Are you now or have you ever been?
August 01, 2002

Lynn at Noli Irritare Leones comes out as bisexual:

So was that forcible grope (or even the longer term sense that too many men wanted to pressure me beyond my limits), my only reason for being drawn toward women? Not exactly. Certainly the lesbian community was for me a refuge from sexual pressure, and a place where I felt safe from sexual violence. But I had had emotional attachments to women, even some level of sexual thoughts, before, and perhaps, too, a certain slowness of interest in the opposite sex, as a teenager (I remember lots of other girls becoming interested in boys in junior high, before I could bring myself to share the interest), might suggest that I was somehow less straight, to begin with, than the average girl.

I defined myself as bisexual, open to either sex, though devoting more of my active seeking to women, because of my bad experience. And what happened was, that I became involved with a man anyway, whom I loved, and he died. Well, what woman should be asked to compete with a man's ghost? Or what man, for that matter? And what would I have to offer anyone, in a romantic way, feeling so keenly the ways in which I had failed the friend who had died? For years, I did not so much as kiss another person, man or woman. Not that I was isolated: I socialized with college friends and people from work; I was active with my Quaker Meeting and the local Urban Ministry; I made friends. I simply kept those friendships platonic.

I've known many people with stories like Lynn's over the years -- most are women, very few men. It has always seemed from both the anecdotal stories presented and from what research that has been done, that women are a bit more fluid in their sexuality than men. Perhaps, as this recent study raised, it has something to do with the greater sensitivity of women's brains to emotions and emotional cues. Perhaps its just that women are just much better at loving a person than a type...

My only concern -- if it really is one -- is that I've heard people raise stories like Lynn's to "prove" that being gay is phase that "everyone" will grow out of. The logic goes that since it is obviously a phase, it shouldn't be encouraged. It's plainly not the case. Some people are just attracted to men, some are just attracted to women. Some people are attracted to both, and some people who are attracted to those of the opposite sex had a fling with someone of the same sex, though they'd never for a moment consider themselves homosexual.

To some degree our behavior is malleable -- in jail there are quite a few people who have sex with those of the same gender. It's because they are in jail that they do this, either for convenience or for power. Some behaviors are kept in check, impulses dampened down or denied, in the interests of social harmony, legality or kindness. There are many examples. Our emotions though, those aren't malleable. People who love those of the same gender do so with all the honesty and all the conviction of those who love the opposite gender.

My usual rejoinder to those who point out that being gay is a phase and that in time gay people will just find someone straight that they'll meet and just know they've really fallen in love with is, when someone who is straight meets that person of the same gender across the room and just knows that now they've really fallen in love, will you celebrate with that couple as well?

Posted by Jody at August 1, 2002 08:10 AM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://WWW.nakedwriting.COM/mt-tb.cgi/1366

Comments

Post a comment