Sophie B. Hawkins US Music Artist		Articles/Text Photos Add info
Girlfriends Magazine, October, 2000 issue: "I've never been ashamed of living with a woman. I've never hidden it. I've never been ashamed of being with a man, except I've only had one serious relationship with a man, and that's not in the present. I don't have a traditional viewpoint. And there's no way that I could get up and say I'm a lesbian. I've never felt like a lesbian. I've never lived like a lesbian. But I have no problem getting up and saying I live with a woman, I'm passionately, madly in love. Committed." Out Magazine, unknown issue: "I like developing my ideas in public, as much as I humiliate myself. Every time I'm asked a difficult question, I think even if I answer it and hate myself for how I answered, that's the thing about being alive and being an artist---being challenged." The most humiliating printed matter appeared in the British music magazine Q, which reported Hawkins saying rumors show was a lesbian were "a fantasy of the gay community"---a comment that she denies ever making. Reading that phrase, Hawkins says, "was probably the worst feeling that I've ever had in my life: I felt as if I had seen a child get hit by a car." It perhaps also prompted her to finally come forth with her self-definition as not gay, straight, or bisexual, but "omnisexual," and enter the pages of a U.S. gay magazine for the first time. (Although she is quick to point out that in her very first interview in The New York Times she said she was "omnisexual," and no one ever asked her to clarify until just recently.) "I liken 'omnisexual' to different aspects of the personality," says the 20-something singer ("My age is one thing I am not out about.") "I have my spirituality, my intellectuality, my sexuality, my emotionality, among others. I feel that just because I'm making love to a man who I love, I wouldn't be straight just because he might call himself that. And just the same, if I'm making love to a woman that I love, I wouldn't necessarily be a lesbian just because she might call herself that. I feel my sexuality is as individual as my soul, and it keeps getting enriched. And I become more of myself, not more of them." "If I ever felt that I was a lesbian, I would be thrilled to say it. But I don't feel truthful saying that. It would hurt me to say it. And it would hurt me to say I was heterosexual. And it would hurt me to say I was sleeping with a man at the moment. I'm not." When asked if her lover is a lesbian or an omnisexual, Hawkins thinks for a second and says, "I don't know---I never asked her. I'll have to call you." Her girlfriend, a longtime West Village politico, artist, and professional masseuse, has responded "monarchist" in jest, then confessed to identifying as a "sexual being leaning towards omnisexuality." The two connected after Hawkins hired her for a massage. "I was dating a guy at the time and was thinking, 'I'll never be with a woman again,' or something rigid like that. It was only about six months ago. But feeling her hands on my back, I felt centuries of a life together. I felt like an eternal soul when she was touching me. And I though, 'Oh shit.'"