Making of a Feminist Male Lesbian
In my life I have been blessed to meet soul mates, or as I prefer to call them, "kindred spirits." But I did not "settle down" with them.
Pam has been my most inspirtational friend since 1973 - that is 32 years! We visited one another often back then, never engaged in physical love but loved one another deeply, she went to live out west and I stayed out east, she became a writer and experiences life full on while I went to college and studied life intellectually, she discovered she was a lesbian in the 1980s, and I got married. Well, actually we both got married -- to women so we have that in common!! Seriously, we have so much in common, we even resemble one another in some ways. And today we are both on very spiritual paths, yet still on opposite sides of the country - Washington, DC and northern California. At some point way back when I realized we were destined to live this way, like the Chinese tale of the Cowboy and the Silk Weaver - we are star crossed. I keep hoping some day we'll be in the same time and place. That's why I think of us as kindred spirits.
Could a heterosexual male and a lesbian have been comitted to Love as a partnership? I truly believe we could have. It just happended that we didn't. Not in this life time.
Sandra is the lover from college days who taught me everything about compassion, passion, selflessness, and sensuality. She was to me the Goddess of Love, and when she moved on, we lost contact, but I continued to respect and love women the way she taught me. It was like a visit from an avatar, or my guardian spirits bringing me together with someone that I would learn from important things that would guide me for all my life. And after 24 years, by chance, we found one another again. We are both older, wiser, have children of our own, and still compassionate, passionate, and sensual, though a bit less selfless. We both learned there are times to take care of the self. She is today single, polyamorous, and bisexual (like my wife is) and if she was not rooted out west and my family rooted here in the east, I think we would form a strong triangle. But as it is, we seemed destined to be separate.
Could we have been comitted and partners? I truly believe we could have, but then we wouldn't have brought into the world the wonderful children that we did with our spouses. Children are individual miracles, you know. Parents are just the means for their coming into the world and their initial human guardians.
More often than not, my closest friends and lovers discovered subsequently that they are bisexual or lesbian. For a while I believed that all women were either bisexual or lesbian and that all the other heterosexual women just hadn't discovered that yet. Unless it is a matter of being guided by helpful protective spirits, I don't know why most of my best friends and lovers, including my wife, are lesbians or bisexuals.
Most of them also have been through some kind of sexual assault and trauma. I don't know why most women I meet have survived sexual abuse, but I do know that every two and a half minutes someone is being assaulted in the United States, and that well over 50% of rapes are not reported, so perhaps that has something to do with it.
I no longer find it unusual that I am drawn to women who I find out later have been abused by men and love women. So when my friends tell me about violence they have survived, my heart breaks for them. And when they come out lesbian or bisexual, I celebrated, congratulate and encouraged them - even though it sometimes means our relationship changes because no matter what I think of myself, I am a man.
All of this reinforced my respect and love for women, my intellectual attachment to feminism, and my confusion, frustration, and occasional loathing about my own male sex. I read Susan Brownmiller's Against Our Will : Men, Women, and Rape, Shere Hite's Hite Report and works by Andrea Dworkin and questioned any male oriented feelings and desires I had left. My parents never exposed me to any church growing up, but I was really creating all kinds of definitions of sin for myself for every feeling of desire I felt toward women. As a rule, I am not judgmental of others , only myself. So while I was basically a male feminist and did not participate in misogyny with other men, I did not subscribe to the blanket condemnation of pornography that Andrea Dworkin espoused, but I did condemn my own feelings and prescribed a lot of guilt.
Around that time Pam wrote that she was a lesbian. I read some issues of On Our Backs. I went into an adult store and my eyes fell upon images of women with whips. All the lights were coming on.
Pam has been my most inspirtational friend since 1973 - that is 32 years! We visited one another often back then, never engaged in physical love but loved one another deeply, she went to live out west and I stayed out east, she became a writer and experiences life full on while I went to college and studied life intellectually, she discovered she was a lesbian in the 1980s, and I got married. Well, actually we both got married -- to women so we have that in common!! Seriously, we have so much in common, we even resemble one another in some ways. And today we are both on very spiritual paths, yet still on opposite sides of the country - Washington, DC and northern California. At some point way back when I realized we were destined to live this way, like the Chinese tale of the Cowboy and the Silk Weaver - we are star crossed. I keep hoping some day we'll be in the same time and place. That's why I think of us as kindred spirits.
Could a heterosexual male and a lesbian have been comitted to Love as a partnership? I truly believe we could have. It just happended that we didn't. Not in this life time.
Sandra is the lover from college days who taught me everything about compassion, passion, selflessness, and sensuality. She was to me the Goddess of Love, and when she moved on, we lost contact, but I continued to respect and love women the way she taught me. It was like a visit from an avatar, or my guardian spirits bringing me together with someone that I would learn from important things that would guide me for all my life. And after 24 years, by chance, we found one another again. We are both older, wiser, have children of our own, and still compassionate, passionate, and sensual, though a bit less selfless. We both learned there are times to take care of the self. She is today single, polyamorous, and bisexual (like my wife is) and if she was not rooted out west and my family rooted here in the east, I think we would form a strong triangle. But as it is, we seemed destined to be separate.
Could we have been comitted and partners? I truly believe we could have, but then we wouldn't have brought into the world the wonderful children that we did with our spouses. Children are individual miracles, you know. Parents are just the means for their coming into the world and their initial human guardians.
More often than not, my closest friends and lovers discovered subsequently that they are bisexual or lesbian. For a while I believed that all women were either bisexual or lesbian and that all the other heterosexual women just hadn't discovered that yet. Unless it is a matter of being guided by helpful protective spirits, I don't know why most of my best friends and lovers, including my wife, are lesbians or bisexuals.
Most of them also have been through some kind of sexual assault and trauma. I don't know why most women I meet have survived sexual abuse, but I do know that every two and a half minutes someone is being assaulted in the United States, and that well over 50% of rapes are not reported, so perhaps that has something to do with it.
I no longer find it unusual that I am drawn to women who I find out later have been abused by men and love women. So when my friends tell me about violence they have survived, my heart breaks for them. And when they come out lesbian or bisexual, I celebrated, congratulate and encouraged them - even though it sometimes means our relationship changes because no matter what I think of myself, I am a man.
All of this reinforced my respect and love for women, my intellectual attachment to feminism, and my confusion, frustration, and occasional loathing about my own male sex. I read Susan Brownmiller's Against Our Will : Men, Women, and Rape, Shere Hite's Hite Report and works by Andrea Dworkin and questioned any male oriented feelings and desires I had left. My parents never exposed me to any church growing up, but I was really creating all kinds of definitions of sin for myself for every feeling of desire I felt toward women. As a rule, I am not judgmental of others , only myself. So while I was basically a male feminist and did not participate in misogyny with other men, I did not subscribe to the blanket condemnation of pornography that Andrea Dworkin espoused, but I did condemn my own feelings and prescribed a lot of guilt.
Around that time Pam wrote that she was a lesbian. I read some issues of On Our Backs. I went into an adult store and my eyes fell upon images of women with whips. All the lights were coming on.