Carter-Madhu

Somewhat incoherent and personal ramble:

I am in the unusual position of being a lesbian who fell in love with one extraordinary man and married him. Sometimes when I look at the qualities I adore in him I can see how different he is from what is held up as the typical male. Apart from my wonderful husband, I have a few close friends who are men, but most are women. Speaking in very broad generalities, I am more comfortable with women than with men. Men seem to take up a lot of space and demand a lot of attention. They are more likely to dismiss the views of others - especially of women. They are more likely to be arrogant and demanding. They are more likely to suffer from pride. Again - I am speaking in very broad generalities, and recognize that many men don't, and many women do, display the characteristics I have broadly described.

I am often quite baffled by the things that heterosexual women find tolerable, let alone attractive, in men. To give you a rather trivial example, there is an Indian movie star, Shah Rukh Khan, who is a great romantic hero who makes a whole lot of women - even very intelligent women I respect a lot - lose their heads from swooning. I have watched many of this guy's movies because he is such a massive star and a central part of the culture of Hindi-speaking India. And I simply cannot stand him. The romantic scenes that make my acquaintances swoon make me want to smack him across the mouth very, very hard. He is arrogant; he presents himself with a "you know you want me" attitude that just makes me angry and disgusted instead of evoking feelings of romance. He grabs women's wrists and forces them to face him. I think it's horrible.

And yet I have talked to dozens of women - including modern, feminist women, both Indians and Westerners - who just lap it up, and melt when they watch him strutting his stuff on screen. They fantasize about someone doing that to them. And it just makes me throw my hands up; it's a gulf I'll never bridge. I would never want anyone, male or female, to treat me that way. And when I have attempted to seduce women myself I would never treat one that way. It's not sexy, to me, at all. The opposite.

Then I look at my husband, who is as gentle and kind as a person can be. He lives to help others. He goes out of his way to be kind to me and encourages me in everything I do and almost never criticizes me. I guess you might say he is submissive (in a non-sexual way) because I have to remind him sometimes to put his needs on equal footing with mine.

I think before I met him he was one of those guys whom women didn't want to date because they perceived him as "too nice". This, like the supposed romantic appeal of Shah Rukh Khan, is something I will never understand. His niceness is what I love about him. I look at him and think, why can't I be more like him? Why can't I be more openminded and giving and non-judgmental? Why can't I take care of him as well and as selflessly as he takes care of me? These are the things I love best about him.

I do perceive a phenomenon where heterosexual women (again, very broad generalities, and there are many straight women who don't fit this description) don't want a guy like my husband; they want a guy like Shah Rukh Khan who will grab their wrist and say "you know you want me." And I, a lesbian married to the sweetest guy on earth, just can't begin to understand it.

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