Women and Women

Below are presented excerpts from For Ourselves, Our bodies and sexuality from women's point of view, by Anja Meulenbelt (published by Sheba Feminist Publishers, 488 Kingsland Road, London E8, England, £4.50. See Resources for longer review).

Available by mail order from Sheba.

Choosing a Woman

It has become clear to me that choosing a woman doesn't just mean that I find a woman's body attractive. When I was still convinced that lesbians were 'the other', that I could never be like that, I still had a male idea of homo- and heterosexuality: it was about what kind of object you happened to find most satisfactory to make love with. And as I didn't have too much against men's bodies as such, I thought that I would never find women attractive as well. It was only when I began to see women as interesting people and also began to like myself a little, that it was possible to overcome the taboos, and the fear of not being normal. With hindsight it is now clear to me that I used to find men attractive because they helped me to do things I couldn't otherwise do, because they were a passport to a male world which, as a woman, you couldn't penetrate — the world of art or of politics, for example. Now that I don't use other people in order to get on, but have made my own life, my own work, and can't imagine that I would want someone else's life, I am no longer seeking someone who can offer me something which I can't achieve on my own. I'm not asking to be completed, made whole. I am attracted to equals, to people who are emotionally close to me, with whom I can share what is important to me. And they are, on the whole, women. So for me, being a lesbian is about more than sex. It's not just about a certain kind of body, it's also about self-respect, loving yourself, recognising how much women can give each other, how strong we can be together. It's about another kind of living, another kind of human relationship.

The rigid divisions which are drawn between the two groups of women, the 'normal' and the 'others', are used to play women off against each other. As long as we are afraid to be called 'lesbian' or 'dyke', we will do our best to prove how much we love men and what 'real' women we are. We will be afraid to let women come close to us, to take our friendship with other women seriously, to allow intimacy. We are letting ourselves be divided. We allow men the illusion that we need them. And perhaps we believe it ourselves. And so the struggle of lesbians is important to all women, including those women who at this moment choose to be in a relationship with a man. If we can
respect ourselves, we can look at other women as important people. People with whom we could have a real relationship. Then we only choose a relationship with a man if we like him, and not because we ought to go with a man. All women should feel offended by the assumption that you are heterosexual until the opposite is proved. It says something about how women are perceived: we are clearly not independent enough to decide what we want, and women must, by definition, be a second choice — we'd have a man if we could.

Making Love

Sexuality between women is not always a breeze as we would like to believe. It certainly helps that as lesbians we are less stuck in prescribed roles, and that in principle we are much more equal to each other than a woman and a man.

"The best thing about making love to a woman forme is that it doesn't have such a predictable end. Not: this is foreplay, and now comes the real thing, now I have to have an orgasm (which never succeeded), and then it's over. With my girlfriend there was no beginning and no end when we made love. Without deciding about it, we went from talking into caressing and kissing. Sometimes she had an orgasm, or I did, but that was never the end, never, right, that's that done. It was just one of the things that could happen along the way."

"It was only with a woman that I discovered how sensual ordinary touching is. The way she stroked my back or the inside of my thigh. I had never thought I could get so turned on from  just being stroked."

The first condition to being able to make love well with someone else is to know your own body, your own needs and to be able to make them clear to someone else. But not all women like the same things.

"I can get an orgasm from very light stroking over my clitoris. If I have been very excited from making love, I need very little touching, and even that is almost too much. It wasn't the same for my first girlfriend: she didn't come so easily. She said orgasm wasn't important to her, but I still felt awful, it seemed so unequal. I wanted to share with her. Then one time she said very shyly that perhaps it would be good if she was licked. I was a bit shocked at that because I had never done it. I needed to get used to it."

It is not true either that we can automatically overcome all the taboos just because we love a woman. If all your life you have been told that your cunt is dirty and stinks, then it can cost a lot of effort to be liberated in your erotic experiences, without shame and disgust.

"At first I was a bit scared of all that wetness. It was all right with my hands, but it took time for me to kiss her there. She had much less trouble with it. She was already more experienced than I was. She said she enjoyed kissing me there, but in the beginning I could hardly believe it. And then it was a long time before I came, I couldn't give myself so easily, because I couldn't imagine it was a nice thing for her to do. After we had bathed together, I tried it with her. It was strange, but not at all revolting. And it didn't smell as bad as I had thought. Very clean actually. And I found it really fantastic to experience her orgasm with her. Later I tried it with another woman.
I didn't enjoy that so much, but I wasn't very close to her." 

We can make love with our entire bodies. We can explore a body with our lips, we can discover smells with our noses, we can find hollows and folds with our fingertips in which we have not yet been. We can make an orgasm together. With fingers, with a mouth. We can try to come at the same time, but we can also lie back and let ourselves be given pleasure, and then later reverse the roles... There is an endless range of possibilities. We don't have to make it a 'performance', we don't have to save it for in bed. We can make love just to make love, with or without orgasms.