The Hasbian Decade

Oh brother. In another one of their meant-to-cause-outrage pieces, Details Magazine says there's a new "trend" of lesbians dating straight men. Because their biological clocks are ticking and they need a baby. Also, the "novelty" of lesbianism has worn off.

There are no reliable statistics by which to gauge how many refugees there are from the isle of Lesbos. Nor could there be: Bisexual women, for instance, don't have to "switch teams" to enter into relationships with men, even if they've lived with other women for decades. But if the hasbian (and for simplicity's sake, we'll include bisexuals who've shifted from women to men) really is having a coming-out moment, it might be because the lesbian had her big coming-out moment in the nineties—the decade that saw Cindy Crawford shaving k.d. lang on the cover of Vanity Fair, the birth of Lilith Fair, and the mainstream popularity of lesbian-friendly folksingers like DiFranco, the Indigo Girls, and Dar Williams, not to mention a slew of literal "coming-out moments" set off by Ellen's "Yep, I'm gay" in 1997.

Today, The L Word has come and gone, Katy Perry has qualified her confession about kissing a girl with "I hope my boyfriend don't mind it," and the tabloids are far more preoccupied with LiLo's dropout antics than with her sexuality—just as we are more compelled by Rachel Maddow's intelligence than by her orientation. It's safe to say the novelty has faded. A woman who began her sexual exploration in the lesbian-leaning nineties would be in her thirties now. Is it unreasonable to suggest her biological clock could also affect her sexual proclivities?

I'm trying to think of something pithy to add, but mostly I'm just pithed.