The lesbian in Winter. on Trilema - A blog by Mircea Popescu.
There's such a thing as a lesbian in exactly the same sense there's such a thing as a rock covered in snow.
I'm aware you might've seen rocks that weren't, at that most holy & particularly sacred moment of your observation, covered in snow. I'm also aware you might've encountered rocks that claimed, even truthfully, to have never been covered with snow.
Nevertheless, a snowy glaze is universally and unexceptionally something that happens to rocks exposed to Winter outdoors.
That some rocks happen to find themselves underground since before the last Ice Age ; that some rocks were spewed forth by tropical volcanoes and haven't yet made their way up to the glorious North ; that plenty of chunks in this world never yet knew or possibly never will know the crushing glory of frost -- all that's strictly a discussion of circumstance, and of accident.
The only truly random element in anyone's life is the order in which they experience things. Nothing worth the mention is changed by the broadly irrelevant circumstance that some particularly basic rocks experience a lot of difficulty internalizing this basic truth, even perhaps to the point of ridicule where they fail to do so, even beyond the point of ridicule where they imagine the particular order they ran into things is somehow universal or if not universal then at the very least important an therefore universalizable.
With their permission or without, with their approval or without, with their agreement, understanding, notice even and just as well without : as soon as Winter comes, all rocks outdoors will be covered in snow. No venue is open for rocks to discuss whether they think they could, or whether they think they should, or whether they think the flow of events might, or might not or should not or could not. There's no ought open to rocks, their internal statei is not relevant to the ardours of intemperate water and seasonal winds.
A rock in Winter will be covered in snow because that's what a rock is and that's what Winter does.
I suppose the definition of lesbian here is "a woman who will sleep with another woman at one point in time, and a man at another point in time."?
No, the definition of a lesbian is a woman that orgasms with women but not men.
And the point of the article is that this state of lesbianness changes with the shifting seasons / whims / external factors?
In other words, there is still hope for Ellen DeGeneres?
There's no hope for degeneres, but nor is there nearly as much optionality involved as the waitresses populating her bed like to pretend to. Ie, they're not there because they're lesbians. They're simply "lesbians" because they're where they happen to be.