Straight Girls Kissing

labrys, études féministes/ estudos feministas
janvier /juin 2011 -jameiro /junho 2011

Leila J. Rupp and Verta Taylor

Abstract

This article explores the common phenomenon on U.S. college campuses of presumably heterosexual women kissing and making out with other women. The reigning assumption is that they do it to attract attention from men. While that is sometimes the reason, it is also the case that some women use the hookup culture to experiment with or engage in same-sex sexual interactions. Thus what young women call “heteroflexibility” allows for behavior outside one’s claimed sexual identity, although the lines between lesbian and non-lesbian women, whether heterosexual or bisexual, remain firmly in place.

straight girls kissing

The phenomenon of presumably straight girls kissing and making out with other girls at college parties and at bars is everywhere in contemporary popular culture, from Kate Perry’s hit song, “I Kissed a Girl” to a Tyra Banks online poll on attitudes toward girls who kiss girls in bars to AskMen.com’s “Top 10: Chick Kissing Scenes.” Why do girls who aren’t lesbians kiss girls? Some think it’s just another example of “girls gone wild,” seeking to attract the boys who watch. Others, such as psychologist Lisa Diamond, point to women’s “sexual fluidity,” suggesting that the behavior could be part of how women shape their sexual identities, even using a heterosexual social scene as a way to transition to a bisexual or lesbian identity.

kissing and the construction of sexuality

These speculations touch on a number of issues in the sociology of sexuality. The fact that young women on college campuses are engaging in new kinds of sexual behaviors brings home the fundamental concept of the social construction of sexuality—that whom we desire, what kinds of sexual acts we engage in, and how we identify sexually is profoundly shaped by the societies in which we live. Furthermore, boys enjoying the sight of girls making out recalls the feminist notion of the “male gaze,” calling attention to the power embodied in men as viewers and women as the viewed. The sexual fluidity that is potentially embodied in women’s intimate interactions in public reminds us that sexuality is gendered and that sexual desire, sexual behavior, and sexual identity do not always match. That is, men do not, at least in contemporary American culture, experience the same kind of fluidity. Although they may identify as straight and have sex with other men, they certainly don’t make out at parties for the pleasure of women.

The hookup culture on college campuses, as depicted in another article in this issue, facilitates casual sexual interactions (ranging from kissing and making out to oral sex and intercourse) between students who meet at parties or bars. Our campus is no exception. The University of California, Santa Barbara, has a long-standing reputation as a party school (much to the administration’s relief, it’s declining in those rankings). In a student population of twenty thousand, more than half of the students are female and slightly under half are students of color, primarily Chicano/Latino and Asian American. About a third are first-generation college students. Out of over two thousand female UC Santa Barbara students who responded to sociologist Paula England’s online College and Social Life Survey on hooking-up practices on campus, just under one percent identified as homosexual, three percent as bisexual, and nearly two percent as “not sure.”

National data on same-sex sexuality shows that far fewer people identify as lesbian or gay than are sexually attracted to the same sex or have engaged in same-sex sexual behavior. Sociologist Edward Laumann and his colleagues, in the National Health and Social Life Survey, found that less than two percent of women identified as lesbian or bisexual, but over eight percent had experienced same-sex desire or engaged in lesbian sex. The opposite is true for men, who are more likely to have had sex with a man than to report finding men attractive. Across time and cultures, and, as sociologist Jane Ward has pointed out, even in the present among white straight-identified men, sex with other men, as long as a man plays the insertive role in a sexual encounter, can bolster, rather than undermine, heterosexuality. Does the same work for women?

The reigning assumption about girls kissing girls in the party scene is that they do it to attract the attention of men. But the concept of sexual fluidity and the lack of fit among desire, behavior, and identity suggest that there may be more going on than meets the male gaze. A series of formal and informal interviews with diverse female college students at our university, conducted by undergraduates as part of a class assignment, supports the sociological scholarship on the complexity of women’s sexuality.

the college party scene

What is most distinctive about UC Santa Barbara is the adjacent community of Isla Vista, a densely populated area made up of two-third students and one-third primarily poor and working-class Mexican American families. House parties, fraternity and sorority parties, dance parties (often with, as one woman student put it, “some sort of slutty theme to them”), and random parties open to anyone who stops by flourish on the weekends. Women students describe Isla Vista as “unrealistic to the rest of the world… It’s a little wild,” “Very promiscuous, a lot of experimenting and going crazy,” and “like a sovereign nation…a space where people feel really comfortable to let down their guards and to kind of let loose.” Alcohol flows freely, drugs are available, women sport skimpy clothing, and students engage in a lot of hooking up. One sorority member described parties as featuring “a lot of, you know, sexual dance. And some people, you know, like pretty much are fucking on the dance floor even though they’re really not. I feel like they just take it above and beyond.” Another student thinks “women have a little bit more freedom here.” But despite the unreality of life in Isla Vista, there’s no reason to think life here is fundamentally different than on other large campuses.

At Isla Vista parties, the practice of presumably heterosexual women kissing and making out with other women is widespread. As one student reported, “It’s just normal for most people now, friends make out with each other.” The student newspaper sex columnist in October 2008 began her column, “I kissed a girls and liked it,” recommending that “if you’re a girl who hasn’t quite warmed up to a little experimentation with one of your own, then I suggest you grab a gal and get to it.” She posed the “burning question on every male spectator’s mind . . . Is it real or is it for show?” As it turns out, students offered three different explanations of why students do this: to get attention from men, to experiment with same-sex activity, and out of same-sex desire.

getting attention

Girls kissing other girls can be a turn-on for men in our culture, as the girls who engage in it well know. A student told us, “It’s usually for display for guys who are usually surrounding them and like cheering them on. And it seems to be done in order to like, you know, for the guys, not like for their own pleasure or desire, but to like, I don’t know, entertain the guys.” Alcohol is usually involved: “It’s usually brought on by, I don’t know, like shots or drinking, or people kind of saying something to like cheer it on or whatever. And it’s usually done in order to turn guys on or to seek male attention in some way.” One student who admits to giving her friend what she calls “love pecks” and engaging in some “booby grabbing” says “I think it’s mainly for attention definitely. It’s usually girls that are super drunk that are trying to get attention from guys or are just really just having fun like when my roommate and I did it at our date party… It is alcohol and for show. Not experimentation at all.” Another student, who has had her friends kiss her, insists that “they do that for attention… kind of like a circle forms around them… egging them on or taking pictures.” One woman admitted that she puckered up for the attention, but when asked if it had anything to do with experimentation, added “maybe with some people. I think for me it was a little bit, yeah.”

experimentation

Other women agree that experimentation is part of the story. One student who identifies as straight says “I have kissed girls on multiple occasions.” One night she and a friend were “hammered, walking down the street, and we’re getting really friendly and just started making out and taking pictures,” which they then posted on Facebook. “And then the last time, this is a little bit more personal, but was when I actually had a threesome. Which was at a party and obviously didn’t happen during the party.” She mentions “bisexual tendencies” as an explanation, in addition to getting attention: “I would actually call it maybe more like experimentation.” Another student, who calls herself straight but “bi-curious,” says girls do it for attention, but also, “It’s a good time for them, something they may not have the courage to express themselves otherwise, if they’re in a room alone, it makes them more comfortable with it because other people are receiving pleasure from them.” She told us about being drunk at a theme party (“Alice in Fuckland”): “And me and ‘Maria’ just started going at it in the kitchen. And this dude, he whispers in my ear, ‘Everyone’s watching. People can see you.’ But me and ‘Maria’ just like to kiss. I don’t think it was like really a spectacle thing, like we weren’t teasing anybody. We just like to make out. So we might be an exception to the rule,” she giggled.

In another interview, a student described a friend as liking “boys and girls when she’s drunk… But when she’s sober she’s starting to like girls.” And another student who called herself “technically” bisexual explained that she hates that term because in Isla Vista “it basically means that you make out with girls at parties.” Before her first relationship with a woman, she never thought about bisexuality: “The closest I ever came to thinking that was, hey, I’d probably make out with a girl if I was drinking.” These stories make clear that experimentation in the heterosexual context of the hookup culture and college party scene provides a safe space for some women to explore non-heterosexual possibilities.

same-sex desire

Some women go beyond just liking to make out and admit to same-sex desire as the motivating factor. One student who defined her sexuality as liking sex with men but feeling “attracted more towards girls than guys” described her coming out process as realizing, “I really like girls and I really like kissing girls.” Said another student, “I’ve always considered myself straight, but since I’ve been living here I’ve had several sexual experiences with women. So I guess I would consider myself, like, bisexual at this point.” She at first identified as “one of those girls” who makes out at parties, but then admitted that she also had sexual experiences with women in private. At this point she shifted her identification to bisexual: “I may have fallen into that trap of like kissing a girl to impress a guy, but I can’t really recollect doing that on purpose. It was more of just my own desire to be with, like to try that with a woman.” Another bisexual woman who sometimes makes out with one of her girlfriends in public thinks other women might “only do it in a public setting because they’re afraid of that side of their sexuality, because they were told to be heterosexual you know… So if they make out, it’s only for the show of it, even though they may like it they can’t admit that they do.”

The ability to kiss and make out with girls in public without having to declare a lesbian or bisexual identity makes it possible for women with same-sex desires to be part of the regular college party scene, and the act of making out in public has the potential to lead to more extensive sexual activity in private. One student described falling in love with her best friend in middle school, but being “too chicken shit to make the first move” because “I never know if they are queer or not.” Her first sexual relationship with a bisexual woman included the woman’s boyfriend as well. In this way, the fact that some women have their first same-sex sexual encounter in a threesome with a man is an extension of the safe heterosexual space for exploring same-sex desire.

heteroflexibility

Obviously, in at least some cases, more is going on here than drunken women making out for the pleasure of men. Sexual fluidity is certainly relevant; in Lisa Diamond’s ten-year study of young women who originally identified as lesbian or bisexual, she found a great deal of movement in sexual desire, intimate relationships, and sexual identities. The women moved in all directions, from lesbian to bisexual and heterosexual, bisexual to lesbian and heterosexual, and, notably, from all identities to “unlabeled.” From a psychological perspective, Diamond argues for the importance of both biology and culture in shaping women as sexually fluid, with a greater capacity for attractions to both female and male partners than men. Certainly the women who identify as heterosexual but into kissing other women fit her notion of sexual fluidity. Said one straight-identified student, “It’s not like they’re way different from anyone else. They’re just making out.”

Mostly, though, students didn’t think that making out had any impact on one’s identity as heterosexual: “And yeah, I imagine a lot of the girls that you know just casually make out with their girlfriends would consider themselves straight. I consider myself straight.” Said another, “I would still think they’re straight girls. Unless I saw some, like level of like emotional and like attraction there.” A bisexual student, though, thought “they’re definitely bi-curious at the least… I think that a woman who actually does it for enjoyment and like knows that she likes that and that she desires it again, I would say would be more leaning towards bisexual.”

everybody but lesbians

So, although girls who kiss girls are not “different from anyone else,” if they have an emotional reaction or really enjoy it or want to do it again, then they’ve apparently crossed the line of heterosexuality. Diamond found that lesbians in her study who had been exclusively attracted to and involved with other women were the only group that didn’t report changes in their sexual identities. Sociologist Arlene Stein, in her study of lesbian feminist communities in the 1980s, also painted a picture of boundary struggles around the identity “lesbian.” Women who developed relationships with men but continued to identify as lesbians were called “ex-lesbians” or “fakers” by those who considered themselves “real lesbians.” And while straight college students today can make out with women and call themselves “bi-curious” without challenge to their heterosexual identity, the same kind of flexibility does not extend to lesbians. A straight, bi-curious woman explained that she didn’t think “the lesbian community would accept me right off because I like guys too much, you know.” And she didn’t think she had “enough sexual experience with the women to be considered bisexual.” Another student, who described herself as “a free flowing spirit” and has had multiple relationships with straight-identified women, rejected the label “lesbian” because “I like girls” but “guys are still totally attractive to me.” She stated that “to be a lesbian meant… you’d have to commit yourself to it one hundred percent. Like you’d have to be in it sexually, you’d have to be in it emotionally. And I think if you were you wouldn’t have that attraction for men… if you were a lesbian.”

In contrast to “heteroflexibility,” a term much in use by young women, students hold a much more rigid, if unarticulated, notion of lesbian identity. “It’s just like it’s okay because we’re both drunk and we’re friends. It’s not like we identify as lesbian in any way… .” One woman who has kissed her roommate is sure that she can tell the difference between straight women and lesbians: “I haven’t ever seen like an actual like lesbian couple enjoying themselves.” Another commented, “I mean, it’s one thing if you are, if you do identify as gay and that you’re expressing something.” A bisexual woman is less sure, at first stating that eighty percent of the making out at parties is for men, then hesitating because “that totally excludes the queer community and my own viewing of like women who absolutely love other women, and they show that openly so, I think that it could be either context.” At that point she changed the percentage to fifty percent: “Cause I guess I never know if a woman is like preferably into women or if it’s more of a social game.” A bisexual woman described kissing her girlfriend at a party “and some guy came up and poured beer on us and said something like ‘stop kissing her you bitch,’” suggesting that any sign that women are kissing for their own pleasure puts them over the line. She went on to add that “we’ve gotten plenty of guys staring at us though, when we kiss or whatever, [and] they think that we’re doing it for them, or we want them to join or whatever. It gets pretty old.”

So there is a lot of leeway for women’s same-sex behavior with a straight identity. But it is different than for straight men, who experience their same-sex interactions in a more private space, away from the gaze of women. Straight women can be “barsexual” or “bi-curious” or “mostly straight,” but too much physical attraction or emotional investment crosses over the line of heterosexuality. What this suggests is that heterosexual women’s options for physical intimacy are expanding, although such activity has little salience for identity, partner choice, or political allegiances. But the line between lesbian and non-lesbian, whether bisexual or straight, remains firmly intact.

Bibliography:

DDDiamond, Lisa M. 2009. Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women’s Love and Desire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Hamilton, Laura. 2007. “Trading on Heterosexuality: College Women’s Gender Strategies and Homophobia.” Gender & Society 21: 145.

Stein, Arlene. 1997. Sex and Sensibility: Stories of a Lesbian Generation. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Thompson, Elisabeth Morgan and Elizabeth M. Morgan. 2008. “’Mostly Straight’ Young Women: Variations in Sexual Behavior and Identity Development.”Developmental Psychology 44/1: 15–21.

Ward, Jane. 2008. “Dude-Sex: White Masculinities and ‘Authentic’ Heterosexuality Among Dudes Who Have Sex With Dudes.” Sexualities 11: 414-434.

[published also in Contexts 9/3 (Summer 2010), 28-32]

Biographies:

Leila J. Rupp is Professor of Feminist Studies and Associate Dean of the Division of Social Sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is author of Mobilizing Women for War: German and American Propaganda, 1939-1945 (1978), Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women’s Movement (1997), A Desired Past: A Short History of Same-Sex Sexuality in America (1999), Sapphistries: A Global History of Love Between Women (2009); and coauthor with Verta Taylor of Survival in the Doldrums: The American Women’s Rights Movement, 1945 to the 1960s (1987) and Drag Queens at the 801 Cabaret (2003). She is also coeditor of the 7^th and 8^th editions of Feminist Frontiers.

Verta Taylor is Professor and Chair of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is coauthor with Leila J. Rupp of Drag Queens at the 801 Cabaret, which won the 2005 book award from the Sex and Gender section of the American Sociological Association, and Survival in the Doldrums : The American Women's Rights Movement, 1945 to the 1960s; author of Rock-a-by Baby: Feminism, Self-Help and Postpartum Depression (1996); and co-editor of 8 editions of Feminist Frontiers. Her articles on the women’s movement, the gay and lesbian movement, and social movement theory have appeared in journals such as The American Sociological Review, Signs, Social Problems, Mobilization, Gender & Society, Qualitative Sociology, Journal of Women’s History, and Journal of Homosexuality.

labrys, études féministes/ estudos feministas
janvier /juin 2011 -jameiro /junho 2011