Gay women are bolder, more complete and unconstrained artists than straight women?

Are heterosexual women really more constrained and less “take charge” in their artistic expressiveness than gay women? Is this lack of repression or being “contained”, and it’s expression through their art, one reason that gay people (men and women) have such a powerful presence in the arts?

From the Village Voice

It’s Not the Meat - Lesbian Choreographers Redefine Motion
by Sara Wolf - June 11 - 17, 2003

Bilgewash

Seems to me this is “celebrate diversity” taken too far. I’ve met some unmazingly uncreative, conservative, hesistant lesbians and some outrageously “out there” straights. By this reasoning, sexual perverts, murderers, and other truly deviant life forms should be the best artists because they’ve “broken the box”. John Wayne Gacy might have been a painter, but he wasn’t a spectacular one, just competant.

She’s clearly biased against straight women. Ridiculous. Straight women are not some homogenous mass of females mindlessly following the same script of marry-give birth-drive kids to soccer in SUV-weep hysterically when the nest is empty. Plenty of creative, straight women in history.

She can’t even give concrete examples of how this supposed phenomena either works or manifests - it’s all vague generalities. If she personally finds inspiration in her sexuality that’s just dandy, but she’s painting with too broad a brush, here.

For what it’s worth, speaking as a longtime lesbian artist:

Nope.

I know many gay women.

I know many artists (I’m one, myself, so I’m in the field).

I don’t know a single lesbian artist.

You’d think, if lesbian artists were so much more “in touch” with their artistic sense than straight women, that I’d know at least one lesbian artist.

“Bilgewash”, indeed, I’d say.

[sarcasm]

Also, black people are naturally better basketball players, Asians are better at math, Italians are better lovers, women are less logical than men, and Mexicans are lazy.

[/sarcasm]

I don’t know much about lesbian artists, but I DO know that anyone who uses groaners like “…ordain your life as a lesbian” and “hetero social script” (two different people there, BTW) is pretty much just talking out their ass.

I think gay people have disproportionate influence in the arts for much the same reason that blacks are disproportionately represented in the NBA and cheerleaders are disproportionately represented in fashionable sororities; because there’s social reasons they choose those paths. It’s not because they’re inherently better at them.

Having said that, however, the OP’s link does not make a blanket assertion that lesbians are better artists.

I’m straight, but I’m not in a box. I know more straight women than lesbian, and I don’t think one is more creative than the other.

Weren’t Isadora Duncan, Loie Fuller and Agnes DeMille all heterosexual?

And what about Mary Tyler Moore?

I don’t know a damn thing about choreography, but I suspect the woman quoted in the article is full of it.

It’s definitely true. lesbians are bold, innovative artists who are constantly pushing the envelope, and NEVER settle for unoriginal stuff.

That’s why you’d NEVER see lesbian musicians warbling boring old folk songs in coffee houses. That’s WAY too tame and conventional for them.

I don’t know much about lesbians (wait, that’s another discussion) but I do know a number of fine straight female artists who are very much in command of their chosen art forms.

I’m saying NO in a big fat way.

I’m hetro and I’ve had lesbian friends (also artists) say that my stuff is totally wacked-out. (you know - in a good way.)

Besides, I can think of about 10 fabulous female artists that like boys without even really putting my mind to it.

Sounds like sour grapes to me.

Out of curiosity what is your “whacked out” art? Do you have a link?

OK, I can understand that being lesbian can open your mind to new ideas. It certainly can make you question dominant assumptions.

Then she shoots herself in the foot by saying straight women don’t. Bilgewash indeed.

In her defense, I know enough about the interview process to say to a great degree of certainty that sometimes your quotes get placed out of context. She may have been asked “well, how does being a lesbian affect your choreography?” Then “how do you feel it differs from straight women?” which doesn’t excuse her response, but in context it might not have been that flat-out stupid.

Thus endeth the Devil’s Advocate portion of this thread.