Recently, I read an article that said that gay men had a more developed sex culture than lesbians. I took umbrage. In fact, there are highly developed lesbian sex cultures. They may not be found prominently at the Folsom Street Fair nor in back rooms in bars, but to suggest that the sex cultures among lesbians are less developed than among gay men is specious, but more importantly, such a suggestion is harmful.

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Fundamentally, lesbian sex culture is premised on two values. The first value is that everyone has a right to determine for him or herself what to do with his or her body. The second value is that everyone has a right to experience a pleasurable and fulfilling sexuality. These two values provide the foundation of lesbian sex culture and extend beyond the lesbian community to impact broader notions about sexuality.

A public sex culture is not simply formulated as public sex acts. That is too simplistic. Public sex cultures make sex and sexuality visible so that it can enter the public discourse. The notion of reproductive rights found its expression and public entry, in part, through lesbian sex culture. This isn’t to say that the notion of reproductive rights was created by lesbians; it wasn’t, though lesbians were intimately involved with the work to create it. Rather, lesbian sex culture—our experience of our sexuality as both a private and a public experience deserves protection and expression—was central to the creation and public embrace of reproductive rights.

Another way that sex and sexuality are made visible is in sexuality education. Lesbians, whether openly lesbian or closeted, have long played a role in educating women about their bodies and their sexual organs, including how they work and how they can be pleasurable. This education, the belief in it and the consequence of it, is another public expression of lesbian sex culture. Our sexuality and our experience of it is made visible through the education of other women and through the creation of social movements that seek to further protect women’s bodies and women’s rights to sexual self-determination.

The second value of lesbian sex culture is that everyone has a right to experience a pleasurable and fulfilling sexuality. Everyone. No exceptions.

The right to a pleasurable and fulfilling sexuality has led lesbians along, with other women and men, to work to end rape and domestic violence because of how they fundamentally violate that principle. Ask anyone who has worked in the movement to end violence against women if they knew lesbians. They did, and they can tell you about their work. Lesbians’ work, like the work of their heterosexual counterparts, was both to empower women to live a life without violence, but also to live a life that is satisfying and fulfilling. Ultimately, it is not just the absence of violence that movement to end violence against women is seeking – it is the presence of a full and fulfilling life, and that includes the healthy expression of human sexuality. The movement to end violence against women is another contribution of lesbian sex culture.

I don’t want to suggest that lesbians have a sex culture that is only positive. There are many examples of times when individual lesbians and factions of the community as a whole have been prudish and sex negative. Struggle—inside and outside of the lesbian community—is something with which we are very familiar. It may be this struggle that cause some to believe that lesbians’ sex cultures are less developed than gay men’s sex cultures or than heterosexual sex cultures. Such a perception, however, is false. Even in the times when lesbians desire to repress or suppress sexuality, there has been a public sex culture in the lesbian community that is highly developed and that seeks to strengthen and affirm a broader sense of sexuality than that expressed between and among lesbians in the community alone. Lesbian sex culture often seeks to make broad cultural, social, and political connections and contributions in the world.

Lesbian sex culture is both analytical and experiential. Lesbian sex culture is verbal and physical; it is emotional and spiritual; it is pragmatic and fanciful. Lesbian sex culture is a sex culture that engages the mind and the body, the heart and the soul. It is a sex culture that is expressed within the community and that reaches out beyond the community. Lesbian sex culture expresses the hope and the vision that sexuality is something that we can all experience to bring more joy and meaning to our lives.

Julie R. Enszer is a writer and poet who lives in University Park, MD. You can read more of her work at www.JulieREnszer.com.