gotta say, as a queer woman i kind of hate that thing where there's a man in a relationship with a woman and you ship him with another man, so you say "oh, it's fine, don't worry about it, she's a lesbian."
if you're interested in her as a character, and you think she's queer, you'd write that story, you know? you'd write about her stuck in that marriage trying to breathe, and you'd write about her faltering weird intense friendships with other women, and you'd be interested in the woman she finally leaves her husband for. but that story doesn't exist. instead, you get a throwaway line or two in the story about her husband or her boyfriend or her best friend with romantic tension, who doesn't love her anymore.
so you gotta think: this is a story where the writer wanted to break up or desexualize or deromanticize this relationship between a man and a woman, but they're not a dick, so they don't want to character bash her, so instead of writing her being an evil bitch*, they go "it's okay, she's a lesbian," and then that gives them the out. like her being a lesbian is a get-out-of-jail-free card for the writer, who no longer has to worry about how she fits into the story—don't worry, fellas! she's a lesbian. she's out of the picture. case closed.
and that's also a way of defanging the flaws of the man in that relationship, you know? he's not an asshole for ignoring her or cheating on her or forgetting about her, it was all just a big misunderstanding. he's gay, she's gay, they can be Best Friends (who somehow never get much page time, and if they DO, it's all her absolving him of wrongdoing and encouraging him to go after his man.)
i do really hate the conversations they have where The Newly Out Lesbian tells the Man Who Now Suspects He Might Be Gay that he's just being so stupid and why doesn't he just talk to the other guy and if he weren't so oblivious he would have realized sooner that there's never really been anything between them. I hate it when she holds his hand like he's a little baby and then hits him gently on top of the head with a rolled up newspaper. don't worry, she's beyond his power to hurt! She's not a person who can be wounded by her partner falling out of love with her, she's a Lesbian, and Lesbians exist on a higher plane that is mysteriously beyond the story's power to really pay attention to. why are you flattening both of them out like that??? isn't it better to just acknowledge that he did something that hurt her, regardless of whatever their sexualities are??
anyway i'm much more interested in stories about infidelity where the cheated-on partner is actually getting their heart broken, you know?
i don't want to see this cheated-on woman smile beatifically and say "it's okay, it's better this way, I'm going off with my Companion who you've never heard me mention before and we'll live down the block and meet every day for coffee at Central Perk," I want her to throw a vase at his head and then still have to coparent with him afterward. I want her to get to be sad!! I want her to get to be angry!! I want him to have to deal with having hurt her!! I want him to deal with the consequences of having hidden the truth or made this discovery!!
I'm not interested in configuring events such that the guy cheating on his wife never did anything wrong, I'm way more interested in just letting him have done something wrong. You can hurt somebody and still be following your heart! You can hurt somebody and save your life at the same time! and that's juicy, that's interesting, that's messy and a problem and a story I want to read about.
and then if she turns out to be queer after all, I want to read the story about that. maybe he cheats on her and that's awful and in the disillusionment afterward she goes and cries on her best friend's shoulder and says something about how she's through with men, absolutely through, and her best friend kisses her temple and promises to kill him, if she wants, and later she goes to the bathroom and looks at the smudge of lip gloss on her forehead and it makes her stomach do a flip. maybe she starts having a crisis and then six months later she's supposed to be having a custody discussion with her cheating ex and instead they end up getting drunk together while she asks him how he did it, how did he figure it out, and he lifts his head up from the bartop, hopeful as a kicked dog and is like does this mean you're considering forgiving me, and she's like no! fuck you. buy me another drink. is it different, being with him versus being with me? and if it's different, how is it different?
do you see what i'm saying??
*of course there still are people who character bash and write her off as an evil bitch. fuck those people, but this isn't about them.
