Women Having Sex, Hoping Men Tune In

A. Stanley

Except for the politics and soft-core pornography, "The L Word," Showtime's new series about lesbians that starts on Sunday, is old-fashioned fun _ more "Melrose Place" than "Sex and the City."The show's equivocal message does stand out, however, though perhaps not quite as much as the steamy scenes of women making love."The L Word" has been marketed by Showtime as a kind of premium-cable Certs: a manifesto of lesbian liberation and visual candy for men. This was not the case for Showtime's other groundbreaking series, "Queer as Folk," about the sex lives of gay men. (For whatever reason, what is good for the gander leaves the goose cold: few women report being aroused by the sight of men kissing each other.)In that sense, "The L Word" conveniently fits in with a trend currently preoccupying magazines, afternoon talk shows and parents' meetings: young women, including high school students, who experiment with bisexuality both for a sense of female empowerment and as a way to seduce men.