Philip F. Rose

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November 06, 1999

Lesbian in a Man's Body

It started with a simple premise. I'm not straight, since I bear as much resemblance to a typical straight man as to a baboon. So I must be gay. But I'm attracted to women. So – I started to think – maybe bi. But try as I might, I simply was not attracted to men. (Of course I can recognize when a man is particularly beautiful or charismatic, but that doesn’t make me want to have sex with him.) So, the only remaining answer in our array of choices is that I must be a lesbian. I loved this idea and embraced it immediately as a playful assertion to confuse and intrigue people. And as I started tinkering with the idea of being a lesbian in a man's body and extending it, the meaning revealed itself to be much deeper: it turned to the issue of why the social and behavioral trappings that caused me to not feel like a man were typically tied to having a sexual attraction to men.

This inquiry is not anti-experiential like the academic queer theory debate over whether all gender is constructed, but it links to it, both in influences and in motives. The bottom line is that once you throw out the assumption that there are two ways to act, male and female, or four ways, male, female, gay male and lesbian, once you question whether and why specific behaviors are tied to certain sexual preferences, then the whole house of cards comes down.

Most of my friends have been women -- often groups of women. And to the extent they've allowed it, I've acted as one of the girls, talking about relationships and other struggles of making ones way in life. But I’m not drawn to all female groupings. Women’s activities that are nicey-nice repel me. Womyn’s activities about learning from crones and finding power through motherhood ring hollow. But on the latter point, so do men’s activities tied to male elders and initiation rituals – all the Iron John men’s group type stuff. Basically everything to do with celebrating elders and breeding rings hollow for me.

But women’s activities that are about finding power internally, about accepting yourself and your strengths and weaknesses, about not being codependent, defined by your partner, or a victim in the world, but instead celebrating yourself, and activities about getting in touch with your sexuality as a positive force that can bring you happiness: in these kinds of things, I am right there. Girls’ coming-of-age stories are relevant to my experience; boys’ almost never are.

The women who turn me on most, who I have an immediate fetishistic reaction to, are very strong women -- sometimes lesbian, sometimes not -- who have nothing to do with the protection-needing female stereotype. Oh, and dominatrixes. The bottom line is that I’m attracted to women who play the role of the man in the classic male/female dynamic, not in a role-playing, costume-wearing way, just in day-to-day life. And at minimum I am repelled by women who play the help-me-oh-big-strong-man and protect-me-daddy gambits.

What does this make me? I used to care. I used to want to define a category, a movement. Now I realize I am: me. I'm a guy who likes both to hang out with women and to be in relationships with women -- or as they say in legalese, I am female-oriented in both affiliation and affection, and male only in identity. I'm a guy who -- like many women -- cries at romantic comedies but who -- like many men -- has trouble asking directions. I value feelings, but still have some trouble expressing them. I still like playing around, so nowadays I tell people I'm hetero queer, but I really don't care anymore. These things don't make me anything other than what I am. Trying to create a category for it is no more meaningful or fruitful than accepting the categories that already exist.

© 2004 Philip F. Rose