Monday, September 26, 2005
Lesbian Bed Death, And How To Get It (If You Really Want It)
As I made my way deeper into the lesbian community starting back in the late 60s in Berkeley, I would sometimes run across a term that has often puzzled me.
Lesbian Bed Death, they called it. An expression referring to a state in lesbian relationships where sex goes by the boards pretty much altogether. Over time I have continued to hear this expression. And it still puzzles me.
Don't lesbians want/need/try to have as much sex as possible? Like their gay male counterparts? I mean, isn't the fact you're a lesbian saying that you are attracted to your own gender, and you want lots of nice mindboggling sex with them?
Apparently not. It is (still) a phenomenom associated specifically with the gay female community.
Recently, I tried to answer a woman's posting on Craig's List as to why LBD exists. She could not fathom it either. Along the way, I got flamed for my efforts by another blogging queer woman, who claimed the title was foisted on gay women by the hetero world, and doesn't that suck. It was yet another label from "them," the straight world, trying to manipulate "us", fine upstanding queers that we are. She claimed that she and all her circle had a ton of sex, and she didn't understand why anyone would want to dwell on the topic of Lesbian Bed Death. For her, it had no existence, and therefore no meaning. She also travelled in a crowd where basically everyone is single, and sleeping around. Like the one I first came out in. So LBD is probably not going to become too apparent unless you are attempting a relationship over time.
I would beg to differ with her for other reasons too. Hanging around both gay and straight circles, I can say that most heteros are not concerned with casting labels around on the dyke population. Most of the time they don't even seem to know it exists. The only equivalent to something similar among the straights is when guys joke about how blow jobs are the first thing to disappear from the relationship after marriage occurs. And certainly there are marriages where the passion takes a powder pretty early on. But no one has coined a term for this the way the lesbians have for themselves.
And they have come up with that term all on their own. Because they know it and have to deal with it and try to figure out a way around it.
My take on LBD is that it happens because you have two women together, not just one. There is simply not enough testosterone prsesent in the mix to keep the ship afloat, so to speak. Even when you have the women playing fairly defined roles, like one being butch while the other is more femme, you still have two women present. And there is a built-in oddness about that situation. You end up with two peas in a pod, too much similarity, and while this may be fine for building emotional connections with women, it is not good when it comes to maintaining passion.
There needs to be more testosterone in the mix. I will probably get flamed more with this comment, but I don't see a way around the truth of the situation. Somebody needs to have a strong enough sex drive to push the relationship along.
This happens more readily in gay male relationships. As a consequence, you get probably the highest incidence of sexual activity among gay men. The lowest incidence would be among gay women. If this is not testosterone at work here (or should we say, at "play"), then I don't know what is.
When gay male relationships fall upon troubled times, the guys may actually go to more play parties or bath houses in an attempt to work around the impasse.
Gay women on the other hand don't often seek other sexual partners. They will suffer in silence, or try and work it out, or focus on the positive things in the relationship that may have little to do with sex. Women are too ready to channel the energies elsewhere; gay men may not be ready enough to do that.
Who comes out ahead in this game?
- - - - - - -
Lesbian Bed Death, they called it. An expression referring to a state in lesbian relationships where sex goes by the boards pretty much altogether. Over time I have continued to hear this expression. And it still puzzles me.
Don't lesbians want/need/try to have as much sex as possible? Like their gay male counterparts? I mean, isn't the fact you're a lesbian saying that you are attracted to your own gender, and you want lots of nice mindboggling sex with them?
Apparently not. It is (still) a phenomenom associated specifically with the gay female community.
Recently, I tried to answer a woman's posting on Craig's List as to why LBD exists. She could not fathom it either. Along the way, I got flamed for my efforts by another blogging queer woman, who claimed the title was foisted on gay women by the hetero world, and doesn't that suck. It was yet another label from "them," the straight world, trying to manipulate "us", fine upstanding queers that we are. She claimed that she and all her circle had a ton of sex, and she didn't understand why anyone would want to dwell on the topic of Lesbian Bed Death. For her, it had no existence, and therefore no meaning. She also travelled in a crowd where basically everyone is single, and sleeping around. Like the one I first came out in. So LBD is probably not going to become too apparent unless you are attempting a relationship over time.
I would beg to differ with her for other reasons too. Hanging around both gay and straight circles, I can say that most heteros are not concerned with casting labels around on the dyke population. Most of the time they don't even seem to know it exists. The only equivalent to something similar among the straights is when guys joke about how blow jobs are the first thing to disappear from the relationship after marriage occurs. And certainly there are marriages where the passion takes a powder pretty early on. But no one has coined a term for this the way the lesbians have for themselves.
And they have come up with that term all on their own. Because they know it and have to deal with it and try to figure out a way around it.
My take on LBD is that it happens because you have two women together, not just one. There is simply not enough testosterone prsesent in the mix to keep the ship afloat, so to speak. Even when you have the women playing fairly defined roles, like one being butch while the other is more femme, you still have two women present. And there is a built-in oddness about that situation. You end up with two peas in a pod, too much similarity, and while this may be fine for building emotional connections with women, it is not good when it comes to maintaining passion.
There needs to be more testosterone in the mix. I will probably get flamed more with this comment, but I don't see a way around the truth of the situation. Somebody needs to have a strong enough sex drive to push the relationship along.
This happens more readily in gay male relationships. As a consequence, you get probably the highest incidence of sexual activity among gay men. The lowest incidence would be among gay women. If this is not testosterone at work here (or should we say, at "play"), then I don't know what is.
When gay male relationships fall upon troubled times, the guys may actually go to more play parties or bath houses in an attempt to work around the impasse.
Gay women on the other hand don't often seek other sexual partners. They will suffer in silence, or try and work it out, or focus on the positive things in the relationship that may have little to do with sex. Women are too ready to channel the energies elsewhere; gay men may not be ready enough to do that.
Who comes out ahead in this game?
- - - - - - -
