To Love out of Spite

   "The Good Fairy was very fond of Love and helped all who were in love. She saw the Snow Queen taking the beautiful Kaya away in her castle of ice and that saddened her heart. She decided to help Gerda find her beloved though she new many dangers were shadowing her way. But was there anything that could stop the girl in love?"
                                                                                       Source: bg-lesbian.com, section “Fairy tales”

Is that clear? In Andersen’s new rendition the little boy’s place is taken by the woman Kaya truly and deeply in love with her friend Gerda. What’s more, at the end all characters become good. The Snow Queen meets the princess with whom she hopes to find her piece of happiness while the Fairy is casting an arch and promising glance at woman-bandit. Everyone meets the new millennium with hearts filled with love. As I read this story I start feeling sad. There is another story underneath it. The one about the Princess who kissed a frog and the frog turned into another Princess. Same old story told again. Well there are no stories about lesbians. The stories are for children. Mostly. You can’t read to your kid how Snow White and Rose Red after thousands of adventures held their hands in front of the altar vowing in eternal love. Actually no, the question is not could you do it, but would you?
So, this article is bout women who fall in love with women! Just for general knowledge it’s good to know that they are called lesbians, not lezbians. Also, it’s good to know that lesbians are homosexual individuals, i.e.:
- Homosexuals are persons attracted emotionally, physically and sexually to persons of their own sex.
- Heterosexuals are the ones liking the other sex and there’s nothing in the world that could make them change, apart from the climacteric period maybe.
- About bisexuals we all know.
So far nothing new. Except for the fact that they feel sad that they don’t have their own stories. Probably no one of us ever imagined that anyone could feel such a want, but it’s a fact that obediently lines up in the long raw of things that they don’t have, things they can’t do, they can’t dream about unless they want to make their lives miserable. That makes being a lesbian not an easy thing. Being a lesbian is a destiny. Let’s continue getting to know them. The lesbians themselves are very different as people. Very often when a lesbian shares with someone about her sexual orientation she hears: “It can’t be! You don’t look like one!”. The truth is that they are women of any kind, beautiful, ugly, smart, stupid, butches and femmes, unemployed or holding high offices. The one thing common between them is that they fall in love with women. What’s surprising is that there’s so many of them!

The world has provided many and mostly satisfactory explanations what kind of people are lesbians, why they are like that, and what made them be like that. There exist several popular fallacies created by people’s striving to make lesbianism acceptable and understandable for them. The willingness to understand them is a good thing, but the bad thing is that we do it the wrong way.

Truths and Lies

Lie: Lesbians hate men!
Truth: There are few lesbians who hate men but they are very few, being an exception rather than the rule. Mostly it’s the case when a young woman has been harassed by men, or women who have combined lesbianism with radical feminism, but that’s a rarity.

Lie: Lesbians want to be men!
Truth: Lesbians are very happy as women. Lesbians are very different from transsexual women who want to identify themselves as men and have male sexual identity, i.e. they are men emotionally and psychically.

Lie: Lesbians look masculine!
Truth: Some do, others don’t! But if a woman looks masculine doesn’t mean that she’s a lesbian. If we gather together a large group of lesbians it would be hard to discover a common characteristic in their appearance that could be considered a stereotype. The case is the same as with a group of randomly chosen persons – they all look different.

Lie: Lesbians just haven’t met a real man!
Truth: By that reasoning we could say that all heterosexual women haven’t met a real woman, so they haven’t changed their sexual orientation! Or the heterosexual men haven’t been with a real man that’s why they haven’t become gay! The lesbian is a lesbian because she likes women not because she hasn’t found or appreciated enough values in the men around her. We mustn’t forget that there are a lot of heterosexual women who, because of different reasons, experience difficulties in finding a man who will like them. But they are not lesbians! Being able to attract the other sex’s attention affects not sexual orientation, but masturbation.

Lie: Lesbians are hurt by men!
Truth: As all other people lesbians are very different. Some of them are strong, persistent, and powerful women. They are the reason for society’s most popular fallacy regarding what is a “lesbian”. These women are considered to be certainly hurt by men and that their behavior is dictated by their inner fear of them. Men аre either intimidated or feel insecure and they make up the suggestion that lesbians are rejected or hurt by men.

Speaking of myths about lesbians I cannot but point out that no person that has discovered that they like people from their own sex has accepted it with loud cheers and enthusiasm. The psychologist Kass divides the process of forming of homosexual identity into six stages.
Stage I – doubt.
You feel that something is not right. You ask yourself “Is it possible that I’m lesbian/gay?” You try to avoid the company of the same sex. You try to find information about those that are with homosexual orientation.
Stage II – comparison.
Yes, you are certainly different and you feel it all the time. You are absolutely clear what it is to be homosexual. Gradually you give up the learnt rule that a woman needs a man (and vice versa). You feel like a complete idiot. You keep on hiding.
Stage III - toleration.
You get accustomed to yourself. You get to know other gay or lesbian persons, you get emotional support. Problems could arise if you are shy or incommunicative or if you are afraid that others will find out about your inclination. If your experience during that period is negative, your progress in that direction could stop. But on the other hand if you feel confident enough and you assess positively your experience as a final result you will get so accustomed to yourself that you will be able to say without hesitation: “I am lesbian!”
Stage IV – inner acceptance of your identity.
At this stage the tolerance is being shifted towards positive direction. Your relationships with people like you become stronger. If you communicate with people that see nothing wrong in homosexuality you start to develop the same perception. When you accept your sexuality entirely, you go on.
Stage V – pride.
You stop rejecting the commonly accepted norms and even become proud of yourself. The desire to hide yourself diminishes and your best friends find out the truth. How things develop is up to them. If the overall reaction is negative you will start thinking that confiding in people with heterosexual orientation is dangerous and counting on them is senseless. If their reaction is positive, however, finally everything in the Universe comes to its own place…once agan.
Stage VI – synthesis.
You no longer divide those around you to “us” (homo- and bisexual) and “them” (heterosexual). You stop perceiving the others on the basis of their sexual orientation. Not all heterosexuals are seen in a negative light and not all homosexuals are perceived positively. The process of forming the sexual identity is complete.

     > > > > > next