*Back to Table of Contents* Pgs. 125 - 127 Shyness & Love: Causes, Consequences, and Treatment Dr. Brian G. Gilmartin University Press of America, Inc. 1987 The "Male Lesbian" Concept Another potentially useful diagnostic label is that of "male lesbian". On the surface the whole idea appears ludicrous; everyone knows that lesbians are female homosexuals who want to "make it" vis-a-vis another woman. Yet in selecting the men to be interviewed for this research the seemingly incongruous notion of "male lesbian" kept staring me in the face again and again. For this reason, I don't think that any book pre- tending to be complete on the subject of chronic love-shyness in men can afford to ignore the "male lesbian" idea. Specifically, a "male lesbian" is a heterosexual man who wishes that he had been born a woman, but who (even if he had been a woman) could only make love to another woman and never to a man. Unlike the transsexual, the "male lesbian" does not feel himself to be "a woman trapped inside the body of a man". Moreover, none of the love-shy men studied for this research entertained any wishes or fantasies of any kind pertinent to the idea of obtaining a sex change operation. All wanted to keep their male genitalia; all wanted to remain as males. However, all deeply envied the perogatives of the female gender and truly believed that these perogatives fitted their own inborn temperaments far more harmoniously than the pattern of behavioral expectations to which males are required to adhere. The following represent some typical comments from love-shy males: "From the time I was very, very young, I had always wished that I had been born a girl. I know I would have been much happier as a girl because I have always been attracted to the kinds of things that girls do. But every time I think about how great it would have been if I had been born a girl, I immediately realize that if I had been born a girl I would be a lesbian. I have always strongly disliked the idea of doing anything with my own sex. I despise men. Just thinking about making love to a man, even as a woman, makes me want to throw up! But I would also never want to play football or baseball or any of the other games boys are supposed to like playing. I never wanted to have anything to do with the male sex, on any level. So, like if I had been born a girl as 1 would have wanted, I would definitely be a lesbian because I'd be falling in love with and having sex with girls instead of with men." (40-year old heterosexual love- shy man.) "To be perfectly frank, I don't think I would be shy at all if it wasn't for this goddam norm that says that only the man can make the first move with a woman in asking for dates. I mean if both sexes had equal responsibility for having to suffer the indignity of having to make the first move, I just know I would have been married fourteen or maybe fifteen years ago." (35-year old love-shy man.) "Well, I don't know if I'd actually like to be a woman. All I know is that I've always envied women because they can play the passive role and still get married. I think our society is extremely cruel to men. It treats them like second class citizens all the time while women get treated like prima donnas. When you write your book I hope you emphasize the fact that men have feelings too. I mean, men are human beings too, and they have feelings just as much as any woman does. I think it's rotten and stinking the way it's always the man who is made to suffer--like in the military, for example. Just because a person happens to be a male he has to suffer all the horrors and indignities of the military establishment and the selective slavery system. If you're a man you're not supposed to feel any pain. You're not supposed to have any feelings. You're supposed to be just like a piece of steel and press forward no matter what harm or pain comes to you. Well, I was lucky in being able to avoid the military-- thank God! But when it comes to getting a woman there doesn't seem to be any way of getting around these extremely cruel social rules that insist that only the man can be allowed to make the first approach with a woman .... If I was writing a book on shyness I'd hollar and shout on every page that the only way to solve the problem is to change these cruel social rules. You tell your readers that we've got to change the rules. And we've got to keep telling our daughters from the time they are little that they have just as much responsibility as men for making the first move in starting romantic relationships." (38-year old love-shy man.) Male lesbians differ from both transsexuals and homosexuals in that they cannot conceive of themselves making love to a man. For example, after sex change surgery the male transsexual almost always wants to begin making love to a man AS A WOMAN. The male homosexual wants to make love AS A MAN to a man. The male lesbian, on the other hand, wishes that he had been born a woman. But he always makes it clear that if he indeed had been born a woman he would be a full-fledged lesbian. In other words, he would want to socialize exclusively with women and he would choose female partners exclusively for love-mak- ing and for sexmaking activity. In short, a secret fantasy of many love- shy men is to be a beautiful woman who lives with and makes love with another beautiful woman. The love-shy men studied for this book all reluctantly accepted the fact that they are males. And none of them had ever revealed any trans- vestite tendencies. Thus, none of them had ever experienced any urge to dress up as a woman or to put on lipstick or nail polish, etc. Since they could not be a woman, most of them visualized themselves as a man romancing a beautiful woman. And most of them had begun doing this from a much earlier age in life than had the large majority of non- shy heterosexual men. As the later chapters of this book will clearly demonstrate, many of the love-shy men studied never liked their own gender very much. As young children most of them had avoided playmates of their own sex. And most of them had envied the girls' play groups and play activities. They had come to view conventional societal expectations as cruel and callously insensitive because they perceived the girls' peer groups and play activities as being their "natural terrain". Hence, they had often thought to themselves that if they could only find a way of gaining acceptance into the all-female peer group they would find hap- piness, inner peace and contentment. From a very early age in life onward, the love-shys felt somehow "different" from their male peers. Something inside of themselves told them that they did not belong around male peers. Male peer group activities appeared foreign and often totally unappealing to them. And they tended to view males and their peer group activities with feelings of total and complete alienation and detachment. As one love-shy man expressed it, "Whenever I watched the boys in my school playing I might just as well have been watching a bunch of bear cubs play. I knew they were having a good time; but I just didn't feel that I belonged to their species. I knew that I belonged somewhere else, but I did not know how to find that someplace else." The "someplace else" referred to was, of course, an all-girl peer group. And so the male lesbian (1) does not want to play with males, (2) does not want to make love to or experience sex with males, (3) does not have male recreational interests, and (4) does not even want to procreate male children. The vast majority of the love-shy men interviewed for this book confessed that if they ever did become fathers they would want to have girl children only--NO BOYS. In stark contrast, only one percent of the self-confident, non-shy men felt that way. In fact, the non-shy men preferred the idea of fathering male children to the idea of fathering female children by a ratio of almost three to two.