How to Become a Lesbian, Step One: Watch Cable TV While Depressed

Posted on | August 2, 2014 | 105 Comments

Shane and Cherie from Showtime’s The L Word.

Have you ever heard of “medical student syndrome”?

It’s a type of hypochondria, “a condition frequently reported in medical students, who perceive themselves or others to be experiencing the symptoms of the diseases they are studying.” Human beings are suggestible, so that minor itch or cough or ache you have may suddenly appear to be a symptom, if you consider the possibility you might have an actual disease. Medical students spend a lot of time thinking about diseases, and thus may become obsessed with the fear that the rash on their leg is a potentially fatal disease, when the actual cause is the poison ivy they brushed up against while hiking in the woods.

So . . . are you gay?

For the vast majority of people throughout thousands of years of human history, this wasn’t a question to consider. They grew up, got married, had kids, raised goats or whatever and hoped they didn’t die from disease or famine or attacks by hostile invaders. Merely trying to survive a life of toil and hardship — the fate of most people at most times in most places — was sufficiently difficult that people didn’t sit around wondering about their “sexuality” or “identity.”

Welcome to middle-class America in the 21st century, where sexuality and identity are all some people have to worry about:

How To Leave Your Husband (Because You’re a Lesbian)

That’s the headline on an interesting — excuse me, I meant to say weird — column at the lesbian blog Autostraddle:

I got pregnant and married, in that order duh, while I was in high school! I stayed married, got pregnant again, and kept staying married for something like eight years — I lost count. Then we moved to Virginia, into a house I hated, in a neighborhood I hated . . . My husband was in the military and he’d be gone for months at a time. I was perpetually in a bad mood/depressed. Then there was free Showtime and a Season Three marathon. I watched Shane fuck Cherie Jaffe by the pool over and over and spent the next month googling ALL THE THINGS + FEELINGS.

Had to Google “Shane and Cherie” to realize she was describing the 2006 season of the Showtime series The L Word. Anyway . . .

Everything — every last fucking thing ever — finally made sense. I made sense.
I came out, we separated.

“For richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health — unless one of you eventually decides you’re gay, and then all bets are off.”

How do stories like these happen? I mean, besides getting knocked up as a teenager, then moving to Virginia while your husband is serving his country, becoming perpetually depressed and watching Showtime? How is it that somebody can be married with two kids and then one day — cable TV gay epiphany! — chuck it all overboard?

The converted apostle has her rationalizations:

I’m often asked, not necessarily outright, how I kept up that husband thing for as long as I did. It’s not an easy question to answer, both because it involves summoning a state of mind I can no longer relate to and because I’m scared of being judged. . . .
Where I grew up, it wasn’t uncommon to be young and pregnant and married. Birth control was available but not really discussed or supported, and no one talked about homosexuality or feminism. This was the 80s and early 90s, so there wasn’t any internet or gay people on television.

Which is to say, she was a normal girl who grew up in a normal family with a normal life in a normal town. But did you notice this?

. . . no one talked about homosexuality or feminism.

Gee, why do you think these two topics are connected in her mind? I mean, she could have said “no one talked about homosexuality or vegetarianism” or “no one talked about homosexuality or Buddhism,” but instead, it’s “feminism” — why?

Anyone who has been reading my “Sex Trouble” series about radical feminism will instantly understand the connection:

According to feminist theory, this woman’s problem was (as every woman’s problem is) heteronormative patriarchy:

Heterosexuality, these authors argue, is never a woman’s own free choice, nor is female heterosexuality the result of natural instinct or biological urges. Rather, according to radical theorists whose works are commonly taught in Women’s Studies courses at universities everywhere, women who are sexually attracted to men have been indoctrinated — brainwashed by “hetero-grooming” — to believe that male companionship is desirable or necessary to their happiness.

In other words, heterosexuality is imposed on women. Once she divorced her husband and became a lesbian — thanks to cable TV — this woman revised her memory with the benefit of hindsight. She suddenly realized she never really liked men anyway:

It never occurred to me that being “in love” could feel like anything more than kindly agreeing not to be mean to each other. And attraction? Actually wanting sex? I mean, what must that be like?? Women aren’t socialized, like men are, to think they deserve sexual satisfaction. Maybe it’s different now, but at the time, I interpreted sex as a thing that made boys happy, but for which women shouldn’t set their sights too high.
That part — the sex part — is hands-down the most difficult thing for me to talk about, process or explain. Not just because of how personal sex is, for everybody, but also because of the terrible sad vacant feeling that comes with discussing a thing that I never related to and now can barely fathom ever doing. At that time, sex was how I could get someone to like me.

Again, this is rationalization, informed by feminism. She blames the way women are “socialized” for her failure to realize she was a lesbian until she was a depressed married mom watching cable TV. She now refers to her years of heterosexuality as “a thing that I never related to,” which she was only doing so she “could get someone to like” her. She insists she never wanted it or felt attraction to men, never really had the feeling of being “in love” with a man.

Let’s not mince words: This woman is a failed heterosexual.

Being successfully heterosexual is not as easy as it may seem. Sure, some of us are so good at it, we make it look easy, but this apparent ease is simply the result of years of practice. It’s not as if the problems involved have never been considered.

“In everything on this earth that is worth doing, there is a stage when no one would do it, except for necessity or honor. . . . If Americans can be divorced for ‘incompatibility of temper’ I cannot conceive why they are not all divorced. I have known many happy marriages, but never a compatible one. The whole aim of marriage is to fight through and survive the instant when incompatibility becomes unquestionable. For a man and a woman, as such, are incompatible.”
— G.K. Chesterton, 1910

Considerations of “necessity or honor” are alien to the 21st-century mind, so that husbands and wives don’t think of the honor involved in upholding a sacred vow. If nothing is sacred, no vow can really be binding, and the sense of honor one should derive from being true to one’s word — to say, “I do,” and really mean it — can play no part in our considerations. If the grass is greener on the other side of the fence (or if the sex is sexier on cable TV), why let something as silly as a marriage vow stand in your way?

The important thing, we are nowadays told, is just to be yourself. Find the real you. Get in touch with your feelings. And, amid all these gooey emotional hymns to the Happy Self, at some point the children have to hear The Talk: “Mommy and Daddy are getting a divorce, because Mommy watched a cable TV show and now she knows she never really loved Daddy, because she’s a lesbian.”

Hey, what’s that rash on your leg? Probably ebola virus . . .

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Category: Feminism, Gays, Sex Trouble

Comments

105 Responses to “How to Become a Lesbian, Step One: Watch Cable TV While Depressed”

NeoWayland
August 2nd, 2014 @ 4:45 pm

*grins*

There is that.
Art Deco
August 2nd, 2014 @ 5:09 pm

Why do you guys even bother? You already lost this fight and the coming
generations are going to look back at you as bigots, and hateful.

I’m sure there’s not one person here who wants your good opinion.

—

Back to the issue at hand. There is nothing at all unusual about formless discontent. Other people recognize it and have trudged through it because they have an understanding that there is one consistent element in all their dissatisfying relationships. There are people who do not get it, are not capably introspective, and cannot get to work in spite of not being capably introspective and go off on these larks injuring themselves and others. Look up Elizabeth Gilbert.

You find personal responsibility, personal dignity, and an ability to reflect ‘slavish’. Pity for you. My regrets to anyone who has to deal with you on a day to day basis.

—
robertstacymccain
August 2nd, 2014 @ 5:18 pm

“Rigid status quo” would be what people ordinarily refer to as ‘everyday life’, which people commonly adjust to just fine.

Your point about people adjusting — learning to get along in society — is very close to the main point. There was a time, just a few decades ago, where the whole point of developmental psychology was about helping young people adjust to their circumstances, so that the neurotic misfit was said to be maladjusted.

Our culture has completely abandoned this concept. It is now considered oppressive to expect kids to grow up to fit into society, to get along with others, to try to please their parents. Having any kind of expectations for your kids — e.g., Christian parents who expect their children to live by Christian moral principles — is considered tyrannical, an infringement of the child’s “rights” and autonomy.
Art Deco
August 2nd, 2014 @ 5:18 pm

It was not fantastically frequent, but it was common enough that I remember it.

Just to recall, prior to the advent of cable television (which did not reach a majority of households until about 1986 and was not marketed at all in ordinary metropolitan centers until about 1975) there were only three or four networks broadcasting in most areas, if that. That one episode in a network sitcom would reach a lot more eyeballs than would something similar today.

During the time to which she is referring, discussion of AIDS in news outlets was obsessive and what was up was certainly widely understood (and injected into mass entertainment, natch). Some decades ago, Wm. F. Buckley was asked if he still favored disfranchisement of 30% of the population and, if so, which 30%. His reply: “the 30% that has never heard of the United Nations”. There are masses of people – yes, 30% of the total – whose minds are completely divorced from public affairs and there are masses who make no effort to pay any mind (another 45% or thereabouts). The woman’s excuse is that she’s clueless about both the world around her and about the problems in living you experience as you age.
Art Deco
August 2nd, 2014 @ 5:20 pm

The plot: Throw in a gay character who’s nervous about coming out of the
closet; have our regular “jerk” character (say, Frank Burns) say
something about it being “weird,” “unnatural,” “un-American,” or “icky”;
have our beloved characters (Hawkeye) snap back defensively.

IIRC, played by Ted Eccles (My Side of the Mountain). No I did not check IMDB first.
RKae
August 2nd, 2014 @ 6:10 pm

Y’see, this is what I always find an interesting notion. Think of what a fantastic invention TV is. We learned how to break down a moving image and its accompanying sound into electronic particles, transmit them through the air, and reassemble the jumbled bits like a trillion tiny jigsaw puzzle pieces – and all at lightning speed!

And the right abandons this brilliant invention, because they lost that ground.

People on the right now say “Pull your kids out of public schools!” Funny, no one on the right thought public school was a bad idea back in the ’50s.

We just keep abandoning things that the left ideologically conquers. Why do they keep conquering? Why do we conquer nothing?

Will we soon be saying, “Oh, stay off the internet; it’s nothing but agitprop!”?
Guest
August 2nd, 2014 @ 6:11 pm

but i thought they were born that way….
RKae
August 2nd, 2014 @ 6:12 pm

My woman is my partner. It’s me ‘n’ her.
Mike G.
August 2nd, 2014 @ 7:08 pm

I don’t know about that. My youngest, I think, knew when she was 4 or 5 if her reaction to wearing dresses was any indication. She “came out” in high school.
concern00
August 2nd, 2014 @ 7:21 pm

Finally read the article in full and I must now apologize for the inane starting comment I posted. So many good observations here, but by far my favorite is, “This woman is a failed heterosexual.”

Having discussed homosexuality with some of my acquaintances of that persuasion, I have also come to a conclusion that homosexuality is the way out for a quick and easy relationship, a bit of perverted sex and no strings attached (other than the associated mental and physical illnesses). Homosexuality is for those who can’t cut it as heterosexuals.
Wombat_socho
August 2nd, 2014 @ 7:40 pm

Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.
Wombat_socho
August 2nd, 2014 @ 7:44 pm

That’s last week’s pravda, Comrade. Get with the program.
Käthe
August 2nd, 2014 @ 7:58 pm

The typical retcon* (and you see some of it in her tale here) is that they WERE born that way, and “should have seen the signs” but somehow missed them because of “compulsory heterosexuality” but now the scales have fallen from their eyes and they see the truth.

*handiest term to come out of the internet “fandom” world, means “retroactive continuity” for those who don’t know, ie, going back and making stuff up explaining why apparently discontinuous parts of the narrative actually make sense.
DeadMessenger
August 2nd, 2014 @ 8:01 pm

Men and women are born heterosexual. That’s biology. They are driven the other direction by mental illness. In the case of the power of suggestion, if a person is so weak-willed that they can be influenced by the ubiquitousness of homosexuality in media, that is also a mental illness.
Käthe
August 2nd, 2014 @ 8:04 pm

I was a kid and I do remember that trope. It was not terribly common, but it was common enough that I know it shaped our attitudes–Hawkeye and the other good guys would always stand up for the gay or coded covertly “gayish” character, who was presented as harmless and pitiful, like a wounded puppy.

Then there was the lovable buffoon type, such as Mr. Humphries on the British show “Are you being served?” which was ubiquitous on PBS channels.

Finally, there was the “beloved character mistaken for gay through a series of hilarious misadventures, but his family loves him anyways because they’re good folks.” That seemed to be a later development. I know Frasier had that one happen at least twice!
DeadMessenger
August 2nd, 2014 @ 8:11 pm

The “problem” was a temper tantrum; the adult equivalent of stomping off to one’s room and slamming the door. She didn’t like where she moved, she didn’t like the house, blah blah blah, instead of being grateful for what she and making friends, which would have prevented her inappropriate, reactionary “solution”. If a person actually tries to be happy, that will go a long way toward being happy. For instance, I could have fun at an actuarial convention, and I think that’s probably more natural. Make the most of what you have and where you are, instead of dwelling on “bad” things all the time.
Käthe
August 2nd, 2014 @ 8:11 pm

I used to read my grandfather’s “Reader’s Digest” about that time. There was a story about gay men in it one month–Reader’s Digest, of all the bland media outlets!–and I asked my mom what it meant. The event was memorable because she got very flustered and threw the magazine away. But yeah. AIDS, in particular, was on the news almost every night.
robertstacymccain
August 2nd, 2014 @ 8:15 pm

My argument — not just in this post, but in the series — is not with homosexuality, per se. Rather, I am arguing against the theoretical ideology of radical feminists. They assert, as a matter of political principle, that male oppression of women is so pervasive and harmful that (a) women’s own heterosexual preferences can never be truly authentic, and (b) the only “liberation” possible for women is through lesbianism.

This ideology depends, obviously, on an extremely hostile attitude toward men, as well as a sort of female chauvinism — not a belief in equality, but rather a belief in female superiority. It is a species of prejudice, really, but if any man challenges feminist ideology, he is dismissed as a hateful misogynist, whereas any woman who disagrees with feminism is treated as a helpless, ignorant stooge.

Are we so intimidated by the prestige of feminist intellectuals that we — the successful heterosexuals, male and female alike — must remain silent in the face of such insults?
Käthe
August 2nd, 2014 @ 8:19 pm

“You gravitate toward something non-typical for your gender and everybody starts to assume you must be gay, so you start to think you’re gay and eventually convince yourself that must be it.”

I think that is huge. HUGE. Especially for kids and really young adults (like college age). Think about it, you don’t fit in with your peers, you’re lonely, you wonder if there’s something wrong with you. Along comes someone–a whole group of someones, including authorities like teachers and counselors–and they have the magical answer and a “community” where they guarantee you will feel right at home. By the time you have figured out that the answer isn’t so magical, you’re stuck, because you’ve thoroughly convinced yourself and so you just keep trying different ways of making the same mistake to see if it will get better. Plus there’s very little support for going back the other way, certainly nothing like there was for “coming out” in the first place.
Käthe
August 2nd, 2014 @ 8:21 pm

It’s not a universal explanation that fits every individual. But it absolutely describes a real pattern.
Käthe
August 2nd, 2014 @ 8:24 pm

Our society has literally gotten to the point where we would rather declare a little boy who wants to play with dolls and wear glitter a “trans girl” and mess him up for life, than deal with the fact that some kids are different and need to learn how to cope, and peer groups can be cruel and need to be taught how to be kind.
Käthe
August 2nd, 2014 @ 8:29 pm

Maybe he wants to be left alone and you should respect that. Maybe his faith is more important to him than sex (like oh, say…a monk!) and you should respect that. Seriously there is nothing more annoying than some bossy lefty yelling at conservative religious gays that they are “miserable and repressed.”
Art Deco
August 2nd, 2014 @ 8:32 pm

You’re presupposed the cousin is not fictional, or been reconstructed beyond recognition.
Angry Harry
August 2nd, 2014 @ 8:33 pm

Nice piece.
Käthe
August 2nd, 2014 @ 8:38 pm

Yeah definitely. Women with kids who end up “questioning their sexuality” and make the mistake of getting support from feminists get told that they have to break up their marriage or they will be a “bad example to their kids.” Like, “you wouldn’t want your kids growing up thinking it’s not ok to be themselves, right?” And when you “ex” out of the gay community, I don’t know what the men do to each other, but I know lesbians and their feminist allies will viciously stalk women who have left their community and badmouth them, try to intimidate them, try to turn their friends against them, for years and years. I have said before it’s kind of like leaving a cult, people always think that’s a rhetorical flourish, but it really has similarities.
DeadMessenger
August 2nd, 2014 @ 9:03 pm

Why is it that if someone takes exception to the behavior of individuals, or subsets of individuals, that constitutes hate? Cripes, under that condition, I must hate my kids, my husband (who I’ve been married to for 30 years), my parents, siblings, teachers, boss and so on.
NeoWayland
August 2nd, 2014 @ 9:53 pm

“Men and women are born heterosexual. That’s biology.”

That’s not quite true. That’s a discussion for another time though.

My point is this. If someone is “weak-willed” enough to be influenced by something they saw on television, then they were probably too weak-willed to be “normal” originally.

Of course this assumes that sexuality is a binary scale. The evidence indicates that there is probably more than gay, straight, or bisexual. That’s a lot of assumptions and none of them are divorced from cultural bias.
RKae
August 2nd, 2014 @ 10:13 pm

Keep following the BBC scandals. You’ll find that entertainers tend to be notorious child-izers.
DeadMessenger
August 2nd, 2014 @ 10:43 pm

I think these groups are aptly classified as heterosexual and not heterosexual, as the causational pathologies of the non-heterosexual group are likely to be more similar than not.

Actually, in my world, everyone can bbe classified in one of two groups: forgiven and saved Christians, and sinners who need forgiveness and redemption.
DeadMessenger
August 2nd, 2014 @ 11:08 pm

You know, I think there’s “individuality” different, and “weird” (i.e., mentally ill) different. I do believe that children can differentiate between these two, and they respond accordingly.
Bob Belvedere
August 2nd, 2014 @ 11:36 pm

‘Cult’ seems very appropriate.
Bob Belvedere
August 2nd, 2014 @ 11:45 pm

Exactly.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, when he realized that, was able to do so in The Gulag.
Bob Belvedere
August 2nd, 2014 @ 11:50 pm

‘Going Homosexual’ is also a grand cop-out for many of these types, because it means being able to avoid having to find compatibility with the opposite sex.

Some of us took the incompatibility as a happy challenge and ended-up having [and still having] a heck of a time.
Bob Belvedere
August 2nd, 2014 @ 11:53 pm

Andrew Breitbart argued for a Reconquista of our Culture…and he was damn right.
maniakmedic
August 3rd, 2014 @ 12:42 am

I have yet to have any of the defenders of homosexuals being “born that way” tell me why that is different than someone who struggles with other mental illnesses, such as depression. I have enjoyed being told by people who have clearly never dealt with real depression on any level that you can just pop a pill for depression and that makes everything ok (which is complete and utter BS, as anyone who has ever actually had first-hand experience with depression knows).

Nobody celebrates when a person lets themself spiral into a depression. But there is great demand that everybody enthusiastically celebrate somebody “being themself” by embracing the gay lifestyle or forever be labeled a homophobe and bigot.

And just to be clear (this is for anybody who wants to label me a homophobe and/or bigot): I have absolutely no hatred for or malice towards gay people. I disagree with their lifestyle on moral grounds but I don’t hate them as people. If there are gay people I dislike, it is because they are assholes. Has nothing to do with their sexual preferences (unless their asshole-ishness is a result of them insisting on shoving their sexual preferences in my face and calling me names when I don’t enjoy the assault).
maniakmedic
August 3rd, 2014 @ 12:57 am

If I were just 10 years younger I believe I would have been a target for this type of thinking. While I was a tad girly as a little girl, I ended up doing a 180 very early. I hated pink (still do), played basketball, refused to grow out my hair, could barely bring myself to put on a dress for church, and absolutely refused to wear makeup or act like a weepy, weak girly-girl to flirt with boys. I played with Ninja Turtles, watched cartoons like Conan the Barbarian and XMen, and would throw down with the boys if they cut in front of me in the tetherball line.

I’m not sure if it would have worked on me, though, as I was always a bit mature intellectually for my age and didn’t see much point in caring what a bunch of dumbass teenagers who could barely read thought of me. Also, I saw no point in dating in high school.
DeadMessenger
August 3rd, 2014 @ 1:01 am

I think that they didn’t realize that women already had superiority in a sense. A twinkle in the eye and a flash of cleavage, and she could make a man her slave. The ability to fake stupidity or incompetence and get away with it. Never having to change her own tire. Having someone pull a car to the curb, then get out in the rain and open the door for her. All of these things, and many more, seem to me like superiority. I like these perks. I’m glad to be a woman. I feel like God totally blessed me with the better end of the gender bargain.

I just wish that feminists would mind their own and stop trying to “help” me.
Major_Bong
August 3rd, 2014 @ 1:02 am

The Supermen.

America is going to find out the hard way.
Zohydro
August 3rd, 2014 @ 1:54 am

Have you ever spent any time on a dairy farm, Neo?

If you have, you might be forced to conclude as well that every cow is a lesbian…

But that’s just biology!
Krolll
August 3rd, 2014 @ 7:17 am

The letter is obviousely a fake, written by a lesbian journalist who was never married at all.
Art Deco
August 3rd, 2014 @ 11:13 am

An attempt at a search for “Laneia Nicole” turns up a dry hole on Ancestry.com, “White Pages”, and “MyLife”. It is a reasonable inference that that is a pseudonym.

—

And, yes, there is nothing in her personal memoir that’s a signature of someone who has experienced domestic discontent rather than reading about it or hearing about it.

Her account of the repellant sort of girl talk she’d been exposed does have the air of authenticity. I heard it too, and the perpetrators were women notable for an abiding belief that they did nothing abrasive to the people around them and (half the time) for bad behavior and emotional instability.
Art Deco
August 3rd, 2014 @ 11:57 am

White Pages identifies a “Laneia Murray” who supposedly lives in a suburb of Phoenix and is, per the registry at Bed, Bath, and Beyond, appended to someone named “Megan O’Grady”; “Laneia Nicole” identifies her dyke-buddy as “Megan”.

MyLife identifies a “Laneia N. Murray” who did live in Virginia Beach ca. 2006, once lived in California, and was born ca. 1981. The town in California where she supposedly resided has a naval air station nearby.

Noodling around a bit, I discover a man named Gregory S. Murray married a “Laneia N.” on 17 July 1998 in Lewis, Tn. Advanced Background Checks locate him in Virginia Beach and Lemoore, Ca at times in his life and report he was born ca. 1978.

There was a gentlemen named Scott who apparently lived around Lewis and Maury counties in Tennessee who died in May 2013. Laneia Murray and Megan O’Grady are listed in his obituary.

It appears she’s legit up to a point, just not very reflective or persuasive.
NeoWayland
August 3rd, 2014 @ 12:18 pm

As I said, the classifications are a discussion for another time.

If someone is “weak-willed” enough to be swayed, then the implication is that they weren’t strong enough to make the “right” choice in the first place.

And the implication of that is that they could never assume responsibility for their actions.

I don’t think it’s what you meant, but what you’re implied is that certain people will always fall for the next fad, whether it’s pet rocks, homosexuality, or Facebook. They are perpetual victims, no matter what they are anyone else does.
NeoWayland
August 3rd, 2014 @ 12:26 pm

Please, NW or nw if you have to abbreviate it. Calling me Neo just brings in stuff from the movie series, even if you didn’t intend it.

Yes, I’ve been to a dairy farm. Golly gee whiz, I’ve even been to a zoo!

I linked to the article because if homosexual behavior occurs in other species, then it’s obvious than many of our assumptions are wrong. Therefore we don’t have enough information to draw conclusions. At best we can make observations and say it’s mostly true.
robertstacymccain
August 3rd, 2014 @ 4:54 pm

So, Laneia Nicole Scott, from Tennessee, was 17 in 1998 when she married 20-year-old Greg Murray, who was in the Navy. Eight years later — exactly the timeline recalled by the Autostraddle editor — they were living in Virginia Beach. She is now living in Arizona with her lesbian partner Megan O’Grady. This all fits.

Good research, Art.
M. Thompson
August 3rd, 2014 @ 5:37 pm

Gonna have to face it, you’re addicted to spuds.
Guest
August 3rd, 2014 @ 6:35 pm

My deepest apologies, Commissar. I shall immediately report to room 101 for my reeducation.
Male Feminists: No Country for Any Men | Batshit Crazy News
August 3rd, 2014 @ 9:41 pm

[…] TOM: How to become a Lesbian… […]
Art Deco
August 3rd, 2014 @ 9:46 pm

Not sure whether the maiden name is ‘Scott’ or ‘Tenry’. Mr. Scott was the grandfather.
Quartermaster
August 4th, 2014 @ 12:52 pm

But is there any Pravda in Izvestia now?