Vivian: A strong-willed lesbian creates her own path
As soon as Vivian starts talking, I know she is a straight shooter, and I like her instantly. She’s a short, stocky woman with razor-cut hair, wearing an oversized t-shirt and black Ray Ban glasses. Her left hand flashes an oblong, blue stone when she gesticulates. I enjoy her humor as she tells her story.
Vivian grew up in a large, Mexican Catholic family in Southern California that frequently gathered for family celebrations like birthdays and first Communions. “The family was always together. The women kept the girls very separate from the men. We were never babysat by a man. We were never left with my brothers. We were very, very well protected on that level. They just didn’t trust what alcohol would do to men, whether they were related or not.”
Vivian took notice, even as a small girl, of the differing roles of men and women in her community. “Women were told what to do and how to do and when to do, and they couldn’t have their own professions or money.” When the extended family gathered for meals, the children were served first, then the men, and then the women. “The children weren’t served first because they were children, it was so they wouldn’t bother the men while the men were eating. How ridiculous is that?! And then after the men were done eating, they'd go off and fart and drink their beer, while we ate and then did all the cleaning.” By age 15, she angered her sisters by skipping dish duty and going in the back yard with the men. “I said, ‘I want to be a man!’” The relative roles of women and men remained a theme throughout her life. “We have to change the emotions of men, somehow, to quit telling them that because they’re the man, they’re the best. And, one of the biggest ways to make change is for women to teach their children.”
Vivian learned about sex from school, the Catholic Church and the neighborhood kids. She gleaned that if you were going to have sex, you had to get married. Yet, a number of her sisters and friends would become unwed, teen parents. Her best friend throughout adolescence started having sex at age 14 and passed on lots of information to Vivian - mostly that sex was fun. But Vivian had no interest. Lacking a concept of women having sex with women, “I just knew that I wasn’t interested in boys or in men. Information about sex was like nothing. It was like… tying my shoes.”
Vivian’s parents had wanted her to become a nun. “That’s usually what they do in a very strong Catholic family - try to have the first-born son become a priest and the first girl a nun.” Then she laughs and says, “But we were both gay. So, that was out!” Initially, some of her family members had a hard time when she came out to them in her 20’s. She told them either to accept her or not, but that it was their issue, not hers. “So, they dealt with it. I am pretty strong minded. It has served me to this day.”
Vivian began living on her own at age 18, working and putting herself through college. At twenty, she went on her first date, at a gay bar. “I snuck in and I realized that I was really comfortable, and that I found women to be very interesting and beautiful. That’s when I started to rise up and want to be sexually involved.”
“When I had my first orgasm, I was shocked. What was this?! And that’s when I started to masturbate and explore myself.” She describes orgasms, “as a gift from God.” It was very important for her and for her partners to orgasm. “At the beginning of my sexual relationships it was like, ‘Let’s have orgasms, orgasms, orgasms.’ And then when I got older, I realized that emotions and love were more important than orgasm. Being in a loving relationship has nothing to do with the act. It has to do with the love and life outside that.”
In her 20’s, she often talked with other women about sexuality. For them it was about sex, “but for me it was more of an empowerment. I became empowered with women. It made me love myself and empowered me to really want to enjoy life, to be with someone special and grow. I was a very open soul. I’d go anywhere and do anything because I’d lived such a sheltered life at home.” As an example, she described getting to know a young woman who was into “S&M.” “I wasn’t interested in her sexually but I was so curious about what S&M meant.” The girl explained that she only felt orgasmic when partners cut on her with a knife. At age 24, Vivian went to a sex dungeon in an opulent home wearing a sign that said, “Observer.” “It was just huge. Men and women. Women and women. It was very open to whatever. I wasn’t aroused by any means but I was very pleased that I went. I think it really opened me up. It made me see the intensity of life, that if they could choose to do that, I could choose to be whatever I wanted to be.”
Becoming more reflective as she speaks, Vivian says, “I didn’t know anything about relationships. If someone showed me attention, I would flourish with it.” In retrospect, she wishes that, “I could tell myself to just observe more. Not to fall for that. I think I would have chosen better relationships.” She describes herself as being attracted to women who were wild and exciting and thinks that more subdued women probably would have made better partners.
During her thirties, Vivian took in and raised a number of children born to her two heroin-addicted siblings. She is proud of the fact that she raised her boys to cook and clean, to change diapers and to buy their women tampons at the store. Today, her sons have families of their own. “I brought up all those kids with a lot of Buddha and meditation, and they all turned out Catholic. Never did I take them to a Christian church. I was shocked. I’m like, ‘What the hell’s wrong with y’all?’” She laughs. “What happens if their children become lesbians or gay? That’s what I’m waiting for.”
Sexual communication with partners often centered on Vivian’s desire for more sex. When sex became less frequent in her relationships, “that's when I started to become more verbally abrasive with it. ‘I want to have it! I don't understand why you don't want to have sex. It was really heated at the beginning and now it's not.’ And their replies were often, ‘Well, after a few years, you tend to lessen your sexual relationship.’ And I'm like, ‘Why?’ I didn't understand why. And that has been the same issue with all of my relationships.” Vivian interprets her partners’ decreased sexual desire as a sign of their decreased love for her; she thinks that they stayed with her because of comfort and fear of a breakup. She tells me that each of her long-term partners cheated with other women before they left her.
Vivian recalls friends saying, “Maybe we really don't need sex. Maybe we just need to be in a relationship that's comfortable and dismiss the sex.” Here, Vivian touches upon the concept of “lesbian bed death,” the phenomenon that women in same-sex, long-term couples tend to have less sex than other types of couples. The term emerged in the 1980’s. [1] Though the concept is debated, lesbian bed death is an entrenched notion in the lesbian community. [2] [3]
Vivian tried to adjust to a relationship with very little sex. But she wanted a relationship partly because she wanted the sex. Her last relationship, with the love of her life, ended about 15 years ago amidst tension over their mismatched sexual desires. As the relationship was coming to a close, Vivian says, “I came to the conclusion that I can have sex with myself all the time, any time and not refuse myself. Hallelujah! I don’t need anybody because nobody can make love to me better than me. I know exactly what I want.”
Vivian breezed through all aspects of menopause. Regarding sex, she says, “I’m a sexual person still. I masturbate at least once a week. I don’t have a problem with moisture. Nothing. I’m the same as I was. I often ask myself why my friends are dry and not as sexually wanting as I still am, and I do believe that it has to do with the way you look at it.”
Vivian believes that her determination, to avoid a difficult menopausal transition like her mother and grandmother, is responsible for her symptomless menopause. Let me interject here and say that while I applaud the influence of a positive attitude, some women are just stuck with more menopausal symptoms than others. Symptoms are real and not one’s fault.
Perhaps, however, many women can learn from her positive attitude towards her body. She says, “I love myself. I'm not afraid to say that I am overweight, that I'm fat. I know that in the image of other people in America, the way they portray women, I am probably not desirable because I am overweight. But I'm a good person, and I can love very deeply, and if you can't see that, then you're not for me.”
Vivian has been without a partner for many years now. She tells me that, at age 62, she now can imagine a sexless relationship based on comfort, an arrangement she was not willing to settle for in her 30’s or 40’s. This woman has forged her own strong path through life and no doubt will continue to do so.
[1] Blumstein, P., & Schwartz, P. (1983). American Couples: Money, work, sex. William Morrow & Co. On Amazon.com
[2] Cohen, J. N., & Byers, E. S. (2014). Beyond Lesbian Bed Death: Enhancing our understanding of the sexuality of sexual-minority women in relationships, The Journal of Sex Research, 51(8), 893-903. DOI: 10.1080/00224499.2013.795924
[3] Corwin, G. (2010). Sexual Intimacy for Women: A guide for same-sex couples. Seal Press. Accessed through ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/unm/detail.action?docID=544595. On Amazon.com