Mostly on Sexual Identity

Now from the Married (or ex-married) Gay List:

On sexual identity, and other ways of doing 'family'. 20/08/06

About sexual identity: Broadly speaking, there are two main ways of looking at it: “essentialist” – I was born this way and there’s nothing I can do about it – and “constructionist” – we all have some predispositions, but it’s a mixture of circumstances, opportunity, and our own choice what we do about that. I know some gay and lesbian people who have known they were “different” since the age of three, have never felt a scintilla of desire for a member of the opposite sex, and will gladly (or not!) see themselves as gay or lesbian until they die. Doubtless there are many heterosexual people for whom the corresponding (i.e. never been attracted to the same sex) is also true.

There are others, however, like myself, who were happily heterosexual for a longer or shorter period, but then their sexuality changes. I was a pastor’s wife for 22 years, with two gorgeous kids, and only became really unhappy with it in the last three or four years of the marriage. A lot of gay and lesbian people have tried to convince me that I was gay all along and just didn’t know it, but I’ve examined my past fairly rigorously, and I don’t agree. In this I’m not unusual – the sociological and psychological literature suggests that attraction is much more fluid for women than for men, and the studies of young people coming out these days suggests that their sexuality is more fluid than perhaps it was for many in the past.

I think it’s important that we accept that our experiences are all different – that it’s not an ‘either/or’ situation, but a ‘both/and’ situation. Some of us are born that way, and some of us get there by many other routes. This can be pretty tricky politically. Many people think that, if we can prove we’re born that way, the christians who currently condemn us and rave on about the ‘homosexual lifestyle’ (complete with feather boas and track lighting, no doubt) will eventually have to accept us. I sincerely doubt this, for a number of reasons which I won’t elaborate here. Even if this were true, please don’t forget there are those of us who have chosen to be gay or lesbian – and are pleased and proud about this choice, and believe that [name of your deity here] made us choosing people for a reason.

I also want to say something about ‘desire’. Is desire only sexual? Freud believed that in childhood we’re all ‘polymorphous perverse’ – that pleasure can be derived from lots of different activities with or without lots of different people, and it’s our upbringing that causes us to narrow our erotic focus down to certain permissible activities with certain permissible people (or one person, most often). Over time he came to understand ‘libido’ (which we often see as exclusively sexual) as ‘life energy’, in counter distinction to thanatos, the death instinct. I think it’s helpful to keep in mind that we can be ‘attracted’ to many different people in different ways, and that all of this is liable to change over time – as are we. We all know that the ‘best’ sexual partner doesn’t always make the ‘best’ life partner – and vice versa! And that someone who was absolutely the right partner at one stage of our life is entirely the wrong partner at another stage. Which is why I don’t see my marriage as ‘failed’ – we just grew out of it. Lucky for us, this happened when our kids were in their late teens – I can’t imagine the anguish for all of us if it had happened earlier, and I see that is something that many married gay people grapple with. Part of me thinks that for a relationship to work long-term, the partners can’t change and grow as much as human beings should – another part of me hopes I’m wrong and that someone will come along who will glory in my multiplicity and constant evolving, as I will in theirs (whether two such creatures could actually live together is a moot point!).

Please pay no attention to that dodgy ‘there’s-no-such-thing-as-a-bisexual’ research – the experimental design is hugely flawed, but so also is the fundamental premiss – ‘attraction’ is a very different animal to simple ‘arousal’ – as I’m fond of reminding people, the biggest sex organ is the one between our ears.

And to all I would say – let’s get out of our mental ‘straightjackets’ and remember that there are so many ways to do family – be creative, think up new ways of your own. I know several gay couples where the ex-wife of one is very much involved with them, sometimes even lives with them, sometimes there are kids involved. In my opinion, a kid can never have too many parents – only too few. Now I’m not saying this is easy to negotiate; this has usually taken years and a lot of angst. But each family who does it differently gives everyone else new ways to imagine their lives. I think queer people are the vanguard of social change in this country, and rather than trying to knock down the doors of the old institutions to let us in, we should be out in the fresh air, pitching our tents, and getting to see the countryside!

On sexual fluidity, and other things that are hard to grasp. 24/08/06

(Someone asked me if I thought sexual fluidity is more common among women).
Up to now, yes it has been. The literature reports a much higher number of men who have known they were gay from an early age, and have never been involved in heterosexual relationships. The trajectory of most women however, has been from heterosexual relationships, often marriage, and then a later life transition to a lesbian identity. More women (in Australia at least, it’s different in the UK and US) identify as bisexual than men do. I haven’t seen any actual statistics, but I suspect more women than men go back to heterosexuality. Again I have no evidence for this, but I suspect that has more to do with having children and a socially-recognised family than fluidity of desire or identity (more on this later).

I think this may be changing – there are a larger number of young women claiming a lesbian identity at an earlier age (however, they also become sexually active with both sexes at an earlier age than str8 kids, and are at higher risk of pregnancy and STDs – sex ed in schools has little to say about their particular situation, surprise, surprise!).

I don’t think this necessarily means there are any fundamental biological differences between male and female sexuality – apart from the obvious differences in libido caused by blokes having 10 times more testosterone running around their bodies than sheilas do! (Which might help explain why there aren’t many lesbian beats). There are some social factors involved though. First, it has only been a comparatively recent development that a woman could survive financially or socially without a male breadwinner – very few jobs or professions were open to women, and unequal pay meant that a factory girl, for example, didn’t earn enough to keep herself in food and lodgings. Even though the world has changed a lot, many women are still raised to see themselves first and foremost as wives and mothers, and so haven’t prioritised education and career. The statistics show that post-divorce, especially for older women, their standard of living drops substantially, often because they have to return to the workforce without skills or experience. So many women in the past who were same-sex attracted could do little about it, because they could not see any way to support themselves outside the context of a heterosexual marriage.

Another factor is the way ‘desire’ is constructed in contemporary society. From a gender theory point of view, in heterosexuality the man generally takes the initiative and sees himself as the one who desires; to be normatively feminine is to be desired, and fairly passive in erotic relationships. I love that, as a lesbian, I can ask a woman for her phone number, ask her out to dinner, send her flowers, ‘seduce’ her. Some women, however, find all this too terrifying for words, and in my own research I’ve heard bittersweet stories of women who’ve known each other and secretly been in love with each other for years, before one of them got up the courage to say anything. If you’ll forgive my being blunt, a man can’t get it up unless he desires his sexual partner (or am I wrong here? Please let me know!) whereas a woman can lie back and think of England! Which might explain why something like two thirds of married women have never had an orgasm. “Girl Power” notwithstanding, for the most part a sexually aggressive woman is still one who flaunts herself in such a way as to show she’s willing and to arouse desire in a man (raunch culture), not one who initiates a relationship or a sexual encounter. This is just my opinion; others may have a different experience and I’d like to hear about that.

I predict that as women become more economically independent and used to autonomous living, male and female sexuality will become a lot more similar. Time will tell, I guess. But to all you new lesbians out there, don’t be afraid to ask another lesbian for a date – if they haven’t asked you it’s probably because they’re just as scared as you are. But don’t go trying to convert your het friends unless you’re ready for a whole lot of trouble.