What Is Sexuality?

I ranted yesterday on physical gender and drew the conclusion that government institutions which insist on recording gender should only record declared gender, and record it as

• Female,
• Male,
• Intersex, or
• Undeclared.

I am now going to be even more foolish and try to tackle sexuality.

Several years ago, a friend (I hope she still counts me as a friend.) told me she was gay.

At the time, she identified as male.

I told him (as I supposed at the time) that he wasn't gay. I said it a bit too emphatically.

Transitioning gender is a life-changing decision, at least in the present world, for at least three reasons.

One, it can not presently be fully completed. You can't go from being physically able to induce conception (male) to being physically able to conceive (female). Transitioning is only relative to the sex act, not to having children. Sure, you can still adopt or take foster children, and those can be good things to do, too, but, for the foreseeable future, you do pretty much end your opportunities to add to the genetic pool of the human race.

Two, it can not presently be undone. Once you've transitioned, you can't go back. Even vasectomies and tubal ligations have a better chance of being reversed, if you do the full transition.

The third reason, I'll have to hold off on explaining until I've laid some groundwork.

I do not intend to attack her for her decision. She evaluated her options, consulted with people she trusted, and approached the operations carefully. My inconsiderate exclamation was not her only reason, and I understand it was not even close to her primary reason. She did a lot of research. She chose what she considered was her best option, and, as a friend, I have to respect that.

I do intend to attack the social institutions that seem to me to have pushed her to first think she was gay, then to consider transitioning. But not here. Not today. At least, not directly. 

Transitioning may have been the right thing for her. I can't judge that, it's not mine to judge.

But there is too much social dialog in the current milieu that treats transitioning too casually, and there is too much that treats sexuality as a cure for ills that have other causes and better cures.

Considering the topic, I hope you will pardon me for exposing you to frank and explicit monologue below.

***** somewhat explicit content *****

When I was a kid, back before elementary school, a neighbor family introduced me to sex. I won't go into the details, but coercion, deception, and seduction were all involved. This applied against a kid of four. I did not learn sexual promiscuity from the experience, but I did learn solitary masturbation. It should not be necessary to learn that when you're only four.

Shame? Yeah. I felt that, too.

I also learned not to trust my friends too far.

When I was in elementary school, there were guys in the locker room who compared the size of theirs with the size of others', and teased the boys with apparently small endowments, then teased them more if the teasing caused (as is often the case) their endowment to suddenly become bigger.

***** end of somewhat explicit content *****

If it excited you, you must be gay or queer.

It was never stated explicitly in the locker room (or anywhere where teachers would hear about it), but, if you admitted you were excited, they came after you after school for various favors related to the ad-hoc power structures they were trying to establish among the students, and sexual favors (male-male rape) were involved.

These guys who engaged in the teasing, who were telling kids they were gay and/or queer were alpha males.

The teasing was predatory. It was their intent to groom less-alpha males to their service, both sexually and otherwise.

They were the ones who would publicly disparage, insult, and bully people for being gay or queer, but their hidden behavior was pretty much exactly what they disparaged, insulted, and bullied people about (and into).

When I was in high school, there sure seemed to be a lot of people who acted surprised to find out it was often the alpha males who were most gay. Well, we would say bi, now, I think.

Not all alpha males are predatory, nor are they all bisexually promiscuous. But a lot of them are.

I had already learned other meanings for the words "gay" and "queer".

"Gay" was ostentatious, liberal, flamboyant, creative, enjoying physical pleasures and the things of this world. But it didn't have to have a sexual implication.

"Queer" was strange, edgy, non-conformist, interested in things that many people found unpleasant. But, again, it did not have to have a sexual implication.

I still resent that those meanings are not available in the current vernacular. I guess that makes me an aged snowflake.

I had very strong reasons for rejecting the sexuality philosophy that recognizes some people as sexually homosexually inclined. The whole concept of another sexuality was promoted by the very people who disparaged it, and their purpose was not to find homosexual love, it was to establish bisexual power structures.

I still have those reasons, but they are moderated by my desire to recognize other people's attempts to understand themselves and the world around them.

My studies of cosmology, metaphysics, origins, ethics, and morality (ergo, religion) open me to an idea that many people today seem to find bizarre.

Sexual fidelity is a good ideal, a good goal, a good principle. It does not tend to evil.

Why?

Sexual interaction has always exposed the participants to more microfauna and microflora than refraining from sexual interaction. Many of these germs, bacteria, molds, etc., tend to be harmful to the health of those who have not developed immunity to them. Developing immunity to them can damage the health, as well.

I say, participants, but I mean to include unwilling participants.

I'm refraining from using the word "dirty" because it has unfortunately been traditionally generally associated with shame (hypocritical shaming, yet). Especially when used in the context of sex, it has been associated with damning shame. Sex is not necessarily dirty in that sense.

(Rape is dirty in this sense of shame and damnation, but it is the rapist, not the victim, who is ultimately defiled and damned by the act, regardless of how confused society tends to be when interpreting physical effects and results. The inversion of culpability in cases of rape is one of the major sins of society, throughout history.)

This is no small part of what being intimate means, exposing the other person to those things which, out of courtesy and caution, we usually protect external society from, and protect from external society.

The pill? It may protect a woman from pregnancy at better than 90% rates, but, at the same time, it can both subtly and drastically alter her hormonal balances in detrimental ways. And the pill is no protection from diseases. (The pharmaceuticals companies don't want people to know this, but the effects are not uncommon.)

Condoms? Condoms and other physical barriers aren't 100%. Pinprick holes from manufacturing and sexual exertion, slippage, failure in the heat of the moment to remember to use them, etc. No, they are not 100% prophylaxis. There is no such thing as 100% prophylaxis.

The larger the group of people you are sexually active with, the greater your chance of catching some very dangerous, debilitating, and damaging disease. HIV is not the only sexually transmitted disease, nor is it the only one for which the cures can also cause permanent disability.

Even disregarding unwanted pregnancies, sexual activity is dangerous.

No matter how good sex can feel, it is dangerous, and having multiple sexual partners is much more dangerous.

I'm going to go a little further and point out that sexual activity is emotional and psychologically intimate, as well. The act of mutual stimulation exposes many things about your non-biological self to your partners -- things that you protect general society from, things you protect from general society, and for good reason.

Some seek a sex partner with whom they mutually refuse to share names, but there really is no such thing as anonymous sex.

And there is no such thing as safe sex.

This is not the government's fault, although the government can exacerbate the problems.

It is not society's fault, either, although society can also exacerbate the problems.

Likewise the church or any other human institution. The institution can exacerbate the problems, but the institutions are not the fundamental cause.

If you have to blame someone for the problems, blame God, if you dare.

No, do go to God and complain, if you believe in God. Or if you don't believe in God, go some place you can face nature alone and raise your voice to the wind, for a bit.

Then sit down there where you complained, and contemplate the alternatives. Some things about reality do not bend themselves to human convenience.

Even though promises can be broken, promises (covenants) of fidelity are much more protection from sexually transmitted diseases than lack of promise. Statistically, it turns out that those seemingly flimsy promises are better protection than condoms and medical treatments. And refraining until you can find a partner you can trust yourself with is also effective protection.

Even talking about sex can be stimulating, and may involve unnecessary emotional intimacy. (Yeah, there is a bit of irony in me blogging about it. I recognize that.)

What about sex feels so good?

One of the things that scientists have found is that sexual activity can induce the release of natural drug-like chemicals such as endorphins in the nervous and endocrine systems. These are natural substances that act a lot like certain drugs. Being natural, they tend to be safer even than the drugs you can buy over the counter.

But they can also be addictive.

Endorphins are also produced as a result of running, and you've heard about people who run themselves to death, right?

Not really?

Well, okay, how about people who get so into running that they overdo and do harm to themselves?

Still not so much?

Heh. Running can be hard enough to discourage overdoing.

We can find ways to make sexual activity too easy, though, and, yes, that leads to compulsive behaviors, including obsessive-compulsive disabilities.

However, there are plenty of other ways to get those endorphins and other natural substances that make us physically and emotionally feel good -- if we will go looking for them.

Many of them, like dance, running, and other exercise, and volunteering at the homeless shelter, are quite socially acceptable.

***** somewhat explicit content *****

What about sexual activity with only oneself as a way to refrain from promiscuous sex? Masturbation has a number of problems, too, especially if you let yourself get carried away, or end up developing compulsive behaviors. Sex toys, especially, tend to accumulate dirt, germs, bacteria, molds, etc.

Sexual self-control is a topic for another rant, but I'll note that, if the choice is between masturbation and promiscuous sex, masturbation is much less likely to cause either yourself or others hurt or damage, no matter what the alphas say.

I won't be more specific here for the same reasons I am not specific about what people do when having sex with each other.

***** end of somewhat explicit content *****

What about pornography as a way to refrain? Maybe it is biologically and physiologically safer (as long as it doesn't lead to playing with sex toys), but I don't believe it is psychologically safer.

if you believe in the Bible, consider Matthew 5: 27-28. No, even if you don't believe the Bible, consider these verses:

Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery:

But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

When you use pornography to stimulate yourself, you are essentially having psychological sex with the entire company of people who produce the pornography, from the people who let their pictures be taken to the photographers, to the artists who air-brush all the images to erase all the (intimate, but) non-ideal details and morph the images into something that will excite as wide a range of audience as possible, to ....

Anyway, empirical evidence indicates that pornography is much more addictive, and tends much more to OCD behaviors than even simple masturbation.

Also, it tends to pervert your expectations about intimacy.

The non-ideal about a person is precisely the part that is most intimate, and the intimacy is no small part of what makes sex feel good.

What are other good non-sexual ways to achieve intimacy (that I didn't mention above)?

Watching football or other sports on TV with your buddies (depending on how long they can go without talking about sex, perhaps).

Playing card games or board games or on-line games.

For some people, studying arcane mathematics and similar kinds of activities can get those endorphins going. Writing a novel can, also.

Participating at church and in other service organizations, if not done as some sort of social competition, is also a good way to get those natural euphoriants working in our systems.

And there are many other ways to be more intimate than riding the train with other people but less intimate than having sex. There are many kinds of intimacy that don't involve sex or imply sex at all.

Okay, various individuals react differently to different things. A chaste hug, for instance, might be completely asexual to one person, but be sexually stimulating to another. We are individuals. Or, for the same person, it might once be completely free of sexual implication, yet, at another time, feel sexual. And the difference might be a difference in the attitude of the giver of the hug or the receiver. In fact, the giver and the receiver may well not feel the same way about the hug.

Appropriate intimacy in a supportive setting is part of what makes sex feel good, and we don't have to take our clothes off, talk about sex, or do anything related to sex to share some level of intimacy.

Okay, I've spent quite a few words selling the idea that sexuality is not the only way to find happiness and fulfillment. Haven't done nearly as good a sales job as I wanted, but it's the best I can do for now.

Thus, I can approach the third reason I said I above that I would postpone.

I do not consider LBGQT issues to be physiological issues. [JMR202003072214: That is to say, I consider intersex issues to be separable issues.]

I do recognize that they can be socio-psychological issues and emotional issues. Where I once was emphatic that the gay movement was much ado about nothing, I will admit that the "nothing" can be pretty substantial, because of cultural biases we have inherited from Freud, Machiavelli, and much farther back, including the philosophies and religions of every part of the world.

What kind of cultural biases am I referring to? Consider Janis Ian's "At Seventeen":

...
That love was meant for beauty queens
...

A lot of people are deceived by this message promoted by various sectors of our society. (Beauty products? Politics? "Women's" magazines? "Romance" literature? ...) When Ms. Ian penned those lines, she knew better, but the lyrics acknowledge the length of time she labored under that misconception, and the troubles it caused her.

And elsewhere in the lyrics of that song is another of those cultural lies:

...
At ugly girls like me
...

There are no ugly girls. Nor boys. Only people who have been brow-beaten by predatory alphas into believing that they are ugly, and therefore not worthy of real love.

That's a lot of momentum, even if I am right that it is far more cultural than physiological or biological.

And I acknowledge that there are physiological ambiguities, such that we really should not, as a society, but making such a big deal about the whole thing. As long as a person is not forcing him-, her-, or (missing-intersex-pronoun)-self on others sexually, the gender a person assumes or presents in private or public should not be a matter of contention.

But I am convinced that it is mostly cultural.

We have currently, as a society, way over-sold the Disney ideals of romance, so much so that even minor variance from norms becomes a social impediment. That, of course, results in a backlash to invent new social norms.

I have personally observed a number of times, people convincing themselves that they must be homosexual, or there that there must have been a biological mistake when they were born, when the root of the problem seemed to me to be in what they were letting society define for them as legitimate intimacy, legitimate love.

*****

For those of the cultural group that has often been referred to as Mormon, I want to put it this way:

You were born with a set of talents. These include strengths, weaknesses, and attributes that may be better left uncategorized. These are gifts from God, even the ones that sometimes may make you question whether you chose right in choosing to be born.

Your gender is one of those (sets of) attributes. It may not be ideal. No, it is almost guaranteed to vary from the ideal, to some degree. Some men have, for instance, a low count of viable sperm. Some women's hormone system gets in the way of conceiving children, or even makes pregnancy an extremely dangerous activity. There are variations that our human culture defines as more extreme. It is still a gift from God, no matter how far from human ideal it varies.

None of your talents or attributes are reason for you to accept shaming from others.

What you do with them may be reason for you to repent -- no, we all make mistakes in our use of talents. Therefore, shaming each other is evil, even if the target of our shaming needs to repent.

If you have been shaming someone, back off and let that person talk with God in peace, to figure out what that person needs to do. It's not your business.

If you are letting someone shame you, turn your back on that person, as long as is necessary for you to be able to get enough privacy to talk with God.

God loves you. He/She/They want you to learn to use your talents/attributes for good -- in ways that will make you and others happy.

It may take some struggling. In my experience, it required me to adjust my understanding of what God wanted of me -- to begin to reject the extreme interpretations of doctrine that once made living as a human almost impossible for me. That was a huge struggle for me, figuring out that the line is only ever approximate, in the view of mortal humans.

We misjudge things far too often.

Treat your talents with gratitude and respect.

In the same way that I would not suggest that someone who was born blind should automatically reject surgery that could safely correct the blindness, I would not suggest that someone who was born with some gender condition that makes it hard for them to function in some necessary way should automatically reject surgery that could safely correct the condition. Nor is it my place to say that such a person should automatically accept such surgical help.

Such questions are between a person and God, and possibly close family and sometimes people outside the family that the person feels can be trusted.

*****

For people of every cultural background, you are a bundle of talents and attributes that you have received from whatever you consider created this universe and this world we live in. Things that many people call weaknesses, if applied in appropriate places and ways, often turn into strengths. 

Don't automatically assume that something about yourself that gets you ridiculed and shamed is really bad. And never ridicule others or shame them for things that make them different from yourself.

All these differences can work together to make the world a more beautiful, more varied, more functional place.

There are hard attributes and talents to deal with. Sometimes they are too hard, and the best thing is to try to find some way to correct them. Sometimes they seem too hard, but, by accepting them, we find a way to help others and to improve the world.

Usually, we kind of struggle our way through them as best we can, and eventually find something more important to move on to, whether we were able to take corrective action or not.

For those that are convinced that homosexuality is not a thing, and for those that are convinced it is, at least consider that others may have found a different way to deal with the same sort of issues as you, and let them be.

As the old saying goes, let's get back to living and letting live.