Decrying Gravity

[Another fairly explicit post, particularly towards the latter half, though not as bad as two weeks ago.  Rape and explicit sexual writing are both quite present.]

I've always felt that lesbian relationships were "pure" in a way sexuality is normally not.  It's not a reasoned or rational opinion; it's quite literally how they feel to me.  This is, at once, illuminating and problematic.

I've mentioned before that one of the forces that truly pushed me to finally commit to transitioning was seeing Naomi Watts character in Mulholland Drive.  The film starts with some light-ish romance that eventually goes awry, leaving Watts's character to masturbate in a gutwrenching and desperate scene as she tries to recall whatever it was she might have had.  And it haunted me.  It was almost impossible to tell whether I wanted to be her or fuck her more.  She felt so real.  So... resonant with how I truly felt.  I identified with her and wanted her so very badly.  And she simply wouldn't fade away.  The desire was too strong.  The longing was too entrenched.

Although I wish it was otherwise, this... holy affinity I feel for lesbian relationships extends primarily to "straight-looking" women; "femmes," I suppose you'd call them.  I certainly don't have anything against butch women, but, all told, I have a hard time understanding on a visceral level why a woman would want to mask her femininity (as defined by traditional norms).  I like movie/TV lesbians.  The (usually) fake ones that are meant to be titillating for straight men moreso than representative of lesbian identity.

That's not to say that there aren't femme/femme lesbian relationships (and, certainly, even such distinctions are problematic and ultimately trivial).  But I'm acutely aware that the women I'm attracted to and the relationship models I feel affinity for tend to mirror "straight-male fantasies."

What's perhaps odd, then, is that their allure only works in television or cinema.  Lesbian pornography does little for me.  I'm still primarily turned on by humiliation, terror, self-hatred, and those are usually (but not exclusively) caused by men in pornography.

By contrast, I find men, usually, tainted.  As if the very idea of a blowjob requires some element of degradation and compromise (whereas cunnilingus is practically a sacrament).  And again, this is felt not thought.  I smile at cute gay couples.  In certain pictures, where the male/male partnership, butch/butch, butch/femme, or the female/male partnerships seem to make both parties feel "loving" and happy, I "enjoy" their joy but I'm usually not aroused by it.

No, it's really only in TV/film where I have emotional investments in the characters that their relationships become poignantly felt.  For instance, in the series I'm watching tonight.  It's revealed that a character you thought was having an affair with the photographer is actually sleeping with his wife.  And I instantly fell for both of them.  They're not... artificially feminine, but they trended towards straight norms of beauty.  And it felt so pure!  It felt divine.  I envied them, so much, but even moreso I just felt... peaceful.  Like that was the ideal.  Two beautiful women gently kissing each other, playfully teasing, simmering with lust and love.  I want it so badly that I almost can't acknowledge it for fear that it will never manifest.  It seems right in a way that nothing else does.

And I don't understand it.  I don't like attaching such arbitrary corruption to "the male."  I fantasize about being fucked by a man and, honestly, I really do want to perform oral sex on one/some, but I can't help but feel a significant part of both would just be to reaffirm my femininity.  Imagining myself fucking/being fucked by a woman is about me, her, and love.  With a man, it's... sex.  It's carnal, it's me, small and girlish, him larger and with the capacity to hurt me he has so much strength.  He doesn't, and although I have rape fantasies, none of them are of *real* rape.  It's kind of sweet, in a way.  He says I'm beautiful.  Thinks I'm pretty.  I sit on his lap, I put my head on his chest as we lie in bed, he fondles my breasts because they're so goddamn wonderful and "other."

It's fun.  Cute.  Binary traditional.  Only after sexual reassignment surgery.  But it never seems realistic when I try to love him.  I want him to throw me on a bed, wrench my legs apart, and fuck me til I howl and he bursts inside me, withdrawing as his semen leaks from me.  I want him to stick his cock down my throat and use my head as a proxy, fucking me until I taste him, savor, and swallow.  But beyond fucking?  I'm sure he's nice and all, but he's not who I want to fall asleep beside every night.

 And maybe that'll change.  Maybe I'll find the right guy, as I've found a very small handful of young women, and I'd love him.  But I worry I'd just be loving my femininity, using him as a foil instead of loving him as a person.

Again, I don't like it!  I don't know how much is me, how much relies upon my visceral notions of what gender is, how much is a reaction to my hatred of myself and my body, whether that is merely a backlash against authority structures coded as male and summarily rejected.  I don't know.  I don't know that it matters.

I want to be a thin, pretty (by straight norms) lesbian.  Not just a woman.  A lesbian.  I suppose there are worse things to want to be when you grow up, no?