The Kids Are Alright

I liked the movie "The Kids Are Alright" with Julianne Moore and Annette Benning. Teh movie is about a lesbian couple with two children, impregnated by the same anonymous sperm donor. Except he no longer is anonymous when the children seek and find out his identity.

And then suddenly the close-knit family finds itself having to incorporate and deal with an insider.

The movie was very good for a variety of reasons. First, I never really had thought about the day to day practicalities of growing up in a household with gay parents. At one point, the daughter's friend called her a "dyke" because she was shy around boys, and the son's friend called him a "fag" because he didn't want to do something adventurous. And while this is a typical "insult" lobbied by kids against each other, it took on a particular resonance when one stepped back and realized that the daughter and son were children of gay parents. How much more did the insult hurt then? Was it particularly cruel to call someone something knowing that their parents were that very thing?

Second, at one point in the movie, one of the women falls for the anonymous sperm donor. What I found interesting was the portrayal of sex. In the beginning, the two women are having sex in a way that seemed, to me, well, very unsexy. One of the women was watching gay porn, while the other, underneath a big, heavy blanket, went down on her. You did not see any titillating body parts. Furthermore, the whole episode seemed more funny/ weird than exciting. Why was one woman completely hidden underneath a blanket. Wasn't she suffocating?!? But when that same woman -- formerly hidden under a blanket -- had sex with the man, well, va va voom. They went straight at it, they threw themselves at each other, and you just saw them rolling around doing their thing. I could not tell why the sex was portrayed so differently.

Third, how often does a lesbian cheat even temporarily on her partner with another man? This part of the story seemed to play on the theme that women go through a bisexual phase but ultimately emerge heterosexual, and what they really want ultimately is a man. Was this stereotype true in long-term, committed lesbian relationships (was there statistical backing to the stereotype)? Turns out, according to the representative lesbian friend to whom this question was posed, this happens more often than you would think! Not sure what to make of that.