All About Me

I am writing this blog for my Women's Studies class. The idea is talk about issues that women deal with, whether it be related to gender, sexual preferences, race or political views. As I was thinking in my mind of all the things that I could discuss, one topic stood out to me: lesbian (and bisexual women) relationship stereotypes.

Let me start off by saying that I am a straight woman so I am not writing about my personal experiences in this blog. I consider myself to have a wide range of friends that vary in race, political views and sexual preferences. I thought about some of my friends whom are homosexual and I realized that they are all male. Come to think of it, all throughout high school and college, I have known women who have had threesomes or fooled around with a girl while intoxicated, but I don't recall any women who date only women and have romantic relationships with other women. "Romantic relationships" meaning that they date a girl and call her their "girlfriend".

After I realized that I don't know a woman whom is involved with another woman romantically, I became very sad. Not only because I realized that my group of friends were not as diverse as I had originally thought, but because if I was a homosexual woman, how would I learn about having a healthy romantic relationship with my partner? Because I am heterosexual, I can go to a lot of people with questions about relationships, including my family and friends. I can talk to my mom about sex (maybe when I'm older), dating etiquette (should he pay on the first date?) and marriage (she's been happily married for 22 years). Many lesbian women don't have the luxury of talking to their family or friends unless someone else they know is also a lesbian. In this case, the only way to get advice would be from a doctor (embarassing) or by watching TV.

I have seen several TV shows or movie with a lesbian as a character. The only bad part about TV is that most of the stuff that we are watching is fiction. The lesbian characters on TV are acting out a part that the writers wrote to add comedy, drama or romance. In many TV shows and movies, the lesbian character is overly sexual. "She" (not one specific person in mind) might have sex every weekend with a different girl, but she might never have a real relationship.

Whatever the case, I feel like lesbian women should watch TV to possibly relate to some lesbian characters, but not expect their lives to be the same way. The goal of this blog is to show different lesbian TV characters and discuss the stereotype (if there is one) and how lesbian women can learn from this character. Because although the character may be a sex-crazed freak, it doesn't mean we can't learn from her!

My Sources

Pictures
Paige: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/62/Paige_Michalchuk.jpg
Alex: http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110117191218/degrassi/images/d/d7/Alex.jpg
Fiona: http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100812040550/degrassi/images/c/c2/Degrassi-fiona-04.jpg
Maureen: http://moviecitynews.com/archived/arrays/images/2005/rent/poster_maureen.jpg
Joanne: http://images.wikia.com/rent/images/8/89/Poster_joanne-1-.jpg
Tea: http://static.wetpaint.me/skins/ROOT/photos/tea_punch_fb.jpg
Santana: http://thetvaddict.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/naya_rivera.jpg
Thirteen: http://www.tvfanatic.com/gallery/thirteen-house/
Erica: http://www.zimbio.com/Brooke+Smith/articles/7/Brooke+Smith+Dr+Erica+Hahn+Fired+Grey+Anatomy
Callie: http://rohadi.info/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Callie-Greys-Anatomy.jpg

External Resources
Rudra, Natasha. "New Light Cast on Lesbian Issues". Canberra Times (Australia) Dec. 2010: Section A, p. 8. LexisNexis Academic. June 2011.
Swift, Mike. "Survey Shatters Stereotypes of Same-Sex Duos". San Jose Mercury News (California) May 2008. LexisNexis Academic. June 2011.
Kuyper, Lisette and Fokkema, Tineke. "Minority Stress and Mental Health Among Dutch LGBs: Examination of Differences Between Sex and Sexual Orientation". Journal of Counseling Psychology April 2011: Vol. 58 Issue 2, p. 222-223. EBSCOhost. June 2011.