Struggling against the almighty tides of eventuality

This is the first of what I’m hoping to have as a series of posts on sexual behavior, primarily in humans. I’m not a physician or a psychologist, but I’ve read a fair amount of Wikipedia and that seems to at least qualify me to have an opinion on the Internet, however poorly-formed. I’m not looking to really bash anyone, but I know these topics can be uncomfortable for some people, so please, if you’re offended by any of this, just don’t read it: proselytizing won’t find any souls to be saved here; I’m quite fine the way I am and I think any deity that made me would be too. However, if you find yourself disagreeing because you think I’ve put together conclusions from erroneous facts or just write like a monkey bashing at a keyboard (I’m always looking to improve), please don’t hesitate to leave a note in the comments.

I’m often interested by what people describe as features that attract them to sexual partners. It may be that I simply don’t have a hard and fast set of rules dictating what attracts me to someone else. There are some general guidelines, but I wouldn’t say I have a “type.”

Some of you who read this blog know I have a predilection for black men (not just african-americans, as it turns out). It’s alternately a joke or a really big joke amongst my friends, and it’s also, as time goes on, more and more incorrect. It’s not to say that I don’t still find myself attracted to them more often than to other people, but it’s no longer the case that I’m solely attracted to them.

Sexual preference is an evolving thing. Alfred Kinsey discovered in his studies that most, if not all people, experience a modification of their sexual preferences throughout their lives. While his dealt mostly with the gender of preferred mates, I tend to think there are so many more dynamics to sexual preference than simple gender (I’m sure Kinsey did as well and is probably just suffering a rather vicious bullet-pointing of his ideas on my end).

As a matter of fact, simple gender lines no longer really adequately describe people. There are men who enjoy dressing up like women, for any number of reasons: they feel like women on the inside, they want to become women, it simply is a way they enjoy sex, or just because they think it’s really funny. There are women and men who find each of these things to be appealing in their own right. At one point I rode the bus next to a man dressed as a woman, clearly on a date with a woman dressed as a man, and both seemed very happy with that. The fact that these people even found each other in the world is pretty amazing.

It’s become kind of a joke in the gay community that any “Queer Alliance”-type organization will try to account for all of these things in its name, its mission statement, or all of its speeches. I find myself loathing that aspect of organizations. Sure, we all want to be recognized as special in our own way, but after a certain point, when the lines become so blurred, doesn’t it become a hindrance to try and separate the ingredients back out? I identify as a gay man, but it wouldn’t be totally out of the realm of possibility for me to have sex with a woman. I don’t consider that a betrayal of who I define myself as, or a watering-down of what I feel. It’s simply an extension of the fact that, like my racial preference, I simply don’t feel the need to constrain my attractions to fit a label.

It’s sort of blowback to the whole idea of being gay in the first place. Gay people have fought to have their right to define their sexuality as “other” than heterosexuals for some time now, but it just wound up making a new pigeonhole. Now, you’re gay, straight, or bisexual. But what if you’re a woman or a man who’s attracted pretty much only to hermaphrodites? What if you are a voyeur who enjoys watching straight pornography but can only really achieve any active sexual pleasure with a member of your own gender? What if you’re a guy who has an operation to become a woman and then decides you’re still attracted to women (with thanks to South Park for that last one)? These things may deserve their own definition and name, but the more you think about it, the more you realize that you just can’t do it, any more than you can give a name to all the grains of sand on a beach.

So, once again, we are presented with a problem of nomenclature. The world of the last 20 years has had so many new ideas, that they have outpaced our languages’ abilities to keep up. Is it really right to even try to force categorization on people? Is it right to deny them that categorization if they want it? I identify as gay, more or less, but what about that couple on the bus? The nature of their relationship flows in the same river of humanity as mine but I’d be loathe to try creating a name for it. So, am I being prejudiced against them for denying them a place in the world with a name, or am I just being common-sense? Would I be comfortable with being labeled against my will, or with having a label I’m comfortable with ripped away? The murky and irresolute answers to these questions mirror the nature of the world in which they find themselves.

On the other side of the cloth wall of my cubicle sits a black guy.  So far, he hasn’t shown up for work yet today.  That’s unfortunate for me, cause I needed some information that only he has the skills to provide.  A few minutes ago, I heard discussion from his space, space he shares with another coworker who is in today.  Awesome!  I get my information at long last!

So I wheel myself out from behind the wall with great vigor, only to find that my coworker has not arrived, but rather a FedEx guy, who happens to be black.  “Oh no,” I think to myself, “I’ve just made a terribly racist assumption.”  You see, I recognized the voice as belonging to my coworker.  Being as they’re both black, naturally this meant it was that sole trait which registered in my brain.

Or is it really?  I know there’s a terrifically stupid assumption that “all [race] people look alike” that most racists make.  Naturally, it follows that “all [race] people sound alike” is a similarly racist statement.  Of course, I’ve never been good with identifying unseen voices.  When I first spoke with Eric and Matt on the phone, I couldn’t tell them apart, and as a white person that should be easy as pie for me, right?  They’re even from different areas of the country and have (supposedly) different accents.

So, after thinking so ashamedly of myself for a few minutes, I’ve finally figured out that maybe I’m not the worst human being ever for being voice-identification challenged.  But that leads me to wonder, how many times is it that we assume some sort of racial profiling is in effect because the person involved is of a specific race, when nothing could be further from the truth?  I realize there are plenty of instances where people do profile; but, sometimes maybe jumping the gun and assuming something is racist, i.e. taking special note of someone’s race to make that judgement, is actually the more racist part.

So, I have mentioned my “partner” before in the scant few posts I’ve had thus far.  I should clarify this by saying that, yes, I do mean this in the semi-politically-correct sense of he’s my long-term significant other.  Allow me further clarifying leeway in stating that I hate this term to describe our relationship.  It feels like a watered-down version of a real term of endearment.  I’d be (marginally) less uncomfortable sticking to “boyfriend,” though there seems to be some consensus that “boyfriend” denotes something less serious.

In the heterosexual world, there’s clearly delineated levels of a relationship: dating, boyfriend/girlfriend, engaged, and married.  Due to the fact that people get married faster than they switch toothbrushes these days, they’re watering down their own meaning of the last two, but I digress.  For gay couples, it just stops after the boyfriend or girlfriend stage.  We’ve been left to come up with our own terms for what follows, given that marriage between us is being treated as a bigger threat to the institution as a whole than people getting married before they’ve decided to which college they’re going.  “This long-distance marriage thing just isn’t going to work out, you’re going to the University of Pittsburgh and I’m going to the University of Philadelphia.”

This isn’t to say I want to be able to call him my husband, or for him to call me that.  I’m aware of where the term comes from, and it just doesn’t seem appropriate in this day and age.  So, where does that leave me?  Well, I use, with great disdain, “partner.”  We’re not in a business together, we don’t chase down criminals together; we share a home, a bed, and our lives.  Companion seems better, though it has an unfortunate feeling (to my mind), that one person is the dominant entity in the relationship.

Honestly, I try to avoid labeling things like this anyway, as I feel it’s like trying to catch the wind and stick it in a bottle, to contain it in something less than it already is.  Unfortunately, it becomes a problem when communicating the idea to others.  So here I am: stuck, trying to label something I don’t want to label; hating the terms I’ve been given, and thinking I should come up with a new one; and terrified of coming up with something absolutely, unequivocally awful like “brights.”