Relationships Between Women Don’t Exist To Please Men
If two women have given you no indication that they want to have a threesome, it’s not your place to ask.
Relationships between women don’t exist to satisfy The Male Gaze. Relationships between women are complete and valid in their own way. Relationships between women don’t need to involve men to be happy.
As a polyamorous and pansexual woman, I am open to relationships with women. I have a girlfriend and a boyfriend. I’ve noticed that men are more intimidated by my relationship with a man than they are by my relationship with a woman. They’re not intimidated by the fact I’ve been with my boyfriend for a long time. They’re intimidated by his gender.
However, the same can’t be said about my relationships with women. Men feel more than free to intrude upon my relationships with women.
In the world of polyamory, there’s something called the “One Penis Policy” or OPP for short. OPP happens when a man tells a woman she can’t hook up with men, but she can hook up with women.
Men implement this “policy” in polyamorous relationships due to their own insecurity. For some reason, they find relationships with men to be more intimidating than relationships with women. I think it’s because they can get off to a woman being with another woman, but not with another man.
Not only is OPP transphobic as hell, but it’s misogynistic. It’s implies that relationships with men are more “serious” than relationships with women and therefore to be avoided. It’s basically a man’s admission that they don’t see relationships between women as threatening, but feel threatened by their girlfriend forming relationships with other men.
More importantly, it implies that relationships between women exist to please men. I’m tired of people devaluing my relationships with women because there isn’t a man involved. People delegitimize my relationships with women by ignoring or outright erasing them. It’s as though they think we need to involve a man in order for it to be a valid relationship.
When I tell guys I have a girlfriend, some comment that it’s “hot” or ask to have a threesome. It’s as though the lack of a man present in the relationship means we want or need a man to complete us. As though our sexuality exists for men’s consumption. Men get the impression from lesbian porn that actual relationships between women also exist to satisfy men.
News flash: Most “lesbian porn” is created for straight men. Women don’t form relationships with other women based on how these relationships will impact men. In real life, women who like women don’t care if their sexuality satisfies men or not.
Men: Stop treating women like our personal lives exist to please you. If two women have given you no indication that they want to have a threesome, it’s not your place to ask. Nobody asked you if you thought our relationship is “hot” or not.
Unless the two women say otherwise, their relationship and sexuality is none of your business. It’s not like relationships between women need a man in order to be considered complete.
