This is work?

If someone had told me years ago that I'd one day be paid to watch television, and actually make a living writing about dogs and lesbian sex scenes in the movies, I'd have probably said, "No one can make a living only doing that!"

And yet, apparently you can. How odd and non-puritanical. It's almost unAmerican, isn't it?

So, lesbian sex scenes. I did two articles for AfterElton.com, one on the most groundbreaking gay male sex scenes on television and the next on the most groundbreaking gay male sex scenes in the movies. They asked me to write them, and I did, but no one asked me to write this one. No, I went to my editor at AfterEllen.com, Malinda Lo, and scuffed my high heeled boot against the curb and said, "Ummmm Malinda? Can I, could I, please please please?"

And she said I could. Then I had to reschedule it due the dread whooping cough, but I'm all better now and here it is:

It's hard to believe today, when women argue for and against their favorite lesbian films and compile rival top 10 lists, that not long ago there were no LGBT film festivals, no lesbian and gay sections at the video store, and no books cataloguing queer-themed films. Lesbian sex scenes outside of the porn industry only rarely made it onto the big screen, and when they did, it was likely in some obscure foreign film that played for one weekend at a small art house in New York City.

And then in the early '80s, two very different films — both from straight male directors — hit American theaters, and the standard for lesbian sex scenes in movies changed for good. The first, released in 1982, was a glossy mainstream film from director-screenwriter Robert Towne. Personal Best starred Mariel Hemingway as Chris Cahill, a young athlete who falls in love with teammate Tory Skinner (Patrice Donnelly).

The second, which came out a few months later, was a very different kind of film. Made by indie darling John Sayles, it was the story of an unhappily married faculty wife at a small American college who leaves her husband after she falls in love with another woman. That film was Lianna, and the year was 1983.

Although the sex scenes in both films are tame by today's standards, they clearly and overtly showed women having sex with each other on-screen — something even most of those arty foreign films only hinted at.

We're going to take a look at the most important sex scenes between women in movie history — not always the best or the hottest (although we've got those, too), but those that broke new ground in their depictions of women having sex with other women. We'll start with a sort of golden age of lesbian sex that began in 1996, come up to the present, and then take a look at groundbreaking films of the early '80s, and even the roots of lesbian sex in films going back to 1929.

It's all here... pages and pages and pages of it! Have fun!

Comments

[Nancy Campbell]

*hands on hips* It's about time!!! *wink*