To understand sexuality, you need to know not the labels but the history
Ordinary humans construe ‘sexuality’ largely as a binary opposition of ‘heterosexuality’ vs ‘homosexuality’, with ‘bisexuality’ lying right smack on the fence. People are arbitrarily categorised into either ‘straight’ or ‘gay’ groupings based on their gender and dominant sexual preferences. LGBT and now together with QI+ are variations of the non-straight community, but they are mostly contained within the realm of homosexuality constructed as the direct opposite to heterosexuality. Now, what I like about sociology is that it contests everything we think is obvious and natural. This includes our conception of sexuality. Heterosexuality is the norm in the social world today, but it has not always been the case in the past. Historical and cultural contexts matter when it comes to evaluating the meaning of a practice.
Let me first give you a little history about heterosexuality.
‘Heterosexuality’ first appeared officially in 1892 in an American psychology journal as a result of a growing debate on the range of erotic expressions and sexual identities. It was perceived as a vice — ‘abnormal or perverted appetite towards opposite sex’, ‘morbid sexual passion for one of the opposite sex’.
What’s deemed as abnormal is not, unlikely today, the attraction towards one of opposite sex, but its non-procreative purpose. Sex was framed as a dirty, negative and destructive force that could only be redemptive by its procreative purpose within a marriage. Towards the end of 19th century, more people were having sex for pleasure, which was deemed as sinful by the Victorian tradition. As the main focus of sexuality was on reproductivity, any sexual relation that was not procreative was judged as abnormal, including one between a man and a woman. It was only till later ages did heterosexuality become normalised through pitching by the academia.
What I am trying to drive home here is, there is nothing inherently abnormal or normal about a practice. A norm is always constructed by the powerful in the society and maintained by the institutions they left behind. However, as contemporary society links sexual identity to normality and normality to psychiatric condition, a person whose sexual orientation is not the norm is diagnosed with psychiatric disorder. This results in ridiculous medical attempts to treat someone of his or her homosexuality, causing real mental distress to the ‘homosexual’ victims. Alan Turing, the renowned British code breaker who helped to decrypt Nazi messages and contribute to triumph of WWII, was subjected to such hormonal treatment because of his ‘homosexual tendencies’. He was ultimately forced to take his own life because he could no longer tolerate the harassment by state and police and the treatment was having an adverse impact on his health. This, is a true story.
I kept using ‘…’ when I wrote ‘homosexuality’ and ‘heterosexuality’ because I do not subscribe to these terms. I am not a hipster wannabe who rejects label; I simply do not find accuracy in them. They only started to exist after the 19th century when academics assigned biological sex to feelings.
What do I mean?
Basically, this German writer called Karl Ulrichs came up with this theory that a man who loves a woman has male erotic feelings for females, while a man who loves man has female erotic feelings for males. The same goes for a woman who loves women; she possesses a masculine love-drive — male feelings for females. By assigning sex to feelings, erotic behavior came to be differentiated by sex. Previously, ‘homosexual’ behaviours were already existing in different societies but they were not condemned as the main point of contestation was not the biological sex. It was not same-sex v.s. different-sex.
In ancient Greece, it was Earthly love v.s. Heavenly love. Heavenly love refers to feelings for the beauty of boys, a superior object. Men were free to have pleasurable intimacies with both women and boys. It may seem gross and vile in today’s context but we certainly cannot use our modern-day yardsticks to measure the morality of their acts. Neither is our heterosexual/homosexual polarity — social organisation of sexed difference — appropriate in determining the Greek men’s sexuality.
“The Greeks did not see love for one’s own sex and love for the other sex as opposites, as two exclusive choices, two radically different types of behaviour.”
Bisexuality is also not the best adjective to describe their practice as there are no two competing drives in a dual structure. It is simply free choice based on “the appetite that nature had implanted in man’s heart for ‘beautiful’ human beings, whatever their sex.”
Perhaps this fluidity is why some people are hesitant to label themselves any term with regards to sexuality. I go for someone who is beautiful regardless of the sex, so why should I be forced to a category in a binary that does not accurately capture the fluidity of sexual preferences? If a man loves a man because he is beautiful, what is so abnormal about it? Why should anyone be subjected to verbal (and even physical) abuse because he/she loves someone? There is an article I read for this module that accurately highlights the vulnerability of heterosexuality.
“Could it be that restrictions of same-sex couples originate because we are so unsure about the steadiness of our heterosexuality that we feel extending heterosexual institutions to same-sex couples will endanger heterosexuality itself?”
Standing ovation for this quote. Most people realise at some point of time that they have a flexible sexual self. Women can turn ‘lesbians’ and then become ‘straight’ again.
Indeed, gender offers a very narrow conception of sexualities. Imagine a world where time, aesthetics, or generations define sexualities. For example, you can have sexual relations with anybody who is +/- 5 years from your age, regardless of the person’s gender. And it implies that anyone who sleeps with a person who is 10 years younger is abnormal. How different will the world be? Alfred Kinsey tried to capture the wide spectrum of sexualities using a scale from 0 to 6, 0 being totally heterosexual and 6 being totally homosexual, and 3 being “you don’t care what comes through the door”. Take some time to think and rethink, you will be surprised by your own value judgement.
I am not arguing that gender or sex is irrelevant to sexualities. It does form the bulk of our understanding of sexualities. We cannot just look at social relations and deny the legitimacy of our biological parts. In fact, because of the differences in biological capacity, there exists disparities between men and women’s sexual hierarchy. I will not go too deep into that in this post, but if you are up for a discussion with me, I am too. Last but not least, I would like to end with this quote from a reading:
“In conclusion, I think it is clear that if heterosexuality were indelible, easy to achieve, and easy to keep, we wouldn’t make all this fuss over it.”
