Sexuality and American Culture

 When I started reading this week’s text, I was kind of amazed by the amount of writers who found the idea of women friendships so intriguing. Being someone who has so many female friends, I never really thought of why that was the case or what it could mean about the kind of person I am and stories I told. I especially liked this week’s readings because it made me appreciate my friends somewhat more. Even though I liked the support of the majority of the texts, I was also shocked by a lot of them. They seemed to give off the idea that there could not really be a platonic relationship between females. Most of the stories told were about women who went way beyond to have these “sisterly bonds” and headed for “romantic friendships” instead. As I read, I wondered how much of these instances happened in present day.

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            “Woman friendship”, as it was called, is the bond between two females. It is known as the sisterly bond women can create with each other. Even if two women do not share the same DNA, friendship makes those details minor. These bonds were made for social purposes. According to Julia Deane, a woman did not have to bother their husbands with “petty annoyances” and domestic issues if she had a female companion. Carol Smith-Rosenberg writes in her essay that this was not done for isolation. Females bonded because of similar issues: mestruation, menopause, housekeeping and childbirth. However, many women often made the switch in a friendship from a “romantic friendship” to lesbian lovers. What is the borderline? How much affection and dependency is too much?

            Many of the readings talked about physical and emotional intimacy between two women who held each other to a close friendship. Although some of them were dependent on each other for actual love and affection they should be seeking from a male counterpart, many of them were just extremely compassionate towards each other. I feel like a lot of the conversations I have with my female friends are within the same framework and it does not mean that I seek sexual attention from them. I feel like it we are just comfortable enough to talk to each other in a certain way that seems rather natural to us. Would we be considered ‘lesbian lovers’ because we talk this way? If there are no sexual acts between the two people, where is the line drawn between friendship and deeper same-sex love? I did not feel like any of the text answered these questions.

            I also found the document based on Alice Mitchell was rather interesting. It reminded me of the first article we read about Beau Breedlove. His lover was considered to be a pedophile, and I remember asking if the public was angry because he was gay or because he was a gay pedophile. I have the same question regarding Mitchell. She killed her best friend Freda Ward “because she loved her.” Although she was put in jail for murder, the document focused on her sexual preference, and she was classified as a pervert. The public and courts seemed to care more about her sexual activity than her homicide. Similarly, the mayor who had an affair with a seventeen year old was given more grief about being gay then he was about having a relationship with a minor.

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