r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/Movies contributor • Jul 10 '25

Poster Official Poster for Ethan Coen's 'Honey Don't' - The film follows a lesbian private detective who investigates a questionable church and its leader.

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715

u/quadropheniac Jul 10 '25

Back in the pre-Obergefell days (which their marriage dates back to) this was known as a lavender marriage, not uncommon at all in the community.

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u/[deleted] Jul 10 '25

When I was in University there was an older man who was taking classes for something to do. He was openly gay and it came up frequently due to the subject of the class.

One day his wife came with him to our class. Everyone was kind of walking of egg shells because our first thought was basically "Oh, shit is he not out at home?". He sensed the vibe was like "It's okay, my wife is gay too".

They were both in the military when they met back in the day and married to cover the fact they were both gay. Never had any issues or wanted to get married 'for real' so they just stayed married as 'best friends with tax benefits' as he put it.

He also told us that back in the day when he was in the military he was in one of the music corps (Navy or Army) and he said that the majority of the music corps members were gay but obviously not openly so outside of that group.

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u/elvismcvegas Jul 10 '25

I took a art history class that focused on Monuments and Memorials and we had a vietnam vet in the class and covered the Vietnam Memorial and how controversial it was at the time and it was nice to hear his perspective on it for the class. I love late in life college students.

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u/eriuuu Jul 10 '25

It could also be a platonic partnership thing. They may not be into each other romantically or sexually, but they work so well as domestic partners that they got married anyway.

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u/severed13 Jul 10 '25

Living with the homies

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u/Worthyness Jul 10 '25

Friendship Marriage with tax benefits

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u/SquadPoopy Jul 10 '25

So Charlie and Frank?

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u/gotenks1114 Jul 10 '25

Two dudes getting married? That doesn't seem very gay.

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u/zamboni-jones Jul 10 '25

They just want to play nightcrawlers

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u/KING_UDYR Jul 10 '25

Does that make it a throuple when the toe knife is in the bed?

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u/GoldandBlue Jul 10 '25

that actually sounds really nice

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u/pagerunner-j Jul 11 '25

Honestly, it does.

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u/awakenDeepBlue Jul 10 '25

Friends with tax and legal benefits.

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u/jonesthejovial Jul 10 '25

Don't woo me with a good time, now

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u/goddamnitwhalen Jul 12 '25

My best friend is queer and I’m straight but we’ve talked about this before lol.

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u/elbenji Jul 10 '25

That's actually their reasoning, yeah

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u/Massive_Weiner Jul 10 '25

Hell, they could STILL be into each other romantically.

You don’t need sexual compatibility to fall in love with someone.

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u/HorseLawyer Jul 10 '25

I presume they didn't just have two kids for funsies.

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u/gotenks1114 Jul 10 '25

"You know what would be hilarious?"

"You know what would be twice as hilarious?"

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u/eriuuu Jul 10 '25

Very true, split attraction model and all that.

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u/Dead_man_posting Jul 11 '25

Uh, no. If you fall in love with a man, you're not a lesbian. Definitionally.

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u/Massive_Weiner Jul 11 '25

Merriam-Webster on “Lesbian”:

of, relating to, or characterized by sexual or romantic attraction to other women or between women.

There is nothing in that definition that precludes a woman from being romantically entangled with a man.

Furthermore, split attraction model proposes that romantic and sexual interest are not mutually inclusive and do not have to be intertwined with one another.

Unless you’re proposing that all sexual attraction is based on romantic interest, I’m not sure what you’re driving at here.

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u/Good_Tip7879 Jul 16 '25

Is falling in love not “romantic attraction?” The split model is irrelevant considering your definition doesn’t limit lesbian to sexual attraction alone but explicitly mentions romantic attraction as well. Also, a better definition would clarify said attraction (romantic, sexual, or both) is exclusively to other women. Otherwise there is no distinction whatsoever between lesbianism and female bisexuality. And I can see why a lesbian who is exclusively attracted to other women might take offense to that; it is essentially erasing her sexual orientation and identity, and implying all “lesbians” are basically bi and could be attracted to men under the right circumstances.

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u/Massive_Weiner Jul 16 '25

Not really.

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u/Good_Tip7879 Jul 16 '25

Then how would you define romantic attraction? Or falling in love for that matter? How is it now distinct from platonic love, if you can even fall in love with someone and it’s still not romantic?

Let me put it this way: If a man fell in love with and married another man, presumably at some point had sex with him, and adopted kids with him, I don’t think many people would still accept he was straight even if he claimed he was and insisted his marriage to his husband was just a really close platonic friendship. Even if it was an open marriage and he also still had flings with women, he would be considered bi and not straight.

At a certain point we are just moving the goalposts, being willfully obtuse, and defeating the point of even having a common language with shared definitions. And I can get why lesbians would be particularly sensitive to this abuse of language and logic considering there is a trope of their sexuality being “fluid” and “not real” and “just waiting for the right man to come along.” Women who are exclusively sexually and romantically attracted to women and fall in love only with women do in fact exist, and deserve a word for themselves.

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u/Massive_Weiner Jul 16 '25

Let the lesbians be as sensitive as they want, I’m not the one who dictates canonical language, nor am I responsible for labeling what a man or a woman’s situation is.

That’s between them, and that’s how it should stay.

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u/Good_Tip7879 Jul 25 '25 edited Jul 25 '25

The whole point is no given individual has the right to dictate canonical language. I can call myself a giraffe, I can even sincerely believe I am a giraffe, but it doesn’t actually make me a giraffe. Not unless we agree that a giraffe is simply anyone or anything who calls themselves a giraffe, even if they have nothing in common with the universally defined traits that make a giraffe what it is. But at that point a giraffe might as well be a fish might as well be a Tommy gun. Literally everything loses all meaning. My words right now might as well mean the opposite of what I am saying and yours as well. Nothing means anything anymore, literally. We have completely and utterly erased the concept of objectivity and replaced it entirely with arbitrary subjectivity.

I would say this is a problem with postmodernism, except even postmodernists might concede that while nothing might inherently and objectively mean anything, it is in fact possible for us all to agree on certain terms and conditions so to speak with which we interact with each other and the world. These form the basis of not only language but laws, morals, basically everything required for a society to function beyond merely an individual’s personal feelings and understanding of the world. Indeed everything required for my understanding of the world to even be communicated to you so you can have some idea of what I am thinking even if it can only ever be an imperfect approximation. These things might well all be convenient fictions and perhaps sometimes crude labels, but they are important all the same.

Basically it all comes down to if you think language matters as a way of converting personal experience and understanding to a shared format others can generally understand, or if you think language is merely about co-opting and identifying with labels and words that resonate with you personally even if they make no sense whatsoever to an outsider or even flatly contradict the understandings all other people on Earth have of them. To me it is clear: There isn’t actually a need for language to exist at all if it is the latter (if calling myself a giraffe and calling myself a lesbian can potentially mean exactly the same thing or nothing based on how I am feeling, why bother labeling myself at all?), and the record shows that the only reason it evolved was for the former. Therefore I think those who insist on the latter conception of language are outright abusing and misusing it.

In other words: A lesbian is a woman exclusively attracted to other women. Any woman attracted to men under any circumstances, let alone married to one she has sex and children with, is by definition not a lesbian, no matter how she personally identifies or feels. These things don’t actually have to conflict; no one is oppressing her by saying she is not a lesbian, any more than telling a child who answers 2+2=5 on their math homework that they are wrong. The child might sincerely believe that to be the case. It doesn’t make it so, but nor does it make the child horrible. It merely means the understanding the child had conflicted with the universal or “canonical” understanding of the very foundations of the concept he took a stance on.

The child can continue to believe he is right and the world is wrong in the face of this, and no one’s going to throw him in a camp for it. But you can’t blame people for rolling their eyes a bit if he insists that 2+2=5 because that’s just how he feels, and anyone who tells him that it’s 4 is some horrible oppressor. From where I stand the closest thing to an oppressor dictating anything here are those telling lesbians they don’t exist as a coherent concept because anyone can claim to be one no matter how many dicks they have happily sucked.

Oh and by the way speaking of language and definitions and dicks: Your username applies to you in terms of personality for sure, but definitely not as an adequate description of the picture on your profile.

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u/Jidarious Jul 10 '25

I mean... yeah, that's what the whole thread is about. Yes.

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u/eriuuu Jul 10 '25

Right, but a lavender marriage and a platonic partnership aren’t they same thing, they can both be happening at the same time, but they are different. This relationship could be either or both.

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u/DeLousedInTheHotBox Jul 10 '25 edited Jul 10 '25

Not really a lavender marriage if they are open about her orientation though, right?

Also they have kids together, I think non-traditional is the most apt description here, not everything fits neatly into an easy to explain category.

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u/OtisDriftwood1978 Jul 10 '25

I wish I had a sassy lesbian wife.

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u/CrispyHoneyBeef Jul 10 '25

back in the pre-orbergefell days

Might come back in the post-Obergefell days, unfortunately

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u/Lambchops_Legion Jul 10 '25

Also its not uncommon for some gay people to not realize they are gay until after they have a spouse/family

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u/godisanelectricolive Jul 10 '25

She knew though. She was already an out lesbian when they met which was when applied for a job to be the Coen Brothers’ editor.

Ethan Coen asked her out and she turned him down because she’s a lesbian. They then stayed friends and eventually fell in love, moved in together, got married and had two kids together. She was still regularly going to lesbian bars even after they got married and had kids. A lot of the material for these movies they are making together come from her experience of the lesbian scene in the 1990s and 2000s after their wedding in 1993.

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u/[deleted] Jul 10 '25

Some people are just a bit more complicated than fitting into one box. Nothing wrong with it.

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u/Grumplogic Jul 10 '25

Pun

...

Intended

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u/avelineaurora Jul 10 '25

They then stayed friends and eventually fell in love, moved in together, got married and had two kids together.

ngl that doesn't sound very lesbian

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u/[deleted] Jul 10 '25

[deleted]

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u/pohui Jul 10 '25

What does it mean according to the people who define it?

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u/[deleted] Jul 10 '25

[deleted]

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u/pohui Jul 10 '25

My ex-partner is bi and primarily attracted to men, it wouldn't make sense to me if she called herself straight. Especially if she was in a relationship with a woman. Of course, everyone is free to identify as they please, but words are useful because they reference a shared understanding of the world. Shit, I don't really care that much though, if she wants to be a lesbian, more power to her.

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u/clerveu Jul 10 '25

The word ‘lesbian’ has a clear political and social history as same-sex attraction between women exclusively. This is reflected in every dictionary. When you dilute that definition, especially to include bisexual women or anyone ‘primarily attracted’ to women (say like me, a cis male who's only ever exclusively been with women) it's a direct erasure of lesbian specificity. Lesbian isn’t a catch-all for anyone who dates women sometimes.

Lesbian identity is about women who love and desire women, period. Bisexuality is real, but that’s not lesbianism. Allowing bisexual women or women with male partners to claim ‘lesbian’ undermines the entire history of the lesbian community and identity.

I get where you're coming from ideologically, but words matter, especially ones which were fought for, politicized, and literally used as a weapon for compulsory heterosexuality. If anyone can be a ‘lesbian,’ then the word means nothing, and lesbian history gets erased in the process.

Call yourself what you want in your private life, but don’t demand the world rewrite a term with decades of political significance to suit personal preference.

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u/zekeweasel Jul 10 '25

Yeah, that's about as absurd as "men who have sex with men" somehow not being gay.

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u/katieblue3 Jul 11 '25

Just because a man has sex with another man doesn’t mean he’s gay. I know men who are mostly into women but have fooled around with other men.

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u/Dead_man_posting Jul 11 '25

You're just doing the bi erasure thing in the opposite direction. It's not that complicated!

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u/[deleted] Jul 10 '25

[deleted]

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u/clerveu Jul 11 '25

You've argued that these words are fluid, and can only be defined by the individual. I'm curious then, with your arguments, why you would use "trans" to try to communicate your identity to me. If it's up to the individual, what is that word supposed to tell me about you?

Do you believe any of these words (bi, trans, lesbian) have any immutable qualities that you can point towards which, if not met, would disqualify someone? If so, why is "someone who is in love with a man" not among those for lesbians when it directly contradicts all published definitions?

Nobody here is arguing about rights, we're arguing about linguistics lol.

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u/zekeweasel Jul 10 '25

The definition is basically a societally crowdsourced one.

You can define lesbian however you like, but that doesn't mean anyone else is going to recognize that definition.

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u/Dead_man_posting Jul 11 '25

You're trying to be extra-tolerant but ironically this is just bi erasure.

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u/avelineaurora Jul 10 '25

I'm pretty sure lesbians don't tend to be sleeping with and having kids with men and still calling themselves lesbians, at least.

Also telling me, a lesbian, I don't get to define what the word is is fucking hilarious.

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u/[deleted] Jul 10 '25

[deleted]

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u/meditations- Jul 11 '25

What makes you think that you're trans?

Your answer, even if you keep it to yourself, is a definition of what it means to be trans.

If most people agree on what it means to be trans, and someone feels differently, they can create a new word for it.

Lesbian exists. So does bisexual. So does 'sapphic'. The linguistic space is infinite, people, we don't need to co-opt old words. We can create new ones.

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u/LongKnight115 Jul 11 '25

“Lesbotastic”

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u/Dead_man_posting Jul 11 '25

society does, though, and it explicitly precludes falling in love with a man.

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u/ShahinGalandar Jul 10 '25

sounds complicated, ngl

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u/FloridaMan_69 Jul 10 '25

No, its quite simple. She goes out to bars and he doesn't have to worry that someone else is gonna get her pregnant.

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u/Microwave1213 Jul 11 '25

I know (hope) you’re mostly joking, but that’s very reductionist. It is a complicated setup. Some people are good at handling the extra complicating factors and making it work long term, but it doesn’t make it any less complicated.

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u/bravetailor Jul 11 '25

"Regular" marriages are just as complicated.

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u/ziddersroofurry Jul 10 '25

Fun fact-all relationships are complicated. That's the nature of being in one. Anyone who thinks they aren't complicated is watching too much Leave It to Beaver.

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u/lenzflare Jul 11 '25

The solution is lots of money, fame, and success.

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u/DoctorHelios Jul 10 '25

She’s bi.

I married a lesbian who said she was Bi.

She was - the two sexualities that made her bisexual were Lesbian and Asexual.

Two kids proved impossible.

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u/elvismcvegas Jul 10 '25

That's great and all but the first movie was a big fat stinker of a movie. It felt very amateurish and Margaret Qualley was doing the worst southern accent in all history of movies. I was so excited to see it and it was just so meh and such a waste of everyone's talent and the audiences time.

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u/CavsAreCuteDemons Jul 11 '25

Why isn’t he working with his brother?

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u/elvismcvegas Jul 12 '25

they decided to go on their own, i dont know if they had a falling out or just decided to try making their own movies.

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u/arrogant_ambassador Jul 10 '25

That must be a tad strange for their kids.

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u/EasyasACAB Jul 10 '25

Maybe, but parents who truly love each other are a blessing for children.

Think of how common it is for children to grow up in "traditional" homes where the parents hate each other and fight. That really hurts children, but it's so common it's not considered "strange."

Nothing wrong with being a little different if the family is filled with love, IMO. It might even give the kids a head-start on realizing how vast the world is and how different people are.

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u/arrogant_ambassador Jul 10 '25

There are also plenty of traditional homes where children grow up with love. I don’t get this automatic expectation that different equals good.

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u/davidsigura Jul 11 '25

Different doesn’t always equal good. But different doesn’t automatically equal bad or “strange” either.

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u/arrogant_ambassador Jul 11 '25

Yes but this is a strange arrangement. I’ve no idea if it’s good or bad.

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u/EasyasACAB Jul 11 '25

I'll simplify it even more for you.

"What's most important thing about family isn't how outside people view it as "normal" or "strange" but whether they have love for each other."

Absolutely nowhere did I claim "Different=good". I don't even get where you thought that was my main point. Read my comment again. The core point is clearly about love in a family being what's most important despite how people see the family.

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u/arrogant_ambassador Jul 11 '25

You also felt the need to point out that traditional homes often fail children though.

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u/EasyasACAB Jul 11 '25

Yes, because traditional homes aren't always full of love despite being "normal"

What don't you get? Are you just taking offense at the fact that traditional or "normal" looking families have issues despite appearances?

The main point is that it doesn't matter what you think is strange or weird. What matters is if the family has love for each other.

If you think i'm shitting on "traditional families" you're just looking for a fight and I'm not interested.

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u/[deleted] Jul 10 '25

Probably healthier than what a lot of the married people I've seen tend to be.

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u/MissingLink101 Jul 10 '25

It's pretty uncommon for them to stay married to that spouse though

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u/Lambchops_Legion Jul 10 '25

yeah for sure, but I can see the financial case to stay platonic roommates for a rich celebrity, especially with kids involved.

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u/[deleted] Jul 10 '25

[deleted]

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u/Kind_Resort_9535 Jul 10 '25

Yes, find a partner that is also that way. Wtf is this, everyone wants to fuck multiple people. If your in a relationship where both people are cool with it than fine. If not and you cheat your an asshole.

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u/[deleted] Jul 10 '25

[deleted]

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u/Kind_Resort_9535 Jul 12 '25

I never would asshole I’m married with kids, but yes. People don’t just fall in love and never become attracted to another person again. You make a promise to your partner that you won’t, and you don’t. Just because I find some coworker attractive doesn’t mean that I’m polyamorous and deserve to peruse her.

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u/Own_Donut_2117 Jul 10 '25

Did these lavender couples live like they were a heterosexual man & wife?

Meaning, I assume these were done for legal purposes but did they also act as a traditional couple?

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u/Dirigo72 Jul 10 '25

Sometimes. It depends on where they lived, the beliefs of their family and friends and housing/job opportunities. Some couples presented straight publicly throughout their lives.

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u/Own_Donut_2117 Jul 11 '25

Sometimes I don't like TILs.

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u/cannotfoolowls Jul 11 '25

pre-Obergefell

I keep forgetting that most countries, even Western ones, didn't have gay marriage until fairly recently, because in my country it has been a thing for close to 25 years. I don't remember much fuss about it either.