As if I don't Post About Sexuality Often Enough

The more I think about it, the less I think I'm gay. As far as I can remember, I've avoided choosing that except as a matter of convenience. It's far easier as a man who pretty exclusively has sex with men to tell people I'm gay than to give them a three hour lecture on sexual fluidity and the false premise of identity construction when equating sexual acts with sexual identity. Or to use the language of straight-guy seduction porn, “No, bro, even if you have my dick in your mouth, that doesn't make you gay. It's just one guy helping another guy out.”

See, I don't know what gay is. If it's men who like having sex with men, then why is craigslist littered with ads for guys looking for “straight-acting” or “masc only.” It seems to me that this desire for straight-acting implicates that non-masculine, non-straight-acting people aren't “real” men. Which would mean “gay-acting” men aren't men. And if they aren't men and they're interested in having sex with men, then that definition of gay doesn't work.

There's complicated reasons for all this. General confusion on the differences between gender and sexuality for one. There are books written on how the effeminate male and homosexuality became linked. This idea that homosexuality is innately feminine and a lesser form of sexuality for that fact is essentialist, misogynistic bullshit.

And if it sounds like I'm verbally gay-bashing, I apologize. More than anything I'm bashing this idea of identity and self. Yes, social constructivism is just as problematic as social essentialism (formal academic language for nurture vs nature to use the oversimplified, binary-inducing idiom). In a queer praxis, it's a combination of a constructed performativity and essentialist innateness that form who we are, and creating identity categories or labels for everything only serves to grossly oversimplify and homogenize the beautiful, detailed complexities of the human experience.

I'm frustrated by identity politics because I'm trying to reconcile the social activist part of me that actively teaches and educates that identity is a rallying point for community building with this deep seated need to move beyond identity.

Personal and social identity are important to people and respecting those different identities is necessary for social change. It's why worldviews espousing that we're all human, that we're all the same, can't work. They at best ignore and at worst erase difference in ways that can be harmful, especially in situations of a privilege/oppression dynamic where there is a real and tangible unequal distribution of power/resources.

At the same time, at some point we need to move beyond identity to truly move forward, or at least find new language in this activism. Equality itself is problematic to me because it creates this binary of potential outcomes where either everything is treated the same or everything is separate but equal. How can I fight for equality when neither outcome really solves the problem?

As long as there are separate, differentiated identities, enforced and policed, it's that much harder to integrate. And for some communities, because of the history leading to differences and physical differences, integration isn't going to be possible as readily. Class and race and age (and to some degree gender) will never stop being problems in some form or another. But if this movement toward a more fluid view of sexuality is allowed to continue though, sexual identity through a postmodern context of situational plurality has the potential to transcend strict identity categories. Or at least that is what I'd like to see.

 Nirvana, Enlightenment and in some Western Christian teachings, attaining oneness with God through Christ, all require a sacrifice of the Ego. In spiritual teachings the world over we must let go of the Self in order to reach the next step, whatever that may be. If this holds true on the personal level, why not on the community level as well? I am not defined by my identity. My identity is defined by who I am as well as by the world around me. Why must my chosen community insist on defining itself through limiting, restrictive formations of identity that further enforce and marginalize themselves and others in society?

I don't have an answer. I don't have a solution. I just know I can't get behind gay. I also recognize that because of my sexual practices I'm never going to escape it. Which is maybe for the best, maybe people like me are the solution simply by being living examples that each of us is unlimited, that no matter what we're identified and labeled, no matter what we choose for ourselves or others choose for us, there is possibility for change.

Guess this means I'm officially PoMoSexual.