Phallocentrism and Lesbianism

I have a theory that in general society, it is easier to be a gay man than a gay woman, due to mysogyny. This mysogyny takes two forms:

1. There are elements of mysogyny in certain male homosexual communities, and though these communities are a minority, there is not the same level of misandry in lesbian communities.

2. Our society is extremely phallocentric. Gay men do not negate the need for the phallus, thus they are not a threat to phallocentrism. Lesbian women however, negate the need for a phallus in order to acheive sexual pleasure. This is threatening not only to the phallocentric structure of our patriarchal society, but also the psyches of invidual men, who have been taught that their worth is in their penis, and in women's need for that penis in order to achieve orgasm.*

Thus, the media tends to portray lesbians as extremely butch and masculine, depriving them of womanhood by attributing to them characeristics associated with phalluses. It is common to envision butch/feminine couples, implying that the phallus - or at least markers that stand in for it - is still a part of lesbian relationships.

The other media trend is to fetishize lesbians. This places them in the phallocentric framework, where now their desires are being appropriated in order to stimulate the phallus - their phallus-less relationship is ok as long as it still serves the needs of the phallus in some way. Furthermore, this fetishization often transforms lesbians into bisexuals, therefore a) making the fantasy more "real" because the girls making out might let the man in on the action for a menage a trois b) putting back in the need for the phallus: Now the need for cunt is in addition to, not instead of, the need for the penis. This especially true because the media image of the bisexual (somehow media bisexuals are all women, where have the male ones dissapeared to?) seems to be that she needs both a man and a woman to feel satisfied, while in reality, most bisexuals are capable of being stasified in a monogomous relationship with either/or, making the phallus a possibility, but not a requirement, for sexual satisfaction.


* As a matter of fact, our society's entire definition of sex as penatration, and of sexual pleasure as orgasm, is both heteronormative and phallocentric.