Female Intimacy

How intimate are you willing to be with your female friends? Have you ever snuggled in bed with them? Maybe kissed them? There appears to be a barrier as to what is an acceptable level of intimacy for two heterosexual women to have with each other. Except we're not too keen on the word heterosexual anymore, as we prefer to see sexuality as a spectrum, rather than cut-and-dried.

Society would prefer to see any kind of sexual intimacy between two women as taboo. It's still not keen on lesbians and would rather pretend they didn't exist. Notice the eyebrows raised if two female friends choose to buy a house together. The automatic assumption is that they must be lesbians, not to mention that being a lesbian is a bad thing. Living in this kind of society, therefore, we're experimenting without any kind of guidelines in place. As we've mentioned before, we like the 'Do No Harm' code of ethics; if you're not hurting yourself, the other person or anybody else, then what happens between two consenting adults is up to them.

We do think it's important to experiment though. When women become happy sharing intimacy with each other, rather than believing it has to be kept solely with a man, they will no longer be controlled by peer pressure. When the fear of being labelled a lesbian no longer holds any fear for women, when it no longer has any kind of control over them, they can stop being bitchy towards each other in the workplace, and start supporting and empowering each other instead. In her book, The Hite Report: On Women Loving Women, Shere Hite believes women backstabbing each other is down to this fear of being seen as becoming too intimate with another woman and consequently being labelled a lesbian. Whereas if women are constantly bickering and fighting, no one is going to accuse them of such a thing.

The first step to becoming more intimate with female friends is to realise that there's nothing wrong with it. Cuddling on the settee whilst watching a film, is a perfectly acceptable way for two friends to spend time with each other. If you think this is self-evident and are already intimate with female friends, then congratulations. If the thought scares you, Why does it? Is it the fear of being labelled a lesbian that scares you? If so, realise that society uses this taboo as a very effective weapon for controlling women. If women are afraid to get their intimacy needs met with other women, they can only look to men, which keeps them locked into their reproductive role in society.

It's time for women to cast-off the fear associated with same-sex intimacy and instead treat the taboo with the contempt it deserves.