I think, perhaps, that the “sex-starved homoerotic despair” could have a big impact for a guy-on-guy guy, too…

In some ways, it’s the same recognition of longing** that makes str8 narratives of desire recognizable and oftentimes empathizable…for this dyke-identified queer, femme-of-center, Black/African-American, woman reader.

**With the caveat that one’s positions as a reader can influence how and why one might feel more Affinity for some POVs or characters.

When I was an unaffiliated young Southern, urban, black girl reading science fiction, for instance, or many interesting mundane novels in the 70s-80s, I did not find a golden horde of characters like me out there yet they were often interesting in their quirks and desires…

A couple more things, though… My real question was, ‘Will a man reading a Sarah Waters book in a state of “sex-starved homoerotic despair” get “the full impact”?’ The abcd version was an attempt to explain the background to the question, ignoring some difficult problems so as not to occupy Alison’s entire disk quota. It wasn’t just playing with abstract categories. I hope no one, particularly trans folk, felt I was trying to exclude them. I apologize if it came across that way. I was just trying to avoid raising every question at once.

Everyone who is exclusively lesbian, gay, or straight seeks to distinguish between men and women, with or without the benefit of theory. So it’s something that an awful lot of people want to do and think we can do.

R2A’s response suggests that the answer to the question is “yes”. If part of the impact of a Sarah Waters novel comes from the transgression against heteronormativity, then a person who is participating in that transgression might feel the impact more powerfully than a person who is only reading about it. And that might be true regardless of the reader’s gender. That’s going beyond what R2A actually said, and I hope I’m not putting words in her mouth. It’s one way to understand what she said.

I think the important question is, what are the implications of the answers to the question; i.e. what would it mean if there really WERE a “female essence?” or a “homosexual essence?” What would it mean if there really WEREN’T?

to me, these questions are like the question of god; we have a world that treats these things as though they exist; but we understand why it would be kinda silly to try to prove it scientifically. despite no scientific evidence, people believe in god because they like the way it enables them to organize their world. similar with gender/essence/ whatever. believing in god is ok with some people, and they don’t need scientific proof. it’s not ok with other people. believing in gender is ok with some people, and not others. but, there is evidence to show that when you go looking for scientific proof of heteronormativity, then you are talking also about looking for “cures” for everyone else.

so, i think the question of gender/essence is better left to the realms in which we discuss philosophy and religion. (which certainly includes this blog!)

a lot of feminists were able to start to think about gender differently when they accepted it as a cultural construct, and not biological determination. but, some feminists still believe (and who is anyone to say they are wrong in the face of so much glaring evidence?) that it is precisely gender constructs/stereotypes/behaviors etc. that continue to oppress women (and also queers and transfolk).

@Andrew B: I totally agree. The one thing that is true about humans is that we are all different. Even trying to do something as simple as “handedness” can become very difficult very quickly. Trying to generalize sexuality…well, I don’t think it can be done. Where would one place the transexuals who get married and have kids, then transition but stay with their spouse…or move on to someone of the opposite sex…or…I think you see my point.

@Ginjoint: Patience will be the key. I waited 3 years before I felt like I moved into the “a really important friend” category, then things built up from there. So you have to REALLY believe she is “the one.” Also, I’m passing along “Love Will Come To You” by the indigo girls via good vibes and positive forces

One thing I am sure of is that questions like this can only be usefully discussed in the kind of space so many have expressed a wish to create here, a space where we needn’t fear that a difference of opinion or an unresolved question or an admission of a fault will be used as a weapon by those who would like to harm sexual minorities. The reason I said we couldn’t talk about that question at all even a few years ago was that until then such spaces were so rare and so small that a discussion could hardly begin.

I second the recommendation of Terry Pratchett, whose every Discworld book I’ve read. But there’s something that bothers me a wee bit: in 30-odd Discworld novels, he has never had a non-heterosexual character (except perhaps for two women in Monstrous Regiment). It is, of course, his business what sorts of people he chooses to write about, and I’m not going to stop reading him on that account; but it’s still a failure of basic ‘universality.’ An equally prolific queer writer who went as long without a straight character or even acknowledgment of the straight lifestyle would be accused of ghettoizing him or herself.

judybusy, I read only one of McCall Smith’s non-Botswana novels, and though it went down smoothly — the man can write — it struck me as a sort of translation of the No 1 Ladies Detective Agency formula into a Scots locale. I’ve never felt any wish to read any more of them.

I wrote about open-mindedness at my blog at great length, so here’s a link (in response also to judybusy’s request): http://thisislikesogay.blogspot.com/2008/09/prejudiced-in-favor-of-prejudice.html

I agree wholeheartedly that this is Alison’s blog and she can moderate it as she sees fit. She could be much stricter about the breadth of discussion she permits here, and I’d have no complaint. This is a subject that’s come up around these precincts before, I recall. What makes me uneasy is some other commenters’ criteria, like “objectionable” postings: what is “objectionable”? Presumably something that someone objects to, but *someone* will object to just about anything. Why shouldn’t people learn to object to the objectionable themselves, instead of demanding that “objectionable” material be removed from their sight? The mindset involved is really just the same as that of conservative Christians or other religionists who don’t want to see anything that offends *them*; it’s just the other, liberal, side of the same coin.

I recall, when we discussed this question here a year or so back, that someone said that she didn’t like to debate or counter the claims/arguments of other people because she didn’t want to risk hurting their feelings. Apparently, deleting their postings, etc. doesn’t involve such a risk. I’m not making a brief for “reader,” only pointing out the danger in giving overly broad criteria for deletion. But the fun thing was, “reader’s” remarks were very easy to refute. His personal attacks on our host/ess were, I thought, a good reason to nuke them. (In the interests of full disclosure, I haven’t enabled comments on my own blog.)

Henceforth:
DOWN WIF HUMIN OPRESHUN
LEEVE OWR HEAT SIKULS ALONE
=
Down with human oppression
Leave our heat cycles alone
(and Maggie, that really made me laugh — esp after your eloquent commentary on sex, gender, and oppression)

ps “heat” = the natural hormonal fluctuations of cats related to their normal/animal sexual reproduction (the cycles of which are nullified by the neutering process)

And of course (a) and (b) above both challenge patriarchy and compulsory heterosexuality, which they do not share with (c) and (d). Is that what you meant, Andrew?

Andrew B. asks a question that has kept me curious for a long time, but that I have stopped discussing innocently, since it raised too many eyebrows. In my version the question went like this: if you would wake up in the morning, and found out that you had turned into – no, not into an enormous insect as in Kafka’s ‘Die Verwandlung’, but into a man; would you (a) still be attracted to women, or (b) still be gay?

O, and I tend to agree that we are not anyone else’s therapist, but we are still our brothers keeper, and there is no harm in trying to take people serious and avoid ridiculing them, even if they are disproportionally angry.

(a) woman attracted to woman
(b) man attracted to man
(c) woman attracted to man
(d) man attracted to woman

What I’m wondering is whether (a) and (b) have anything in common that neither of them shares with either (c) or (d). Is there such a thing as homoeroticism generally? Or are there only gay male desire and lesbian desire, two completely different things?

I gather from Acilius’s answer that I may have stepped on some toes by asking this. That is not what I meant to do.