100 hot women with low BMIs, two sides of the same coin

Just so you know, I agree that all the women in the AfterEllen.com Hot 100 List are, well, hot. Also *heavily* inclined to the same body/mass and height/weight/boob-proportional indices favored by straight men. Even if they were picked by AfterEllen's predominantly (or at least ostensibly) lesbian readers. (That many of the women in the list are actual lesbians, bisexual, or have played lesbian-sympathetic roles on screens doesn't necessarily distinguish them from the MAXIM list the list is supposed to distinguish them from. Neither, I might add, is the author's glowing notes about list member's intellectual, social, or professional talents.)

So yeah, it's a Hot 100 list. Rather than carp about it I think I'll just say the list affirms my strong impression that rather than being as widely separated as Mars and Venus, men and women, even lesbian feminist women, are at best two sides of a single coin -- differing only in the bas-relief images and text imprinted in metal that's not merely identical but unitary. And even that metaphor fails in the sense that two sides of a coin can never see each other yet men and women see each other every day.

All the other things we tell each other about ourselves are basically lies. That one gender is better than another. That the strength or height or wit or wealth of one gives all dominion over the other. That one is more nurture or nurturing and the other more nature. That what could happen one-on-one, removed forever from all others, with no possibility of outreach to others for approval or disapproval, advice or judgment, support or succor, gainsays any possibility of equality. That such "states of nature" in fact inform anything we do today *outside* the stories we make up and tell each other, or that there was ever only one such state to begin with and not myriad diverse ones. That this one is "normal" and that one "other." That one is ruled by hormones and the other not (in one century.) That the other is ruled by hormones and the first is not (in the next century.) That one must stay home to care for infants and the other cannot. That one must work out in the world and the other can not. That one is virtuous and the other base. That one is naturally lustful and the other's lust can only be induced. That one is snakes, snails and puppydog tails and the other sugar, spice, and everything nice. One prefers sexy pictures, the other sexy text. One is less moved by common standards of beauty, the other more. All tales we tell each other like children spinning ghost stories to entertain

None of that is to say those stories have no impact. If you think words have no significance see how easy it is to undo, for instance, "I do."

And none of that is to say there are no immutable differences between our genders. There certainly are. They're just not nearly as vast as the ones we make up...

...like the story that beauty can be ranked from 1 to 100.