Men Who Love Women Who Love Women

Freud was responsible for the term penis envy. But is there vagina envy—an emotion that some males might be prone to experience after watching the exuberant sexuality of a movie like Blue is the Warmest Color (La Vie d’Adele in its original French version)? For those who suffer from this affliction the question might then be asked, is a predilection a question of biology or an acquired characteristic, a taste that one develops? Can someone born with male gonads possess the sensibility of a lesbian? Is it possible to cultivate a taste for sexuality the way you would a certain kind of art, in this case by reading books like Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood or seeing movies like Blue is the Warmest Color? And is the converse true? Some activists who fought hard for the notion that gayness was a matter of genes and biology might buckle at the notion that one is not necessarily gay or straight at birth. This is not to support the position of fundamentalist Christian deprogrammers who want to return gays to biblically modeled heterosexuality--which is just another side of the same absolutist coin (in both views sexuality is ideologized). Is sexuality perhaps more labile? Can one live a gay style of life at one point and then switch over and become a heterosexual as is the case with Chirlane McCray, the wife of the Bill de Blasio? The question of sexual identity brings up the classic dichotomies between nature versus nurture, between free will and determinism. It's understandable that those who have felt shame about their sexual inclinations or faced ostracism and disapproval about them would like to find an end to a painful struggle. Human beings like answers. They want to know and once they know who they are, they naturally want to join in and be with those who like them for it. Interestingly Adele (Adele Exarchopoulos) the young protagonist of Blue is the Warmest Color seems the most uncomfortable in the scene where she had her lover, Emma (Lea Sedoux), attend a gay rights march. Another dichotomy that’s brought up in the movie is that of existence versus essence. What if sexual identity is an existentialist choice rather than the reflection of predetermined essence? Wouldn’t it be specious reasoning to conclude that there is some platonic ideal one must aspire to? What if men and women saw themselves as independent voters, who pulled the Republican lever in one election and the Democratic in the next. Dispensing with expensive and irreversible sex change operations, can’t men who are enraptured by the sexuality of a movie like Blue is the Warmest Color undergo a change of consciousness in which they don’t love like men who love women or men who love men, but like women who love other women?

Chirlane McCray

The Times bio of Chirlane McCray is a sign of hope, in otherwise bleak landscape of domestic and international affairs. “Now, this one time student of powerlessness, a woman whose early identity was profoundly shaped by feelings of alienation—because of her race, her gender and her evolving sexuality—is emerging as the ultimate insider” (“Once Alienated, and Now a Force In Her Husband’s Bid for Mayor,” NYT, 10/1/13). The article goes on to describe the “bullying” she was subjected to “in high school during the late l960’s, where for a time she was the sole black student,” and the ostracism she later faced at Wellesley when her “being a lesbian was discovered.” The candor with which she describes her past should warm the hearts of anyone whose feelings of "not being a part of" are exacerbated by an ambivalent sexuality. And the model for her relationship to the man who is likely to be the future mayor of New York City turns out to be “the Clintons’ working partnership.” Politics and gender politics of course become uniquely conjoined in such a statement. But it’s even simpler. How do you turn trouble and personal conflict into a source of strength? The Clintons certainly laid the groundwork for that and it’s nice to think that the first lady of the City of New York is somebody you could conceivably talk to, if you were having problems fitting in. The truth is that in an age when there are few prescribed roles in terms of sexuality (are there men with the sensibility of women who love other women?) or politics (are there social progressives with the mentality of free market capitalists?), we’re all outsiders. And strange bedfellows are likely to abound. How queer politics has become! Now if the de Blasio/McCray team can rid the city of stop and frisk type while retaining the services of the extremely capable current police commissioner Ray Kelly--they’ll truly preside over the end of ideology and labeling, at least as far as politics is concerned.