The 'jury' scene (and Lesbian identity)

The one with Daria, after she has just had sex with a man, and she imagines a group of Lesbians accosting her in the street and pulling her into a dark room for an interrogation.

** The rest of my post assumes you've seen the movie**

The ensuing "interrogation" shocked--and pleasantly surprised---me in its willingness to go where few other lesbian media or pop culture dare to go.

Each queer subculture has its own bugaboo, the things that many perceive to strike against that subculture's identity and thus, that they try to tamp down and deny evidence of, to make taboo. For the Gay culture, perhaps one bugaboo would be the existence and legitimate social place of bisexual men (and the attendant fact that some bisexual men feel pressured to exert a Gay identity and hide their attractions to women).

For Lesbian culture, it would be a dogged refusal to accept that many women who identify as Lesbian are not homosexual per se, that the Lesbian community contains many women who are bisexual in sexual orientation but who prefer women on an emotional basis, and even a few who are heterosexual in orientation but have experienced episodes of sexual fluidity (usually tied to their emotional bond to another woman) towards women. (As to the latter case, we have only to view the actress Cynthia Nixon's recent dismissal of her 40+ years lifetime of self-admitted sexual desire for men and her emphatic statement, 'I'm gay now' and coming out as a Lesbian spokeswoman simply because she experienced sexual desire towards a woman whom she loved enough to enter into a relationship.)

In short, few acknowledge that the word "Lesbian" is not synonymous with "homosexual," that it is instead an identity badge, a sub-culture, a way to carve out a space for women who want relationships and emotional connections with other women alone. Within that Lesbian umbrella is a wide spectrum of different sexual orientations--homosexual, bisexual, and yes, even heterosexual in a few cases---and instances of fluidity running both ways. But they are all united in their self-identification as Lesbian, and for them (and ultimately, for Daria), that's the controlling factor in their identities and attendant life choices.

This whole movie, Go Fish , is a testament to the power and cohesion of "Lesbian" as an identity group. Much of the dialogue--like the dialogue of other lesbian-produced film and TV, such as Exes and Ohs (2007) --centers on "what Lesbians act like" and "what Lesbians want" and "Lesbian tastes and preferences in fashion, movies, dating, etc."

If you sit for a second and think about it, you will realize that these sub-cultural quirks and preferences cannot possibly be "the quirks and preferences of all women who are proactively sexually attracted only to women as a category and feel no sexual interest in men as a category." As many high femme homosexual women, non-Western homosexual women, and politically conservative/corporate shark-type homosexual women serve as living proof, there is nothing about consistent, born-this-way homosexual desires that compel one to like certain styles of music, drink certain types of beverages, dress certain ways, have certain dating interests or behaviors, or so forth. Sexual orientations in their rawest, most clinically-measurable form are independent of such socio-political trimmings.

No, these quirks and preferences are, rather, the communally-created ones of a particular identity group: [Western] women who feel a strong connection--whether sexual, emotional, or both--with women; who want to be part of a 'community' of other women who identify the same way; and who want others around them to be aware that they have no interest in formally dating or entering into a relationship with a man. Thus, "Lesbian" as a badge of identity is born and flourishes among those of like mind. (And more power to them).

The "jury scene" in Go Fish is powerful because it confronts the fiction that all Lesbian women are homosexual or even that all homosexual women will never desire sex with a man (because, owing to instances of sexual fluidity, some will). It goes even further by questioning the point of sex for some women:

Hostile Lesbian to Daria: Did he get you off [paraphrase]?
Daria: No, but I wasn't in it for an orgasm.
Hostile Lesbian: What WERE you in it for?
Daria: [matter-of-factly, as though it were self-evident] The sex!

That last utterance is quite profound, if you think about it. It conjures up a whole host of potential reasons why some women, perhaps even many or most, would desire sex without necessarily aiming for the orgasm that is virtually guaranteed men.

One also gets the sense, in watching the jury scene in Go Fish , that many of the "hostile Lesbians" were hostile out of fear--not fear of Daria or the fact there are women out there who desire sex with both men and women at various times and for various reasons, but fear of themselves, of their own potential desires.

In looking at the actress's closed, angry faces, one could almost see some thinking, "If that uber-dyke with the slick men's hairstyle and hundreds of female notches on her promiscuous belt could choose sex with a man, what does that say about what I, with my shakier Lesbian street-cred, might end up choosing? Could that be me in the future, jumping into bed with a man or even--gasp!--starting to like one enough to date? Where will I be then, rudderless and alone without my place in the world and in my own mind as a Lesbian, without my identity, my personhood? Perish the thought--and let me come down on Daria with a vengeance to perish it."

* * *

Overall, I have to agree with those who think most of the dialogue of Go Fish is pretentious and labored, too laden with political musings. But, the winning charm of the characters aside (which ended up swaying me towards the "thumbs up" camp), I think that the Jury Scene is an example of a time when political-heavy dialogue succeeds in a big way.

I won't soon forget the defiance--and vulnerability--of the appealingly baby-faced, brash young dyke "Daria" as she confronted not just the hostility of her so-called "community," but some of the most deeply-held tenets of her very own identity.