http://www.salon.com/2014/07/29/im_a_lesbian_marrying_a_man/
It's an article by a self-identified lesbian who fell in love with, married, and - apparently - is having kids with a man. What I consider the most important aspects can be summed up with this paragraph here:
I know plenty of people who identify as bisexual; I am not. The term simply doesn’t apply. I am not, as a rule, attracted to men. I simply fell in love with this person and didn’t hold his gender against him. That won’t change because of our vows, any more than my eye color will. My fundamental coordinates are unaltered.
When I first read it, it actually reminded me a lot of Ash. She's a high-sex-drive low-romantic-drive borderline vanilla girl (I suspect she'll disagree with that in part, but I'll leave an in-depth analysis of Ash, her self-perception, and my perception of her for another day), and I'm a high-romantic-drive low-sex-drive anything-but-vanilla demisexual guy. Most people who I've tried to explain our relationship with gave me some version of "...And why exactly are the two of you together?" It's not even that I can't understand where they're coming from; it's that they're basing their reaction on a totally different standard than our relationship is based on. Ash knows it's okay if she wants to get sex somewhere else, and is mostly okay with the conversations she has with some of her old... Acquaintances and the sex we do have. For my part, she encourages me to find an outlet for my dominant and sadistic sides, and tries not to push me if she thinks she's going too far over my own sex drive. It's not perfect - I've never seen a relationship that was - but it's open, honest, and in every other way we mesh far better than most people seem to realize.
There's a quote I found recently on a Tumblr feed I follow:
Being able to find someone you click with so naturally is the best feeling ever. You feel like you’ve been best friends you’re[sic] whole life, it feels like you’re coming home. You’re so comfortable with them. Maybe that’s what a soulmate is. Not someone who shares every single thing in common with you, but someone who feels like home.
The important take-away, to me, is simply this: she identifies as a lesbian, because as a rule she's attracted to women. That's not something someone else can argue, because it's her own identity. The fact that, arguably, her relationship conflicts with that self-identity isn't self-deception or malicious manipulation of the people around her; it's narrow-mindedness on the friends, family, and internet trolls who are giving her grief. If her husband is her home, the place where she's comfortable, it doesn't change whether or not she sees herself as a lesbian... Only whether she's married to a woman.
People seem to get so worked up at someone else who doesn't quite meet their own definition of some term when they claim it. I've seen discussions online where someone says "I'm asexual but occasionally enjoy sex with my partner" or "I enjoy sex, I just have no sex drive" and promptly gets jumped on by the AVEN definition nazis. I mean, in all fairness, those occasions are few and far between (the asexual/demisexual community is one of the more inclusive and accepting ones I've ever encountered), but it's much more common in the gay and bisexual communities.
Not everyone agrees with your definition on everything; get over it. My definition of "dominant" disagrees with 95% of all other self-identified dominants; my definition of submissive, since I don't actually identify that way and such am less invested in it, is far broader. My definition of "sadist" is not the same as that of every other self-identified sadist I've talked to. My definition of "asexual" is not the same as every other self-identified demisexual I've talked to... And that's okay, really.
I have to admit, I find the comments on this article more than a little depressing. People flipped out on EJ - the author - and ranted on and on about how she's giving lesbians a bad name, and fooling herself; that she's bi in denial, was never a lesbian, and this is the reason why people say lesbians don't actually exist. EJ's attitude isn't single-handedly defeating all lesbian process; those who disagree with or try to fight "lesbian culture" would do so with some other thin excuse if this one weren't available. All they're doing is excluding her in their own heads, from their narrow little worlds.
Ash, when she read it, came away with a totally different reaction, and I'll leave you with this comment that summarizes her view nicely:
Max the CommunistAug 16, 2014
@Lauremcln @Max the Communist "She can't make herself leave little Italy." Frankly, my concern is more than some fuss over her personal identity and whether it fits the purity codes of the lesbian and gay male communities. What if the real problem is that she can't make little Italy NOT leave her?
In other words, even if it may seem to her lesbian and gay friends that she can pass as straight now and that her life is on easy street from here on out, what if EJ is suffering from loss of community that is dear to her and recognition that the gender of her partner has changed but her values as a lesbian, not to mention her sexual attraction to women, have not changed? She still wants to belong, she still wants to participate, she still wants to be regarded as a person still engaged in LGBTQ struggle and culture--not as a traitor or a sell-out, accusations that some gays and lesbians hurl quite frequently at bisexuals. Accusations and attitudes that EJ herself may have held (and may still hold?) against bisexuals.
She doesn't want the "bisexual demotion" because a terrible cost comes with the bisexual demotion--the loss of regard and respect and the feeling of a community having your back and understanding your sexuality and/or gender, even if the homo/bi/tranphobic mainstream does not.
The cost that accompanies biphobia from the gay and lesbian community is real. National studies of bisexual health disparities show rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm and suicidality (contemplating suicide) are higher for bisexuals than they are for their straight, gay and lesbian counterparts. Not only that, but smaller studies than national samples have shown that even those people within the LGBTQ community who think of themselves as "mostly gay" or "mostly lesbian" have rates of depression, anxiety, etc., greater than those identifying as lesbian/gay and on par with the depression, etc., levels of bisexuals.
You've probably taken a gander at the dearth of negative comments from some lesbians on this thread. That's just the tip of the iceberg. And it's negativity and rejection that has to be taken seriously for its destructive impact on the mental health of the groups it targets.
Cisgender non-monosexual people in opposite sex relationships may not have the easy ride that lesbian/gay culture thinks we do. We may be in heterosexual culture, but not of it, and therefore feel more isolated and disempowered than ever before within a mainstream culture that has greater power to erase us than the lesbian and gay counterculture does. Furthermore, I have come across various bisexuals who have met with discrimination, such as being fired when coming out/being outed at work, even when they were in long-term relationships/married with the opposite sex. So the days of EJ never running into anti-queer discrimination are not over, especially if she outs herself continually--as she does in this article--even though she is currently married to a man.
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