Fridae

Who doesn't love Brad Pitt?

Well maybe Jennifer Aniston, but pin-up Pitt has just won himself a keg of extra kudos after he said he wouldn't be marrying Angeline Jolie until the US legalised same-sex marriage.

His latest gesture has probably won the hearts and minds of lesbians everywhere. Not that he needs it.

Pitt has long been an object of dyke desire. He's a golden boy in a white wifebeater.

Scratchy lesbian rocker Melissa Etheridge famously quipped that of all men, it was Pitt that had the power to "turn her."

"Brad's effect is far-reaching," Etheridge told Vanity Fair in 1995. "One night a few of us, shall we say lesbians, were in the hot tub watching the guys play basketball in the pool. We were staring at Brad, and we all agreed he could change a woman's mind."

Although I'd rather be raiding Jolie's tomb, Pitt has a certain allure. I don't know if he'd be changing my mind, but he might make me change my underwear.

What is it about certain men that turns lesbians on?

And who qualifies in moving us from the muff to mulling about the men?

We've already established Pitt as lesbian lust fodder, but a quick survey pulls in Johnny "Jack Sparrow" Depp, soccer star David Beckham, warbler Justin Timberlake and ex X-Files David Duchovny as fellow sappho magnets.

Dyke researcher, Miss E, plumbs for Timberlake. "His music is a turn-on, it's the whole package I guess. It's just refreshing to see a straight man in the music business actually packing in the sex appeal and turning it into an act."

The Stud is a Timberlake groupie too, it seems. "It has crossed my mind more than once that his body could be rocked," she says.

Who else? Megan, a 30-something Chinese dyke, fancies Takeshi Kaneshiro, the half Taiwanese, half Japanese pretty boy and star of Perhaps Love and House of Flying Daggers. Taiwanese mandopop cutie, Wang Li Hom, gets Canadian-Chinese dyke, Jockie, hard; while my Indonesian friend Slim has the hots for Pitt.

"Brad Pitt in Fight Club (is sexy)," says Slim. "I like the whole 'I don't care attitude', and he has a rock solid body, six pack."

Finally, I ask my old partner in crime, Miss Clarice, who flicks her clit.

"Robin Williams, Ashton Kutcher, Sean Penn, Christopher Walken, Brad Pitt (sorry I hate to admit it), Tim Robbins, Matthew McConaughey, Owen Wilson, Robert Downey Jnr, Jake Gyllenhaal, Denzel Washington and Johnny Depp," she says.

I'm breathless. I don't even know who half those men are.

"Of them all... I want Robin William's sperm," she says, adding, "Does this disqualify me as a lesbian?"

No comment.

For my own part, I've been drooling over the uncommonly gentle Depp since he snipped Winona Ryder's barnet back in Edward Scissorhands in 1990. Nowadays though, I find my interest piqued by Buffy the Vampire Slayer's "Spike."

Spike is a platinum-headed charmer, a cockney-tongued rogue, and a vampire with a soul. His masculinity is shot through with vulnerability. He is not man; he is certainly not woman; he is a beastie beyond. And I'd do him in a heartbeat.

And therein lies the magic that some of these men wield.

Their manliness is almost always tempered by femininity or androgyny. In general, the kinds of men that can moisten the Sapphic lip are boyish, like Timberlake, Kaneshiro and Beckham, or genderless, like Depp and Spike.

"I don't think we're attracted to men a lot of straight women are attracted to," explains The Stud. "I think gay women go for more androgynous men. They have a sort of noble beauty that transcends gender.

"The hairless beauty thing - that is boyish. The quintessence of masculinity isn't Brad Pitt, it's Mario the pizza shop owner who's super hairy and has a 5 o'clock shadow by 9am."

Dykes like Spike because he is vulnerable, because he likes to be topped and because he's into hot kinky, genderless sex.

"In the presence of femininity Spike immediately transforms from a macho posturing monster into a man of breathtaking beauty and erotic potential," writes Dee Amy-Chinn, in her "Queering the bitch: Spike, transgression and erotic empowerment."

It's also safe for us as dykes to eroticise or romanticise these men because they are unattainable. They are celebrities after all.

"You're allowed to desire them," says Jockie, "because they're just an idea."

But what of the dynamics of this desire?

Would we go "all the way" with the objects of our lust?

The Stud says she believes we're not turned on by these men, but that we want to turn into them.

"I also think for a lot of gay women, when they get excited about men - I think they confuse what they are excited about," she says. "I think some of them would like to be these men. A lot of women, for example, are into James Dean - a lot of them just really want to emulate him.

"When I was growing up and before I realised I was a lesbian all my crushes were guys I wanted to be. While all the other girls were fantasising about going to second base with Luke Perry, I was practicing his eyebrow arch in the mirror, and contemplating the merits of sideburn length."

But I don't think I'm confusing hard ons for sideburns.

And although I cannot visualise the mechanics of having sex with either Depp or Spike, the idea of them - with clothes on - is undeniably arousing. They have a genderless essence and a vulnerable power that helps me bypass the reality of what's between their legs.

Dawn, a Singaporean dyke, discriminates between finding a guy attractive and being attracted to him.

"From a very simple-minded point-of-view, for a lesbian to find a guy attractive and be attracted to him, it either means you are a bisexual or you are just a very horny girl."

I must just be horny then.