Darkside Rainbow

Dear Adri:

I’m a happily married lesbian, and even though most of the older members of our families are accepting, they still ask “who’s the man”. How can I make them understand that there doesn’t have to be a “woman” and a “man” in a gay relationship?

Thanks,
Not a man

You could do what I did to my mother (who, I recently discovered, reads this regularly, which rather creeps me out): you could explain to them in explicit detail who’s on top in the bedroom, including the exact physical mechanics of it and any accessories required. I guarantee they’ll stop asking. They’ll stop even wanting to wonder, because they’ll realize they don’t want to know. Few want to picture their younger relatives caught in the middle of the dirty deed.

No? Doesn’t work for you? But the reaction’s really funny…

Okay, okay, we’ll try the diplomatic approach. This is a question I’ve dealt with from many quarters, from my parents right down to nosy coworkers, and it’s never an easy issue to address. The first thing that I always have to do is check my knee-jerk reaction of irritation and exasperation, settle my hackles, and remind myself that nine out of ten times, the person asking doesn’t mean to be nearly as insulting as they come across. They aren’t trying to be rude; they just don’t know any better.

With that in mind, it does fall on our shoulders to explain to them so that they do know better. I’ve found that the best tack to take is to calmly and patiently remind your family - or whoever’s asking - that you and your partner are the same gender, so there’s no separating you into the “man” and “woman” of a relationship based on behavioral roles, and that you have an entirely different dynamic. Explain that you’re equal partners and what matters to the two of you isn’t who gets to fulfill the male or female role in the relationship, but who your partner is as a person and how your individual dynamic works together.

In truth, that probably won’t sink in at first. It takes a lot of time and acclimation to break people of this idea that any balanced relationship must have a male/female element regardless of the genders of the people involved (and that includes relationships between two transgenders or relationships between a transgender and a non-transgendered person). One way I’ve found that works best is to point out extremely close same-sex friendships between heterosexuals; in many ways a relationship is (or should be) just like a close, trusting platonic friendship, and yet in friendships there is no requirement that one be the man and one be the woman.

Explain to your family that your relationship is just the same as a stable, balanced, loving friendship - down to the point where you love your friends even when you want to throttle them - but with intimacy and further commitment involved. It’s not going to make them understand immediately, but it will help them take baby steps across that gap once they can find a parallel that they understand in everyday life. Once they grasp that, try to remind them that you and your partner are people that they know as unique individuals, and that nothing about what they know about you has changed enough that they need to redefine you in either a male or female role as opposed to your partner.

The social stereotypes of the male and female roles are just that: stereotypes, not concrete necessity. Love is love, period. It doesn’t know gender, and it doesn’t require a solid element of male or female. It’s about you, and nothing else. Many heterosexual couples break the social stereotype; they may physically be male and female, but their roles in their relationship don’t fulfill the traditional social stereotype of who’s the “man” and who’s the “woman” - and I don’t just mean the old jokes of “well, we know who really wears the pants in that relationship!”

More and more relationships are becoming a thing of balanced equality between two people who both have careers, life goals, hobbies, etc. They’re socially equal outside their relationship, and remain socially equal inside their relationship regardless of the fact that they have different anatomy. Try to explain that it’s exactly the same for homosexual relationships; we just happen to have one more thing in common with our partners beyond steady jobs, etc. (As Noxema Jackson/Wesley Snipes said, “For starters, the same business between your legs - boink, boink, boinkboinkboink.”)

Unfortunately, there’s no easy way to tackle this. I wish there was. You often have to take it on a case-by-case basis and try to explain with consideration for the person you’re talking to and how they think, and sometimes it still won’t register. They may get it over time; they may never get it at all. The important thing is to be patient and never lose your cool. Arguing about it is just going to cause the other person to block out what you’re saying, because at that point to listen to you means to lose the argument.

Once they do understand, you may want to remind them (and other people in your life who ask) that it’s just as rude and invasive to ask homosexuals about our relationships in that fashion as it is to ask heterosexuals. I, for one, don’t mind explaining the first time; as I said, the majority don’t realize that they’re being offensive (and sometimes making me feel like a circus performer putting on an act in front of a sign that says “Look at the amazing homosexual! Marvel at his strange ways!”). If someone doesn’t have the patience to educate them then they’ll never really get it, and they’ll never be able to accept it as normal rather than as some freakish novelty that needs to be stared at, prodded, and picked apart.

But once they know, they should remember that a little common courtesy goes a long way and that they should respect the social and personal boundaries of their gay/lesbian/bi/transgender friends and family in the same way that they’d respect those of their straight friends and family.

Good luck,
~Adri

ask adri, gay relationships, lesbian relationships, relationship issues, non-gender-biased relationships