I was going out with a woman from Cambridge, Massachusetts, for about six weeks. She’s a very bright, educated and analytical woman of 60. Good-looking, if you want to know, at least to me. Call her Lydia. She and I were walking hand in hand down a street in a residential area of Cambridgeâ€â€Âa date of sortsâ€â€Âon the fourth of July. Massachusetts, remember, is a gay-marriage state.
“I hate lesbians,†she said.
Picture me gaping a little. I was not taking notes. Yet this is what she said. It was news to me, and I pass it on to others who might find it news.
“My friends Sally and Ruth are going to have an engagement party,†Lydia said. “They’re going to get married. The big news is that the party is going to be co-ed. It’s very exciting. Women will be able to bring their boyfriends! What’s so strange about that, you ask? This isn’t the done thing in Cambridge,†Lydia said.
“They’re not lesbians, you know,†she said.
“What do you mean,†I said, “they just live together like sisters? No sex?”
“No, they do everything. Sleeping together, kissing, anything two women can do, they do it.â€ÂÂ
“Doesn’t that make them lesbians?â€ÂÂ
“No. To be a lesbian,†she said, “your politics have to be right. They have to be correct. It’s not just sex, it’s the politics of it. You have to be part of the group, you have to believe. You can’t step outside the boundaries. That’s what it means to be a lesbian.â€ÂÂ
I didn’t ask her if the boundaries of lesbianism in Cambridge include man-hatredâ€â€Âas a political stanceâ€â€Âbecause it seemed so obvious. If it was big news that two women getting married would allow men at their engagement party, well then it was obvious, right? Being a real lesbian meant shunning men. Lydia talked about all this as if it were as obvious as the July sunlight we were walking through that lesbianism is not just sexual, but a political philosophy of hating men.
“I hate lesbians,†Lydia said, and she didn’t say anything more than that. She kept holding my hand, and we walked happily down the leafy street.
