The more the merrier is the attitude some members of Chicago’s lesbian community have toward the number of younger women experimenting with their sexuality and sexual orientation.
These women and teens may not necessarily define themselves as “lesbian” or “bisexual,” identifying instead as “queer” or choosing not to label themselves at all.
Aimee Pine, director of operations for the gay rights group Equality Illinois, says she sees the number of women one could consider bisexual increasing, especially among people under 30.
“I’m seeing a lot of ‘Kissing Jessica Stein,’ if you will,” said Pine, 26, referring to the movie in which a straight woman gets fed up with dating men and tries dating a woman. “I think it’s great; it’s a reflection of society being more comfortable. … It’s OK to like a girl.”
Jessica Halem, 31, works with teenagers and young adults and finds that the idea of describing themselves as lesbian, gay or bisexual just doesn’t make sense to them.
“A lot of them don’t pick a label,” Halem said. “They feel like ‘lesbian’ sounds really old; it sounds like the ’70s.”
It’s all for the better, Halem said. These people are demanding more choices and openness in their world, and that’s forcing the older gay community to be more free-thinking about gender and sexuality.
“Imagine if everyone thought they could have choices,” Halem said. “It wouldn’t be such a big deal.”
What about the idea that some women are just hooking up with other women to attract the attention of men? Nothing to be offended about there, Halem and Pine say.
“We all did things for boys’ attention, if we played into that,” said Halem, who said she did worse things than kiss another girl in pursuit of a guy.
She laughs at the “Girls Gone Wild” videos that show women kissing other women. That kind of fluid sexuality has been going on for ages in college dorm rooms and high schools, she said. Straight women experimenting with women, as well as lesbians being with men, is nothing new–it’s just more in the public light.
“Right now, Snoop Dogg is filming it,” she said.
Halem admits that it can be tough to foresee some women who have been with other women going back to a more traditional role of marriage and moving out to the suburbs. But there’s also the possibility that a woman making out with or dating another woman just for the shock value might discover she really cares for the person she’s with, or simply that she likes being with women better.
“You never know until you try–that’s my motto,” Pine said.
There have been rumblings of complaint about the new flexibility in some older gay circles, Pine said, but she compared the complaints to any generation gap, where the older one doesn’t quite understand the younger one.
In fact, Pine said, older lesbians should feel happy about the fluidity in sexuality, because the rights and recognition they fought for paved the way for young women to express themselves in this way.
But the flexibility to try out variations of sexuality doesn’t extend as easily to men, says Rick Garcia, head of Equality Illinois. While women can hold hands or dance or even kiss and not raise eyebrows, there’s a real stigma for men doing the same things.
“We’ve always seen women have more flexibility with behavior and activity,” Garcia said.
