Bisexuality

I wrote about this in a previous post, but on the basis of my further reading, thought and self-examination,  I am going to stick my neck out (as it were).

It seems to me that all human beings naturally enjoy a degree of same-sex play. All categorical rejections of it are a reflection of internalized homophobia. Same sex erotic response characterizes all plural sexual situations, masturbation and, in men, the widespread interest in pornography featuring transsexuals. These days, when I encounter males troubling to identify as “100% hetero” it raises, I suspect rightly, a red flag.

This being so, it becomes useless to apply either the term bisexual or the term heterosexual to persons whose primary attraction is to the other sex. It similarly becomes useless to apply the term homosexual in the contrary case. This is because neither what we term homosexuality nor what we term heterosexuality is actually about sexual behaviour or narrow erotic/genital response. These terms in fact mistakenly take sexual behavior for the whole of something of which it is simply a part, that is, human bonding behavior, and with which it is also not exclusively associated.

I would question whether the term “heterosexual”, as employed in common parlance, usefully refers to anything at all, beyond signalling latent (or not so latent) homophobia. Bonding behavior between the sexes is the norm in our species. When something is the norm, does it need a name other than in specialized contexts? We recognize the existence of albinos without a corresponding term for “non-albinos” (unless that was it). Similarly, while there are certainly antonyms to blind, deaf, handicapped etc., these are not usually emphasized ad nauseam in a person’s self-description, unless the context requires it. Neither should gays or anyone else have to accept that their bonding behavior is conflated with their sexual behavior and the two are codetermined. A perfectly reasonable alternative with improved etymological purity is, moreover, available: the statistically dominant tendency could be termed “heterotropic” and the other tendencies “homotropic” and “bitropic”.

In any case I think we owe it to true bisexuals to stop using the same word to apply to their bonding behavior and to the normal sexual behavior of heterotropic adults. We also do not need this term for heterotropic adults, because all it vectors for them in most cases is shame and meaningless identity crisis. If you are heterotropic but you sometimes enjoy elements of same-sex play, you are not bisexual, you are just more at ease with your basic nature than most of your peers.

Sexual orientation

I inadvertently wandered into a sea of hostility when I posted recently a few thoughts on this subject on the blog of a person self-identifying as bisexual. Although I was extremely supportive and only doing a bit of thinking out of the box, I encountered what can only be described as a ghetto mentality: you’re not one of us, therefore you can’t be on our side. Which I find rather sad.

In the hope of launching a more serene debate, let me try again here. This is, I think, a subject that troubles the tantric community. In tantra there is much talk of the male/female polarity, sexuality plays a defining role and, accordingly, non-heterosexuality is difficult to reconcile with both practice and theory. Osho seems never to have taken non-heterosexuality seriously as a natural phenomenon, and writers like David Deida offer not only a stark dichotomy of the sexes, but also what might be viewed as unhelpfully stereotypical portraits of “superior men” and “superior women”. Sure, all this gets politically correctly glossed as being about “essences” not biological gender and sure, we all have male and female aspects to us, but this only allows the head to be held above water. It is anything but satisfying. At the end of the day some of us are men and others are women, and tantric union occurs between those who are men and those others who are women. Of course some form of union may also occur between men and other men and between women and other women, but this form of union then has no characteristics to distinguish it from any other experience of mystical union with whatever element of nature; it does not occupy an archetypal position, either in theory or in practice.

At the same time, the practice of tantra contributes a lot to the breaking down of barriers to same-sex intimacy. As in society at large heterosexuality is generally equated with homophobia (which encompasses not only a rejection of homosexuality, but often of any form of intimacy between men, even non-sexual), the loss of this barrier is destabilising and may lead some to feel they need to redefine their identity. If I can enjoy intimate touch from men, does that mean I’m gay, or, at “best”, bisexual? For women, who have close biological bonds to their mothers and feel less cultural pressure to be homophobic in the first place, this question may be less insistent. Still women, in my experience, may like to identify as bi, and this for a number of reasons. For a start, there is a much greater demand on the part of men for their female partner to be bi (or “bi”) than vice versa. Anecdotally, at least, it seems that many men are turned on by the idea of their wives playing with other women; in any case many more than there are women turned on by the contrary scenario. Secondly, for men, to self-declare as bi, especially after a period of heterosexual identification, not only runs into society’s homophobia, but also risks being seen as a cover for actual but unadmitted homosexuality. On the other hand, women seem, in my culture at least, to be less at risk of this kind of stigmatization. Lesbianism is statistically less common than male homosexuality, but although in some countries such as the USA more men than women seem to have had same-sex sexual experiences, in others such as France and Australia the reverse applies (see here). Because it is a bigger “deal” for men than for women, women may tend to adopt a wider definition and be more ready to self-identify as bisexual, and self-identification may not accurately portray underlying behavior.

In the course of this debate, which was unfortunately cut short by the blogger in question, it was both suggested by me and put to me that sexual attraction might be a better gauge of sexual orientation than simply the incidence of same-sex play. On a basic level, it may be considered that erotic touch by persons of either sex creates a similar primary response and may be similarly enjoyed without activating or being associated with other layers of sexual experience, in just the same way as other characteristics of the person providing the touch may not be very relevant, such as age, appearance, education and so on, factors which nonetheless play an important role in pre-intimate sexual response, that is, the response to sexual stimuli and signals other than intimate touch. If same-sex touch is not so enjoyed, this is more to do with its mental associations and conditioning, factors which, again arguably, could be considered not germane to determining primary sexual orientation.

On this basis, one could legitimately ask the question of whether the typical hormonal response that characterizes heterosexual attraction, with which I am familiar, is comparable in the case of homosexual attraction and whether such attraction is, then, comparable in nature or somehow distinct. From the little I have found on the subject, the endocrinology appears to be similar for men, whilst for women the results are more difficult to interpret. According to Wikipedia, in a 2004 study at Northwestern University, female participants, both heterosexual and homosexual, became sexually aroused when they viewed straight as well as lesbian erotic films. Among the male participants, however, the heterosexual men were turned on only by erotic films showing women; the gay males, however, were aroused only by films showing men. (I suspect though that a lot of the women were simply yawning at both types of film – and maybe were even more turned on by some gay male porn, which according to some reports women quite like)

Be this as it may, I do wish that homosexual and bisexual persons of both genders would show a bit more interest in engaging with those who call themselves heterosexuals in order to better understand each other’s sexuality. This ghetto mentality I find appalling. And I am pretty sure that many people denied entry to today’s ghetto really just long to talk to other people with whom they in due course would find common ground and friendship (or, for that matter, love).

I hate society’s hypocrisy and discrimination, but personally I am not too concerned by what the answers are, I am only curious. I am open to all experience, yours and my own. Whatever your orientation, sexuality should not be a battlefield, but a celebration.