Movies

Sugarbutch Says: The “Lesbian Who Sleeps With a Man” Trope in “The Kids Are All Right”

Sinclair Sexsmith is the kinky queer butch top behind Sugarbutch Chronicles at sugarbutch.net, which is a personal sex, gender, and relationship adventure writing project. She is a gender and cultural theorist, Buddhist, feminist, and lover of literature.

All the lesbian blogs are abuzz with the new Lisa Cholodenko film The Kids Are All Right. It’s been on my radar – on many people’s radars – since it was first announced. A lesbian film? With Annette Bening and Julianne Moore as a long term couple with two kids? And Lisa Cholodenko is directing it? Hell yes.

But of course, when the plot started trickling out and the trailer showed up, that’s where trouble came into paradise. You probably already know all about it, but in case you don’t, you saw that part, right? Where Julianne Moore’s lesbian character, Jules, sleeps with a guy? Yeah. I know. Sigh.

And this is where the teams start forming, because some people – many people, for very legitimate reasons – see that one key plot device as completely ruining the film. But other people stand firm, saying it’s phenomenal despite it.

I tried not to read too many of the reviews. I knew enough about the film, and have seen enough of Cholodenko’s other films (High Art, Laurel Canyon) to know that I respect her as a filmmaker. How many female film directors can you name, off the top of your head? And how many of those are lesbians? And how many of those are sexy masculine-ish lesbians with kids? So of course I was going to see it, especially when people I respect started saying that the film deals with that key sleeping-with-a-man component very well. And since I didn’t want to have anybody else’s opinions in my head when I saw it, I tried to avoid the reviews as they came tumbling in.

My girlfriend and I made the trek to see it on what turned out to be opening night. That was kind of accidental – I thought it was long out by now, given the hype and conversations happening on the blogs, but of course all of those folks either a) haven’t seen it yet (more on that later) or b) were fancy enough to go to premieres. Ooh la la.

This film is beautiful. Their relationship is real and touching. And yes, one of the women in a long-term relationship with another woman sleeps with a man. This is an old, old trope, a cliché, and overused theme in mainstream depictions of lesbians and lesbian relationships, especially in mainstream films. See: Chasing Amy and Kissing Jessica Stein. People are jumping to critique this film, and explain just how wrong it is to use that theme. Yep, it is. I went away from the film liking it, a little bleary-eyed from the end, touched by the emotional portrayal of the relationship, relating very strongly to the challenges of communication and every day work of being in intimate relation with another person.

The next day, my defenses were back up. How dare yet another film depict a lesbian sleeping with a guy? And of course, it has to be the more feminine one of the couple, doesn’t it? This is going to continue to enforce the idea that lesbians are “just waiting for the right guy to come along.”

Or maybe it isn’t.

I kept thinking. I read some reviews from folks whose brains I am all crushed out on, like Lesbian Dad and Dorothy Snarker, and I kept talking to my girlfriend about my thoughts and her thoughts as they evolved.

What if this depiction of that trope, of that storyline of lesbian-sleeps-with-a-man, is actually a step forward? It’s actually a step away from the old versions of this story? It’s something new. We haven’t actually seen this before. What if it’s a sign that we’re actually getting farther from this trope, rather than recreating it yet again?

Untangling that trope means entering into some grey areas, unseeing the black-and-white of this issue and looking at some of the larger contexts and contents; reigning in our own projections a little bit to consider this with fresh eyes, from a place of a beginner’s mind, without quite so much anger directed at this trope. I know that sounds like you have to give up your very warranted anger, but that’s not quite what I mean. It’s just having enough looseness to be able to allow new information to be observed, even if we already think we know exactly what we’re looking at.

Because that’s really the problem here, isn’t it? We hear “a film in which a lesbian sleeps with a guy” and we roll our eyes and get that disappointed, sinking stomach feeling, and we pretend that we aren’t disappointed in yet another depiction of us, of me, of my life, my legitimate love, my legitimate orientation, in a mainstream film that had so much potential, so we squish that potential and we squish that disappointment and we try to sound so damn smart about the wrong that is this film that we might actually miss the film itself, what it’s saying, and what it’s doing. Warning: spoilers and analysis follows. See it for yourself first, or not.

It was Lesbian Dad’s write-up that first really got to me. In talking about The Trope, the lesbian-sleeps-with-a-guy part, she explains:

Suffice to say that, because this is a story, by definition requiring tension and conflict to exist, stuff happens. Stuff which, because this is a story, has no obligation to be completely plausible, least of all statistically significant – it just has to be plausible enough, and work within the confines of the characters’ journeys in the film.
So then my question became, “Can I do that?” Can I see this as “just a plot device,” just a conflict by which to drive the story? If we just squint a little, blur out some of the stuff, it is a beautiful, loving film about characters I adored and a real conflict.

But you know what? I can’t. I can’t just blur it out as this one little “insignificant” part. Because it’s not insignificant. Because that trope is too strong. That trope is too prevalent in lesbian depictions, and it is too painful as part of lesbian culture. It has left us with wounds, as a community, and it has left me with wounds. Memories of men who hit on our girlfriends right in front of us because we aren’t a “real threat.” Memories of women who really did leave us to date men. The ongoing permission to hetero men that lesbians and lesbianism are unthreatening, done as a performance for men, or perhaps isn’t even real.

That s–t hurts. That trope hurts, and has real consequences in our real lesbian lives. All of those blog posts about how insulting it is, and how boring this old trope is, and how unfair it is, and how ridiculous it is, are totally right. I think we have a right to be mad when it show up again, especially in a beautifully done, mainstream, well-acted film – possibly the most mainstream lesbian film ever made.

But that’s not what’s happening here. You think it includes that trope, because of the way it’s marketed, and because one of the lesbian characters does, in fact, sleep with a man, but this film takes that trope and twists its little nipples ’til they cry uncle.

What’s the difference? How is it new? I started thinking about that when I read Dorothy Snarker’s take on the film:

It’s an infuriating cliché. The lesbian who leaves her partner for a man. The lesbian who was really just going through a phase. The lesbian who secretly craves d–k. … Yet you know what, it’s not about any of that here. Those portrayals come from a place of deep-seated homophobia. A belief that lesbianism doesn’t really exist, that all a gay lady needs is a good man. That is not where the infidelity in The Kids Are All Right comes from.
I think she is right on here, and it really got me thinking. The difference between this film and all those other films is intention. What is behind Jules’ action of cheating on her wife of 20 years with a man? What is behind all of those other characters, going back to their boyfriends or proclaiming that it was all “just for fun” and “didn’t mean anything”?

Jules does not sleep with Paul (Mark Ruffalo, and the kids’ sperm donor) because she is questioning her sexuality, because she was waiting for a man to come along, just needed a serious deep d—ing, or because her 20 plus year marriage was a phase. She sleeps with Paul, I would argue, because she is feeling neglected in her relationship, because he was readily available, because he was easy, and because he is already, in a way, part of her family.

Some of the write-ups I’ve seen for this film introduced the characters as a couple, “a bisexual woman and a lesbian,” and because of that I was half expecting an identity crisis for Jules in the second half of the film. But none ever comes: she doesn’t start questioning her sexuality because she was attracted to (in some form) and sleeps with Paul. Nic asks, “Are you straight now?” and Jules responds, emphatically, “No!” When Paul calls Jules and goes on about how they should now be together, Jules yells into the phone “I’m gay!”

So her orientation, her sexual identity, is never in crisis really. She doesn’t second-guess that she’s a lesbian and married to her partner. She needed attention, to see her self-worth reflected in another’s eyes. Some care, some fun, some play.

Is calling on the trope of sleeping with a man the only way she, her character arc, could have achieved this? No, of course not. But in the world that this particular story created, yes. Only this new, charming (I found him a bit annoying, but clearly they were charmed) member of her family – the sperm donor – could have come in with enough permission to slide under the radar for her to let her guard down and go for it. So because Jules had sex with a man, and clearly enjoyed it (was it really necessary for that scene to be so long, and so detailed?), does that make her bisexual? No. That’s not necessarily how identity works. Arguably, one can be a lesbian and still, occasionally, enjoy sex with men. If that is something that happens, well, frequently, then, yes, I think the identity label of bisexual is a bit more appropriate. But for someone in a 20 plus year committed relationship with a woman, who sleeps with a man a few times for various reasons, does that automatically make her bisexual? No. Identity is more complicated than that.

There are some easy criticisms of gender depicted in this film – particularly that, of course, it is the more feminine one who sleeps with a man. And yes, yes, yes that is a problem. No, we do not want to encourage visions of a femme lesbian sleeping with a man to the straight men in the audience. But first, is that what this film does? No. It depicts a woman who has enough sovereignty in her own life and around her sexuality that, though she does cheat on her partner, she knows it is not a question of her orientation, just like it isn’t a question of whether she loves her partner. It is about some larger issues of their relationship, and needing a wake-up call so big that it affects every one of her family members. But really, was the gender in this movie particularly smart? Progressive? Genderqueer? Enlightened? No, it wasn’t. And while we’re at it, what about some of the depictions of other things in this film – race, class? Why aren’t all these critiques talking about the ways that the depictions of those things are problematic? Because they are, and it is just as ripe for critique and criticism around racial depictions and class privilege as it is about this one Lesbian Sleeps With a Man trope. But we can’t quite see past this trope, can we? At least, that’s what the dozens of writings I’ve seen on this film have been telling me so far.

 

This was a film about upper-middle-class white lesbians, and I mean lesbians, not dykes or queers. So it’s a wonder I identify with these characters at all. I mean, it is not a given that because they sleep with women I will in fact have something in common with them.

But I did identify with them.The depiction of the inner-workings of their long term relationship were stunning and complex. I complain frequently and loudly about how lousy most “relationship films” are, because they depict the chase. Couple is not together in the beginning of the movie, hijinx ensue, couple is together at the end of the movie. The End! Happily ever after!

For years I’ve been saying that it’s no wonder we have absolutely no idea how to be and behave and cherish and belong in long term relationships, given that the only depictions and models we ever have are the story before the committment. What happens after the commitment? What happens after the “I do” vows and the kids and twenty years later when things are getting, well, too comfortable? How do you reconcile if someone does something really stupid? How do you forgive? How do you keep loving someone for such a long time, at such close proximity? How do you go from being separate beings to that merging one-ness of connectedness and togetherness?

I certainly don’t have the answers, but I want more films, and more media in general, to explore these dynamics. And even in a year-and-a-half of exploring my own new relationship, it was clear that some of our struggles with merging and separating were being reflected on screen. And not just reflected, because I duly note with awe and reverence when I see any movie take on those struggles, but also reflected by lesbian characters. And with kids, 20 years on, with a house, with careers, with aspirations, with struggles and hopes.

Nic and Jules are a beautiful, real couple. I want Nic – played so perfectly by Annette Bening and who, one critic said, steals every scene – to be my dyke-aunt figure, who lets me come over and observe her life as she drinks her wine and lets those life-experience pearls of wisdom out of her mouth in casual conversation. Especially because I would love to be the person she calls when she discovers that Jules cheated on her. I would love to have that access to her inner world, to start seeing the ways that the perfect doctor-wife-mother unravels, what her fears are, how she will begin to rebuild. I was so in awe of her throughout the film – both Bening’s acting and the character’s emotional arc. Have I convinced you yet? This film is worth seeing.

So many write-ups I see for this film by lesbians on their sites say things like, “Granted, I haven’t seen The Kids Are Alright yet, but …” and then proceed to go on and on about this awful lesbian-sleeps-with-a-man trope.

Dorothy Snarker called this out on Twitter recently, saying, “People who HATE The Kids Are All Right without having seen The Kids Are All Right are depressing me.” I know it’s hard to stomach, but it’s more complicated than it seems. See this film before going on and on about how bad this trope is. Don’t judge it before you have even expeirenced it. Watch the film, and watch it with a tiny bit of an open mind, asking yourself, is this the same old trope, or is this something new? Is this depicting the trope in a new way, breaking away from the old confines of what it means, in a film, for a lesbian to sleep with a man?

Of course, there is the question of why this trope has to exist in this film at all. Can’t we break out of this entirely, regardless of whether it is a well-known stereotypical plot device? Can we have some films where this isn’t even a factor?

God I hope so, and I think that’s coming, but I guess we haven’t gotten there yet. I think the thousands of queer kids who are teens and 20 and 30-somethings are going to continue making and re-making the images of lesbians we see in popular cultural depictions, like films. And perhaps by then we’ll have more tropes to pull on than just this one.

And as Lesbian Dad points out, the recurrence of this trope shows just “how challenging it is to re-/overwrite dominant narratives.” Even a film which perhaps attempts to tell a more complicated story about a stereotypical theme is getting criticized for even including this theme, and many viewers and casual observers aren’t certain she is successful at overwriting. But if we look a little closer, and we bother to check out the details, not just the big, overarching, umbrella under which this plot line falls, then perhaps we will start seeing the ways that indeed even this film is beginning to challenge and re-write or overwrite the ways lesbians sleeping with men are depicted. And if we look even closer than that, we’ll see learn, valuably, that not everything is black and white, and that in the grey we can have more complicated, more intricate, and more detailed understandings of what is happening in our world.

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