The Lesbian Continuum

Rich’s idea of the lesbian continuum was odd to me. First of all, I didn’t quite understand why it was called the lesbian continuum when some areas of the spectrum had nothing to do with homosexuality. I would rather call it the “female intimacy continuum.” It certainly did display two very opposite ways women express intimacy. I think homophobia discourages women from displaying intimacy because they are too afraid of crossing that line between the kind of intimacy between relatives and sexual intimacy with another woman. It’s very easy to hug or kiss your mother but hugging and kissing another woman may appear too sexually intimate to other women. The same goes for men and is certainly more discouraging. When most men hug, they clasp hands and wrap one arm around the back so there is a barrier between their bodies (their clasped hands). They’re afraid of getting too close out of fear that it wouldn’t look like “normal intimacy.” At the same time, some women embrace this kind of intimacy without fear that they will be misjudged. Some women even use sexual intimacy with another woman to make themselves more heterosexually attractive to men (ie: men love to see women kissing other women as long as they’re heterosexual). I think the lesbian continuum can vary based on different cultures and traditions. For example, if you go to Italy, men will kiss each other on the cheek as a greeting and no one sees it as crossing the boundary of male intimacy. I think America’s obsession and fear of homophobia discourages us all from gaining the kind of intimacy we need from the other sex, even when it’s not sexual in nature.