Jennie On Sexuality
I had debated whether or not to write on this subject here, as it's something which does get done to death in the newsgroups and which can also attract attention for the wrong reasons, but recent experiences have made me feel that there are matters I need to make my voice heard on. Those who wish to discredit and destroy will always shout loudly, so the rest of us may not have the luxury of silence. Not after the bomb in Old Compton Street. Not after Brian Souter's five hundred thousand pound bigotry campaign. Not when we are still so far from equality.
In my lifetime, I've known a lot of people with the attitude "we don't mind you being bi, but why do you have to talk about it?" Well, that in itself is why. I don't try to force anything down anyone's throat (ahem - no pun intended) but neither will I obfuscate when I'm asked a direct question, and neither will I turn aside when I encounter bigotry, however subtle. See, some people see to think it's about sex. It's not about sex. I have never understood why anyone cares what other people do in bed, except where they have a direct personal interest. For as long as other people do care, however, sexuality will remain an underlying issue in every aspect of life.
The most important thing I can stress is that everybody is different. Differences between individuals vastly outweigh differences between the averages of the groups male and female, gay and straight, etc. Everyone has their own subtle individual sexuality, as with any aspect of personality, and categorisation will inevitably be a crude thing. I'm not one of those people who rants against labels because, as a linguist, I can see why they're useful; provided they are personally chosen and not abused, I don't see the harm in them. However, we must remain aware that they don't give us the whole picture. An American Psychologists' Association survey once concluded that approximately three percent of people are asexual, three percent are only ever attracted to their own gender, three percent are only ever attracted to the 'opposite' gender, and the rest are someplace in between (it should be noted that this doesn't mean the in between people are evenly distributed across the scale, nor that they are all equally attracted to males and to females). That would pretty much tally with my experience. I find it a shame that society places so much emphasis on trying to squash people into the smaller categories so that they can be more easily defined.
I'm never quite comfortable with the common assertion that "...yes, but, most people are heterosexual, really." That's all very well, but it often seems to rest on the assumption that most people the person saying it has met have proclaimed themselves to be heterosexual (or haven't said anything at all, in which case heterosexuality is frequently just assumed), and that my experience, being to the contrary, must be based on an invalid sample of the population. Why should it not be the other way around? I'm not sure of the logic here. I certainly don't draw my conclusions based on the inhabitants of gay clubs - I meet people in a wide variety of places and under many different circumstances.
Another approach is to consider the theory of imprinting as applied to sexuality (which reminds me of a paranoid fantasy of Frank Herbert's, but that's another story), which suggests that all or most people have the potential to be attracted to other people regardless of gender, but that, when we are children, our social experiences, and the pressure of cultural values, encourage us to develop a sexual preference based on the ideals of the culture in which we live. I think this could explain a lot of things. After all, most of the people I know (excepting myself) grew up assuming they were attracted (only) to the opposite sex, whether or not that actually turned out to be the case.
I think that the labels which it's practical to use also deserve to be recognised as vague. If a man is attracted almost solely to women, it's generally useful to call him a heterosexual, since the average man wouldn't have a chance with him, and might as well know that; and since, at any random time, the chances are that if he's involved in a relationship it will be with a woman. However, practical though this is, it doesn't mean that he's never attracted to men. I have a lot of friends and acquaintances who consider themselves heterosexual or homosexual but who do, occasionally or perhaps just once in a lifetime, encounter exceptions to their general preference. This might make more sense if we consider that sexual attraction isn't usually based (initially, at least) on observing someone's genitals - we look for a whole range of identifiers - and there will always be some women who appear more masculine than most men, and vice versa. Pheromonal signals do not always match body type, as, indeed, hormone levels do not always match body type in an obvious way. Furthermore, we will sometimes find ourselves so hopelessly smitten by a particular personality that physical issues cease to be as relevant, as when an initially plain looking person turns out to be really sexy during conversation.
Some people dislike the term 'bisexual' because it polarises the sexes, implying that there are two distinct categories of attraction. Again, my attitude is that it's a label, and can indeed be misleading, but that it won't hurt us provided we don't take it too seriously. It is worth recognising that there are a few people who are exclusively attracted to intersexed people, and that there are other people who are, for instance, attracted to women and to intersexed people with predominantly feminine characteristics, but not to men. Also, there are people who are only interested in one sex who find themselves attracted to individuals who have only become of that sex, through surgery and hormone treatment, during adult life. Do these categories represent a transgression of the boundaries of normal choice? Ultimately, it's just people being attracted to other people, and we have to set sex definitions aside for a while and realise that sexual attraction, and love, are more fundamental than that.
Gender, also, is a complex matter. The general assumption that everyone is either male or female is gradually being challenged by more visible cases of transsexualism, but there's still little attention paid to the considerable numbers of people (approximately one in every five hundred) who are born with a chromosomal and/or physiological arrangement which places them somewhere else on the scale of sexes - intersexual - not all of whom want to be 'made' male or female (socially and/or surgically) despite doctors having once thought that the best 'solution'. Often people don't want to be 'solved'. Then there's psychological gender, which is another huge issue in itself - not everyone's brain is wired in accordance with chromosomal or physiological arrangements, and this can be observed neurologically at an increasingly direct level. Some people are gender dysphoric because of this, and cannot be happy with the physical gender they were born with. Most people are fortunate enough not to suffer such an extreme problem, but still very few actually fit at either end of the polarised gender divisions which Western society generally assumes.
I guess this is what webpages are for.
Personally, I am fortunate enough to have never been in any doubt about my sexuality; neither have I been confused about it (I fail to understand why people think it's confusing to have a 'type' which includes some males and some females, and some people in between, rather than a larger group of exclusively males or exclusively females). I knew I was attracted to people across the gender spectrum before I knew that such feelings had any social significance, and before I knew a word for it; it just came naturally. It saddens me to know that other people often go through so much pain 'admitting' their non-heterosexuality even just to themselves. Of course, stupid laws like England's 'Clause 28', which makes it illegal for teachers and other local council employees to give advice on homosexuality 'as a pretend family relationship', make this worse.
On the other hand, however, I never felt comfortable with being female. I used to think this was a social thing, to do with my reactions to the way that the average female was expected to think and behave, and negative body associations linked to that; but latterly, I have encountered a considerable weight of medical evidence (supported most dramatically by my illness, mixed connective tissue disease) suggesting that I have foetal androgenisation syndrome; that is, I was exposed to abnormally high levels of testosterone in the womb, and these influenced my brain development, my hormonal development and some aspects of my physiology including skeletal and genital development. My testosterone levels are high, and my brain appears to function according to male patterns (not better or worse; nothing so crude; but differently). I have female chromosomes and my outward appearance is female at a glance, but in most other ways, especially psychologically, I am intersexed.
Foetal androgenisation is a politically and scientifically controversial subject. Not everyone considers it a 'full' intersex condition, because the changes it causes in the genitals may only be minor, so it can be invisible. This invisibility, however, can cause problems in itself, as it may mean people are slow to get treatment for related issues like salt imbalance disorders. Intersexed people are more likely to suffer from certain other medical problems - in my own case, immune system disorders - than are the general population, which is one reason why it's important that these conditions be recognised even where they are able to be hidden. There is a long history of secrecy within the medical establishment regarding such conditions, and, of course, in most of the world, there is no legal recognition of the existence of intersexuality: legal sex is assigned at birth on the simple (but often uncertain) basis of physical appearance. Intersexed people often have to battle against the establishment just to get medical help and support. I see my sex as a personal thing, not something for the political arena, but I don't see that I really have the option of keeping quiet when I am subject to prejudice just because of how I was born. People notice my difference, one way or another, even when I don't say anything, and I've been threatened as a result, and I've had male lovers told that they're queer. But I don't have the option to somehow magically become anything else.
When I was a small child, I was told that boy babies were traditionally dressed in blue while girl babies traditionally wore pink, and that when people didn't know what sex a baby was going to be they would buy it yellow clothes. I demanded to have my room painted yellow, and wore yellow as much as possible over the next few years (until I realised it clashed with my skin and hair, and sacrificed my principles for fashion - I do fit the queer stereotype in some ways). ;) I didn't want to be a boy or a girl, I wanted to be in between. It would appear that, on that level, I have always known what I am, and any confusion I experienced was rather the result of society trying to push me into one of two moulds which didn't fit. In my teens and early twenties I gave considerable thought to getting a sex change, but eventually concluded that I wouldn't feel any more 'natural' as a male, which makes more sense now that I have a better understanding of my circumstances. I'm actually perfectly comfortable with an intersex identity, and with my body as it is; admittedly more so since I've found lovers who take an active interest in all of it, not just the more female bits. I don't see myself as 'partly male and partly female', but as wholly intersexed; not as a failed woman, but as a successful me. I just wish there were some outward way that I could label myself so that people wouldn't keep assuming I'm female. Since I don't think or feel the way women are expected to, and find it impossible to relate to many popular female concerns, such assumptions cause a great deal of confusion.
More recently, I have had doctors suggest that, whilst they can't cure my related illness, they can 'cure' my sex disorder with hormone treatment which will make me more like a normal female. I don't think most people understand why this distresses me so much. Imagine that you really liked a particular sort of music, say, Beethoven, but that music had become deeply unfashionable, so someone said, don't worry, we can help you to fit in socially - just take this drug, and thereafter you'll feel ill whenever you hear the hitherto glorious ninth symphony, so everything will be better, and you can bop along to Atomic Kitten with your pals. I am myself. I don't care whether or not the rest of the world appreciates my music. I just want to be able to enjoy it by myself. I want people to accept that it's okay for me to not be like everyone else. I don't want people trying to interfere with my personality and my mind. Repent, ticktockman! for my nature as an orange contradicts your desire for the clockwork.
As far as sexual behaviour is concerned, I have just never been able to understand what all the fuss is about. Some people have suggested that this may be to do with my lack of religious upbringing - I'm unfamiliar with the taboos which appear to obsess the rest of humanity. It confuses and offends me that people make such huge judgements about one another based on sex. Why is virginity supposed to be such a big, life-changing event? Aren't there more significant ways of defining a person than by whether or not sie's stuck particular bits of hir flesh into or around particular bits of someone else's? Surely its significance is dwarfed by other life events like, say, first falling in love, getting a degree, learning to read, becoming a parent, losing a parent, being in a serious accident - all those things which affect most people at a much more fundamental level. I don't have anything against people who make a personal decision to remain virgins, or indeed to do the opposite, for whatever reasons, but I can't really see what the fuss is about. Similarly, I'm confused by the fuss society makes over the particular shape and chemistry of the individuals one chooses to have sexual and/or intense emotional contact with. Does it really make any difference? Aren't they still people? Why does anyone care? Most peculiar of all is the fact that this kind of fuss most often seems to be made by the same people who insist that it's rude to think of people in sexual terms, and say that personality ought to be more important. I quite agree on the latter point, but have difficulty reconciling it with the former.
I've had people tell me, often with spectacular conviction, that my different outlook with regard to sexuality is because (a) I've been disappointed by mediocre sex and so resent those able to enjoy and perceive its true value, therefore I'm 'undersexed'; and (b) I was abused as a child, therefore I'm 'oversexed'. The former is quite blatantly not true. I've certainly experienced mediocre sex in my time, but I've also had mind-blowingly, earth-shatteringly good sex - I think it's an insult to me and to my past and present partners for people who weren't there at the time to assume otherwise. As for the latter point, I find people's expectations of abuse survivors to be quite bizarre in their variety and ability to contradict one another, especially as they are most often made by people who insist they've never been in that situation. People are told that they hide from sex because of past abuse, or that it has somehow inspired them to go out and shag everything that moves. Gay people are told that abuse by a same-sex individual has somehow made them choose same-sex partners, or that abuse by an opposite-sex individual has made them fearful of the gender they 'ought' to prefer and so has scared them into the arms of same-sex partners. It seems that abuse is cited as a convenient excuse for anything society perceives as deviant, and, still more disturbingly, it is often twisted so as to become a means of blaming the victim. In my own opinion, abuse/rape and sex are two very different things. When I think of losing my virginity, I think of the first time I had consensual sex, which was a pleasant experience with someone I liked. What happened before didn't feel remotely similar, because it was unpleasant and unwanted, and because it had nothing to do with me - I was objectified in that situation; it wasn't about my decisions or my interests. It was something which happened to my body but had nothing to do with my soul. Where bdsm is involved, I can quite happily let (the right sort of) somebody take control of me and/or cause me physical pain because it's a consensual, interpersonal situation, and I know that my feelings count and that it will stop if I need it to. That's totally different from a situation in which somebody hates me and wants to take power over me so as to try and destroy me. Rape and abuse are either about power and hatred or are about one person using another as an object without any regard to hir feelings. Sex is about communicating with another person - for me at least; much of the pleasure of it comes from the trust involved, and from the intimacy which can only occur when people are interested in each other as personalities and as more than mere objects.
The way I see it, my sexuality is my own. I probably have been influenced by abuse to some extent, because we are all of us a product of our pasts - but even if that is so, why is it assumed to be negative? If anything, I'm a stronger and more adaptable person for having survived in difficult times. Fundamentally, I'm still me, and I refuse to let people devalue me because of an accident of my past. Not all people with my predilections have been abused. Plenty of happily married, monogamous, very 'ordinary' heterosexuals have. So, is it really such a defining factor? Isn't it healthier, in the end, for all of us just to be ourselves, rather than letting society or the past terrorise us into a false conformity?
I was once accused of being so socially magnetic that people around me would pretend to be bisexual in order to make me like them. I felt that was deeply offensive with regard to friends of mine who had minds of their own and whose autonomy deserved more respect; as well as stupid, if it ever did happen, because there's no way I would choose or reject people on so shallow a basis, and I hope I make that sufficiently clear to those around me whenever such matters are discussed. I think it has to do with bisexuality being 'fashionable', which is not something I find pleasing. I never chose to be the way I am out of some wide-eyed desire for glamour. I never chose at all. It worries me when I come across people who loudly label themselves as bi but reject all interested parties of their own sex every time. I can understand people being 'bi-curious' to the extent of experiencing an attraction they haven't experimented with and are unsure of, but obviously there's a difference between that and something done to get attention. I'm tired of being chased by beautiful women who get me into bed and then just want to hold hands and giggle. I'm tired of getting attached to women who later announce that it was just sex, and that they reserve emotional attachments for men. I mean, sure, I'm not going to push it, I'll bow out gracefully, but it hurts all the same, even if they were genuinely dumb enough not to have realised I expected something different. When I get involved with a woman, to whatever extent, I want to be accorded the same respect she'd give to a man, the same respect I automatically offer her. I've nothing against casual sex, but I don't want to be somebody's bit on the side, reduced to the status of fashion accessory while all her 'serious' relationships are conducted with men. I know it's probably worse because I'm poly, but personally I am still just as serious about a 'secondary' relationship as about any other; it can mean as much to me; it can screw me up as badly if it goes wrong. I know this kind of situation prejudices a lot of lesbians against relationships with bisexuals, which makes it doubly frustrating, because that way I get a bad name thanks to the same people who are messing me about.
Lesbianism often seems to be ignored by the media and society at large, even while gay men are accepted as being fairly commonplace. When a programme or article tries to make a politically correct nod to all sexualities, lesbianism is often the one which gets left out. I'm not going to campaign for token mentions - frankly, I've got better things to do - but this invisibility is frustrating sometimes, particularly when most of the references which do occur are designed, at least in part, to titillate men. Lesbians in the media are usually either deliberately plain, as if in apology for their unavailability, or, if they have any hint of glamour, are lingered on and letched at, or are there to suggest the possibility of a threesome with a man. I've had plenty of threesomes with men and I've nothing against having fun; however, on those occasions, my interest was as much in my girlfriend as in the guy, and that's something which seems somehow to get lost along the way. There's a popular myth that most men would do anything to get into bed with two women, but in my experience, once they realise they're dealing with two people, rather than two objects, most concede that they have enough trouble coping with one. It's the dumbing down of women in these situations that really pisses me off. Very, very rarely does anyone seem to discuss such matters from a female point of view. However, probably worst of all, and doubtless responsible for the peculiar expectations of some 'bi-curious' girls, is the 'artistic' and 'sensitive' treatment which lesbian sex receives in TV movies and some films. If people really think that's all lesbians do, no wonder they ignore it. Queen Victoria would have approved. That is not sex! Please, no more soft focus, no more tedious 'romantic' soft rock or bastardised classical music, no more satin sheets and floaty drapes. Why can't lesbian and bisexual females be orientated that way and still be attractive and still have personalities? Is it too much to ask? They do exist in 'real life', so how come they're so rare elsewhere? What's the world afraid of?
Traditionally, I suppose, the legend is that western culture has always been scared of 'strong women' (though from what I've seen, this often means 'vaguely confident women', even when they're not very assertive or opinionated at all). Medieval English society (to revert to a subject I've studied closely) did at times assert that women could be as intelligent and capable as men, and allowed its abbesses in particular considerable political power, but on one proviso - that they become celibate, and dress themselves in such a way as to hide all ordinary allure. It was considered that if a woman had both political and sexual power, a man could be no match for her, and so the forced choice was used to level the playing field. This follows, I suppose, the more established discouragement of male sensual expression. Even today, where men are encouraged by mainstream society to be sexual, it has to be in an assertive, go-getting kind of way which may just not suit the individual in question; it's much harder for a man to safely express a more passive or accessible sexuality, even if he's straight. Personally, I've never found any man I've been seriously attracted to to be scared by my demeanour, and if I do intimidate some men, well, that's a useful filter. People who look at me funny when I request a pint of Guinness or who look down on me for having an interest in politics are not people I want to be associating with, let alone taking even the remotest risk of exchanging genetic material with. Life is short, and I don't have time to do free tutorials on getting a grip.
Sexual desire is, ultimately, something which we have developed to increase the chance that we'll make babies. It is bizarre, then, that sex and reproduction have grown so far apart in the public consciousness that advice on how to approach the former when occupied with the latter is really hard to find. Upon undertaking to try and become pregnant, I naturally began researching the matter, concerned for the safety of any unborn child and anxious that I should not have to give up too much of my sex life - at a naturally stressful time when stress is dangerous, pleasure and emotional intimacy become all the more important. I discovered a world in which doctors are only beginning to dare to raise their voices against the traditional medical opinion that pregnant people shouldn't even exercise! (It was a mile's walk from my train to the maternity department - how could I not exercise?) Pregnancy is believed to render one impossibly delicate, incapable of handling exertion or physical distress. So how does anyone manage to give birth, I wonder? What's really going on, of course, is that people are terrified of giving bad advice, of being blamed for a miscarriage or dangerous complications, so everyone plays it safe. Of course it is important to be careful when pregnant, and to seek medical advice when in doubt, but very little research seems to have been done to provide for such advice. A few doctors advise confidently that 'sex is safe', but they treat sex as a single unvariable heterosexual act, assuming everyone is the same size and shape, and some advise not being 'too vigorous', without providing any useful parameters. It's as if Kinsey never happened.
Given the general reluctance toward discourse on this subject, I find myself in the dark, having to assess every situation by myself. Still more problematic than vanilla sex is bdsm. I see no reason why certain activities (those not affecting parts of the body close to the child) should be dangerous, but no-one can confirm this for me. Of course, I could opt to give it up for nine months, but I'd rather approach childbirth with as high a pain tolerance as possible - that would seem like common sense. More research in this area is desperately needed. Some people may lose their sexual desire during pregnancy, but that's by no means universal, and one would expect that the specifics of pregnant people's sexual desires would vary as much as anyone else's. What's holding science back, I fear, is a reverence attached to pregnancy which tries to set those undergoing it aside from the real world. Erith has advised me that, in much of US culture, a new father will assume he shouldn't have sex with his partner for several months after the birth, because she is the mother of his child, and that gives her a sort of sacred status, not to be degraded by lust. This, of course, depends on an underlying assumption that sex is degrading, which is something I find worrying. Must she sit frustrated on a pedestal because he has been taught to be ashamed of his natural desires? Is she accorded no desires of her own? Is the production of children somehow so far removed from nature that we cannot admit, as we undertake it, that we are natural creatures?
The other thing which confuses me about popular attitudes to sex is the apparent inability which many people have to distinguish between people who are comfortable with themselves as sexual beings and people who want to fuck everything that moves. Because I write on subjects related to sex and sexuality, I get a lot of strangers flirting with me, and I also get a lot of strangers who probably think of themselves as more polite but who talk amongst themselves about how they're attracted to me but would feel too shy to get involved with me - as if they could expect to get sexual attention from me just by stating an interest! Similarly, I have acquaintances who seem to interpret the way I dress as implying that I think everyone is attracted to me or that I am making a pass at everyone (this may in part be due to cultural confusion; I don't get the same thing from fellow goths). There are also people who think that because I have more than one partner I must be eager to fuck them too. Um, no. Because I have more than one partner, I have a lot less time for sex with anyone else, and besides, I'm really quite happy as I am. As a rule, I'm not interested in sleeping with anybody else, and I'm certainly not looking for another relationship. I don't understand why this is an issue. Don't people realise how rude they're being, to make such presumptions? I've been told that I must be getting old and boring because I 'no longer want to sleep around'. Well, guess what? I have never had sex with anybody just because I was asked to, or out of some nebulous commitment to hedonism. The sexual encounters I've had have occurred on my own terms and in accordance with my own desires. I don't believe in 'free love'. I have to be attracted to somebody, and it seems that I am attracted to a far smaller percentage of the population than are most people (this isn't a criticism of most people, just an observation). I also have to be able to respect that person. At the present rate, I seem to be encountering people I find seriously attractive about once every year or two.
My academic, scientific and literary interest in sex is not an emotional thing, and does not reflect any (unsatisfied) overwhelming physiological drives. I study and write because I think it's a subject which deserves more attention (as opposed to more noise, of which there is always plenty), not because I'm looking for personal sexual attention. I know many of you reading this will have figured it out for yourselves; I just wish you were representative of the majority.
Those interested in reading further articles by me on matters relating to sexuality may wish to check out CopyRight NewsMagazine or http://www.sxxxy.org
Last updated 9th January, 2008.