MALE OBSESSION

And therein lies the rub. Lesbianism is glossed over and made palatable for male tastes. We all recognise the cliché of lesbian porn; two blondes idly pawing at each other, fluttering their eyelashes to a (sometimes invisible) man who inevitably joins in. Fortunately for real women’s thighs and real men’s egos, porn doesn’t mirror reality. But if this cliché isn’t real lesbian sex, then what is real lesbian sex? I’m often asked: “Do you count it [my sexual activity] as sex?” which is never asked of gay men.

Christian Pambrun, a 27-yearold gay man who works in the music industry, says: “Straight people will never doubt it’s sex, but will ask me, ‘So are you the woman, or the man?’” Such a comment is irritating, yes, but at least it doesn’t come with the added insult that your adult relationships are simply pretend. Sally Munt, professor of Cultural and Gender Studies at the University of Sussex, says, “What lesbians do in bed is a huge preoccupation of straight pornography. ‘Real sex’ is often still assumed to be defined by the male orgasm and female penetration.” Which, to Cydney Chadwick, a bisexual 25 year old who works in advertising, is ridiculous: “When women have sex, they do what is physically possible, and I consider that as sex. The build-up is more intense, and that’s something you miss when you have sex with a man. There’s nothing missing when I’m having sex with a woman.”

Look at it like this: the Pill was invented three generations ago, so we’ve had enough time to accept that sex doesn’t have to be procreative, and that women can do it for pleasure too. But because penetration is straight sex’s defining feature, women are still facing inequality in the bedroom. In 2009, a survey found that only 25% of straight women reach climax through penetration alone. And a 2005 study showed that most men climax within three to seven minutes of ‘sex’, whereas the scientific consensus is that women take up to 20 minutes to orgasm. Clearly, a man’s USP – the thing straight people worry lesbians’ sex life is worthless without – isn’t even doing the trick for them. Professor Munt agrees: “Different people find pleasure in different ways; that is the joy of human sexual desire, that it is not defined by, or restricted to, one act.” Sex is supposed to be mutually satisfying, but if it centres around male pleasure, then it can’t be.

MEDIA BIAS

There’s also the assumption that lesbianism is all a passing phase. When straight friends tell me about the traditional milestones they’ve reached with their partners – holidays, moving in together, engagements – they then ask me, “Do you think you’ll end up with a man one day?” I’ve experimented with men, and even fancied some, but I’m not sure a gay man would be asked the equivalent – it’s assumed that once a man has slept with another man, there’s no turning back, whereas women sleeping with other women is ‘fooling around’. So this question is always insulting. Lauren Peach, a 26-year-old teacher, agrees: “People would say it to me when I was in the early stages of my relationship with my fiancée. They thought it was just an experiment. I was frustrated and disappointed that they couldn’t just accept we were together and in love.”

However, it’s little wonder people are curious about women sleeping with women when the media represent it as so outlandish. From Lindsay Lohan’s relationship with Sam Ronson to Natalie Portman’s character in Black Swan, it’s portrayed as the behaviour of an unhinged woman. Otherwise, it’s a marketing tool that Rihanna, Ke$ha, Katy Perry, Megan Fox and Nicki Minaj have used to woo men. And this trickles down into real life. A lesbian experience is now seen as like taking a gap year, or something to tick off on a bucket list. Which seems more about male desire for a girl to prove she’ll do something they enjoy, than actual female desire for another woman. And considering those 35-40% of women who have had a strong same-sex attraction or lesbian experience, it shows how little our society cares about female pleasure if women’s attraction to other women is written off as madness or flippancy.

Are lesbians invisible because they're women?