On Valentine’s Day, for starters

Created by D. W. Kellogg circa 1833–1842

Way back when phrenology was considered a legitimate science someone decided to draw a map of a woman’s heart because goddess knows, way back nearly 200 years ago, women were considered intellectually inferior little bundles of emotion and scheming and petulance and prettiness and clearly, only a map could provide enough information to an intrepid adventurer, traveler or navigator of women.

Looking at this map today and putting aside its fun and historical factors, I’m struck by a number of cultural beliefs suggested by this map. Let me call them delusions:

Delusion #1. That one woman’s heart is every woman’s heart.

Delusion #2. That what’s in one woman’s heart is every woman’s heart in equal measure.

Delusion #3. That a woman’s heart is what drives her behaviour.

Delusion #4. That every woman has a heart.

Hmm. Some beliefs haven’t changed much have they?

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All those women who love women and know that no two women — and no two loves — are the same but wish women were more predictable and therefore more the same, raise your hands.

All those women who love women but are confused that no two women — and no two loves — are the same yet find themselves constantly frustrated by how women can be so different from each other and from you — raise your hands.

All those women who love women and know and accept and cherish and revel in the fact that no two women and no two loves are the same, raise your glasses of bubbly, nibble on your little piece of dark and tasty chocolate (or her ear) and smile knowingly at yourself. There is nothing cooler on the planet than a woman who loves a woman for who and how she is.

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Love’s the easy part. Two electromagnetic fields coming into contact with each other. Some kind of a pull. Something to explore or ignore or visit from time to time or bring home and live with for the rest of your days. Love and loving and sharing a bathroom: the not-so-easy part.

And yet? For some people Love with a capital L is nothing but a word, a word in vogue, a trend, a currency in circulation, a form of punctuation like quotation marks, commas, misplaced apostrophes and overused, exhausted exclamation marks. Enough of that nonsense!

Time to take Love with a capital L back from all the misusers and disbelievers and naysayers and counterfeiters and word waterdowners. Time to say that Love will not be pushed to the sidelines by cheap imitations like I lerve you, I <3 U! Luv ya! swirling about in a world of people appreciating a real Love thing.

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(and because I’m reading Marguerite Duras…)

Pause.

Silence.

Love. Loving.

Listen with your unique woman’s heart, a woman who loves women, on Valentines Day for starters and every day after that. Listen and let Love with a capital L be.

Let Love with a capital L and all of its offspring (love and loving) speak to you in its own way, with its own words, with its own sounds and its own touch and its own feeling. Hear Love on the wind and in the rain and in the sun and the smell of the sand or the earth, in the waves on the shore, or the sound of coffee or tea being made, or a quiet moment of pure solitude, or a cuddle with a cat or a dog or a kid or a friend or her, or the sensation as  she slips her fingers between yours as you head out of the cafe, or the warm breath that’s in the space just before that shared kiss with her or the phone call to say hello from a friend on a day that’s not going so well, or the funny commercial when you need a laugh, or the cute woman you see on the street that makes your own (woman’s) heart go RAWR. Let Love be. Let Love be on Valentine’s Day, for starters and every day after that in whatever form it takes in the world around you.

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You know who you are, love.

In the name of love

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Tell me: what have you done in the name of love? What outstanding, super sweet, crazy wild, deliciously secret, sappy, sad, happy, hilarious, goofy, nerdy, mad, stupid, romantic, scary, adventurous, spiritual, silly, wrong, winning thing have you done that when you think of it or remember it now you shiver, shake your head, smile, blush, have a body flush or perhaps shake your head, furrow your brows, purse your lips and wish you could jettison the memory to where it will never be found and you will never remember it?

What is the thing that stands out for you that you’ve done for this thing we call love? What armies did you defeat, hills did you climb, songs did you sing, speed limits did you break? How many cycles of what-if thoughts? How many red-faced, blushing, fumbling, awkward moments did you endure? How long did you stand in the snow, or in the rain, or in the hot sun waiting to casually smiles and wave as she walked by? How many speed limits did you break, rooms did you paint, calls did you make, yoga classes did you attend, marathons did you train for, dog parks did you visit, art galleries did you browse through, books did you buy, songs did you listen to, clothes did you try on, drinks did you drink, all for love?

I’d like to know. I’d like to know what any, all, everyone has ever done in the name of love, for love, the hope of love, about love, your love for her. I’m curious what we all do for love. Or in the name of love. I wonder about it. Would you tell me?

Perhaps it’s not what you did that immediately comes to mind, but what you didn’t do or haven’t done or can’t bring yourself to do for love. Or will never do. Perhaps you sat on your hands. Perhaps pride prevented you from doing what you wanted to do. Or pragmatism: love conquers everything except for what it can’t conquer. Perhaps it’s some regret that swims around in your memory. Perhaps you haven’t experienced love that’s pulled or pushed you out of balance. Perhaps nothing stands out because yours is an experience of an intense, gentle, calm, kind of love, the kind that helped you catch your breath, find your way, and supported your heart in its thump, thump, thumping in a way that tells you’re experiencing a whole lot of a quiet, life-affirming love.

So: would you? Tell me?

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How to be a lesbian

It’s quite simple really. Shall I explain? Let’s start with the basics which quite frankly, are so Goddess-darned obvious you’d think no explanation required but as you’ll see and for reasons that defy logic, some people think anyone can be a lesbian, and since that’s definitely not the case, here we go:

• First and foremost, by dint of birth or gender reassignment surgery, you must be a female. This is not negotiable.
• Second, as a female you know/discover/find that your only and exclusive romantic and sexual/life partner interest/activity is with/for/about other females.
• Third, you like it that way and you want to find a female partner or have several partners — female only — over the course of your life because you want to share your personal, intimate life with a female.

Together, these three elements combine on the periodic chart of human sexuality to form the core of — let’s say it out loud and together — a lesbian! A woman who loves, likes, is and only ever wants to be, with women. That’s a lesbian. I know, I know. It’s a label and we hate labels because labels limit us, hamper our individuality, deny our special unique identity, denigrate Ayn Rand and cause people to make assumptions.

Yes, well, take a deep breath. Let’s for a moment forget about books and covers and judging by appearance and all sorts of human evolution and adaptations that demand we make snap judgments about what we see with our eyes and feel with our senses. And let’s also forget that we can’t definitively know much about any single individual by observing the species or grouping individuals into archetypes, although we think we can and do it all the time and are often wrong, as could be the case about a woman who’s with a man while calling herself a lesbian. But back to the point: Why do I need to explain how to be a lesbian?

Because some girls and women claim to be lesbians while they are partnered with men, hooking up with guys, serial dating them, marrying them. You know them. They’re the ones who say, “I’m a lesbian although I am married to, partnered with and sleep with men too.” Or “In my heart I love women, although not right now.“

Sometimes what’s inside doesn’t match the outside. Sometimes, a woman is a lesbian in her heart, mind and soul and yet circumstance and safety make it impossible for her to claim the life and love and label she wants. She can’t express the fact that she’s a lesbian and that’s a different issue entirely.

To be or not to be a lesbian: that’s not the question

A lesbian is a woman whose desires and attachments are to another woman. A woman who is with a man yet identifies as a lesbian — because as we all know, love is pure energy and that energy is blind to our puny, human, culturally constructed gender norms — is not a lesbian, at least not in the way other lesbians know, or as the label, as the term or word is currently understood, defined, lived. Repeat after me: a lesbian is a female homosexual.

While definitions can and do change, I can assure you — the Oxford English Dictionary has no plans to change the definition of lesbian to “a woman who claims the identity of a homosexual female in spite of her sexual, romantic and emotional partnering interests being with men and sometimes dates or has sexual relations with women. See Bisexuality. See also: Isle of Lesbos, inhabitants called Lesbians.”

And yet, there are pretenders among us. Women who say they’re lesbians but aren’t. Women who claim Lesbian as a political/personal identity as a counterpoint to the world’s entrenched patriarchy, but are not in any way interested in women as lovers or romantic or life partners to which I say, oh tosh. Please. We do not need faux lesbians as a fashion or political statement any more than we need middle-class suburban kids dressin’ up acting all faux gangsta. Cool it is not. And confusing as hell if we want to talk to you at a bar frequented by real lesbians who are there for lesbian-type reasons.

There are also, strangely, males who claim to be lesbians. Listen closely: no, no, no, and no. Only women can be lesbians. Only lesbians are lesbians. Everyone else is something else: bisexual, omnisexual, asexual, sapiosexual — and that’s just fine.

How to be a lesbian

Once you have ascertained that biologically you are female, here’s how you too can be a lesbian. Date women. Romance women. Sing songs about women. Write poems about women. Dream about and fantasize about women. Care about women. Share love with a woman. Share yourself and your life, your hopes and dreams and fears and wonders and laundry and morning breath and PMS and bad hair days and celebrations and cuddles and favourite TV shows and movies with a woman. Explore the world with a woman. Commit to being a woman who loves a woman. That’s how to be a lesbian.

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