The other day I used the “girls don’t have penises so they use their fingers” shortcut to define lesbian sex. I felt quite ashamed later of its imprecision and crassness.
- For one, men use fingers too with women and men, and women use fingers with men. In other words, fingers are not alternative to penises.
- For two, sexual activity is not limited to fingers and penises, nor is it limited to insertion of tubular objects inside orifices. People use hands, lips, tongues, teeth, bellies, backs, shoulders, knees, elbows, arms, feet…
- But then my imprecise and crass formulation also lent itself to the general assumption that women lack something very important and they need to make do with something — in this case fingers — that is vastly inferior.
- Lesbian sex is sex and hetero sex is sex and gay sex is sex and all manner of sex is sex and I am not going to define sex here, but if you think it’s sex and it feels like sex, for the intents and purposes of its validity to you (i.e. not in relation to legal standards, necessarily) it’s sex and it is not better or worse or superior or inferior to anyone else’s sex so you get to have sex any damn way you please.
inside(r) psychoanalysis 