Learning To Love My Inner Hetero
TNG reader and Brooklynite Marcel submitted this post. 
No matter how accepting society may seem, it's hard to be gay. Or bisexual. Or homo-flexible. Or curious. Or perpetually questioning or, or...
Say, which "job description" shall I choose today?
Long story short: at about age 18 or 19, I finally accepted the lingering feeling that I wasn't half as straight as I thought. I did a healthy amount of soul-searching – no holding back, no unhealthy repression, just acceptance. I finally came out as bisexual when I was 20, then identified as gay for a while, then bisexual again and finally back to gay. Five years later the only thing that’s remained constant is: I’m definitely not a straight man.
Instead of a miniature angel and devil pair standing on either shoulder, it seems I have a gorgeous and outspoken pair of twinks on my right, and on the left is a fussy, finicky, shy little hetero who seems to spend most of his time cloistered in his room ogling DVDs of Jessica Alba in her Dark Angel days while eating Haagen Dasz out of the carton. Alas, he's never been good at asserting himself, and he's got strict, perhaps unrealistic tastes. At unpredictable moments he emerges from his closet and demands that his voice be heard, but the twinks work hard to ensure that most women don't appear on my radar (or my YouTube favorite videos list).
Given that I've only ever slept with dudes up to this point (and think mainly about dudes), I've come to accept that at best it's a quad-tearing stretch to say I'm bisexual – I'm not 50/50, not 60/40, not even 70/30. I'm probably 90 percent homosexual, or Kinsey 4.8, or something.
Yet despite my same-sex proclivities, I still hesitate to embrace the "gay" identity. What does "gay" even mean? My dictionary says it means happy, exuberant, y'know, gay. Well, I'm not exactly known as being Mr. Sunshine, especially not in a recession. Does being gay mean rainbows, wigs, drag, the latest anorexic fashions from Milan, Adonis-worship, behaving "effeminately" or (God forbid) voting Democrat? Margaret Cho once did a hilarious bit on a gay friend of hers who'd squeal with disdain at the mere thought of vagina - "Ewwwww...I don't want none of that! Ha ha...girl, I'm allergic!" I've had male friends of mine express similar sentiments. Well, that’s not me.
"Oh, well you're a straight acting gay!" Um, no. What is "straight" supposed to be? A macho attitude, a need to dominate others, red meat and football, competing with your buddies over who's more "masculine" or who most "appreciates" the ample-chested females in the subway, or the coveted threesome with two chicks? If these don't work, then how about convulsing in horror or lashing out violently at the mere suggestion of intimacy with another man? How about writing it into scripture?
"Gay" and "straight", at least the way they're commonly used, are ideological terms that speak more to stereotypes and culturally ascribed attitudes and behaviors than anything else. Think on it a bit. More than anything described above, the one underlying rule of all rules for straight men is "Thou shall not fall in love or show feelings of tenderness for another male, nor shall thou even so much as consider laying with a male as with a woman." The gay male counterpart seems to be "Thou shall treasure thy fag hags, but forever shall they be off limits to thee in the bedroom." Off limits! As a “straight” teenager, I understood implicitly that I was not allowed to have same-sex desires, but I eventually overcame that and accepted them as healthy and natural. But alas! Upon stepping into the “gay” world, I began to understand that I was not allowed to have desires for the opposite sex. No ambiguity! Don't be one of those bisexual traitors! Keep the Commandments!
Well, I admit I've always been a bit of a nonconformist, a "heretic" if you will. I see now that's partly what kept me coming back to a bisexual identity, even if it's become clear that I don't truly fit into that category like a hand into a glove. The same open-mindedness, strong self-awareness, and refusal to conform to the cult of masculinity that drove me from being "straight", has kept me from accepting the gilded cage of being a "gay" man.
So if someone asks me now where I stand, my answer is: "a very open minded homo". Because that little hetero inside me needs to have his day in the sun too even if he usually hides in the closet playing Xbox or something. He's a fussy, timid part of me, and because I love myself I've learned that I should show my inner hetero some love too –gay/straight ideology be damned.
27 comments:
everybody needs a day in the sun. some need more, some need less...
good reflections about these casual but not really issues!
So you've never slept with a woman, you watch Dark Angel and play X-Box, and you think this makes you straight?
The word is nerd. ;)
What about a "queer" identity? Is that not ambiguous or fluid enough?
I totally feel you on this one. I guess I identify as queer, but really I just prefer people identify their sexual attractions based on the Kinsey scale. In fact, I usually don't even like it if people just give me one Kinsey number, it should be a range for each person. It really all depends on the day of the week/time of the year. I have a friend who (in the winter months) is almost 50/50 bi, but anything outside Dec-Feb she's almost 100% lesbian.
I rank myself a 4.7-5.1. It's just easier that way, instead of a label.
I know I'm definitely not a gay men. I prefer homosexual or, even better, MSM.
4.7-5.1 is a label. The problem with the notion of a fixed identity and a label associated with such an identity is that it's always already based on an outside representation rather than an internalized truth. The specific lack of such a truth is what drives so much anxiety surrounding associating oneself with a queer identity, which exposes the chaos in assigning intelligibility to our lived experiences. Identity is always performative rather than constative.
Never let it be said that I cannot change my mind. You all have convinced me: "gay" is cultural, and "homosexual" is an inherent sexual orientation. Furthermore, based on the predominating definition of "gay" I've encountered in the comments here, I'm not gay. You can find my full concession posted on my blog.
If everyone rejects labels and self-identifies as something different, how can ever hope to unite and work for our rights. I think the event lobbying congress for the marriage rights of the 4.7-5.1 will have an attendance of one.
Don't we need a shared identity to rally behind?
I agree with Michael. We do need a shared identity to rally behind.
I think what this poster, Marcel, needs is broader definition of "gay." To admit that you can have feelings that vacilate on the scale, but not be scared to call yourself gay.
Homosexual is a description of sexual behavior and a scare label that the Christian Right uses instead of gay. Gay is an acceptance of your homosexual tendencies and letting yourself have relationships instead of sneaking off in the night behind your wife's (or husband's) back. Mr. Wide Stance is a homosexual, I am gay and so is my boyfriend.
The gays have to have a wide definition of what makes you gay. The thing that brings us together isn't our love of musicals, but our love of sex with people of the same gender (I know people take issue with the word gender, but I use it for ease.) Their are hipster gays, opera gays, gym bunny gays, bear gays, and professional gays. We are all gays.
That was longer than I thought it would be.
I disagree with Michael. We do not need a shared cultural identity. People of color are allowed to be themselves, united by their biological race.
We are already united by sexual orientation.
I do not see why we must all adopt the same identity, why we cannot simply be who we already are, united by our biologically determined sexual orientation.
What is "enough" for you?
I forgot to add:
I don't need all "Gay" people or all homosexuals to be exactly like me to know and feel we are united by one common trait. I do not need all of us to conform to what I think is "right" in order to feel better about my sexuality, or manipulate a civil rights movement into action.
There are all kinds of blacks, latinos, asians, women, etc. All are already united by the most important trait they all share in common, one that is biologically determined. Their identities are by no means imposed and confined by their own communities.
This notion that we must all be "Gay" is, I think, what is precisely what alientating many and holding our rights movement back.
Ed put it perfectly while commenting on another post:
"The idea that homosexuals have to be gay in order to belong to the club is one of the reasons fewer homosexuals are trying to join the club. Do you think a word can truly define the enormity of who we are as individuals?"
"And whether you like it or not, the word gay comes with baggage. Gay is the label sitting on the floor when we come out of the closet. It is so easy to pick it up and put it on without giving thought to whether or not it fits. I more closely associate with the homosexual individuals who make the conscious choice to assuage gay and embrace queer or nothing at all."
"Homosexual is a description of sexual behavior and a scare label that the Christian Right uses instead of gay. Gay is an acceptance of your homosexual tendencies and letting yourself have relationships instead of sneaking off in the night behind your wife's (or husband's) back. Mr. Wide Stance is a homosexual, I am gay and so is my boyfriend."
--Clearly Here
No. I could not disagree more.
Reclaiming our sexual orientation for ourselves is "acceptance". Taking it BACK from Christian Right is true acceptance.
I love my homosexuality and I love being an avowed homosexual. I am neither afraid of that word nor am I afraid to call myself such. It is what I am.
My sexual orientation is not a "scare label". Anyone using it as such will answer to me.
And just so you know we're in this fight for the rights of us all.=, including "Mr. Wide Stance". Maybe if we all stand up and proudly reclaim our homosexuality from the Christian Right guys like Mr. Wide Stance will realize there is nothing shameful in being who you already are and won't live sad little lives on the DL.
The point of this post is that "homosexual" works no better than "gay" as an identity or label. "Gay" may be a cultural adaptation, and sexual orientation biological, but it is on a biological continuum, rather than in a couple of either/or boxes.
We may need to rethink the very idea of community. For better or worse, the default example of an oppressed minority claiming its rights is the African-American community. But that community was defined, in US laws and customs for many years, by the "one drop" rule - if you had "one drop" of African blood in your veins, you were considered "negro" or "black". It clearly delineated the boundaries of that community. No other ethnic or racial community had that definition. As for gender issues, that was pretty well defined, as well (I cannot get into intersex issues here): you were either male or female, and your rights and responsibilities, historically, were determined by which box you fell in.
We - however one defines "we" - don't have that clear delineation of boundaries. Maybe a tiny few of the sexual minority "community" are a Kinsey 6. But not many. The bottom line is, granted that "gay" delineates a culture, nevertheless "homosexual" only describes a sexual minority within a sexual minority (i.e., the subset of those with exclusive attraction to one's own sex, within the set of those who have attraction to one's own sex as well as the opposite). If we don't have sufficient community cohesiveness to rally around - and I would argue that it appears we do not - we may simply have to work on the positive presentations of our individual selves in society for a few more decades, until the idea of marrying whomever one chooses, getting and keeping whatever job best suits your needs, etc. are all guaranteed without regard to an "identity politics". It will be a harder shlep, but it may be the only way.
The issue here is the difference between how one self-identifies and how one defines the "community" one is a part of. I self-identify as a gay man and I'm willing and able to challenge our larger culture's preconceived notions of what GAY means by living a genuine authentic life.
However, I identify as a member of the QUEER community, because all of us queers need to unite under one label, one flag, one mission, to fight for the rights we deserve and are being denied.
As Kyle said, the women and African Americans have had rules that clearly stated what minority population they fit into, or rather ways to seek out similarly disenfranchised peers. Our rules are blurier. It's harder. We need a term by which we can refer to this larger group of people who have the same level of disenfranchisement. Otherwise, we'll have to wait the 20 or 30 years it will take for the children who grew up watching Will and Grace and Ellen to get elected into all the positions of power and start treating everyone truly as equals.
I have to say I like Queer community better than the LGBT community.
"united by our biologically determined sexual orientation."
Two points, one relatively minor. First, sexual orientation is not "biologically determined." The scientific attempts to prove that it is, are incoherent and inconclusive on their own terms.
Second, what is our "shared sexual orientation"? Do a Kinsey 2, a Kinsey 3, a Kinsey 4, a Kinsey 5, and a Kinsey 6 have the same sexual orientation? If you think they do, do you think there is a different "biology" behind each position on the scale? Should the gay movement be limited to Kinsey 6s? If not, then you're talking about identities, not sexual orientations, and you do need a shared identity after all.
Neither "identity" nor "orientation" are clear in their meanings. And the Kinsey scale, by the way, was not developed to describe sexual orientation, it was developed to describe sexual experience. There is no way that I know of to measure "sexual orientation", and simply assigning oneself a number on the scale is bogus.
Still, it has been interesting to watch people argue about these issues here, if only to learn how little people have thought these issues through.
"...sexual orientation is not "biologically determined."
--The Promiscuous Reader
OK. When did you "choose" to be "Gay"?
re: Clearly Here and Michael
Running from the word "homosexual" is exactly what the Christian Right wants you to do.
You can call yourselves what you want but as long as you let the word "homosexual" be owned and demonized by the Christian Right you are ceding the very ground on which we stand.
"...what is our "shared sexual orientation?"
The Promiscuous Reader
If you need something shared how about this: anyone who is not enfranchised based on sexual orientation, whatever it is. As humans we have neither one "shared sexual orientation" nor one shared cultural identity. The danger is the need to collapse everything into one neat category, excluding allies and similarly disenfranchised others.
I doubt anyone would agree "Gay" defines us all. When you stop and realize that (more than just those Kinsey 6 100% homosexuals) there are many in our society who do not have the same rights as heterosexuals you realize how limiting it is to define ourselves as "Gay" only and confine our movement to the same limiting, alienating and confusing language. "Gay" actually is a misnomer if we are to include bi-sexuals and transpeople.
Debating degrees of sexuality and demanding "Gay" orthodoxy when we should unify our movement is like splitting hairs on the deck of the Titanic. It's fine for an intellectual discussion but inappropriate and irrelevant here. The only way to unify is to expand, not to contract.
The tremendously huge irony is that while some of us argue for expansion and strengthening of our "movement" to include allies, others of us argue for the same old rigid confining categories of identity politics. It is precisely those categories and identities that are impeding our progress. Stridently demanding and defending one clearly delineated identity for us all ("Gay") we hand over the very bricks and mortar to enclose us in our own ghetto of disenfranchisement. We are actually many more than only those people who choose to self-identify as orthodox, card-carrying, Kinsey 6, 100% homosexual "Gays".
You can choose your cultural identity. You cannot choose your sexual orientation...whatever it is. If you doubt that simply ask everyone you know (straight, bisexual, Kinsey 1-6, or "Gay") if they made a choice to be such.
re: Clearly Here
Homosexual is a clinical word that is more about sex and less about relationships.
That's precisely the point. I seek only a word to accurately describe my sexual orientation only. The rest is up to me. I am proud of my sexual orientation and embrace the very word that describes it.
I don't need a cultural identity. I am not a sieve, I already know who I am. "Gay" does not and cannot fully describe the entirety of any one person no more than "straight" or "white". I do not demand the word "homosexual" define me. It does, however, dimply and accurately describe my sexual orientation only. I see absolutely nothing wrong or defamatory about that simple self-evident fact.
You contradict yourself: reclaim "Gay" from it's hateful history but not "homosexual"? So "homosexual is a "clinical word"? Like "phlebotomy"? Regardless of how it has been used by others it is up to us to embrace it for ourselves removing the onus from the word.
The Christian Rong uses it as a scare word in seemingly everything they can. The CR is obsessed with us, always talking about those homosexuals and the evils they do.
I see. So the "Christian Rong" is right? Because they hate us we'll let them continue to do so using the very word that describes so many of us accurately?! I don't get it. Again, a contradiction. Reclaim "Gay", disparage "homosexual"? You realize by doing that you are confirming what the Christian Right believes about us and wants us to do.
can we please stop using kinsey as our one and only scientific reference point? i'm just tired of it. his work was flawed, much of it discredited, and what remains is still suspect. the work was more important culturally than it was scientifically. people describing themselves by a kinsey number is even more embarrassing than defining yourself by an astrological sign.
"There are all kinds of blacks, latinos, asians, women, etc. All are already united by the most important trait they all share in common, one that is biologically determined. Their identities are by no means imposed and confined by their own communities."
I just want to contradict this statement which has already been quoted and agreed to by someone.
This isn't true. The idea of "blackness" is socially constructed as is "gayness." Like many people believe one drop of black makes you black in the US, people also impose the idea that one drop of gay makes you gay.
I'm not arguing whether the construction of gayness is good or bad, but identities across the border are really confusing--- people who belong to an identity group but don't identify with the culture, or who come from black/latino/etc background but aren't externally identifiable as that identity (like gays who aren't easily identified by others as gay).
And stereotypes and cultural expectations are huge pressures among women and the various racial identity groups. E.g. women who don't date, hate kids, take on masculine traits, dress a certain way. Identities are generally difficult to navigate. Lots of people find themselves in confusing situations.
re: alex
Race, like sexual orientation, is biologically determined.
The culturally derived idea of "blackness" is completely different from the immutable fact of biological race.
The culturally imposed idea of "Gayness" or "straightness"is distinctly separate from the immutable fact of biological sexual orientation.
No one has said "stereotypes and cultural expectations are [not] huge pressures among women and the various racial identity groups."
even race can't actually be called an "immutable fact" biologically. can we try and get out science straightened out around here. there a was actually a really good episode of radiolab about this a while ago.
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2008/11/28?utm_source=texttop&utm_medium=hp&utm_campaign=radiolab
I am referring to the precedent established by the U.S. Supreme Court's in using immutable traits and characteristics as the barometer of enfranchisement.
It is clearly obvious that regardless of phenotypic race we are all human (i.e the same). Just as it is also obvious that regardless of sexual orientation we are all sexual and human. As we all know recent research reveals differences in genes, prenatal hormones, and brain structure arguing for a biological basis for sexual orientation.
All I know is I did not chose my sexual orientation any more than I chose my race.
my point is that people try to ground certain identities in biology but nothing is 100 percent biological determinable.
a person isn't the color black. probably no (or very few) African-Americans in the US today have no white blood in them. Thus no one is a "black" person, because there is a mix of blood.
Latinos can also be of African descent or a mix of races and also from Latin American, or be phenotypically black. Are they biologically determinable as distinctly black or distinctly Latino?
I look like a bunch of light skinned people around me, but I have Sicilian blood and Jewish heritage. Race is not immutable, is not a one concrete, objectively identifiable thing. It is based on a group of random observations, some based in appearance, some in lineage, to mark arbitrary lines.
I hate it when people talk about race in absolutist terms without seeing how constructed and not objective the identification of people as "black" and "white" and "latino" (and so on) is. And if we want to compare gayness, we should look at how all identities are created by socialization, and definitive lines between one "kind" of person and another are actually subjective. I'm not suggesting choice.
re: alex
"I hate it when people talk about race in absolutist terms without seeing how constructed and not objective the identification of people as "black" and "white" and "latino" (and so on) is. And if we want to compare gayness, we should look at how all identities are created by socialization..."
That's just the point Alex. We are talking about how race and sexual orientation are perceived. The idea of "Gayness" or Gay identity is a construction, just like the idea of "whiteness". The idea of hegemony is equally constructed based on these mistaken perceptions.
Racial and sexual taxonomies are created by the cultures we live in. Those categories are structured by perception and there is no denying differences in phenotypic race and skin color. There is no denying the range of sexual orientation experienced by every human being as innate, and as immutable as skin color.
Again, no one chooses sexual orientation any more than they choose to be "white". If you explain this to a "white" heterosexual they just might get it.
But this idea that all homosexuals are, by default, "Gay" is nothing more than capitulation to cultural perception and imposed identity.
Post a Comment