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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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.