Where are the happy, chill lesbians?

[TheLobster]

I doubt it is your intent, but your posts on this thread seem to be increasingly hostile toward lesbians, and virtually pathologizing those who write lesbian fiction. Perhaps you should reconsider how you address these issues if you want your points to be considered.

If you doubt that was @Kelliezgirl ’s intent but also remark how her posts seem to be to you, then perhaps it is in fact your attitude that needs adjusting.

Pick up those eggshells instead of forcing us to walk on them.

 

[MelissaBaby]

If you doubt that was @Kelliezgirl ’s intent but also remark how her posts seem to be to you, then perhaps it is in fact your attitude that needs adjusting.

Pick up those eggshells instead of forcing us to walk on them.

I write what I mean and I mean what I write. I have always thought Kellieagirl was a reasonable, thoughtful poster and that she has made defensive posts that are distorting her actual intent.

No one is forcing you to do anything.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Sigh.

I'm giving a five-star rating to five stories of your choice to whoever sticks to the topic.

 

[AwkwardMD]

Sigh.

I'm giving a five-star rating to five stories of your choice to whoever sticks to the topic.

Maybe the better question is, of all the sad lesbian authors, what is it about us that we then also seek community and fellowship here? LC was right. None of the chill ones are here.

Edit: am I answering my own question?

 

[PennyThompson]

Being fairly pansexual, I think I enjoy the more joyful "awakening," lesbian stories, where a woman discovers, either gradually or suddenly, that she's falling for another woman for the first time in her life.

When I was writing Vocational Awe (my only real pure lesbian story, so far) @THBGato advised me to lean into feelings of confusion and doubt and second-guessing.

I think I did that a little bit, but for me the feelings there are more excitement and curiosity... like exploring a new city and finding a new favorite food

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

Here, maybe...

 

[AwkwardMD]

Being fairly pansexual, I think I enjoy the more joyful "awakening," lesbian stories, where a woman discovers, either gradually or suddenly, that she's falling for another woman for the first time in her life.

When I was writing Vocational Awe (my only real pure lesbian story, so far) @THBGato advised me to lean into feelings of confusion and doubt and second-guessing.

I think I did that a little bit, but for me the feelings there are more excitement and curiosity... like exploring a new city and finding a new favorite food

Love that for you

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

Sigh.

I'm giving a five-star rating to five stories of your choice to whoever sticks to the topic.

Which topic?

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Maybe the better question is, of all the sad lesbian authors, what is it about us that we then also seek community and fellowship here? LC was right. None of the chill ones are here.

Edit: am I answering my own question?

That might be true for more than just the lesbians here.

Anyway, after a very long hiatus, I started writing again. It's gonna be a story in this very category, and one about happy and sexy lesbians pursuing love and sex, tinged with gentle d/s themes. There's a love triangle of a sort, there's drama, but also plenty of erotic buildup and sex. And I wonder how I would categorize it in the sense of this topic?
It's like a fifty-fifty in the sense of story vs stroke. There's angst and desire, but it's mostly positively nuanced.

That's one more thing that I realized. While I can certainly appreciate stories about sadness and loss, especially those that progress into something more positive, I find that such stories are a murder for my erotic tendencies. For me, sadness and loss don't mix at all with arousal and sex.

Is that weird?

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

It's gonna be a story in this very category, and one about happy and sexy lesbians pursuing love and sex, tinged with gentle d/s themes. There's a love triangle of a sort, there's drama, but also plenty of erotic buildup and sex. And I wonder how I would categorize it in the sense of this topic?
It's like a fifty-fifty in the sense of story vs stroke. There's angst and desire, but it's mostly positively nuanced.

You could pick up on Heidi and Thea.

Highly successful at business, so much so that they don't have enough time for each other. Insanely attractive and wildly into each other. They make the best of what little time they get, but also 'stray' a bit with full knowledge and consent of the other. In some cases, they even share the third.

I got crap for the third having a dick, but you could take it different way.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

You could pick up on Heidi and Thea.

I assume that's one of your stories?
Anyway, trust me, I don't lack for ideas. There are like ten long stories in my head still waiting to be given life. And I'm already 10k words into the story, which for me is usually just the beginning.

But thanks for the offer, though. And maybe repost that story, this time without fussing about readers' comments.

 

[AwkwardMD]

That might be true for more than just the lesbians here.

Anyway, after a very long hiatus, I started writing again. It's gonna be a story in this very category, and one about happy and sexy lesbians pursuing love and sex, tinged with gentle d/s themes. There's a love triangle of a sort, there's drama, but also plenty of erotic buildup and sex. And I wonder how I would categorize it in the sense of this topic?
It's like a fifty-fifty in the sense of story vs stroke. There's angst and desire, but it's mostly positively nuanced.

That's one more thing that I realized. While I can certainly appreciate stories about sadness and loss, especially those that progress into something more positive, I find that such stories are a murder for my erotic tendencies. For me, sadness and loss don't mix at all with arousal and sex.

Is that weird?

Good for you for writing again.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

Oh well.

 

[JordynRose]

It was just an observation, and I understand the question.

I think I am happy, and laid back.

Hoping everyone a beautiful day.

 

[Euphony]

One thing I couldn't tell from Carroll's paper is whether these studies considered confounding factors.

For instance, poverty is associated with a significant increase in DV rates - rich people aren't necessarily nicer, but people with more money have more options for getting out of bad situations. Queer people tend to have higher rates of poverty than the general population (in particular bi women and trans people generally), so one would expect to see somewhat higher rates of DV in those groups; the question would then be are they higher than normal for straight/cis couples in similar economic situations?

Yeah, there are plenty of nebulous areas seemingly unconsidered by the study (linked) most of those articles seem to be relying on. Affluence levels relative to a demographic certainly seems like it would factor.

Also, men seem more unlikely to report (given the societal pressures/weird "ideal masculinity" going around) So it's not that lesbian partners experience more violence, they feel safer in reporting it, less fear of social consequences for doing so, and less hit to the ego.

So far the data seems more pop science to draw conclusions from than is good practice.

 

[Euphony]

Don't mind me, I've had a crush on Shirley for a long long time and this song just fit the thread... And makes me happy.

Shirley and co. are top tier from that era. Always felt they never got their due but also didn't feel like they were chasing it either.

Sure I'm speaking to the choir but Garbage's B-sides (not just the collection album but international singles and beyond) are EXCEPTIONAL.

The albums proper are great but so many of the singles elevate even beyond the bangers on even self titled or 2.0 peak.

I honestly think they didn't get hassled by the A&R suits as much with the small stuff which allowed them to experiment.

And Garbage really shines when they Push It (the envelop.)

Their singles catalog is maybe the best I know.

 

[EmilyMiller]

So far the data seems more pop science to draw conclusions from than is good practice.

To anyone with a background in publishing in top tier peer-reviewed journals in an at least semi-numerate field, these papers are a house of cards based on meta analyses of data,which was often collected for a different purpose, or via unpublished questions with who knows what bias. The methodologies that I can discern seem flawed, and the data volumes low. And, to borrow a phrase, there is more than one review paper with an agenda forward perspective.

I’m not going to comment on them any more as I don’t think they merit any further comment. People will believe whatever they want to believe. But science is not about belief.

 

[FrancesScott]

But it feels like LS really likes sad angsty women crying about their extremely dramatic internal or interpersonal conflicts.

This meets your [relatively] happy, chilled criteria:

https://www.literotica.com/s/bilingual

This meets your [relatively] sad angsty women criteria for much of the text (like men never get sad or angsty):

https://www.literotica.com/s/the-soldiers-widow

This is somewhere in between, and plays with the male gaze on lesbians in that I tried to come up with a credible reason why a man might become part of an otherwise happy / healthy lesbian relationship (it’s a fantasy, not political polemic):

https://www.literotica.com/s/open-wide-16

Your original question was clumsily put and disrespectful to some fine authors, but it was when you started comparing lesbians to people in incestuous relationships that it went totally off the rails. I suspect this was an offhand comment that you probably regret now.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Thank you.

Unfortunately, all I write are the sad ones.

https://www.literotica.com/s/the-dress-18

I guess it starts off sad but it doesn't stay there.

 

[Bramblethorn]

https://www.census.gov/library/stor...income-than-opposite-sex-married-couples.html

Overall, same-sex married couples had a higher median household income than opposite-sex married couples: $107,200 and $96,930, respectively.

And if you stick one hand in boiling water and the other in an ice bucket, on average you're comfortable.

The median, by definition, tells you how the middle of a given population is doing. It doesn't tell you very much about what things look like at the extremes.

Some other issues here:

• "Same-sex married couples" is of course not the same thing as same-sex couples generally.
• Because ACS depends on asking "Relationship to householder" (first person on the form), what they're really counting is not even "same-sex married couples" but "same-sex married couples of whom one is the 'householder' and who felt comfortable with telling the government they were in a same-sex relationship".

That "householder" bit is particularly an issue with poverty, because poor people are often doing things like couch-surfing or living with parents, in which case they're not going to be 'householder' on the form.

It's one of the limitations of both the US and Australian census systems: the data collection was designed around an assumption of a nuclear family where Person 1 and 2 will be husband and wife (usually in that order), with everybody else defined by their relationship to those two people. It's not suited to capturing relationships between people who aren't the home-owner/primary rent-payer.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Shirley and co. are top tier from that era. Always felt they never got their due but also didn't feel like they were chasing it either.

Sure I'm speaking to the choir but Garbage's B-sides (not just the collection album but international singles and beyond) are EXCEPTIONAL.

The albums proper are great but so many of the singles elevate even beyond the bangers on even self titled or 2.0 peak.

I honestly think they didn't get hassled by the A&R suits as much with the small stuff which allowed them to experiment.

And Garbage really shines when they Push It (the envelop.)

Their singles catalog is maybe the best I know.

I saw their 30th anniversary tour - it was amazing.

Crying shame Shirley isn't a lesbian, though. Or remotely queer, or polyamorous, or met me...

 

[AwkwardMD]

https://www.literotica.com/s/the-dress-18

I guess it starts off sad but it doesn't stay there.

No, you're right. They don't all end that way anymore.

That's the great part about therapy.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Yeah, there are plenty of nebulous areas seemingly unconsidered by the study (linked) most of those articles seem to be relying on. Affluence levels relative to a demographic certainly seems like it would factor.

Also, men seem more unlikely to report (given the societal pressures/weird "ideal masculinity" going around) So it's not that lesbian partners experience more violence, they feel safer in reporting it, less fear of social consequences for doing so, and less hit to the ego.

This would be more of an issue if the data were based on DV reported to police, but basically nobody depends on police reports for this type of research. For just about any crime that doesn't leave a dead body, it's a known issue that a LOT of cases never make it onto a police record, and differing legal standards make it hard to do meaningful comparisons between places/across time. So the gold standard is to use a survey approach with interviewers who are trained to deal with sensitive topics and under assurances of confidentiality. I'm not sure of the US legalities, but in Australia it would be illegal (with a significant risk of jail time) to disclose anything from that survey that would identify an individual.

So social consequences aren't a consideration - at least, for people who trust those assurances - and this leads to much better reporting rates. This is where those "only X% of [crime] gets reported to police" type stats come from - using the survey approach to estimate the true incidence, then comparing to the police numbers.

 

[Britva415]

I have, in the past, had many friends of all "orientations"

What's the thought process behind the decision to put orientations in quotes? I'm not assuming any bad faith but doing that kind of makes it seem like you don't like the concept or don't believe in the concept of sexual orientations. I'm positive that this isn't where you're coming from but I can't figure out where this did.

please pardon my use of the obsolete term, "gay" clubs

Say what? Is that a UK thing? I haven't heard a word about this being obsolete, but I'm in California. Maybe it's a regional thing. If it's obsolete, what replaced it?

 

[Kelliezgirl]

And if you stick one hand in boiling water and the other in an ice bucket, on average you're comfortable.

The median, by definition, tells you how the middle of a given population is doing. It doesn't tell you very much about what things look like at the extremes.

Some other issues here:

• "Same-sex married couples" is of course not the same thing as same-sex couples generally.
• Because ACS depends on asking "Relationship to householder" (first person on the form), what they're really counting is not even "same-sex married couples" but "same-sex married couples of whom one is the 'householder' and who felt comfortable with telling the government they were in a same-sex relationship".

That "householder" bit is particularly an issue with poverty, because poor people are often doing things like couch-surfing or living with parents, in which case they're not going to be 'householder' on the form.

It's one of the limitations of both the US and Australian census systems: the data collection was designed around an assumption of a nuclear family where Person 1 and 2 will be husband and wife (usually in that order), with everybody else defined by their relationship to those two people. It's not suited to capturing relationships between people who aren't the home-owner/primary rent-payer.

You start off with a metaphor about "on average" but a median value isn't an average. That would be the mean. Also it doesn't tell you how they are doing, tells you where the dividing line is.

Same sex married couples is relevant because you were discussing the divorce rate. If you aren't married, by definition you can't get divorced.

There are certainly some statistical challenges, but saying, "queer people are poorer ergo..." doesn't really answer the mail.