Female Friendship, Eroticism, & Betrayal - A Preface
For as long as I can remember, I have always adored and gravitated towards women. In true Freudian fashion, my earliest memories involve women’s breasts and the soft curvature of their hips and ass. Standing just below most adults’ waistlines — likely at around age four — I observed the way women’s hips swayed as they walked and how perfectly or imperfectly their fat was distributed in the usual places. I watched curiously, forming judgments, adding data to my little inner dialogue. A year later, I announced with conviction to my parents that I would “only marry a girl” when I grew up. The feelings of romance and desire for the opposite sex was naturally foreign to me at that time, and the possibility that I would ever choose to pair up with a male seemed ludicrous to me. Why would I? Boys in my kindergarten class were far meaner, louder, and more annoying than most of the girls; they made fun of me when I did cartwheels that revealed my brightly-colored underwear, or pointed when I hung upside down on the monkey bars in a dress. I frequently sat on the side of the playground’s messy communal sandbox, brooding, lamenting to my teacher that boys were simply stupid and that they should all go away to a separate school or something. I had an innate preference for women right from the start, as I would argue most very young girls do in a pre-rational, biological sense. Perhaps for all of these reasons, I was primed to fully accept a worldview that I eventually clung to so strongly as I aged, even when reality informed me otherwise.
Before I continue, I would like to establish something: although men have routinely disgusted me, no man has ever hurt me in the way that a woman has. That may actually be a less popular experience, and I suspect that the inverse is probably true for many women and girls. That said, I believe it is still very common (even if it is in the minority) to get burned in such a way by your fellow woman; someone who you sincerely believed had your best interests at heart; why wouldn’t she? Women stick together. Women instinctively care for one another. I desperately wish I could’ve been gently introduced to the ways in which females routinely harm one another as a teenager. I never was. Quite the opposite, in fact. If I had, perhaps I could’ve been saved from facing a harsh reality with no warning, no guardrails, and no ability to interpret this harsh betrayal without growing embittered. I could’ve been saved from being so cynical of female relationships in the years that followed.
Coming of age during the last gasp of liberal “pop feminism”, it was hammered into my impressionable young mind that women are, by all accounts, morally superior to men. That women are more creative, robust, and gifted in both an abstract and literal sense. During the media frenzy of the Me Too Era, I willingly accepted that we must #BelieveWomen, no matter the circumstance. Even if a woman blatantly lied or was somehow in the wrong, it was considered damaging to even suggest that she could ever be untrustworthy or have ill-intent. Collectively, we were reaching the tail end of this very strident, aggressively millennial, post-sexual revolutionary degradation; hook-up culture that encouraged young women to “find themselves ” through random sexual escapades — casual sex. As if the highest expression of intimacy that is also the first step towards creating new life could ever be considered casual. As if tenderly making love or vigorously fucking was akin to showing up to the grocery store in sweatpants and a tee, yawning while placing eggs and milk in the cart — casual. Through treating ourselves like a masturbatory object to be pumped and dumped by the random men in our social circles, I was propagandized as a young woman to believe that I could achieve self-knowledge — self-love, even — while somehow also maintaining profound respect and love for my fellow female peers who did the same thing.
In the midst of this cacophony of half-baked, painfully ironic lib fem talking points, I was somehow able to make sense of it all. Such insights were very convincing to a child like me who already strongly preferred the female sex and was mildly repulsed and bored with males. I was not entirely sheltered from the world or culture in a way that some of my peers from intensely religious backgrounds were by any means, but I was certainly more sheltered and coddled than most kids. I was a solidly upper-middle-class, cute, risk-averse, yet infinitely curious young girl. I had a very charming, pitiful naïveté about me for the majority of my teenage years.
I was always reasonably attractive, but I was hardly able to grasp the entirety of what that meant about my social currency until the very end of my pubescent years. People remarked on my attractiveness growing up numerous times, mostly to my parents. Boys would get nervous and awkward in my presence. Strange men gawked and hollered at me on the street. It gave me a sense of pride and satisfaction at times, but it mostly made me uncomfortable. While boys my age (and men who were significantly older than me) excited me the most once puberty was in full-swing, I had this nagging curiosity and latent excitement that flickered in and out of my conscious mind of other girls and grown women. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t ignore it. The harder I tried to forcefully push it back into my unconscious, the more persistent it became. What would it be like to kiss a beautiful woman? To feel the softness of her skin, the warmth of her breasts? To taste her? These somewhat vague, but persistent desires haunted me when I grew enmeshed with several of my friends in a stereotypically feminine way. I had several of those kinds of friendships. I made out with my first best friend during some of our sleepovers together, hidden underneath the bedsheets, giggling. I bathed and showered with many of them. We compared each other's bodies in the water, cupping each other's hips and breasts. We masturbated side-by-side, or one of us did while the other watched in girlish amusement. These moments excited me in a way that I was ashamed of, but I couldn’t help it. My heart skipped, I blushed, my palms got damp, and I was overcome by a glorious rush during these interactions. Nonetheless, the tone of these moments were silly, uncomplicated, and filled with that distinct childlike wonderment that only exists in memory. I quickly learned that such simplicity in sexual explorations between other women and myself just didn’t have a place in adult life without consequences.
Before I continue, I would like to establish something: although men have routinely disgusted me, no man has ever hurt me in the way that a woman has. That may actually be a less popular experience, and I suspect that the inverse is probably true for many women and girls. That said, I believe it is still very common (even if it is in the minority) to get burned in such a way by your fellow woman; someone who you sincerely believed had your best interests at heart; why wouldn’t she? Women stick together. Women instinctively care for one another. I desperately wish I could’ve been gently introduced to the ways in which females routinely harm one another as a teenager. I never was. Quite the opposite, in fact. If I had, perhaps I could’ve been saved from facing a harsh reality with no warning, no guardrails, and no ability to interpret this harsh betrayal without growing embittered. I could’ve been saved from being so cynical of female relationships in the years that followed.
Coming of age during the last gasp of liberal “pop feminism”, it was hammered into my impressionable young mind that women are, by all accounts, morally superior to men. That women are more creative, robust, and gifted in both an abstract and literal sense. During the media frenzy of the Me Too Era, I willingly accepted that we must #BelieveWomen, no matter the circumstance. Even if a woman blatantly lied or was somehow in the wrong, it was considered damaging to even suggest that she could ever be untrustworthy or have ill-intent. Collectively, we were reaching the tail end of this very strident, aggressively millennial, post-sexual revolutionary degradation; hook-up culture that encouraged young women to “find themselves ” through random sexual escapades — casual sex. As if the highest expression of intimacy that is also the first step towards creating new life could ever be considered casual. As if tenderly making love or vigorously fucking was akin to showing up to the grocery store in sweatpants and a tee, yawning while placing eggs and milk in the cart — casual. Through treating ourselves like a masturbatory object to be pumped and dumped by the random men in our social circles, I was propagandized as a young woman to believe that I could achieve self-knowledge — self-love, even — while somehow also maintaining profound respect and love for my fellow female peers who did the same thing.
In the midst of this cacophony of half-baked, painfully ironic lib fem talking points, I was somehow able to make sense of it all. Such insights were very convincing to a child like me who already strongly preferred the female sex and was mildly repulsed and bored with males. I was not entirely sheltered from the world or culture in a way that some of my peers from intensely religious backgrounds were by any means, but I was certainly more sheltered and coddled than most kids. I was a solidly upper-middle-class, cute, risk-averse, yet infinitely curious young girl. I had a very charming, pitiful naïveté about me for the majority of my teenage years.
I was always reasonably attractive, but I was hardly able to grasp the entirety of what that meant about my social currency until the very end of my pubescent years. People remarked on my attractiveness growing up numerous times, mostly to my parents. Boys would get nervous and awkward in my presence. Strange men gawked and hollered at me on the street. It gave me a sense of pride and satisfaction at times, but it mostly made me uncomfortable. While boys my age (and men who were significantly older than me) excited me the most once puberty was in full-swing, I had this nagging curiosity and latent excitement that flickered in and out of my conscious mind of other girls and grown women. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t ignore it. The harder I tried to forcefully push it back into my unconscious, the more persistent it became. What would it be like to kiss a beautiful woman? To feel the softness of her skin, the warmth of her breasts? To taste her? These somewhat vague, but persistent desires haunted me when I grew enmeshed with several of my friends in a stereotypically feminine way. I had several of those kinds of friendships. I made out with my first best friend during some of our sleepovers together, hidden underneath the bedsheets, giggling. I bathed and showered with many of them. We compared each other's bodies in the water, cupping each other's hips and breasts. We masturbated side-by-side, or one of us did while the other watched in girlish amusement. These moments excited me in a way that I was ashamed of, but I couldn’t help it. My heart skipped, I blushed, my palms got damp, and I was overcome by a glorious rush during these interactions. Nonetheless, the tone of these moments were silly, uncomplicated, and filled with that distinct childlike wonderment that only exists in memory. I quickly learned that such simplicity in sexual explorations between other women and myself just didn’t have a place in adult life without consequences.
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