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How are you gay?

  
  

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sleazenation
18:59 / 07.02.02
quote:Originally posted by shortfatdyke:
i am totally lesbian and i find it fairly insulting when people tell me i'm bi really, i just don't realise it.


Interesting. So has no-one known someone that 'came out' and then went 'back in' ? ie announced their presence at a specific point on the 'queer scale' only to later re define their position? Or is this just a hetro/bi-normative myth?

It sort of sounds like this is what Rosa has done. What say you Rosa?
 
 
Naked Flame
09:30 / 08.02.02
sleaze... Not wanting to put words in Rosa's mouth, but I don't think there's any way you could describe that as 'back in'. It's right out the other side of kink and into something totally other. Beautiful.
 
 
sleazenation
09:30 / 08.02.02
I'm expressing myself poorly.

I meant that outing to a greater or lesser extent involves adopting an area on the queer spectrum. Rosa's experience seems to point to a later reassessing on hir position. SFD conversely is offended at the notion that she may change her position.

I guess this only goes to prove the quite obvious fact that queerness and peoples experiences of it are as individual as, well, each individual is.
 
 
Disco is My Class War
09:30 / 08.02.02
Firstly, to answer SMatthew, I would dearly love a larger vocabulary -- both of ideas and words -- to describe and talk through sexuality. Sexuality is obviously more complex than any binarism; in fact it's far more complex than the Kinsey continuum that sfd is referencing. I don't like that continuum at all, because it still has two mutually exclusive points at either end, dominating the field of what 'sexuality' is on a level of hetero/homo. I'm also, however, suspicious of a 'less ambiguous' vocabulary. The production of sexual categories is happening all the time, in different cultural and socio-economic contexts: see, for example, the emergance of the term 'boi'/'boy' in trans/lesbian communities over the last six years or so. Or the numerous ethnically-specific terms circulating in gay communities, like 'rice queen' or 'potato queen'. No-one is ever going to get their heads around all of those terms. Maybe that's a good thing.

And to answer sleaze, well, no, I don't think I've gone back in. I have to do work, though; will answer in more detail later on.
 
 
Disco is My Class War
09:30 / 08.02.02
Right; answering sleaze, and following on from the anti-continuum argument. I know loads of people who are constantly reinventing and re-assessing their sexual self-identification. But the point is that this reassessment comes from the self -- not from other people who are keen to tell you who or what you are. And by 'other people' I'd class heterosexuals who'd like to believe you're 'really' bisexual, as well as the femme lesbian who told a rather androgynous friend of mine that 'she could never be femme'. My friend was pretty offended... It's border policing, is what it is, and border police ought to be shot. Metaphorically.

But aside from that, the very idea of moving backwards and forwards along a 'scale' from hetero-homo narrows the available fields of sexual identification. I don't think I will ever stop re-assessing my sexual identification (at least I hope not) -- more and more I'm thinking of sex/gender/sexuality as a series of layers which interact with each other and form weird combinations of supposedly mutually-exclusive categories. Which gets back to the map idea that Flame On (?) had; a map of sexuality sure as hell ain't a line.

(This seems rather off-topic, so I'll stop now.)
 
 
ciarconn
12:43 / 08.02.02
Funny, I was in one thread in the Authority forum that started with Apollo and Midnighter, and ended basically on these same ideas.
Several of the posters proposed the idea that human, by default is bisexual, and that sexuality is an option.
And most of the ones who opposed this idea, were gays that said they never had been attracted to women.
A friend of mine says that one defines one-self's sexuality by negation, that is, by defining what one does NOT want to be.
 
 
Tom Coates
13:07 / 08.02.02
I've got a couple of points.

Firstly, I'd like to support shortfatdyke in the sense that I think there IS an element of being gay which is like being a different race to straight people. There are substantial differences between men and women (as perceived by our culture) and these differences have made people use the race metaphor or the alien metaphor, and I think that can be useful. But a large proportion of the life-experiences immediate open and obvious to straight people are just DIFFERENT for gay people. I feel as excluded from my male friends' pulling expeditions as I do from my female friends' 'girly chats' (and of course I'm RADICALLY over-simplifying and caricaturing here).

If the worry is about the essentialising biological model then fair enough - I don't want to go down that path at the moment. But in terms of radically divergent cultures defined by an 'apparently unchangeable' aspect of individuals, I don't really see that there is much to contest.

Having said all that, this brings me to my OTHER point. People talk a lot about sexuality being a spectrum between gay and straight with bisexual in the middle. Let's just conjure with a couple of other metaphors for a moment - how about defining sexuality as a spectrum between the love of men or the love of women, without recourse to the gender of the individual concerned. Might that be a different or more interesting metaphor? Or how about a spectrum between people who can love only one gender or who can love people of either? These are all equally plausible ways of categorising sexuality.

And then lets take it still further - Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick talks about all the neglected binaries of sexual identity that have gradually become subsumed in 'gay/straight' - what about peopel who like OLDER peopel, or YOUNGER people, or who like to be passive or active in sexual activity, or who only like oral sex or who like to be punished or punish or who like to take orders or give orders, or who like sex with groups of people or who are only interested in sexual gratification on their own, or people who require relationships as opposed to those who despise relationships or those who use toys and those who don't, or those that like public sex rather than private sex....

Not only are there many more criteria for sexual identity than just gay and straight, but even the spectrum of gender-orientated coupling can be seen in many ways. "Gay" may only be one element of a whole range of intersecting categories. This being the case, we'd probably be better off defining how an impulse or a desire is transformed into a 'community' or an 'identity' rather than trying to define one particular identity as completely emerging from a sexual preference
 
 
cusm
15:46 / 08.02.02
I'm tired of the term bi-sexual having strict dualistic connotations. There are a lot more genders than just boy and girl, as "gender" tends to be defined more in a social manner than the strictly biological.

"Gay" is just as bad, as it implies strict homosexuality, which in its own way is "Straight", as a preference for one gender is implied.

I'm not straight. That's about a much as can be said about it. My "preference" is pretty much whatever I fancy it to be, and don't need any labels beyond perhaps "liberated".

I have heard the term "gay" being applied to this kind of thinking, rather than to being homosexual, and I must say that I like it. I wouldn't mind a redefinition of the word in this sense on a wider scale at all.
 
 
alas
16:03 / 09.02.02
yay Tom! Brilliant response. I also like the idea of "queering" the terrain of sexuality. I'm a part of the "not straight" category, but what "I am" is more ambiguous than the labels out there suggest--and as Foucault would remind us, some part of the purpose of labels is to make "us deviants" visible to the panopticon...

My problem: I'm in a seemingly "het" relationship--and i try to be aware of/ humble about the social perks i (and partner) get for having made that choice--but terms like heterosexual or straight make my stomach turn. And they don't do justice to my past, my inner life, the people I love and have loved.... alas.
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
18:31 / 09.02.02
I find it kinda interesting that in all of this, no one has addressed the notion of asexuality. How does that fit into these sexuality spectrums? You tell me. I don't know.
 
 
Rev. Orr
01:23 / 10.02.02
How do they all fit? As a suggestion, try taking the stright-queer line or spectrum idea and add a dimension. You now have a map instead of a line. Keep adding dimensions until you can't picture the model in any other way than mathematically. Every individual now has their own point in s-space. These points can associate in clusters or float free and are specific to the point of having no meaning. I now appear to have disappeared up my own arsehole but that's just my personal choice.

The point is, I guess, that the specific is the individual and as such only meaningful when blurred to allow identification and mutual recognition and support. Exactitude in definition is an exercise in futility as we only end up with re-stating the unique experience of the individual. We are all snowflakes, people.
 
 
Disco is My Class War
03:21 / 10.02.02
Well, Orr, I don't agree. Specificity allows people to understand that their 'unity' or 'community' is always going to made up of diverse cells/molecular formations, which is useful to know, and, I would say, politically expedient. Tom's last point was really what I was trying to say, but he said it far more articulately. Thanks...
 
 
Rev. Orr
08:29 / 10.02.02
Yeah, Rosa. You and Tom have a good point. Most of my theories tend to leak a lot of hot air when applied to reality. Out in the world it's not always useful to have a knee-jerk 'the individual is supreme' attitude to everything.

I'm not taking back what I said, but it is certainly true that whilst a particular conformity is seen as the norm or legislated for in a way that others aren't then insularity is a naive approach. If looking at the question of sexual identity in another way allows people to see what they have in common rather than what differentiates them from everyone else then hooray for the view from your head. And 'tis true, our glorious leader was and is more eloquent than I am, and I find it hard to disagree with the thrust of what he said. Maybe I just wish it were solely a choice to associate rather than a case of safety in numbers to any degree.
 
 
Tom Coates
08:29 / 10.02.02
I should sell T-shirts.
 
 
Cherry Bomb
10:24 / 10.02.02
Very interesting topic, very intelligient responses.

I don't really know where I put myself on the spectrum here. I wouldn't call myself "bi" 'cuz it just doesn't work for me. I've always found myself attracted to both women and men, yet at the same time only kissed one woman (and no tongue even! innocence!), and as I get older, I find myself more going towards the "straight" side of the spectrum.

I've always thought sexuality should be a fluid thing, however, and I'm really quite hesitant to shut the door on ANY potential aspect of it. It's a damned shame that sexuality has been infused with so much, er, shame in our culture. To me, sex is one of the coolest and best things about being a human.

Those who have met me see that I'm very much "femme" looking. I LOVE being a woman, and I love wearing dresses, wearing makeup - I even love wearing tights which I'm told is a bit unusual. As long as I can remember, I've always had a large circle of gay/lesbian friends, and even though I have never been "as gay" (which is probably the worst and most simplistic way to put this), I've very much identified.

Lately I've taken to calling myself "queer-identified." It's the closest thing I can come up with to describing how I feel even though I'm not really there. And I don't even know if I'm insulting people or not with it but I figured it would at the very least make people think a bit, and I haven't lumped myself specifically in the "straight" category, and when I decide I'm something else, I'll be something else.

But maybe I'm just talking bullocks, eh?
 
 
Shortfatdyke
10:29 / 10.02.02
cherry - id/be where you feel comfortable. no problem there!
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
15:49 / 10.02.02
I've got a question : Could it be that these sexual affiliations/definitions are only really valid if they are in practice? Does it matter which sexuality a person identifies with if they are not sexually active beings?
 
 
sleazenation
16:01 / 10.02.02
which brings us back to the beginning, flux - is there is more to sexuality than fucking?

[ 10-02-2002: Message edited by: sleazenation ]
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
16:09 / 10.02.02
Sorta, I guess. But what I really mean to say is: does a person who does not have sex or any sort of relationships with other people have any fair claim to declaring a sexual definition, even if they have preferences?
 
 
alas
17:59 / 10.02.02
cherry--may i share your id as "queer identified"?

[I keep thinking of Emily Dickinson's exclamation-point ridden poem #288:

I'm Nobody!--who are you?
Are you [queer-identified], too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Don't tell! they'd advertise, you know!

How Dreary--to be Somebody!
How public--like a Frog--
To tell one's name--the livelong June--
To an Admiring Bog!]

PS Emily loved her sister-in-law Susan. That's clear from the passionate letters and poems she addressed to her, and the family's attempts to censor those letters and poems later. The two women lived next door to one another. E loved S for most of her life, at least 30 years. Scholars go crazy trying to label her, knowing that in 1854, when they first got to know one another, there were no such labels available.

alas...
 
 
Ierne
12:11 / 11.02.02
...does a person who does not have sex or any sort of relationships with other people have any fair claim to declaring a sexual definition, even if they have preferences? – Flux

I think so. Because to have or to not have sex is a choice, and someone who at present is not having sex can choose to have sex at another time. And people who choose to not have sex (for whatever reasons) will still be drawn to whatever it is about other people that attracts them – it's just that the attraction won't be expressed sexually.
 
 
Tom Coates
13:46 / 11.02.02
I remember talking to my academic supervisor and saying to her something like "Well as a gay man, I think..." and she kind of looked at me slightly confused and asked me what that meant. What did it MEAN to talk 'as a gay man' - was it a claim to authority? was it a statement of position? and how could I self-label myself as if that meant something - WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO TALK AS or THROUGH your minority status.

My feeling had always been that there is something defining about being defined - a la Foucault - minority groups BECOME GROUPS by being defined as a minority and therefore as weird or bad or different. And from that 'weird' place, they can rally and become a thing when before they were not separate from the 'big' thing.

So what Foucault and Halperin and various others would say that we're talking about here is that moment in queer history when act became identity - when homosexual act became homosexual PERSON, which was the seed of the reaction to that stigmatisation with the GAY person and afterwards the QUEER one.

What very few radicals have done effectively is reseparate the idea of sexuality from identity. Much like the later feminisms - some of which dismantled 'women' so much that there was no longer anyone to fight for, most queer thinkers talk about a proliferation of identities - a mass of typologies of sexualities, but not a reseparation of identity from sexuality. If such a thing were possible, which we don't know if it is (and I suspect it isn't).

Not particualrly helpful stuff this, I suppose, but I thought it might get people thinking in a slightly different direction....
 
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
13:53 / 11.02.02
quote:Originally posted by Flux = Rad:
Does it matter which sexuality a person identifies with if they are not sexually active beings?

Does this perhaps depend on the reason for not being sexually active? I don't really have time for thinking incredibly clever and reasonable examples, but would someone who has some physical reason for not being sexually active have more 'right' to still identify as whatever than someone who just isn't having sex right now? Or the other way round? It all gets a bit tricky because surely everyone is not sexually active beings when they aren't having sex?
 
 
Ganesh
14:13 / 11.02.02
quote:Originally posted by Flux = Rad:
does a person who does not have sex or any sort of relationships with other people have any fair claim to declaring a sexual definition, even if they have preferences?

Yeah. I think so, anyway. It's a vexed area, certainly, presided over by the shade of that Brett Anderson quote, but off the top of my head:

1) Even if we're talking eroticised ones specifically, it's hard to imagine
anyone with no relationships to other people ever...

2) Not every type of sexuality involves other people; are masturbators, fetishists, bestialists (okay, not great example) all somehow devoid of sexuality?

3) The disabled, individuals who, for whatever reason, are physically incapable of having a physical sexual relationship with another person.

4) Virgins - asexual?

5) What constitutes a sexual relationship, anyway?
 
 
Bill Posters
14:19 / 11.02.02
quote:Originally posted by Tom Coates:
What very few radicals have done effectively is reseparate the idea of sexuality from identity. Much like the later feminisms - some of which dismantled 'women' so much that there was no longer anyone to fight for, most queer thinkers talk about a proliferation of identities - a mass of typologies of sexualities, but not a reseparation of identity from sexuality. If such a thing were possible, which we don't know if it is (and I suspect it isn't).

But doesn't it go on all the time on a practice level? I mean, I have heard the line, "if you blow me it won't make you gay", and I have also seen a sexline ad in a US het sexmag which had a reverse claim, 'if I suck you it won't make you gay, so ring me now' or something to that effect. I imagine there's loadsa people out there who have had 'gay' experiences but don't id that way for whatever reason. Haven't they achieved what the radicals haven't?
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
14:24 / 11.02.02
Ganesh - what Brett Anderson quote?

Tom - would you mind citing any specific writings by Foucault and Halperin? I would be interested in investigating what yr talking about a bit further on my own.
 
 
Ganesh
14:29 / 11.02.02
quote:Originally posted by Flux = The Dancing Architect:
Ganesh - what Brett Anderson quote?

He said something along the lines of "I'm a bisexual who's yet to have a homosexual experience". Okay, it sounded a bit wanky at the time (and the context made it seem like he was trying to stir up a little controversy) but I knew what he meant. Still don't think he deserved the degree of ridicule that quote engendered...
 
 
Tom Coates
14:39 / 11.02.02
You're probably looking for Halperin's book "A Hundred Years of homosexuality" which essentially argues that hte category is new and that there weren't gay peopel before the category was invented, only people who did gay stuff.

I can't remember what part of Foucault talks about how defining a group (in order to ostracise it) also generates a space from which to form a positive and reclaimed identity, but it's a theme throughout his work, and is probably in a history of sexuality somewhere.
 
 
m. anthony bro
18:42 / 11.02.02
When you say something like "we are all bisexual", you have to be careful. YOu have to be careful, because it's like sayig "I live in a rich country". You might just do that and feel god about saying that when your are is on a chair in Surrey, but the act of saying "we are all rich" to a person who lives in Newcastle in a council estate may seem a bit frought.
If we are truly bisexual, then the sample will be all over the show, as to how much of ones' preference is directed at one gender or the other. More than that, some people will display no actual attraction to the other or same or any gender at all.
Sexual orientation gets rounded a lot. If I am attracted to women about a quarter of the time that I 'get up' for anyone, then I would be inclined to say that I am gay. If it's roughly equal, I might ay I am bi depending on how desirable I percieve such a label to be.
And,t his is an important point, too - perception is nine tenths of he score! Say I were in a fashionable establishment and a young man aroused my interest, and I would like to find a hands-on way to offend the pope and make us both happy, then I would first need to ascertain whether or not he was a fan of seeing pillows up close. If I discover that he is bisexual, then it might taint my opinion of him, depending on a lot of things-

bisexuals, reputation for promiscuity
bisexuals, reputaton for confusion
gay identity, amount of energy wrapped up in

Thus, we weigh up what we see to be the pros and cons of calling ourself anything and then we tell people what we are: we try and pick the identity that we want to have describe our orientation.
I suspect, like me, that a lot of you have had the whole coming out bizzo, and you know how overt this is: you identitfy as a cocksucker for the first time, you've chosen a new noun.
The path this takes us down is simple - why would you have a label that didn't match your orientation? Why, if I say I am gay, why (hypothetically) would I then go and have sex with a woman two years after I come out? Why would a straight man find himelf one day masturbating over an image of Jude Law in the nude and not change the picture? Why is it that the majority of men who have sex with men do not identify as either gay or bisexual?
Well, thats where you come in. Whether you like it or not, you are in a society. That society produces a sticky-sweet substance called 'culture' out of its arse. You are helping it produce this culture, whether you like it or not. The most popular opinion at the moment is not "sexuality is fluid", because to say such a thing not only sounds highly tossy and try hard, but it also accuses the other party is a discussion of being capable of sleeping with genders they do not admit to liking.
Imagine this: your sexual orientation fixes itself at a point, somewhere between "I am all about pussy" and "cock is it", and then slides about depending on any number of overt or subvert reasons. I suppose it could make dramatic leaps dependent on where it was, but maybe it wouldn't. it's like putting a five legged flea at 50cm on a one metre ruler and then seeing where it jumps.
The rule espoused here is called 'orientation. indentity and behaviour'. The behavioural question is the one that I wanted to touch on, in terms of 'how are you gay?', or more specifically, why being gay influences the decisions of many homosexual men, to the point where it could be easily insinuated that they do have a 'gay' lifestyle. Example: I go to a gay nightclub every now and then, possible once every couple of months versus, I only go to the Homo Hut when I go out.
Gay men, lesbians and definitely bisexuals are put in an awkward position when they're growing up. I suspect the case is different now, but when I was thirteen and I saw Steven's dick and felt all funny, I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what this was called, and I didn't know why it gave me the horn like it did.
But, I was soon to disocover that, because it was remotely enjoyable, it was wrong, and this is an idea that sticks, and permeates: it is wrong, so I am wrong. I am wrong, therefore I am bad.
BUt, as you get closer to coming out, and then past that point, you realise something: it's not wrong. It's fun, and the only downside I see is that I have to wash my towels more often. But, can you say that's only half the job done? Can any gay man remember going 'it's okay and therefore, so am I'? I can't remember doing that.
So, let's say that now you feel okay about being gay, but you're still not a fan of you. You're going to do things designed to make you feel better when you don't know how you hurt. Having firmly established that being gay is good, it now becomes more than that, it becomes desirable, it becomes a way of getting good into your life.
Why? Because you love it. I know so many gay men who just get a woody the size of a baby's arm when Christian preachers come on TV and rant about whatever the homo's are doing. Why? Why would you stand up in the face of that and you go "I love Judy Garland, you fat pigfucking god botherer!"? Because you get to affirm being gay as good, and in the process, yourself. But, you can get trapped, and you're affirming it constantly, but not getting any happier.
And that's because the affirmation is the means to the end, but not the end. You cannot live an entirely gay life and be happy, because you're trying to model yourself around a concept. There's a 'you' which just runs around and does whatever. But, you've dressed him up in a tight singlet and some lino pants, and you're forcing him to watch The Broken Hearts Club again. How can he be happy? Show me one happy circus bear. One who would rather be balancing an eight year old girl on his nose than plucking salmon out of a river and napping until nightfall.
It is the nature of culture that the more you try and subtract yourself from it, the more you add. If all gay men were to run around and say "I am opressed", then they will help society believe that they are opressed and it will opress them, because that's the reality it has chosen for itself.
Holy crap, that's a lot of ground covered, I need to go sit down and catch my breath.

--mike
 
  

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