How do lesbians know when they’re no longer virgins?
With heterosexuals, genital penetrative sex is the normal defining event. For male homosexuals, this can also apply. Oral sex, mutual masturbation, etc are generally not considered to qualify. So what is the accepted qualifying event for a lesbian losing her virginity?
I don’t get this obession.. I’m a girl. I like girls. I don’t understand this stuff about tops and bottoms.
To me its almost like that routine about " can you imagine trying to find a midget gay person who likes to wipe with charmin toilet paper.
I love penatrating…but I like being penatrated too…the thing is really about making love with a chick.
Brace yourself… today I’m building a deck. rowr 
Edit: not in a skirt though.
Can I ask a completely different question about lesbians? Why Subarus?
Alice is looking for a new car and asked my help in locating car dealerships since she knew I’d been checking out cars online just a few months ago myself. The dealership she asked if I knew had any outlets nearby? Subaru. For some reason, I wasn’t surprised. I read somewhere that Subaru is considered somewhat pro-gay because they sponsered The L Word, but that show started in 2004, which is about six years after a lesbian poster on another board (Buzzsaw, an old AOL group that closed a decade ago) talked about lesbians perferring Subarus like everyone knew that…
As a subaru-driving lesbian… 
If memory serves, Subaru has been doing print ads in gay publications for a long time, and were doing so long before other companies took the “risks” of acknowledging and marketing to the gay community.
http://adage.com/adages/post?article_id=140013
Other than that, I think the general “comfortable shoes” analogy/stereotype fits. Subaru’s are a functional vehicle for pets, hiking, camping, kids, outdoorsyness (or the appearance of it at least), which can be facets of lesbian life. They’re generally reliable and affordable and they have decent gas mileage, at least that is generally what I like about them and what others say they like about them.
‘Losing your virginity’ through actual penetration by penis is a rather meaningless marker that straight people get hung up about. Next you’re going to tell me that lesbians can’t have sex :rolleyes:
Basically, if that doesn’t tell you that the generally accepted qualifier is kinda crappy and arbitrary…
Your point dodging skills are impressive. I am in fact quite aware penile penetration is meaningless to lesbians, or I wouldn’t have bothered asking about it. See, this was an actual question, you can tell by the way it was phrased: in the form of a question. I pointed out the standards that I knew, and then also pointed out that I knew they would not apply in this case, and asked what standards did apply. So did you have anything to actually add to the conversation, or was the repetition of the obvious and implied insults all you planned to bring?
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Basically, if that doesn’t tell you that the generally accepted qualifier is kinda crappy and arbitrary…
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Yeah, I guess it is. But it was also made for a different culture. I want to know how virginity is viewed in the lesbian culture. The answer might be ‘They don’t care’ or ‘It never comes up’, great. It could vary wildly, or there could be something mutually agreed upon.
My main reason for asking about this is the odd separation of sexual behavior and actual sex in at least some heterosexual culture. A couple could say that they’ve had oral sex and mutual masturbation and yet still say they are virgins. They could do anything except actual genital penetration, and still claim to be virgins. Some even take it so far as to say that having anal sex is ok. The line is very clearly defined, and treated very much as a letter of the law thing. So is there anything like this in a lesbian relationship? Is there a point past which they can say they are no longer virgins, that they couldn’t say so before it?
I apologise, I was feeling grumpy and, like most lesbians, have experienced many straight people questioning whether we can call what we have sex when ‘it’s just groping around’. Too touchy, forgive me.
I think the point is that the whole ‘losing your virginity’ or rather, ‘hanging onto it’ as a kind of golden chalice is pretty much a hetero concept. If you’ve been to bed with a girl and indulged in sexual activity involving downstairs lady bits then no one would regard you as a ‘lesbian virgin’, whatever you actually got up to. It just isn’t really a topic of conversation - you’ve either slept with another woman or you haven’t, and what you got up to when you both got naked isn’t really relevant. There isn’t some invented finishing line to seal your membership to the club.
And most importantly, there isn’t deemed to be any moral benefit to hanging onto your ‘lesbian cherry’ either - nobody’s saving themselves for marriage, after all
The Savage Love Podcast had an episode about this. link.
It was interesting to listen to the various responses from lesbians.
I’m a straight man and I’m generally attracted to women who display confidence and confidence, including in fields traditionally considered masculine domains. I like women that look and act ‘feminine’ (whatever that means) and I like women that act ‘masculine’ (ditto). It kind of depends on the person.
Perhaps my experience isn’t salient to OP since I’m not a lesbian, but I find that the two things that usually underlie attraction (for me at least) are: is the person potentially interested in me, and do they feel themselves to be sexy. The two interact with each other and with other factors to produce some level of attraction in me. I think that the same holds true for most people gay or straight. Someone who looks ‘butch’ is signalling (or can be signalling) that they are interested in sleeping with women, and other women who are interested in sleeping with women can pick up on that. If they are anything like me they will be more attracted because of the signal of interest.
Attraction is something that is IMHO a very personal and very constructed thing. There are no inherent qualities to people that are “attractive” without reference to other individuals, rather individuals find certain qualities attractive. It’s the meaning that individuals attach to the qualities that causes them to be attractive, which is why I find myself attracted to qualities that signal (intentionally or not) some interest (real or not) in me and to qualities that signal that the other person thinks that quality is attractive to others.
If this model of attraction applies to other people I could easily see how (some) lesbians develop attraction to the butch look. (Just as other people develop attractions to other looks).
ETA: I’m not saying this is a perfect of explanation, I’m just speculating as to the driving force behind the differentiation in what people find attractive.
I think that’s a well-stated layer of the collective consciousness onion, sjc.
I’d like to know how you arrived at this conclusion. I have had oral sex with literally a couple thousand men, and have been fucked exactly once. Are you saying I’m practically a virgin?
Clinton?
d&r
WHERE did you ever get the idea that lesbians don’t have penetrative sex? 
Even the gay for pay “lesbian” porn I’ve seen features penatrative scenes.
But I wouldn’t say that lesbians use that as a marker for loss of virginity
Where I come from, heteros who “use PiV as the virginity marker” while “not counting oral” are known as “virgin in the ear”… they may be virgins in the purely gynecological sense (if female), but nobody believes they’re true virgins any more than they believe that the neighbor’s striped cat is a tiger.
I’m a feminine lesbian and am mostly attracted to butch women. Most people think I’m straight though, especially since I’m single and thus wouldn’t be seen with an SO.
I actually prefer having short hair though, and I’m attracted to other women with short hair.
Right, and with a little thought, why on earth would you notice as you go about your day to day life? A woman looking kind of masculine stands out and we might assume lesbian even if that’s not the case.
Other than that why on earth would you notice? You could ne seeing lots of lesbians and not even knowing it.
I have several lesbian friends and encounter lesbians and gay men at social gatherings. I can’t think of one that looks particularly masculine or that I’d know was a lesbian just by a casual encounter during day to day activities.
Even though I know Rachel is a lesbian I would never assume that if I saw her out and about. I see her as smart and making a style choice rather than butch.
I’m over 50 and have met a lot of different women over the years. Men and women have widely varying preferences and styles. Butch to me means an obvious attempt to look like a man rather than just short hair and sparse makeup. I don’t see Ellen Degeneres as butch.
Heterosexual male owner of a green early 2000s Subaru Forester here, a vehicle that is about as “Lesbaru” as they come. I named it “Emma”, because … well, the name sounds kinda’ lesbiany.
Subarus and their owners have a reputation as being “crunchy” and “granola”, and even more so outside of regions where they’re common because of the weather (Colorado, western New York, parts of New England). They’re also sensible, practical vehicles that aren’t flashy or particularly stylish. Years ago they were the first widely available four-wheel drive vehicles in the US that weren’t gas hogs or impractical for day-to-day city driving.
From what I understand, there’s a very large subculture of lesbians that are crunchy, outdoorsy, and so on. A Subaru seems like a natural for picking up plants at the independent neighborhood nursery, runs to the co-op for bulk grain, hauling the Golden Retrievers to the cottage, and the annual journey to the Womyn’s Music Festival. Honda CRVs, somewhat similar to Subaru Foresters, also seem popular among lesbians around here.
I don’t get the gay male-Volkswagen Jetta connection, though.