We wrapped up my History 24F class (intro to Lesbian and Gay American History) yesterday. As I usually do in such a class, I asked the students what they would be taking away from the course now that the semester was over. Many expressed excitement at finally learning that “We have a history too”, and some who used the first-person plural of Queerness to describe themselves yesterday did so for the very first time publicly. More so than in past semesters of 24F, I’ve had a high number of students who openly identify as “bi” or “questioning”; a couple mentioned that while they had gained no particular new insight into their own identities and desires, they did feel more comfortable after the class living without a specific label. I’m always happy to hear that.
And of course, the students also asked me to talk about two things: why I teach this class, and how I identify sexually. I’ve answered the first, and part of the second question in writing in this post. I wrote two months ago:
I don’t always identify as straight. I’ve never liked the word much: I’m too conscious, in an evangelical Christian sense, of my own places of brokenness to feel comfortable calling myself “straight.†And calling myself “heterosexual†seems to imply a continued openness to other women in my life. I jokingly call myself “Eira-sexualâ€, using my wife’s name. It captures the essence of one basic goal of my private journey today, to direct as much of my sexual energy as possible into one relationship. But there’s no point in denying that from adolescence on, my desire has always been primarily directed towards women. That has given me a set of experiences that set me apart from most of my queer brothers and sisters, no matter how often homophobic slurs and threats have been sent my way. I know better than to presume that I can always put myself in the shoes of those whose identity and desires are at odds with what the dominant culture decrees right.
Of course I stand by that. But my use of adverbs is often problematic, and it was in that paragraph.
First of all, I don’t actually call myself “Eira-sexual” jokingly; I use the word with real seriousness, understanding that at least for me, the call of marriage is to do the sometimes difficult, sometimes easy, always rewarding work of directing all of my erotic energy not towards an entire class of people but towards one single human being. It captures my sense (hard-won, I might add, through a lot of trial and error) that monogamy is praxis. It certainly doesn’t seem “natural”, but a great many things that are very good and rewarding come about as the result of doing the unnatural. This is not to imply that it is painful to restrict all of my sexual energy to one relationship; far from it. But it is to honor that the task of directing all of one’s energy as well as one’s actions into a single relationship is counterintuitive (and counter-biological, counter-cultural, etc) for many of us. That doesn’t make me in the least bit heroic, but it does offer me a way of thinking about my sexuality that makes more sense to me today than the more common labels.
I also wrote that from adolescence onward, my desires have been primarily towards women. I overuse my adverbs, yeah, but not recklessly. That was as obvious as I felt like being that day about the very simple reality that I have, throughout my life but particularly in my adolescent years, felt sexual feelings for both men and women. During my college years, I tried dating men one semester, and I briefly did identify publicly as bisexual. I found, quickly, that while I was capable of sexual longing for a great many people, almost irrespective of their genitalia, I was exclusively romantically inclined towards women. (Pioneering sexologist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs would have labelled me a disjunctive uranodionung.) I am sorry to say that I hurt some very good young men in my college years as I explored — but without absolving myself of all guilt, I note that a great many of us, gay and straight and bi alike, men and women, inflict wounds on each other through our complicated, awkward, and often narcissistically cruel process of self-discovery. (And for the benefit of my right-wing friends, let me point out parenthetically that chastity is no prophylaxis against cruelty; as any reader of 19th century romances will tell you, hearts can be broken in relationships where all the clothes stay on. It ain’t just we promiscuous kids who cause all the trouble!)
What did I learn about myself in all this “exploring”? That my sexuality was a complex thing. That the simple labels about what I should be attracted to didn’t work. That every time I concluded I had a “type”, the universe was readying a surprise for me. I came to discover that in general I was more attracted to brunettes than blondes and women than men; I came also to discover a host of exceptions to those admittedly vague generalities. But in time, it did become very clear to me that on romantic, erotic, and spiritual levels, I could get to a place of intensity and intimacy with a woman that I simply could not with a man. But the fact that I had “been with” men and liked it, that I had felt myself strongly attracted to folks of both sexes, meant that the label “straight” was inaccurate.
I haven’t had a sexual experience with a man in twenty years or more. Then again, I’ve been faithful to the woman who is now my wife for some six years since we began dating. Whether it’s easy or hard, whether my beloved and I are in a good space or a tense one, my job is always the same — direct my thoughts, direct my actions, direct my energy towards her. I’m deeply in love with this woman, which makes it easy. And when it isn’t easy, I remind myself of what I learned in meditation classes.
Practicing any kind of mindful discipline always has its challenges. In meditation, I learned to think of my consciousness like a little dog I was walking. Sometimes my dog walks a straight line, sometimes it gets distracted by an interesting smell. A good dog guardian doesn’t let the dog off the leash; a good dog guardian doesn’t jerk the poor dog, dragging the creature down the sidewalk and berating him or her for his disobedience. A good dog walker gently guides and nudges and redirects the dog as it travels down the path. When something comes into my consciousness (or onto my computer screen) that threatens to draw my energy and focus away from my wife, I affirm the thought and gently redirect. I don’t flagellate or indulge myself. Marriage is a vehicle for spiritual, sexual, and psychic growth — and if it were always easy, no growing would happen. (I will say that like any discipline — including dog-walking — one gets much better with practice. But it’s always good to be on the lookout for hubris.)
What’s the point? To the extent that I have deliberately excluded the fact that I had sexual relationships with men in my college years, I have been dishonest. Was this because of internalized homophobia? Probably a wee bit, but honestly, the real reason has more to do with a fear that claiming these experiences would seem presumptuous — almost like a white man claiming to know how a black man felt. I tried being with men for a few years in the Reagan Administration. Some of what I did was a whole bunch of fun, some of what I did was dull and silly, and in the end, I figured out that my heart and my libido were more intensely drawn to women. I never suffered discrimination or abuse or rejection from anyone who mattered to me as a consequence; claiming the label “bisexual” thus has always seemed both psychologically inaccurate (because it’s limited to one period of my life) and politically tone-deaf (because it claims an identification with a victimized group, an identity that may not be mine to claim.) But to deny that these things happened, and that even if they happened a long time ago I found them educational and pleasurable, is to maintain another kind of myth.
We live in a world where a great many folks don’t believe bisexuality exists. We live in a world where a great many folks think men in particular can never really be “bi”, that even a single experience with another man (or a fleeting desire!) automatically negates the possibility of successful romantic and sexual relationships with women. For a great many reasons, we are generally more comfortable with the notion that women can be bisexual, perhaps because we believe the commonly repeated idea that women have a “fluid” sexuality while men have, well, a more “static” one. Whatever. I don’t call myself bisexual because to do so would imply that my consciousness and my libido were open to men. If — God forbid — I were ever to be single again, I’m quite confident I would end up dating another woman. But that’s a bridge I never intend to cross, and so I’m happiest with the “Eira-sexual” label I’ve placed upon myself.
Yet for the sake of clarity and candor, it’s worth noting that yes, I have a sexual history with both men and women. As we say in AA, I neither “regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.” It was what it was, and my commitment to justice is rooted in far more than a few fleeting experiences in my college years. But if part of being just is being honest, it is silly to deny that what was, was.
This is such a great post and blog!
I always jokingly describe myself as a ‘hasbian’ – because I used to be a lesbian in my early 20′s. And now, I am in a long term herterosexual relationship with a child – so I find myself ‘passing’ as straight.
But that doesn’t really work for me at all – because it denys my ‘queerness’ – and bisexual doesn’t work either.
I think hasbian is great – I nicked it off the English commedian Jackie Clune who was a big time lesbian/feminist commedian untill she met a bloke – and now she has 4 kids under 6 (she had triplets!)
I dated a guy who told me on the 2nd date he had an “ex boyfriend,” but that he “wasn’t gay”. He seemed incredibly shocked when I shrugged and said “Ok. That’s cool.” It’s unfortunate that our society demands us to pick and choose specific states of sexuality. Especially for men. To this day, the most common reaction when someone learns I dated a “straight guy” with an “ex boyfriend” is “He MUST be gay.”
Great post!!!
Great post. My own doctoral research is focused on learning more about people who identify as heterosexual (they check the “heterosexual” box when you give them boxes to check) but don’t endorse 100% heterosexuality when you ask specific questions about attraction, fantasy, and behavior.
My stuff’s mostly quantitative, but I find your (very self-revealing and, to my eye, nakedly honest) post to be really instructive. Thanks for putting this out there.
BTW, see the following research for some interesting perspectives on this issue:
Diamond, L. M. (2005). A new view of lesbian subtypes: Stable versus fluid identity trajectories over an 8-year period. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 29, 119–128.
Diamond, L.M., and Savin-Williams, R.C. (2003). Explaining diversity in the development of same-sex sexuality among young women. In Garnets, L.D., and Kimmel, D.C., eds. (2003). Psychological perspectives on lesbian, gay, and bisexual experiences, 357–400. New York: Columbia University Press.
Klein, F., Sepekoff, B., & Wolf, T. J. (1985). Sexual orientation: A multivariable dynamic process. In F. Klein & T. J. Wolf (Eds.), Bisexualities: Theory and research. New York: Haworth.
Klein, F. (1990). The need to view sexual orientation as a multivariable dynamic process: A theoretical perspective. In D. McWhirter, S. A. Sanders, & J. M. Reinsch, (eds.). Homosexuality/Heterosexuality: Concepts of Sexual Orientation (pp. 277–282). New York: Oxford University Press.
Savin-Williams, R. C. (2006). Who’s gay? Does it matter? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 15, 40–44.
Savin-Williams, R. C., & Ream, G. L. (2007). Prevalence and stability of sexual orientation components during adolescence and young childhood. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 37(3), 385–394.
Worthington, R. L., Savoy, H. B., Dillon, F. R., & Vernaglia, E. R. (2002). Heterosexual identity development: A multidimensional model of individual and social identity. The Counseling Psychologist, 30, 496–531.
The next UK census will have a tick box for sexual orientation and it will include ‘other’ as a category – it will be interesting how many people tick this, probably reflecting the inadequacy of the how we describe sexuality and sexual identity.
Thanks, Beth and Haley and Luis, for the praise and for the various data — Luis, I know the Psychological Perspectives book, but not the others.
And I LOVE “hasbian”. That’s classic.
This IS a great post, I think you’re inspiring me to pen yet another blog article myself!
Great post, Hugo. I wonder, how (if at all) would you distinguish your own disciplining of your sexuality within marriage, versus the “ex-gay” movement’s claims that homosexuality can be cured through therapy? Given that you were attracted to men once and could be again, but you feel that it’s within your power to direct all your libido toward your wife, do you believe that this should be possible for all men with same-sex attraction? If not, why not?
Do you think that we Christians who support gay rights should downplay the argument that sexual orientation can’t be changed, and focus instead on why change is not required?
I just want you to know how much i appreciate your honesty. I can hear your confidence, too, and the combination is inspiring.
Thanks, Erica.
Jendi, I have always experienced sexuality as malleable, and known plenty of other people for whom it is so — and thus am inclined to fight the right on the platform of “change is not required” rather than “change is not possible.”
But what if you don’t feel like you have an authentic sexuality? I identified as lesbian starting in the sixth grade (privately, of course, kids would have killed me with sticks). Then by high school I was identifying as bisexual. Now, I hardly even feel open to women anymore since I’ve been with men so long, not that I’m so much more excited about men. Nothing feels organic. It all feels like it comes from some awful place, and I have no idea what exists separate from those awful things. Is there an authentic sexuality? If you’ve had bad sexual things influencing you your entire life is that your sexuality? Is there hope for reshaping it as an adult?
I really want to get into the theory part of my proposed sexuality concentration when I get to grad school. These questions are too big for one person.
Sorry to hijack your thread.
jennyfields, I have not been through sexual abuse; I have survived much but never that. I wish I had something more promising to tell you, but can say that I have known a great many people who have worked through some immensely painful personal histories of abuse to discover a sexuality that works for them. “Authentic”? Some would use that word.
Have you ever read “Proverbs of Ashes” by Rita Nakashima Brock?
No I haven’t. It looks interesting. I was a bad girl on Amazon during their period of free super-saver shipping.
Authentic is such a loaded word. What does it even mean to say something is authentic? I just finished a Buddhism class, and it seems that the more I learn in general the less the process becomes about finding answers than further complicating the question.
And yeah, a lot of it is about the sexual abuse. But it’s more than that, too. Especially about women. I’ve gotten closer to my mom and grandma in the past few years and they seem to have breathed a collective sigh of relief that I haven’t turned out “gay” after all. It almost seems easier to just stick to dating men because I won’t have to deal with their rejection. When my sexuality seems completely dissociated from actual people, it is easier to just do what is easy than try to actually work out something that is positive and healing.
I feel horrible expressing something like that because I know a lot of gay people suffer because they have to come to terms with their sexuality because there is no other option. Not that relationships are the standard which everyone should aspire to, just that this is the way most of us have been brought up to think. The path of least resistance. It is like, since I can choose in some sense, it makes me selfish and cowardly. All this has made me afraid to really get involved with my local gay community because I am so insecure about these issues.
Interesting, jennyfields. I have no problem being involved with the GLBTQ community even though for all intents and purposes, i ain’t an actual member of the community in terms of having to shoulder the predictable burdens. And lord knows, I exercise my heterosexual privilege to keep on marrying women with great enthusiasm (though I would like to think I’m done now.) But I suppose I see that my sexuality was fluid, but always more strongly directed towards women — and that direction, rooted in biology or culture or something inexplicable, needs no defending or explanation.
I think a lot of bisexuals feel excluded from the gay community, like they’re not really part of that community if they have the option of “being heterosexual” so to speak. I’ve also gotten the feeling from some people that bisexuals negates the argument of biological determinism that a lot of people use to say its not a choice. When I was 16 and started driving, I went to a UU GLBT Youth cafe night in the nearest city an hour out of town. I didn’t really feel accepted because they told me to “stop sitting on the fence.”
Binaries are bad. (See the irony of calling them bad, because good/bad is a binary…yeah…funny).
Hi Jennyfields!
My take on it is that we are all born with sexuality as a natural, great thing that we have a right to enjoy without harm or fear.
That’s the only authentic bit for me – how we express it with other consenting adults whether they be men, women, or just ourselves is very fluid. Unfortunately, that lovely sexuality we are born with can get tainted and abused – leaving us with all of crap to carry around – and it’s easy to just dissassociate from it all rather than explore it as it means stirring up the bad stuff.
Psychosexual counselling is offered in the UK – free if referred from your GP or women’s or young people’s clinics. And it can be a great way to heal and get to know your own (and be happy) with your own sexual self first – before involving other people!! I’m sure in the states you could access something similiar – if you are under 25 there should be a sexual health clinic in your area or attached to your university or something.
Jennyfields, that’s a great question you raise: what is authenticity, if the self is fluid and dynamic? You might enjoy “Soul Without Shame” by Byron Brown, which addresses this question from a Buddhist-informed perspective.
Hugo, I appreciate your response. Do you think everyone’s sexuality is as malleable as yours? If so, why does ex-gay therapy so often fail? Sorry to harp on this issue, I’m just obsessed with it lately because I hang out with evangelicals…
I don’t think everyone’s sexuality is equally malleable, no. Ex-gay therapy fails most of the time for many reasons — one, it does contradict some very deep-seated parts of a person’s identity. Two, it goes against what I think most of us want at our deepest level, which is to be free to love whom we feel (not just believe theologically, but feel) called to love.
Then again, most behavioral modification therapy has a high failure rate!
Yes, I think you’ve identified the crucial piece–there is no love without freedom. Plus, changing through therapy is hard enough when you want to be there and trust the therapist’s agenda. Probably impossible when you don’t.
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I agree that, even in cases where changing one’s attractions is possible, it is unnecessary. However, Hugo’s ability to channel all his erotic energy towards his wife doesn’t suggest “ex-gay” therapy could be effective, it demonstrates that it is not. As this post says, Hugo has always been predominantly heterosexual. If he’d managed to channel all his erotic energy towards a male partner, that would suggest that human sexuality is truly malleable. As it is, it simply suggests that most of us are neither a Kinsey 1 nor a Kinsey 6 — something that’s well-known.
Hugo and I are both predominantly attracted to women. We’ve both had some attractions to men and some sexual experiences with men, but have both consistently found that, regardless of these feelings, we much more frequently fall for women, and that “on romantic, erotic, and spiritual levels, [both Hugo and I can] get to a place of intensity and intimacy” with women that we simply cannot with a men. Hugo channeling all his erotic energy towards his wife is analogous to my channeling all my erotic energy towards my girlfriend, not to me channeling all my erotic energy towards a man.
So, once again: this post points toward the great variety in people’s sexual experiences and inclinations. It does not point towards the malleability of sexual orientation. Hugo honestly explored relationships with men and found that his predominant attractions remained foremost — most gay folks find the exact same thing. Ex-gay therapy doesn’t tend to work on them any more than ex-straight therapy would work on Hugo.
(Hugo, please tell me if I have misrepresented your experience. The characterizations of sexuality that have appeared in this thread strike me as very different from those you described in your post.)
You don’t misrepresent me at all, Daisy, this is right on the nail. I appreciate the distinction between “variety” and “malleability”; I think that’s a subtlety missing from the original post.
I had been wondering for a long time if you were ever going to bring up this aspect of your past, one that your friends know but others in your broader circle (like your blogreaders) don’t. I’m not accusing you of having been dishonest before, but I’m glad to read this here. It offers encouragement to people who are similarly searching and curious.
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