Girl on Girl Action

Welcome visitors looking for porn!

Actually, yes, I did choose a provocative headline, one that would drive up hits. Google ''girl on girl action'' to see how common a search term it is. (95 million plus links!) But it's not like people are looking for women's pro basketball coverage.

As Sociological Images points out:

These days it’s not unusual to see girl-on-girl action on TV and in mainstream movies. Are we tolerant of lesbianism? Let’s do a thought experiment:

Two thin, young, conventionally attractive women in stillettos with large breasts making out? Hot or not? Hot.

Two women making out? Hot or not? Hmmmm.

<SNIP>

Much of the supposed acceptability of girls kissing girls is predicated on the idea that they are doing it not for themselves, but for an imagined male viewer. That is, they’re kissing each other to get guys off. That male viewer doesn’t even have to be present. He’s implied when the girls are, as I described above, “thin, young, conventionally attractive women in stillettos with large breasts.” Looking “hot” signifies a capitulation to the male gaze. So long as the women kissing each other conform to this standard of beauty, they aren’t breaking the rules of femininity (one of which is a desire for male sexual attention).

This may sound outlandish, but consider the disgust or outrage that is often aimed at lesbians who do not conform to this standard of beauty. When lesbians are not thin, do not wear make up, or refrain from dressing in ways that reveal and feminize their body, they are “dykes.” These women are not unacceptable simply because they are sexually attracted to other women, they are unacceptable because they are refusing to acknowledge and accept that they exist, first and foremost, to please men.

Last year during Gay Pride Week, the boy and I found ourselves in a pub that had a huge open window overlooking Yonge Street -- just as the Dyke Parade was on. There was a bunch of beer swillers at the next table -- clearly from out of town, just there for the occasion -- their cameras clicking away. They got all hot and bothered whenever an attractive topless woman marched by -- but they just got bothered if she wasn't conventionally young and pretty.

We were totally grossed out by these sexist hicks. Could they be any more stereotypically sexist?

Anyway, Sociological Images' post was inspired by the latest video by Current TV's Bryan Safi, who shares a website with that Broadsides fave Sarah Haskins. He makes the point that pop culture exploits the girl-on-girl action for its own commercial ends. I would just like to add that pop culture is nowhere to be found when gays and lesbians are battling for equal rights.

But I'll let Safi speak for his funny self:

Comments

[sk8r]

Thank You!! Thank You!!

[Trish]

It's a sad double standard. People really do need to be more open about relationships. It's a little disturbing that people will go to a pride parade, not out of support for equal rights, but to ogle the participants.

[mozo]

Trish, from Merriam Webster online:

transitive verb
1 : to eye amorously or provocatively
2 : to look at especially with greedy or interested attention

— ogler \-g(ə-)lər\ noun

I would say that if you don't go to a parade with the intention of ogling you should not go at all.

[Mike]

Watched the video - that music clip at the end was magic. I think I peed my pants...just a little. Seriously though, from a dudes perspective, if I am not attracted to a woman, why would I be attracted to that same woman making out with another woman (whom I may or may not find attractive)? I argue that the sexual belligerence you refer to is a direct result of lack of sexual interest...although, boorishness does not require a sexual orientation...the same guys you refer to in the article are likely just as brutal with straight women who do not meet their approval - it is just that the derogatory comments are driven by the environment. As with every blog on human ineraction, some guys fit exactly into the mold you have crafted - others just like two hot women kissing cause...they are two hot women kissing...