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Margaret Nichols, Ph.D.
(published as: Therapy with Sexual Minorities in Leiblum, S., and Rosen, R., Theory and Practice of Sex Therapy, New York: Guilford Press, 2000)
INTRODUCTION
All psychotherapy is bound by history and geography, and perhaps none is more constrained by these forces than counseling done with members of special subgroups of the culture at large. The therapist must interpret the client’s personal experience through the lens of a social context that is different from and perhaps alien to his or her own. She must be an anthropologist and sociologist as well as a psychologist/therapist.
Many sex therapists are already accustomed to receiving referrals of lesbian and gay clients, and previous editions of this book included chapters designed to familiarize counselors with gay issues . However, as we enter the millenium, there is an increasing tendency for the gay and lesbian community to include within its boundaries bisexuals, transgendered people, and people who practice forbidden sex acts, especially the many varieties of dominant/submissive sex : those individuals that the mainstream of society considers "the garbage heap of sex and gender trash" (Califia, 1997.) Thus the updated version of this chapter reflects the growth and changes what many now call the "queer" community – a title change that emphasizes the non-mainstream element of all its members. Although this chapter primarily describes sexual minorities within a large urban/suburban setting, it is still relevant to more rural or mid-American locations. Eventually, New York and West Coast urban cultural phenomenon trickle out to the rest of the United States, at least within this community. And even individuals who do not consider themselves to be "members" of a sexual minority community cannot help but be influenced by its mores.
It is important to note that some gay people will take exception to my inclusion of bisexuals, transgenderists, and kinky- sex aficionados as members of "their" community. But I would argue that the affinity of these other sexual minorities for the lesbian and gay culture is not accidental. While breaking barriers of sexual orientation and gender roles does not necessarily mean that other taboos will be overcome, it does make such a result more likely. Moreover, there is considerable overlap of these different sexual minorities. In the last week, for example, I have done an intake on a lesbian couple who, as an aside, mentioned their extensive S/M experience, which includes public sex with multiple partners; talked to a colleague about a self-identified lesbian and gay man who have become romantically/sexually involved; and supervised a staff therapist working with a male-to-female lesbian transsexual.
There are problems inherent even in arriving at common definitions of sexual minorities, because the phenomenon we are attempting to define is so variable and complex. Let us take sexual preference as an example. We tend to think of sexual orientation as 1) a single phenomenon in which identity, behavior, and attractions are all consistent; 2) dichotomous( you’re either gay or straight) or at most tripartite (gay,bi,het); 3) unrelated to gender identity; and 3) stable throughout one’s lifetime. In fact, it seems none of these things are true. Desire, behavior, and self-identification are not consistent within an individual: e.g., many people experience at least occasional same sex desire, while fewer demonstrate behavior and fewer still consider themselves to be gay ( Laumann, E., Gagnon,J., Michael,R., and Michaels, S., 1994). As Kinsey pointed out over fifty years ago, same-sex attractions exist along a continuum, and we superimpose discrete categories upon this continuum. The categories themselves are arbitrary and artificial, and vary with factors such as historical time period or who is applying the label. For example, probably most individuals with primary same-sex attraction and secondary heterosexual desire self-label as "gay" if they are over thirty-five and "bisexual" if they are under twenty-five. Sexual orientation and gender identity seem to have more than a passing acquaintance, as any self-identified "butch" lesbian can explain ( Nestle, 1992). And while sexual identity is indeed stable and fixed for many, some individuals seem to have more fluid and changing orientation (McWhirter, D., Sanders, S. and Reinisch, J., 1990): the switch from lesbian to bisexual is so common that a Boston bisexual women’s group calls itself the "Hasbians." For the most part, when terms like "gay" or "bisexual" are used here they refer to one’s self-identification, but they may describe behavior or desire when discussing cases where clients themselves are confused about their orientation.
This chapter is written from what Jack Morin calls the "paradoxical perspective" of sex (Morin, 1997). Derived in part from the work of sexologist Robert Stoller( 1979)and philosopher Georges Bataille (1986) this paradigm eschews the pathology model as simplistic, thinly veiled moralism, and the "new sex therapy" approach as overly mechanistic and medical. In this model, sexuality is a set of phenomenon that are powerful, complex, multi-determined and multi-functional. Sex is part hard-wiring and part early environmental imprinting, with perhaps a few modifications along the way. But the "environmental influences" are nothing so simple as Oedipal complexes or even role models: the have their root in psychological attempts to deal with the terror and powerlessness inherent in childhood, among other things. Thus sex is by design hostile, dangerous, shame and anxiety evoking, objectifying, and frightening as well as joyful and intimate and sweet. The paradoxical view takes little for granted, including the two-gender system, the assumption of the "heterosexual imperative," and romantic views like the belief that monogamy and high sex drive are compatible.
From the paradoxical point of view the "queer" community is particularly interesting because of its sheer diversity and inventiveness. Extremes of sex and gender behavior can be observed in quite psychologically healthy, indeed brilliant, individuals. The community , particularly that which is concentrated in urban centers, validates and seems to encourage pushing the envelope of tradition. An illustration is the case of Martin, a thirty-eight year old academician, prestigious in his field and in many ways quite mainstream. When I first saw Martin in my office, he was married with two young children and a house in a quiet suburban community. After attaining tenure and approaching midlife, Martin took stock of his life and for the first time since early adolescence, started acting upon his homoerotic desires. Over a period of three years he finally, painfully extricated himself from his marriage while negotiating joint custody of his daughter and son, and ultimately partnered with another man with children. But Martin changed in other ways as well. He began to explore leather bars and dominant/submissive sexuality and played with what is sometimes called "gender bending" or "gender fuck" (Califia, 1994): a muscle tee shirt with a strand of pearls. He challenged his traditional concepts of relationship, negotiating with his partner a version of an "open relationship," sometimes called "modified monogamy" (Shernoff, 1999). In many ways, once Martin broke the gay taboo he was free to question many more of his beliefs and turned his brilliance to inventing an authentic and original life. In the queer community all stereotypes and beliefs about sex and gender are both confirmed and disconfirmed. The male tendency to split lust and love and pursue the former relentlessly is evidenced at its extreme, but gay men also write and speak openly about sex, including group sex and anonymous sex, as a spiritual experience. Some lesbians consider themselves "butches" or "femmes," but the "butch" may be the caretaker or she may be, as it is sometimes quipped, "butch in the streets and femme in the sheets." There are MTF transgendered lesbians and support groups for gay male semen donors used by some lesbians desiring children. There are several lesbian-produced lesbian –oriented porn magazines thriving for over a decade, an annual anthology of "best lesbian/bi women’s written erotic, " lesbian topless bars, and a lesbian S/M club sponsoring group "play parties" in every major urban center in the country.
From the paradoxical paradigm, the queer community has much to teach the mainstream. So this chapter has two goals: to help heterosexual sex therapists become better service providers for their sexual minority clients; and to give a glimpse of the rich information to be gleaned from a community that is a living laboratory for fearless sex and gender experiments.
Psychological Issues And The Gay Community
Just as treatment of mainstream clients is dependent upon social trends and developments – e.g., the treatment of erectile dysfunction changed radically with the development of Viagra – the issues sexual minority clients bring to therapy depend upon their subcultural context. This section ties together history with psychological issues.
Psychotherapists working with sexual minorities should be aware that the very existence of these minorities is a recent cultural phenomenon. For example, the form homosexuality assumed in the last half center is somewhat unique. Throughout most of history, same-sex behavior was just that – acts , not "essential" nature. By contrast, in most Western industrialized nations today, homosexuality connotes not just a preferred sexual partner; it also represents an identity, a life style, and a subculture (Boswell, 1980). Sexual minorities can be compared to racial or ethnic minorities, but this comparison is only partially accurate. Because sexual preferences are not usually passed from one generation to the next, gays and other subgroups cannot count on family-of-origin networks to help buttress them against prejudice or hostility from the mainstream culture. Moreover, gayness, unlike skin color but like many other aspects of sexuality, can be hidden, and thus individual gay people have the option of "passing" for straight with all the psychological issues attendant to that choice. In this regard, many gays could be com pared to, for example, Jews who change their names and try to assimilate, or light-skinned blacks who "pass" for whites.
1969: The Beginnings of an Open Community
In its current visible form, the existence of the "gay community" can be dated from the 1969 "Stonewall Rebellion," a protest in Greenwich Village that marked the start of the "Gay Liberation Movement." Before the 1970s, there was a nearly universal consensus among Americans that homosexuality was an illness, a sin, or both. Gay people themselves shared this belief. Even the most self-accepting homosexuals saw themselves as inferior to the heterosexual mainstream. Before Stonewall the political efforts of homosexual groups centered on convincing society that homosexuality was a congenital disability for which the homosexual was blameless. Homosexuals never considered "coming out of the closet"; gay people did their best to "pass" for straight and suppress or at least hide their gay feelings. Moreover, it could be dangerous to act on one's gay attractions. Homosexuals could be jailed or committed to psychiatric institutions . Police raids on gay bars and other social gatherings were frequent, and those caught in the police net were ruined by the publicity attendant to the crackdowns (Katz, 1976).
Stonewall and Gay Liberation signaled a radical cultural change that began with the view homosexuals had of themselves. The liberation movement helped gays affirm the soundness and positive aspects of their orientation: "gay is good" became a rallying cry just as "black is beautiful" had been in the 1960s. In urban areas of the country, gay people "came out" and built communities that could support them as families of origin often could not. Shame was replaced by pride. Most significantly, during the 1970s, gay men and lesbians "came out"—went public with their orientation—in ways that made it impossible for many Americans to dismiss homosexuality as something "out there" that happened to "others." Before Stonewall, information about homosexuality was scarce , and what did exist was uniformly negative. By the end of the 1970s, most Americans had been exposed to some version of the "gay and proud" theme, if only via watching gay people on television talk shows. Many had experienced a friend or family member "coming out" to them. Because of these cultural changes, gay people who were adolescents after 1970 usually seem more comfortable with their orientation and less psychologically scarred by their experiences than those born before the mid-1950’s.
Gay men and lesbians developed their communities in quite different ways. Gay men clustered in large urban centers where they developed an almost quintessentially male culture, complete with hypermasculine appearance - short hair and moustaches, Levis and work boots. Many gay men viewed the freedom to have sex as a cornerstone of gayness. Even in the pro-sexual atmosphere of the 1970’s, gay men had more sexual opportunities than anyone else—they could act on the traditional male fantasy (lots of sex, little commitment), unfettered by the traditional female fantasy (lots of intimacy and commitment) with which heterosexuals still had to contend.
When Bell and Weinberg (1978) published their study of gay men and lesbians in the San Francisco area, many people were shocked to learn that some gay men had had 500 to 1,000 different sexual partners during adulthood. But in fact, accumulating so many different partners was not too difficult for a gay man living in San Francisco in the 70s. With the abundance of bath houses and "back rooms" where sex might occur in "orgy" style, one man could have several different partners in one night. It would be a mistake to characterize this behavior as pathological, although certainly some few men did become compulsive sexual "addicts." Nor was this behavior a flight from intimacy. As McWhirter and Mattison (1984) point out in their groundbreaking book on gay couples, most gay men eventually formed committed partnerships that often lasted for long periods, a finding corroborated by Blumstein and Schwartz's (1983) study comparing gay, lesbian, and heterosexual couples. But gay men tended to couple in a manner distinctly geared to their life styles: most had mutually consensual nonmonogamous relation ships.
Another aspect of gay male sexuality as it evolved in the 1970s was the development of "high-tech sex." Not only did gay men have more sex than anyone else, they also experimented with forms of sexuality previously associated only with fetishists. For example, Jay and Young (1979) report that 37% of gay men had experiences with sadomasochistic practices, 23% with "water sports" (urination), and 22% with "fist fucking" (insertion of hand into partner's anus). etc.). Sex therapists inexperienced with the gay male community often equate these practices with fetishism, but they lack the rigidity of what is ordinarily considered a fetish. Gay male sexuality in the 1970s pushed sexual boundaries and included a wide range of sometimes rather exotic sexual techniques.
At the same time that gay men were building a community emphasizing sexual experimentation, novelty, and diversity, lesbians were building communities based on feminist principles. For many gay women, feminism became the foundation of their orientation. Many lesbians seemed to see men—including gay men— as oppressive, and if they acted politically, they were apt to do so in feminist or lesbian-only organizations rather than in a "gay rights" context. Often lesbians were interested in "reclaiming" areas of life—spirituality, history, family structure, the arts—that had been male dominated and that had ignored women's needs and voices. Not only was sex not the focus of lesbianism, it was actually quite a problematic issue.
In the 1970’s (and to a lesser extent in the present) feminist interest in sexuality often focused on the sexual exploitation of women. Rape, incest, and pornography occupied center stage; women's sexual pleasure was less discussed or explored. Within the lesbian community this perspective resulted in the promulgation of sometimes absurd standards of "politically correct" sex. Anything associated with stereotypic heterosexual sex was viewed automatically as "patriarchal," even when practiced by two women. Thus, many lesbians came to define as "politically incorrect" such behaviors as the attraction to or desire to wear "feminine" clothing or make-up; any sexual act that involved a more "active" and more "passive" partner; "rough" sex; fantasies involving domination/ submission or overpowerment; and sometimes even the desire to penetrate a partner or be penetrated oneself.
This attitude toward sex proved stifling for many women. To make matters worse, whereas gay men usually defined their orientation as a visceral sexual attraction over which they had no control, lesbians tended to define their orientation as a political or relationship choice and not necessarily an indication of where their exclusive or even strongest sexual attraction lay. Thus, some self-defined lesbians were in essence bisexual women who, for various reasons, choose not to act on their heterosexual sexual attractions. A great many of these women felt ashamed of their heterosexual fantasies or attractions, just as a primarily heterosexual person might feel frightened by his or her homosexual fantasies and attractions.
Clearly, gay male and lesbian life styles, behaviors, identities, and values evolved differently following the early gay liberation and feminist movements. But this changed radically in the 1980’s because of two phenomena: the divergence of lesbianism from feminism; and the AIDS epidemic.
The 80's: The Impact of HIV
In this country, AIDS was first noticed in the gay male community . As early as 1981, when the Centers for Disease Control called it "GRID" (Gay Related Immune Deficiency Syndrome), gay activists were debating the implications of this disease for the gay male community. At first, many gay men resisted the idea that HIV was communicated sexually; it was even believed that the "sexual communicability" concept was a government plot to undermine the gay male community (Shilts, ).
Within the gay community there was virulent debate about such things as shutting down gay bathouses, a central source of multiple anonymous sexual encounters for gay men. As the death toll mounted, gay men became increasingly frightened and the community became more sexually conservative.
Within a few years, the kind of sexual activity that had previously seemed "liberating" and "life affirming" became a potential death sentence. As a consequence, in the 80’s incidence of casual and anonymous sex among gay men dropped precipitously as venues of public sex one by one closed down. Sexual practices changed: anal sex became rare, oral sex was done with caution or condoms, and mutual masturbation gained primacy.
In part, AIDS had a profoundly negative impact on how gay men viewed their sexuality. Many gay men came to view penises and ejaculate as "toxic" or dangerous. Inhibited sexual desire (ISD) and sexual aversion, problems once rarely encountered among gay men, became more widespread. A few men found themselves unable to stop unsafe sex practices, and the concept of "sex addiction" was discussed for the first time in the gay male community. The heterosexual community seemed to place blame upon gay men for AIDS ("You deserve this disease because you caused it by your sinful promiscuous behavior") and, not surprisingly, some gay men blamed themselves as well. An entire generation of young gay men had never experienced a time when sex was not deadly.
But most gay men responded to the challenge of AIDS with ingenious safer sex scripts. Thousands of men participated in safe sex workshops designed by their peers. AIDS prevention emphasized eroticizing safe sex as well as basics of transmision. New video and print pornography was produced to provide visual images of "hot" safe sex.
The gay male sexual norms developed in the 70’s were modified but not destroyed in the 80’s. Although the number of monogamous couples increased, a substantial number of male relationships remained nonexclusive. Bathhouses and back rooms were shut down for a time, but other private clubs emerged in which safe sex was the norm. For example, "jerk off" (J.O.) clubs proliferated, as did other private sex clubs where penetration was not allowed. Telephone sex became more widespread. Gay men greatly modified their sexual and relationship behavior, but never completely mimicked the heterosexual norm.
Meanwhile, lesbians became more interested in sex . During the 1980’s the lesbian community fostered a sex radical movement that continues to grow and that is unparalleled by heterosexual women. The sex radicals included both lesbian and bisexual women and did much more than promote the joys of sex. They engaged in, described, and advertised sex that included activities considered outside the boundaries of "normal" female sexuality: rough sex, "dirty" sex, role-polarized sex, "promiscuity," anonymous sex, sex without love, and sadomasochistic sex.
By the mid-1980s, some women were producing pornographic magazines for lesbians and lesbian video porn that included scenes with dildoes, vaginal "fist fucking," and bondage and submission. Other lesbians created support organizations for women who enjoyed unusual or kinky sex. These groups met to demonstrate sexual techniques and to hold sex parties that ranged from "jill-off" events (modeled after "jack-off" clubs) to public forums for group sadomasochistic activities.
As the feminist influence within the lesbian community waned in the 1980’s, many gay women shed the anti-male attitudes that had helped contribute to lesbians and gay men forming, for the most part, separate communities. In addition, lesbians responded to illness in their gay male brothers in noteworthy ways: in some areas of the country, lesbians actually formed a greater part of the community caregiving system for people with AIDs than did gay men. This brought lesbians and gay men into intimate contact. The so-called "lesbian baby boom" that started towards the end of the 1980’s also helped to break down barriers: as many lesbians began to raise little boys, they bonded with gay men in order to provide role models and "uncles" for their children.
During the 80’s and early 90’s a "bisexual pride" movement began within the gay community. Most people view bisexuality with suspicion. Frequently, gays and lesbians see the bisexual as a gay person who is too afraid to "come out." Sometimes this has been the case: the gay community abounds with stories of men and women who use the bisexual label in order to avoid facing their homosexual attractions. But in recent years the scientific discourse about bisexuality has increased (Klein & Wolf, 1985), as has the publication of personal testimonials ( Bi any other name). As knowledge increases and prejudice softens, more bisexuals feel comfortable being open about their orientation. Although bisexuality is stigmatized within both the gay and heterosexual community, most self-identified bisexuals now consider themselves part of the gay community and feel more tolerance from gays and lesbians than from heterosexuals Moreover, by the end of the 1990’s acceptance had increased enough so that most gay organizations now identify themselves as "gay, lesbian, and bisexual."
In addition, the 90’s saw the inclusion of transgendered people, particularly those with bisexual or gay sexual attractions, within the gay community. The traditional categories of "transsexual" versus "transvestite" seem to have largely been abandoned in favor of an array of gender/orientation variations that ranges from post-operative transsexuals who self-define as homosexual to "he/shes"- men who retain their penises but dress as females and take hormones to increase breast size and change secondary sex characteristics.
The last trend that emerged in the 1980’s was the change in the style of gay political action. Many gay people believed that the United States government engaged in deliberate non-response to HIV and thus passively encouraged the devastation of an entire generation of gay men. Enraged and cynical, some AIDS activists eschewed orderly marches and legislative reform in favor of more militant tactics, akin to the tactics used in the anti-Vietnam movement. ACT UP, one such group, specialized in clever and highly newsworthy civil disobedience actions and enjoyed widespread support during its existence. With ACT UP, gay politics came full circle from the pre-Stonewall days, when homosexuals asked nicely for tolerance for their "disability." Now, gays used in-your-fact tactics to show their rage against a power structure perceived as willfully allowing gay men to die.
The 90's and Beyond: the Emergence of the Queer Nation
In the community that came to describe itself as "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered," the last decade of the century was characterized by increasing social acceptance , continued breakdown of sex and gender categories , expanding diversity of lifestyle, and a "role reversal" in sexual attitudes of men and women.
For any gay person born in the "baby boom" generation or before, the acculturation of homosexuals into the heterosexual community seems to have proceeded at warp speed. Within only thirty years, same-sex lifestyle and identity became visible instead of hidden, and tolerated (if not accepted) by most Americans. It has become possible for even those whose career is in the public eye - congresspeople, entertainment celebrities – to increasingly "come out." Corporate America, quick to seize upon opportunity, has addressed major ad campaigns to gays, especially gay men, whose household income is the highest of any group in the country. By the turn of the century, Ikea Furniture had run television ads featuring same sex couples, Absolut Vodka is a staple ad of all gay magazines, and Ellen de Generis "came out" on prime time TV. In some ways, the lesbian and gay lifestyle has lost its "edge" and become assimilated. But this is only superficially true. In fact, the community has greatly expanded its diversity.
The number of self-identified bisexuals appears to be increasing, and some of this increase comes from the ranks of those who previously identified as gay. This appears to be particularly common within the lesbian community – for example, a support group of bisexual women in the Northeast calls itself the "Hasbians." The increase in self-acknowledged bisexuality has gone hand in hand with increased tolerance from the gay community:
For a long time, I was afraid to say I was bisexual, because it was largely regarded as a term for a lesbian who didn’t want to "fess up" and I knew women who were like this and who used the term this way. I’ve only started calling myself "bisexual" in the last five years because the term seems to have lost the "closed lesbian" connotation. (Beemyn & Eliason, 1996,p.73)
At the Institute for Personal Growth, the agency I founded and direct which has worked intensively with a gay population since 1979, the populations of clients has increasingly included bisexual women who previously identified as lesbian but still consider themselves part of the gay community. Alison, for example, came to IPG in 1981 with her partner of ten years for couple counseling. At that time, both Alison and Marcia, her lover, were lesbian-feminist activists raising a son Marcia had given birth to in a previous heterosexual marriage. In 1997 Alison returned for help grieving the loss of her relationship with Joseph,with whom she connected after breaking up with Marcia. Alison continued to act as a parent to the boy she and Marcia had raised together- she helped pay for Jason’s college education and had recently bought him a car. She identified as bisexual and held a position as treasurer for a large New York City support group for lesbian/bi women interested in S/M sex.
Because prejudice against bisexuality has waned within the community, men and women "coming out" now seem to have less conflict self-labeling as bisexual. Cindy, a student at a nearby university, identified herself as a "lesbian bisexual" when she first sought treatment for depression. Most of her sexual and romantic partners were female, but she sometimes had casual sex with men – usually bisexual men- and on one occasion felt she had fallen in love with a man. Unlike her counterparts from earlier decades, Cindy had no anxiety about her identity, did not fear exclusion from her community, and did not see her behavior or feelings as contradictory. Martin, the man mentioned earlier, could easily acknowledge his attractions to women and inherent bisexuality despite taking on a gay male identity. Even a decade earlier this would have been difficult; a man in a similar situation might feel pressured to hide his attraction to his former wife.
Similarly, gender categories are breaking down and becoming more ambiguous, and the categories of "homosexual" and "transgendered" overlap more and more. In the lesbian community, a subgroup of women label themselves as "butch" or "femme" (Nestle, 1992). "Radical Fairies" is a group of gay men who see cross-dressing in political terms. Once again, many younger lesbians and gays take gender ambiguity – sometimes called "gender fuck" or "gender bending" for granted:
"My gender identity is as fluid as the rest of me… I am a 24-year old woman who also identifies as a teenage boy." (Bernstein and Silberman,1996,p.221).
Some transsexuals now challenge the two-gender model as well. Kate Bornstein (1994), a male –to- female lesbian transsexual considers herself a third gender, not a "woman trapped in a male body." Her stance is radical:
One answer to the question "Who is a transsexual?" might well be , "Anyone who admits it." A more political answer might be, "Anyone whose performance of gender calls into question the construct of gender itself." (Bornstein, 1994, p.121)
The breakdowns of gender are evident in interesting ways. Peter, a transgender client recently seen at IPG, was helped in therapy to recognize that his gender identity seemed to be changing in unpredictable ways over time, and he learned to resist the temptation to push himself into a bad fit with either gender category. At the time he left therapy, he dressed as a woman a substantial part of the time, had recognized attractions to men as well as to women, and felt that for the moment he did not want to go further with sex hormones or surgery, although he left that option open for the future. Claire, a postoperative male-to-female transsexual, also recognized her attractions to women after surgery and when she left therapy was partnered with another bisexual (genetic) female. Daniel, a bisexual man in a nonmonogamous marriage to a bisexual woman, came for treatment with questions about gender identity. Eventually Daniel recognized that his "gender-switch" needs were circumscribed: he enjoyed cross-dressing within the privacy of his home and enjoyed sex with men, but not with women, while cross-dressed. Another client, Genevieve, found the butch-femme movement a godsend. Her attractions were only to feminine women, and for years she had "felt like a man" and agonized about sex reassignment surgery. Joining a "butch support group" helped her validate her internal experience; she found she no longer felt a need for anatomical change
An unusually striking example of gender attitude shifts is the case of Lisa, who first sought therapy at IPG in the early 1980’s. At the age of twenty-two Lisa identified as a radical/separatist/lesbian/feminist," and sought help in controlling her rage at men, which was getting in the way of employment. In 1997 IPG received a call from Lee – who identified himself as the former Lisa, and was now a transsexual male who had undergone double mastectomy but still retained female genitals.
In the 1990’s many lesbians and gay men made more "traditional" life choices. There was a large increase in the number of gay men raising children, primarily through adoption or co-parenting with lesbians, and a growing trend for gay men to create communities in small towns, where the lifestyle is more couple-and-family oriented and less sexual (Signorile, 1997). The proliferation of parenting options available to infertile heterosexuals has also filtered to the gay community. For example, Richard, a single gay man in his early 40’s, recently became the father of a boy carried by a surrogate mother with Richard’s sperm and an egg donated by a close female friend with children of her own.
The phenomenon of lesbians choosing motherhood has become so common that younger women "coming out" seem to see motherhood as an option to nearly the same degree as do heterosexual women. Lesbian and bisexual women climb the corporate ladder – they are sometimes called "execudykes" – spend money on clothes and makeup, balance home and career in much the same way as do heterosexual women – except that, unlike heterosexual women, they have partners who tend to share housework and childrearing equally. Both lesbians and gay men are united in a strong movement to obtain the right to legally marry.
Within the lesbian community, the 1990’s has marked the emergence of an ethos of diversity and respect for individual difference that stands in sharp contrast to earlier years in which "personal is political" seemed to mean "there is only one correct way to live." Thus the explosion of lesbians choosing motherhood has been matched by an explosion of lesbians choosing lusty sexual expression.
In San Francisco today, the hottest lesbian club hosts a once-a-week splash that unabashedly features go-go dancers on pedastals and patrons clad in leather miniskirts. Across town sixty or seventy women gather to discuss the legal ins and outs of donor insemination, foster adoption programs, power of attorney contracts, and parenting... There are many other signs of lesbian life... but few seem to capture the spirit of the moment so completely as femmes strutting around in their lipstick and high heels and the prospective mothers worrying about the quality of the school system.
- Stein, 1993, xi
- Lesbian sexual styles are developing quite differently from what mainstream culture has come to think of as "women’s sexuality," usually translated as romantic, gentle, sensual sexual expression. The emerging lesbian sexual scene has been influenced more by gay men than heterosexual women. With organizations with names like Lesbian Sex Mafia, bars named Clit Club, magazines named On Our Backs, Bad Attitude, and Cunt, lesbians:
"...are moving beyond the realm of Sisterhood into the world of the nasty, the sexy, and the tasty. We are pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable lesbianism. We use the word "fuck" like the boys used to, we wear lipstick, we lust openly and pridefully (Stein,p.48) ...fuck, suck, clit, cunt. These are the words of our sex, and these are the words of our empowerment." (p.88)
As the lesbian community seems to have become more respectful of individual sexual freedom, the gay male community is engaged in bitter controversy about sex. By the end of the first decade of HIV, the rate of new infection in the gay male population had dropped to nearly zero. While new infection rates continue to be low, in recent years the ‘70’s style hedonistic lifestyle reemerged among urban middle class gay males in the form of a series of huge all- night dance parties, held at varying locations and thus called "the circuit." Ironically, these parties are sometimes fund raisers for AIDS organizations. They are distinguished by enormous amounts of both drugs and sex. Symbolic of the controversy about circuit parties was the announcement in 1999 by the New York City Gay Men’s Health Crisis, the world’s largest HIV service organization, that it would no longer hold its annual "Morning Party" fundraiser on the Fire Island Pines, because in recent years it had been the site of several drug overdoses and numerous alleged incidents of unsafe sex.
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