Despite the name of this place I do like to think of myself as an original thinker (sometimes I even live up to the idea) and I often find myself pondering the way society has locked itself into what are actually very unoriginal and limiting modes of thought.
The one that’s come up in particular is sexuality, after a long and rather roving conversation with a friend on the subject. Western society is obsessed with sex, or at least the part that we get to see in the media on a regular basis. This obsession with sex is alleged to be an enlightened view, a liberation from teh sexually repressive attitudes of yore but it’s still an obsession with sex. Everything is seen through the lens of sexual intercourse, or is tinted by the believe that every single human activity is ultimately about sex. This isn’t surprising, when you realise how sexually obsessed the people creating and sustaining this belief are.
The reason I’m bringing this up is because of how damaging it is to relationships. Most obvious is the idea that every relationship is about sex, which makes it hard for men and women to be mere friends. I know from experience of the “behind the scenes” life of media types that the general perception in the media is that when a man seeks any sort of relationship with a woman, it’s because he’s ultimately or primarily after sex. One could spend hours blaming this or that mode of political thought (especially the whole Freudian interpretation of relationships that permeates the collective mind of the media class) but that might be counter-productive – and, to be honest, I don’t have any papers or books to reference on the subject, which makes it a little hard to produce a coherent and well-founded argument.
As I said, the concept of relationships-as-sex is damaging to the individual in obvious ways, but also less obvious ways. The same misunderstanding of the motivations for human behaviour influence the understanding of sexuality as well. This will take a little while to explain, and on top it necessitates putting out a little bit of information that I’ve tended to keep secret up until now because of the misunderstandings that surround it:I am bisexual.
It might not surprise some people who know me but I’m damn sure it’d surprise others to learn this. But what do I mean by bisexual? The popular (and, as far as I’m concerned, wrong) understanding of the term incorporates a wide gamut of definitions and behaviours but, as far as I’m concerned, bisexuality means that a person wants to experience a sexual relationship with both men and women.
Now, being a Christian I wouldn’t want to engage in promiscuous sexual behaviour. Being married, I have vows to maintain, and because I love my wife completely, I can’t really countenance having an intimate relationship with anyone else. Absent those conditions I’d have a slight interest in sex with men, but then absent those conditions I wouldn’t be me.
By this definition bisexuality is fairly simple. It’s about sex. The problem is, relationships more often than not aren’t about sex but about closeness and intimacy. Not “intimacy” in the modern understanding, which is again coloured by the assumption that it necessarily requires a sexual component, but intimacy in an older, more defined meaning of the term that would have been familiar to the writers of pre- and early-post-renaissance romances. The crude term often used is “platonic” or idealised love but that doesn’t really cover it; the word “platonic” is thrown around as often as the word “love” these days, without any real understanding of it’s meaning. Intimacy as I’m trying to define it is the sort of knowledge of the inner soul, the intimacy of life-long companions who know each other’s needs and desires and motivations so implicitly that they often don’t have to speak to communicate. The intimacy of Frodo and Sam from the lord of the rings is often given as an example, but in more general terms the intimate closeness of any partnership that has survived adversity, either of events or simply time.
The post-modern, sex-obsessed world of the media considers such intimacy to be obviously homosexual in nature, because for all their talk about enlightenment they can’t see past their genitals. At one level it’s fun to joke about a gay relationship between Frodo and Sam but, at the same time, it reduces something that is very powerful down to the base and carnal. The idea that two men can be affectionate towards each other without there being some level of homosexuality underpinning the affection has distorted society’s view of relationships to an enormous degree, to the point where you have a lot of people who have accepted the false label of homosexuality or bisexuality for what are perfectly natural, non-sexual behaviours, or who suppress any sort of intimate behaviour, towards both men and women, out of fear of being perceived as “gay”, or less masculine.
It is actually possible to find the male form attractive without being sexually interested in it, and it’s possible for men to be affectionate with other men at a very intimate level without ever having any sort of sexual involvement. The problem is that society, as arbitrated by the media, assigns these behaviours to a sexual foundation rather than one of innocent intimacy.
When I say “I am bisexual” I mean that I find both men and women sexually attractive. I have a rather high sex drive and, if not for my faith, would have very little taste or discernment when it came to sexual partners. This has absolutely no bearing on whether or not I love them and find intimacy with them appealing because, despite the contemporary reductionist belief that all human activity stems from the desire to mate (a belief that was hammered home constantly by the media establishment types when I was at university), sex does not equate to intimacy and sexuality is not love. It is possible to know someone intimately without sex ever coming (so to speak) into the equation. It is possible to love someone so deeply that you would sacrifice everything for them, without every being sexually attracted to them. Our impoverished linguistic understanding of “love” cannot really describe the concept without taking up several paragraphs (in fact C.S Lewis had to take up an entire book – well worth the read, incidentally), and even then the definition is cognitively tainted by the subconscious filtration of love through the concept of sexuality as the primary metaphysical urge. To the post-modern mind, the mind that currently dominates our culture, everything is motivated by sex. The concept that two people can love each other innocently, that love and sexuality are actually separate and sometimes contradictory drives, is alien to a psyche so dominated by an obsession with the sensual that it can no longer understand the spiritual. Even those who claim to be seeking a spiritual understanding tend to let slip that they’re seeking a spiritual experience, falling back to their sensual or “soulish” interaction with the world. But that’s another rant for another day.