I'm so angry and frustrated that I need to vent for a moment here. It has a lot to do with the fact that self-righteous so-called-normal people feel the need to impose their own f-d up moral codes on individuals they deem not-so-normal. I know that OnceUponATime I was one of those so-called-normal people with the so-called Gospel on my side, but now I'm operating in the light of day and I have so much I want to scream back into the darkness. Here's the basic idea...
A Rainbow Is
We're all familiar with Alfred Kinsey whose claim-to-fame concept was that, when it comes down to who we'd like to shag, we all fall somewhere on this linear scale:
0_______1_______2_______3_______4_______5_______6
0=100% heterosexual 3=exactly bisexual 6=100% homosexual
This continuum was extraordinarily forward-thinking for its time and could be applied separately to different stages in an individual's life, but even Kinsey knew his scale was limited. Not surprisingly, there are countless complications in applying a simple model to the complicated human experience. For starters, there is difficulty in determining how heavily one should weigh physical encounters vs. fantasy (what if fantasizing about another man was the only thing that got a fellow through one night with a woman?) We all know fantasy can be just as powerful, even as convincing, as reality.
But more to the basics, there is an inherent problem with the model's linear structure. What, in life, is perfectly linear when you think about it? Not even Time behaves the way we simplistically define it, let alone evolving-learning-reverting-converting-surprising-growing-choosing-changing human beings. We've even figured out how to break the "law" of gravity. I don't just wish I could shag girls 60% of the time and boys 40%. You might have kissed a man's shoe once and fantasize about that moment for the rest of your life while you engage in every other conjugal act possible with women. Tomorrow, your neighbor might find himself irresistibly attracted to the milkman and then go right back to being a practicing Casanova. (Wait a minute, Casanova liked boys, too... where does he fall on the scale?)
___2___4___5___0___3+1___6___5^3____4%&/3/1#
If you've followed me this far, you know my convoluted point is that human desire is fluid - no matter what numbers or colors or symbols you want to assign it. Here's my big postulation: GENDER is no different. And while I certainly don't want to confuse gender with sexuality, it might help to illuminate the two in the same logical light.
Our society believes it has embraced Women's Liberation, even if it cannot stomach the word "feminism." Most people believe that equality in wages, jobs, opportunities, and life choices for men and women constitutes the far reaches of open-mindedness. But in that very same breath, we are forgetting the those who fall between the cracks of our Pink/Blue divide. We say: just because most human beings are born with one pattern of genitals or another, does not mean they should be forced to automatically follow a certain equivalent pattern of behavior. But do we mean it? Does it make us uncomfortable to see an "effeminate" straight man? Are we unnerved by a person whose sex we cannot readily determine?
If I lined up all people in the world according to the length of their penises, you'd find a perfectly fluid spectrum of size from minuscule to massive. (Okay, do it again by color or shape, etc.) And of course, there'd be thousands with disputable organs. Is that a penis or a really pointy clitoris? Does it matter what's inside? Should we look above the belly-button? Or should we ask who they're attracted to, what they fantasize about, what they wanted to be when they grew up in order to determine if they're male or female?
That's my point. Why is it so important for us to categorize when it's obvious that what we deem "natural" is only one part of the spectrum? (His penis is natural, his is not. Oh, you mean that one is alien?) We have confused ourselves into believing things naturally fall into a tidy dichotomy. Man or Woman. (We even make sure our newborns fall into one or the other before we let them out of the hospital - with the point of a knife, if necessary.)
What's worse: we've shaped our language around this simplistic assumption in such a way that we can hardly imagine (let alone talk about) something that doesn't fit. We just don't have the words for it. And so people get frustrated, indignant, thoroughly annoyed, and they try to make things fit when they don't, or destroy them if they won't change... even when what these people take as a personal affront to their morals is only imagined. What does his skirt have to do with you? Why does it hurt you to see those girls holding hands?
THE GOOD NEWS: I believe we will someday talk about this the way we talk about race struggles now. Of course they're not over, but the sensible portion of society knows that "race" is a myth. Dividing things between black & white makes for an ugly world. And like women's liberation. It's a very slow process, but it's not hopeless. I think someday people will remember what a rainbow is.
Thanks, I feel better now...
A Rainbow Is
We're all familiar with Alfred Kinsey whose claim-to-fame concept was that, when it comes down to who we'd like to shag, we all fall somewhere on this linear scale:
0_______1_______2_______3_______4_______5_______6
0=100% heterosexual 3=exactly bisexual 6=100% homosexual
This continuum was extraordinarily forward-thinking for its time and could be applied separately to different stages in an individual's life, but even Kinsey knew his scale was limited. Not surprisingly, there are countless complications in applying a simple model to the complicated human experience. For starters, there is difficulty in determining how heavily one should weigh physical encounters vs. fantasy (what if fantasizing about another man was the only thing that got a fellow through one night with a woman?) We all know fantasy can be just as powerful, even as convincing, as reality.
But more to the basics, there is an inherent problem with the model's linear structure. What, in life, is perfectly linear when you think about it? Not even Time behaves the way we simplistically define it, let alone evolving-learning-reverting-converting-surprising-growing-choosing-changing human beings. We've even figured out how to break the "law" of gravity. I don't just wish I could shag girls 60% of the time and boys 40%. You might have kissed a man's shoe once and fantasize about that moment for the rest of your life while you engage in every other conjugal act possible with women. Tomorrow, your neighbor might find himself irresistibly attracted to the milkman and then go right back to being a practicing Casanova. (Wait a minute, Casanova liked boys, too... where does he fall on the scale?)
___2___4___5___0___3+1___6___5^3____4%&/3/1#
If you've followed me this far, you know my convoluted point is that human desire is fluid - no matter what numbers or colors or symbols you want to assign it. Here's my big postulation: GENDER is no different. And while I certainly don't want to confuse gender with sexuality, it might help to illuminate the two in the same logical light.
Our society believes it has embraced Women's Liberation, even if it cannot stomach the word "feminism." Most people believe that equality in wages, jobs, opportunities, and life choices for men and women constitutes the far reaches of open-mindedness. But in that very same breath, we are forgetting the those who fall between the cracks of our Pink/Blue divide. We say: just because most human beings are born with one pattern of genitals or another, does not mean they should be forced to automatically follow a certain equivalent pattern of behavior. But do we mean it? Does it make us uncomfortable to see an "effeminate" straight man? Are we unnerved by a person whose sex we cannot readily determine?
If I lined up all people in the world according to the length of their penises, you'd find a perfectly fluid spectrum of size from minuscule to massive. (Okay, do it again by color or shape, etc.) And of course, there'd be thousands with disputable organs. Is that a penis or a really pointy clitoris? Does it matter what's inside? Should we look above the belly-button? Or should we ask who they're attracted to, what they fantasize about, what they wanted to be when they grew up in order to determine if they're male or female?
That's my point. Why is it so important for us to categorize when it's obvious that what we deem "natural" is only one part of the spectrum? (His penis is natural, his is not. Oh, you mean that one is alien?) We have confused ourselves into believing things naturally fall into a tidy dichotomy. Man or Woman. (We even make sure our newborns fall into one or the other before we let them out of the hospital - with the point of a knife, if necessary.)
What's worse: we've shaped our language around this simplistic assumption in such a way that we can hardly imagine (let alone talk about) something that doesn't fit. We just don't have the words for it. And so people get frustrated, indignant, thoroughly annoyed, and they try to make things fit when they don't, or destroy them if they won't change... even when what these people take as a personal affront to their morals is only imagined. What does his skirt have to do with you? Why does it hurt you to see those girls holding hands?
THE GOOD NEWS: I believe we will someday talk about this the way we talk about race struggles now. Of course they're not over, but the sensible portion of society knows that "race" is a myth. Dividing things between black & white makes for an ugly world. And like women's liberation. It's a very slow process, but it's not hopeless. I think someday people will remember what a rainbow is.
Thanks, I feel better now...
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
caillou:
actually, i just looked at them and they're really great. you definately could be a suicide girl. i bet it would feel pretty good.
caillou:
i'm having trouble with my picture it keeps getting stretched out, i think i'm going to have to draw one instead. i'mgoing to go watch a dvd with the boy now, i wrote you an email, too. did you check out my favorite ladies?