that developed out of the heteronormativity that pervades daily life. A neckerchief of recognition and desire, without the need for one at all. It starts on the streets and finds its way to the dance floor, but it’s most ubiquitous in the bedroom, across dinner tables or purposely scotch guarded couches. It is the embodied history of a lust that had to claw its way from the private realm of the bedroom to the public domain of the eye. An eye that is not only able to be recognised for its desire, but its sexual identity and sexuality.

Screw Lesbian Bed Death. Lesbian Fuck Eye is the new [orange and] black.

Originally published by Archer Magazine.

Lesbian Desire Across The Ages: From Insane To Cult Hero

Cast your mind across everything you know about lesbians in history. In particular, Australian history. You might be able to name one or two lesbians, bisexuals or queer women from the 1900s, if you’re in the know. Otherwise, it’s a pretty bleak and sparse canvas,...

Burp: A Quick Installation Guide

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Mad, criminal or straight: Female desire in film and TV

Mad, criminal or straight: Female desire in film and TV

Mad, criminal or straight: Female desire in film and TV

When it comes to representations of lesbians in film and television, sometimes they’re there, mostly they’re not. And if they are, they’re mostly confined to cells.

The lesbian in popular culture is usually mad, criminal or she’s really, actually, heterosexual. Think Charlize Theron’s stunning portrayal of serial killer Aileen Wournos in Monster, the crims we all love to watch in Prisoner, Wentworth and Orange is the New Black, and the ‘queer woman turned straight’ in The Kids Are Alright and Chasing Amy. We’ve also got the feminist archetype stitched up, too. You know, the ugly, man-hating, spinster with lots of cats. And to be honest, I’ve never met a lesbian like that – and I’ve met a lot. It’s not a pretty picture on the big screen or on TV, and it doesn’t have to be.

Syd (Carrie Brownstein) and Ali (Gaby Hoffmann) in Transparent. (Photo: Amazon Studios)

Syd (Carrie Brownstein) and Ali (Gaby Hoffmann) in Transparent. (Photo: Amazon Studios)

Statistically speaking, lesbian and bisexual women are more at risk than their heterosexual counterparts across a range of factors; we drink more, smoke more, have more orgasms (bisexuals have the least) and rarely leave the house (if you believe all the U-Haul jokes that season two of Transparent beautifully portray when Syd and Ali move in together).

 

But we’re also carrying the cultural baggage of being hauled off to the insane asylum back in 1900s when lesbian desire was seen as abnormal. That is, if we’re carrying anything at all, because there’s a double-edged sword when it comes to representations of lesbians in the public realm. Sometimes we’re there, mostly we’re not. And if we are, our most popular outings are confined to cells. A new study on diversity in entertainment on TV and in cinema found that female characters fill only 28.7 per cent of all speaking roles in film and less than 40 per cent in TV shows. Of the 11,194 speaking characters analysed, 49 were lesbian, 158 were gay, and 17 were bisexual. In terms of percentages, only 27.9 per cent of LGBT characters were female. So not only are we up against a gender gap, but also a combined sexuality and gender gap. Add race into the mix and 78.9 per cent of characters were white. Researcher Stacy Smith calls it an “inclusion crisis”. I call it devastating.

As a young lesbian, I searched far and wide through every TV show and movie I could wrap my eyes around to find myself reflected. I fell in love with The L Word in the early 2000s because there were lesbians everywhere; beautiful, white, successful, political, artistic, sexual, lesbians who I wanted to be. Sure, they may have popularised the idea of lesbian bed death – as if two women can’t possibly maintain desire for one another – and we rarely saw the characters actually having sex, but we knew they were doing it.

Arthouse movies were, and still are, my very best friend. But I’m a CheerleaderI Can’t Think Straightand Room in Rome are my top three lesbian flicks. Carol is a newly added addition but the running theme maintains the narrative of forbidden desire, of illness, of abnormality, as did Cate Blanchett’s role in Notes on a Scandal where she enters into a relationship with a minor much to the disdain of the desirous and bitter lesbian character embodied by Judi Dench.

Therese Belivet (Rooney Mara) and Carol (Cate Blanchett) in Carol. (Photo: Transmission)

Therese Belivet (Rooney Mara) and Carol (Cate Blanchett) in Carol. (Photo: Transmission)

I’m not saying we need normal, because that’s just boring, but we need more diversity in how we represent lesbians on the screen. Transparent’s slew of same-sex attracted characters is a wonderful cameo in our need for more, but we need more than crims, mentally disturbed people and porn stars doing the work of representing who we are.

Gay men have made it into the mainstream with ground-breaking shows like Will and Grace and more recently Modern FamilyPlease Like Me and The Family Law. Bisexuals have had my other favourite TV show, Lost Girl, but even that is but a memory now. All of these shows, excluding The Family Law, are a virtual whitewash of representation. Ellen DeGeneres, through her original television sitcom and her talk show, is a beacon and a pioneer, but still a white one. Predominantly though, lesbian and bisexual characters are still loitering somewhere between the pages of history and the celluloid closetThe closet is dead so it’s time for us, like film theorist Sally R. Munt suggests, to “come in’. And come in not just to our own gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender circles in order to write ourselves in, but to come into the community at large.

Originally published by SBS Sexuality.

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Lesbian Desire Across The Ages: From Insane To Cult Hero

Cast your mind across everything you know about lesbians in history. In particular, Australian history. You might be able to name one or two lesbians, bisexuals or queer women from the 1900s, if you’re in the know. Otherwise, it’s a pretty bleak and sparse canvas,...
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