Daviddv0601 posted:

I like it because it helps me imagine the scenario as who's the guy in the relationship.

But they're both women, so neither is guy in relationship. I know you mean who has what role, but I find that insulting at best, even in het. There's no like universal split of roles in relationship. It's unique to each individual one.

Daviddv0601 posted:

I like it because it helps me imagine the scenario as who's the guy in the relationship.

But they're both women, so neither is guy in relationship. I know you mean who has what role, but I find that insulting at best, even in het. There's no like universal split of roles in relationship. It's unique to each individual one.

Wouldn't it be healthier to view it as their attempt to integrate the concepts with their lived experience — which is unique to each individual? I don't think they made a claim to a universal split of roles, just extrapolated from their own experience.
Also I'd say "guy(s)" and "dude(s)" have long since transcended gender-locks in common parlance.

Zormau posted:

Wouldn't it be healthier to view it as their attempt to integrate the concepts with their lived experience — which is unique to each individual?

By healthier, you mean not jumping to conclusions? Giving a benefit of the doubt?

I don't think they made a claim to a universal split of roles, just extrapolated from their own experience.

Phrase "who's guy in relationship" is pretty unambiguous and used throughout to mean exactly that, who fulfills the role of a man and woman in relationship and when used in that specific context, what people mean by "guy" is pretty clear cut as well, so I'm highly skeptical they mean it as something very specific and individual to them. It very clearly sounded like in order to relate and/or understand lesbian relationships, they need to force stereotypical gender roles on them for those relations to make sense to them, hence why they like top/bottom dynamic (which is another can of worms in and of itself). I dislike labels and roles in the first place, but forgive me that I'm especially sick and tired of everyone trying to push them on homosexual relationships to try turn them into something they're not.

Also I'd say "guy(s)" and "dude(s)" have long since transcended gender-locks in common parlance.

While it's true, especially for dude, 1. I'm not native speaker, so to me those words still hold quite a lot of their original gender implication (and I still use word "guy" to mean specifically "man" a lot, I usually only see it as gender neutral when used as plural, but even then not always) and 2. Just because those words became accepted as gender neutral, it doesn't mean I like or want to use them like that, because I dislike that they were male to begin with and used as default, even towards females, to the point of becoming gender neutral (and from my understanding it wasn't really intentional, but more people didn't bother to include women, so women had to include themselves). Basically it's another example of long standing sexism in most languages, that men and male words are default and in order to make word female, you either need to change male form, which acts as the base or you just fuck it and use male word to females as well, because why bother.

last edited at Jul 6, 2021 1:23PM

I was not aware that any justification was needed, but it seems that OP was baiting anyway

I like it because it helps me imagine the scenario as who's the guy in the relationship.

But they're both women, so neither is guy in relationship. I know you mean who has what role, but I find that insulting at best, even in het. There's no like universal split of roles in relationship. It's unique to each individual one.

Wouldn't it be healthier to view it as their attempt to integrate the concepts with their lived experience — which is unique to each individual? I don't think they made a claim to a universal split of roles, just extrapolated from their own experience.

"So which one of you is the guy" is a textbook example of rude questions straight people ask from a gay couple. It's so basic that it might even be cited on something like a corporate sensitivity training.

Also I'd say "guy(s)" and "dude(s)" have long since transcended gender-locks in common parlance.

The arguable gender-neutrality of "guys" and "dude" has no relevance here; definitive cases like "the guy" or "the dude" are used for men exclusively.

By healthier, you mean not jumping to conclusions? Giving a benefit of the doubt?

Both of those, yes. Particularly in cases where the "offending" post is rather minimalist and might be bait.

Phrase "who's guy in relationship" ...

A person's perception and/or rationalization of said perception does not force any role upon another. We ultimately do not get to dictate how others perceive us, try as we might.

As for the topic of the thread, since you've touched upon it here, I assume that it's in large part a case of "art imitates life". A distribution of roles (active/passive, giving/receiving, top/bottom, call it what you will) in bed is probably a common occurrence when two people with differing personalities get it on (repeatedly). It doesn't have to be nearly as rigid as for example in the much lauded So, Do You Want To Go Out, Or? (where there seems to be a pathological cause for its rigor), but I'd be surprised if it wasn't common even in homosexual relationships. Thing is: I don't know that, just as I don't know how common rigid roles actually are in straight relationships. I'd only be extrapolating from a) my own experience with all of [one] partners, and b) what I see in het media that "go there" (mostly porn, obviously).

Are there any scientific studies or decent investigations into the topic?

While it's true, especially for dude, ...

Being German (a prime example for a language full of gendered words), having a degree in English linguistics and having grown up as the son of a sociology/gender studies lecturer, I do have my own, rather informed opinion on topics of language and gender, but this is certainly not the time and place to debate that.

last edited at Jul 6, 2021 3:51PM