She & She: Top 5 Myths about lesbian sex

1. Lesbians don’t need penetration
   The logic appears to be plain - Lesbians don’t have any need for men, so well, they don’t need any penetration either. This logic is bizarre to say the least. The pleasure that accompanies penetration is a physiological reaction which doesn’t ask for your sexuality before making itself felt. So lesbians and straight women alike can be fond of penetration. It’s just that owing to their sexual orientation, lesbians are more likely to derive pleasure when they’re involved in the penetrative act with a woman, which brings us to the next myth…
2. Lesbians cannot possibly have real (read: penetrative) sex
   While the mechanisms of two men having sex are pretty clear to a large number of people, the exact nature of lesbian sex is still a mystery to many. Thanks to so many misrepresentations in pop culture and pornographic movies, people assume that two women can have sex only to the point of kissing, cuddling and scissoring and oral sex, at best. That’s not really true! Homosexual women can use an array of sex toys (like dildos) to bring in penetration into the play without any need for a man. Basically, they can engage in as many varieties of sexual activity as two men can, if not more!
3. Lesbian sex is low-risk when it comes to STIs
   That is a serious misconception. Many STIs like warts, HPV-2, etc can spread merely through direct contact with infected genitals or broken skin and don’t need bodily fluids like blood or semen for transmission. And even in the case of STDs that spread through bodily fluids alone, lesbian sex offers many opportunities for that to happen through vaginal discharges, menstrual blood, shared sex toys and so on. In fact, a 2014 report found that there was no significant difference between percentages of lesbian women and straight women affected with HIV.
4. All lesbians like it rough
   Many like to stereotype lesbians as ‘manlier’ and more aggressive than the average straight woman. This leads them into believing that lesbian sex is always wild, raunchy and hardcore thanks to the manly instincts of its participants! Just for the record, lesbians (like straight women) come in as many varieties as butterflies or candies. Some may like it rough, some others may go for tender. To each, her own! It's no rocket science to imagine that the same woman may like it wild at some times, and may go for something gentler at others!
5. There’s always a ‘man’ and a ‘woman’ in every act of lesbian sex
   This is a myth that surrounds all homosexual couples especially among people who fail to understand that two people of same sex can have sex and relationships without assuming opposite gender roles! So all the stereotypes surrounding the ‘butch’ lesbian who’s hard, masculine and the active agent in sex and the ‘femme’ who’s soft, feminine and at the receiving end, are just that - stereotypes. Not all lesbian sexual encounters adhere to this stereotype!

This article was first published on May 18, 2017. 

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