By Karley Sciortino //
I’m a straight, 35-year-old mother of two, and I’ve been plagued with a question that I find rather confusing. So, lesbians use dildoes, toys, etc. It’s erotic, toys makes you come faster, and you get orgasms one after the other—great, right? But where is the intimacy? The sex is erotic, and more orgasms, I get it, but in terms of actually making love, where is the passion? Don’t you need a balance? How do lesbians make love with meaningful intensity? I’m an avid porn watcher and recently my husband wanted to watch lesbian porn. I watched too, and it was interesting, however I wondered about the intimacy level. I suppose gays can hold each other and kiss whilst making love, and straight people can use a dildo, which kind of makes this questionable. I am not being offensive, I am just really curious. Annabel
As someone who’s had serious relationships with both men and women, I feel very adept at answering this question. (Like sometimes I’m realistically just taking a stab in the dark, ya know? But this one I got.) First of all, I need to stress that lesbian porn has nothing to do with how two women actually have sex! Like at all. 99% of the time, lesbian porn is a fantasy scenario created for straight men, where feminine, mostly-heterosexual women are touching and licking each other in a way that displays their bodies for a male audience. Believe me, in the “real world” it’s not normal for two college roommates to spend their afternoons in full makeup and thigh-highs, using a double-ended dildo on the kitchen floor and then fucking each other with their high heels… or whatever. Lesbian sex can be equally as loving, intense and transcendent—and equally as disappointing and detached—as straight sex.
I’m kind of amazed, sort of in a good way, that you asked this question, because I feel like the stereotype of lesbian sex tends to be the exact opposite of this. When people think of two girls banging, they tend to think of something really romantic, slow, sensual—basically, “feelings-ey”—because, unlike men, women are reductively thought to be “super emotional” and to need a deep connection with someone in order to enjoy sex with them. Whereas straight sex is known to range from incredibly loving, to kinky, to boring, to blacked-out Tinder hook-ups. Since I’ve been with my girlfriend, I often feel I have to fight to be like, “Hey, we can be disgusting and dirty too!” Maybe you should watch Blue is the Warmest Color, because there’s a few very intense lesbian sex scenes in that movie that are very passionate, loving and hot, and don’t involve toys at all (or, there’s no toys as far as I can remember). Also, the Chilean movie Young and Wild, about a bisexual sex blogger, has some very realistic lesbian sex in it.
Also, not all lesbians use toys. My girlfriend and I hardly ever use them. Maybe 40% of the time I use a vibrator, but that ratio is about the same as when I’m having sex with men. We’ve used a strap-on like 4 times ever in almost 3 years, and every time we use it I’m just loling to myself about the fact that we’re using a giant plastic purple fake dick.
But all of this is kind of beside the point, because the use of sex toys doesn’t determine whether a sexual experience is intimate or not. Intimacy is certainly not about toys, and it’s about a lot more than just sex— it’s about connecting with another person on an emotional level. Sure, a vibrator can help you cum, but the cumming is really secondary to the closeness you feel for your partner anyway. And yes, as you put it: “gays can hold each other and kiss whilst making love.” Lol, duh! Gay people are just people—shock, horror!—and gay sex is just sex.
