Discrimination through Labeling

I am currently taking a class in Woman's History and for the class I am reading this book called Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, A History of Lesbian Life in Twentith Century America. One of the things that I find interesting in this book so far, is that in the late 1800's and early 1900s women formed what were called Romantic Friendships these were widely known about and accepted, in which women would form close knit parnterships together and often end up moving intogether and living together, there is some evidence that some of these relationships were sexual as well. These relationships formed around the time women were starting to be able to go to school and women colleges were established, a big part of it was the fact that it would not be conveient for a educated career woman to be married, becasue her husband would not support her and she would not able to presuer her goals, she would be kept busy with domestic work and having childern, so women formed bonds with each other, because they could better understand each others knees and desires and support each other in what they wished to do.

Now it was not tell later 1900's around the 1920's that sexologists began to do study on these female realationships, and around this time terms such as lesbian, homosexual, hetrosexual began to surface, and it was also around this time that relationships between women were seen as less favorable. The interesting thing is that even as this sort of literature and thought was more and more being spread, many of the women within the Romantic Friendships, did not see themselves as being lesbian or homosexual, one of the reasons for this is on account of sterotypes that formed of what lebains were, as far as how they acted, dressed, looked and so on, atributing masculine traits to them, such things were largely not true of the upper calls women in the Romantic Friendships, so they did not identify with these terms, and saw themselves as being something apart from that.

Now the thing I cannot help but to wonder, is would it not in fact be better if that is how things were? If there were no lesbeians, homsexuals, hetrosexuals, gay, stright, and so on. If we were all just people that fell in love and formed relationships and households with other people reguardless of thier gender in relation to our own? Are the labals, divisions and seperations really nesscarry? Such things only leads to discriminations, and the competition of which is "right" and which is "wrong" or what is "better" or what is "normal" and "abnormal" and so on. What if we never before heard the words homosexual and hetrosexual, if they did not exsist in our vocabluarly, and it did not matter whom we decided to form paternerships with. It was all the same, on the same level, reguardless. It was just love plain and simple.

12:36 PM - 4/10/2006 - post comment

Untitled Comment

That is interesting. I hope your class goes well. As for your comment about the Finding Nemo thing, it was really cool actually. I liked it. Anyway, thanks for posting. I appreciate it.

silvermelusine - 4:53 PM - 4/10/2006

Untitled Comment

hey,i liked your blog. Interesting reads.good luck for the class

corporatefreak - 11:55 PM - 4/10/2006

Thank you

Thank you both for the comments, and the luck, so far it seems to be a pretty interesting class.

SilverWind - 1:51 PM - 4/11/2006

Untitled Comment

Over here, in the Netherlands gay and lesbian couples have been allowed to get married with exactly the same rights (including child adoption) since April 2001. What I've found is that taking away the limitations for these people has increased discrimination and hostility toward these people. While in fact it is a very good thing that couples of any gender are considered equal before the law, there are always going to be people who are infuriated. Human nature, I guess, sighingly. Have you ever read or heard anything about homosexuality in the Animal Kingdom by the way?

dutchboy - 6:12 AM - 4/12/2006

Homosexuality

Yes I have, I am fairly femallier with the subject, in a blog I use to have a long time ago I did an article about that and the hole argument that homosexulaity is not "natural" that some people try and use.

SilverWind - 8:48 AM - 4/12/2006

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