Wednesday, January 17, 2007 Loving women who love women By Zosimo T. Literatus, R.M.T. Breakthroughs
“ANY world which did not have a place for me loving women,” wrote Audre Lorde in her book Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, “was not a world in which I wanted to live, nor one which I could fight for.”
Lorde captured the frustrations of a lesbian and those women who love them.
Here’s a text message from IS of Minglanilla, Cebu: “Good morning. Kindly write about lesbianism. Does a woman become a lesbian getting involved with one? Is it morally wrong but accepted by society? I’m a senior citizen worried of a daughter involved with a lesbian.”
The morality in a lesbian love relationship is by nature a subjective one. “Morality,” wrote David Hume in his book An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, “is determined by sentiment. It defines virtue to be whatever mental action or quality gives to a spectator the pleasing sentiment of approbation; and vice the contrary.”
Oscar Wilde observed in his book The Importance of Being Earnest: “The amount of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous. It looks so bad. It is simply washing one’s clean linen in public.”
That “perfectly scandalous” flirting of a wife to her husband may not be that scandalous in North America or in the Philippines.
Social approval is too fickle to base our lives on it. Social norms can be so blind as to exalt values that certain groups would consider otherwise. Early Christians were hated by Jews for behaving against the moral norms among Jews at that time.
Christian morality today can be as intolerant. And who stands to judge with impeccable objectivity? Christians are expected to behave as Christians. Accusing non-Christians for immorality would be behaving like Jews against early Christians.
Nevertheless, research literature on lesbians is scarce. Most are accessible only for tens of dollars for a single view. However, available abstracts provide with enough information to help us understand lesbianism.
No study, as yet, has been done on women turning lesbians on account of getting involved with one. However, available studies have shown things of interest: First, love relationships between women and lesbians begin in friendship. In a study published in the Journal of Homosexuality (1982), V.A. Vetere found that such relationships started with being friends first (78 percent) and the current lover becoming their best friends (77 percent). (To be continued next week. For comments and suggestions, email to ztliteratus6046@lycos.com or text to 0927-979-3519.)
