Lesbos, more than a Greek island? Discuss.

Well Berlin certainly has a well established, pronounced gay community. This is the kind of statement to which many of you will simply reply with ‘Duh!’ But, to me, it is a bit of a surprise, as I have not thought of Berlin as being a gay Mecca. It just hasn’t occurred to me. Cologne is really known as the gay center of the German world here. But, as I have come to learn, Berlin is Germany’s intellectual and artistic center. I guess 1 + 1 does equal 2…with culture come gays. It’s just that simple.

Chris and I went to the Gay Museum last night to see an exhibit on lesbianism because an old friend of Chris’ had contributed to it. The whole experience is not exactly what I would rate as one of my most enjoyable times to date. I suppose there are always things to learn, even from imperfect situations. I would surmise that what is to be learned from this one is simple: I still have some very deep-seated prejudices dancing around in my head.

How can I say it without offending anyone? Hmmm, that seems like an utter impossibility. So, I’ll say it like this: I don’t tend to get along with lesbians. And being shoulder to shoulder with what seemed to be hundreds of them made me want to just run away screaming. You can call me a bigot if you like, but it seems to me that lesbians tend to be even more virulent man-haters than the most extreme femininazis. I find it interesting that gay men tend to love everyone: they love straight men (they want to sleep with them, after all), they love women (they serve as our best friends), they “love” other gay men (this is actually a stretch, because gay men can be so mean to each other, but, hey, every list must have at least three elements.) Lesbians, on the other hand, do not have men as their best friends as would make sense. No, their circles tend to be other women, all of whom share their same outlook and philosophies. The gay community tends to be open to everyone. The lesbian community, however, seems to exclude.

Now, before you go to the hardware store to buy some rope in order to properly lynch me, I will say that I have some very dear lesbian friends. They do not in any way resemble the aforementioned remarks. They do not hate men, and do not hate me because I am one of them. They’re cool, and nice, intelligent, and well bred.

So, what does this mean? I abhor people who do not realize that they have within them the same evil potential as others have. It helps me to sympathize with other people and their plight if I try to imagine that that same evil exists within myself. Any high-minded belief that Karma can be reached on earth, one where we are truly freed of our prejudices, is futile in and of itself. We should keep reaching for it, yes, but the moment you think you have attained it, you should take it as a warning sign that you are oppressing something within!

Being driftwood amongst the sea of lesbians last night, I imagined that, if I brushed past someone in the crowd, I could offend someone or, even worse, could elicit some sort of mean feminist response, verbal or otherwise. I imagined that all eyes were on me, as the womyn thought to themselves ‘what the hell is HE doing here?’ These were imagined effects of my own prejudices, bubbling up within me and taking hold, prejudices that I wrongly believed had been eliminated with the experience of time.

Really, these wonderful lesbian friends I spoke of before are great ambassadors, helping to eventually squelch the inner dialogue that may run through my head at events like this. Wondering if some butch lesbian has a higher testosterone count than me is really more a commentary on me and my self-doubt than on her and her mustache, after all. I will get better in this area, I’ll bet.

Maybe I’ll go to next year’s exhibit to test my progress. I can only hope that the gruesome photos of grotesquely disfigured clitorises branded into my frontal lobe will not be remembered when I go next year. Maybe they will have the decency not to show those images again. Perhaps I should turn the tables a bit and see how they would like it I show up next year with a self-styled T-shirt showing penises in the final stages of syphilis and gonorrhea. Then at least my prejudices will seem well founded as they throw my ass to the curb, yelling, “You cannot censor my artistic expression!”