Advice they give to straight girls
Feb. 9th, 2010 10:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
highlyeccentricThis might sound like Stating The Bleeding Obvious, but the advice most commonly given to straight girls about sex and relationships is not the same as the advice given to queer girls. Even discounting "it's just a phase" and variants on that theme, the advice given to queer girls by fellow queers and supportive persons of all stripes is not the same as the advice given to straight girls by fellow heterosexuals and supportive persons of all stripes.
And, ok, what I mean by that is "the advice given to me about sex and relationships as a straight girl was not the same as the advice given to me as a newly minted queer girl". And the context in which I received these genres of advice were pretty far removed - most of the first was in religious context, or in the knowledge that I was religious; most of the latter has been given to me by secular persons to me as a secular person. But nevertheless I am aware that many other straight girls receive the same advice I did, and many other queer girls receive the same advice I did, so I'm going to proceed on with my generalisations. And some of my straight-person advice I took from secular books like Everygirl, and some of my queer person advice was given by my church friends.
Advice given to straight girls about discovering their sexuality, and forming relationships with others:
- Don't rush into anything
- Spend time getting to know your body, your own needs and wants, the sorts of things that turn you on, and so on
- Take things slowly, put a high priority on trust before having sex (or don't do it at all, depending on your moral stance)
- It's a good idea to be single for a while (when, exactly, no one says - usually whenever it's felt you need advice), and to use that time to become more confident in yourself and what you want in a relationship.
Advice given to newly-minted queers - especially if you're bi or have been in heterosexual relationships before:
- wow, you should definitely explore your sexuality! have you thought about going to gay clubs?
- women won't just happen to you like men do - you have to go specifically looking to meet them! What are you going to do?
- how do you know you're queer if you've never been with a woman?
and other variants on that theme. I get the distinct impression that people feel you're not Officially Queer until you've at least engaged in some same-sex snogging; until then you're just "questioning", the extra Q in the LGBTQIQ set.
Thing is, I TRIED to follow the first set of advice as a straight girl, with patchy success due to too much denial in my system. After coming out, I sort of felt like my attraction to women and my attraction to men were running parallel, with the queer half several years behind the straight half (ie, at 21 I was as attracted to women as I had been to men at 17, if that makes sense). And I thought that was fairly interesting, and deserved some time and attention, and I'd say I've pretty well managed to bring the two into harmony by now. But I did it by following the sorts of advice given to me as a *straight* girl - the ones about not rushing into things and looking and thinking and attempting to establish some sort of ownership of one's own sexuality before going off looking for other people to try it out with. Meanwhile, most people giving me well-meaning queer advice seemed to be of the opinion that the *best* way to explore one's sexuality is to try it out in company.
I know there's a whole lot of patriarchal baggage involved in the first set of advice. We encourage young people and especially women to view partnersex as an emotionally risky undertaking that you should only enter into when sure of yourself, instead of viewing partnersex as what it actually is: a slightly ridiculous sticky blundering about undertaken by two or more persons none of whom have significantly more idea than the others about what it is they're doing in the first place. Whether we encourage them in that view because we're coming at it from a morally conservative standpoint, or because we're all about empowering young people to make sound choices and understand their sexuality - obviously the latter is a better standpoint, but can still carry or be grafted onto a lot of social baggage about young people and sex.
I presume there's a lot of baggage involved in the second set of advice, too. Perhaps one encourages young queers to overcome their internalised homophobia and related inhibitions? Perhaps one assumes that newly minted queers have been struggling with their identity for years and by the time they come out they damn well DESERVE a good same-sex shag. Not all advice for queers is in this vein - in my copy of Second Person Queer, for example, one author advises young queer boys to enjoy themselves and explore sex with their peers, but steer clear of seeking older men until they're older and more sure of their sexuality, which is a bit of a blend of both sets of advice. The online sex ed site, Caitlin's Corner, which is no longer active, gave mostly the first set of advice to both heterosexual and queer teens (along with some really constructive and detailed advice on How To Do Everything from kissing to light kink.*
Nevertheless, I'm doing a damn sight better at following the first set of advice when it comes to girls than I did the first time around. I'm fairly sure that spending as much or more of your perving time perving on members of the same sex over the opposite qualifies as "exploring one's queerness"; I've learnt to say "us" instead of "them" in reference to queers collectively and the queer experience; I've dressed up my inner dyke so often she's no longer particularly inner. But it's still kind of hard to shake the feeling that I *ought* to have been engaging in practical lesbotany if I want to be really queer. Which is ridiculous! Few people suggest that a young woman ought to be shagging men to be really straight (yes, some girls do get their heterosexuality questioned if they're single - but in my experience the numbers are relatively few?).
I am not sure if I have a point here. Probably that the advice given to straight girls could do with putting more positive emphasis on practical experimentation; and probably that the advice given to queer girls (and boys, since i think on the queer side at least boys get similar advice) could do with not being *quite* so focused on practical experimentation as the gateway from questioning to queer. Some of us like to work things out in our heads first!
~
* I've been informed that CC turns out to have been run by a woman pretending to be a former sex worker and pretending to be a student of sexuality studies when she was in fact neither. This is poor blogging/internet ethics! But the site was useful to me, so she had some merit.
And, ok, what I mean by that is "the advice given to me about sex and relationships as a straight girl was not the same as the advice given to me as a newly minted queer girl". And the context in which I received these genres of advice were pretty far removed - most of the first was in religious context, or in the knowledge that I was religious; most of the latter has been given to me by secular persons to me as a secular person. But nevertheless I am aware that many other straight girls receive the same advice I did, and many other queer girls receive the same advice I did, so I'm going to proceed on with my generalisations. And some of my straight-person advice I took from secular books like Everygirl, and some of my queer person advice was given by my church friends.
Advice given to straight girls about discovering their sexuality, and forming relationships with others:
- Don't rush into anything
- Spend time getting to know your body, your own needs and wants, the sorts of things that turn you on, and so on
- Take things slowly, put a high priority on trust before having sex (or don't do it at all, depending on your moral stance)
- It's a good idea to be single for a while (when, exactly, no one says - usually whenever it's felt you need advice), and to use that time to become more confident in yourself and what you want in a relationship.
Advice given to newly-minted queers - especially if you're bi or have been in heterosexual relationships before:
- wow, you should definitely explore your sexuality! have you thought about going to gay clubs?
- women won't just happen to you like men do - you have to go specifically looking to meet them! What are you going to do?
- how do you know you're queer if you've never been with a woman?
and other variants on that theme. I get the distinct impression that people feel you're not Officially Queer until you've at least engaged in some same-sex snogging; until then you're just "questioning", the extra Q in the LGBTQIQ set.
Thing is, I TRIED to follow the first set of advice as a straight girl, with patchy success due to too much denial in my system. After coming out, I sort of felt like my attraction to women and my attraction to men were running parallel, with the queer half several years behind the straight half (ie, at 21 I was as attracted to women as I had been to men at 17, if that makes sense). And I thought that was fairly interesting, and deserved some time and attention, and I'd say I've pretty well managed to bring the two into harmony by now. But I did it by following the sorts of advice given to me as a *straight* girl - the ones about not rushing into things and looking and thinking and attempting to establish some sort of ownership of one's own sexuality before going off looking for other people to try it out with. Meanwhile, most people giving me well-meaning queer advice seemed to be of the opinion that the *best* way to explore one's sexuality is to try it out in company.
I know there's a whole lot of patriarchal baggage involved in the first set of advice. We encourage young people and especially women to view partnersex as an emotionally risky undertaking that you should only enter into when sure of yourself, instead of viewing partnersex as what it actually is: a slightly ridiculous sticky blundering about undertaken by two or more persons none of whom have significantly more idea than the others about what it is they're doing in the first place. Whether we encourage them in that view because we're coming at it from a morally conservative standpoint, or because we're all about empowering young people to make sound choices and understand their sexuality - obviously the latter is a better standpoint, but can still carry or be grafted onto a lot of social baggage about young people and sex.
I presume there's a lot of baggage involved in the second set of advice, too. Perhaps one encourages young queers to overcome their internalised homophobia and related inhibitions? Perhaps one assumes that newly minted queers have been struggling with their identity for years and by the time they come out they damn well DESERVE a good same-sex shag. Not all advice for queers is in this vein - in my copy of Second Person Queer, for example, one author advises young queer boys to enjoy themselves and explore sex with their peers, but steer clear of seeking older men until they're older and more sure of their sexuality, which is a bit of a blend of both sets of advice. The online sex ed site, Caitlin's Corner, which is no longer active, gave mostly the first set of advice to both heterosexual and queer teens (along with some really constructive and detailed advice on How To Do Everything from kissing to light kink.*
Nevertheless, I'm doing a damn sight better at following the first set of advice when it comes to girls than I did the first time around. I'm fairly sure that spending as much or more of your perving time perving on members of the same sex over the opposite qualifies as "exploring one's queerness"; I've learnt to say "us" instead of "them" in reference to queers collectively and the queer experience; I've dressed up my inner dyke so often she's no longer particularly inner. But it's still kind of hard to shake the feeling that I *ought* to have been engaging in practical lesbotany if I want to be really queer. Which is ridiculous! Few people suggest that a young woman ought to be shagging men to be really straight (yes, some girls do get their heterosexuality questioned if they're single - but in my experience the numbers are relatively few?).
I am not sure if I have a point here. Probably that the advice given to straight girls could do with putting more positive emphasis on practical experimentation; and probably that the advice given to queer girls (and boys, since i think on the queer side at least boys get similar advice) could do with not being *quite* so focused on practical experimentation as the gateway from questioning to queer. Some of us like to work things out in our heads first!
~
* I've been informed that CC turns out to have been run by a woman pretending to be a former sex worker and pretending to be a student of sexuality studies when she was in fact neither. This is poor blogging/internet ethics! But the site was useful to me, so she had some merit.