[This is actually my third entry on Creating Change, but the second entry was far more personal than political and I did not share it as widely.]
Are our desires microcosms for the politics, or are politics a macrocosm for our desires?
While exploring my own fear of desire in my last writing, I wandered into a ramble about gender dynamics for those of us who are mostly hetero, sympathetic to feminism, and complete chickenshit. I briefly broached the subject of how bad I am at approaching someone pursuant to dating, but I left out something equally important: I’m just as bad at turning someone down.
Fortunately, I am rarely approached by women or men, so it’s not a problem I have to deal with often–but it is a problem I should be happy to have. I love it when a woman makes the first move–I consider myself a feminist and a coward in this regard. And as for men… well, my desire is rather undeveloped there–not so much new as untested–and it might help to have someone else leading… But since I get most of my desires met by women, it’s just easier to focus on them, isn’t it?
Ah, the slippery slope of polysexuality…
No wonder some queer communities are getting frustrated with the rise in “pansexual” events. It may be more okay for people to acknowledge and indulge their same-sex curiosities these days than in the past, but it’s still a hell of a lot easier to just focus on the stronger and/or more socially acceptable end of the spectrum, so many people (and I include myself in this) do. Instead of liberating queer and queer-friendly spaces that build bridges through sexy fun, pansexual events are increasingly flagging into a realm for self-segregation. These spaces can quickly become mostly hetero-normative, overrun with heteroflexible girls giggling their way through same-sex exhibitionism, the boyfriends they’ll be fucking later–in private–standing as far from the other dudes as possible, and a handful of late-coming queers standing around the edges, awkwardly looking for the real action. [I've been following a deep conversation on this topic on FetLife, but if anyone knows of another forum that doesn't require a login, I hope you'll share a link with me.]
This encroachment hinges strongly with the complicated struggle between queer communities (yes, there are more than one!) over the prominence of sexual liberation within the political movement for equal rights. My interest in promoting politically-charged sexual freedom has long made me feel isolated in hetero communities (even before my self-identification began to shift). As long as you’re not hurting someone (yes, I mean minors, animals, and people who have not given you clear consent), I don’t see why anything should be out of the realm of negotiation.
To some extent, I imagine it was the marginalization of gay communities in the past that encouraged their members to explore and embrace less standard forms of sexual expression–for that alone, even french vanilla heteros should be donating to LGBT causes in droves. Once you’ve created a safe, comfortable niche outside the mainstream, why not expand it? But now that conservatives have successfully re-framed the political focal point to the very specific and contentious notion of gay marriage, gay communities are facing an identity crisis. Social moderates and even many liberals are quite comfortable lobbying for gay votes with promises that gays will be able to marry! Some day. Or at least, um, unite civilly. You know, as long as they talk about love, but never sex. And leave the trans people at home. And there’s only two at a time.
To be sure, there are people in the gay community who are just as monogamous and vanilla and gender-normative as your grandparents on their fiftieth wedding anniversary (if they made it that long before death or the degradation of the institution of marriage got to them first)–and it’s a positive thing that the rest of the country is seeing that these people exist. But there are fears that if this group gets what it wants politically without bringing along at least some broader notion of sexual liberation, the rest of the communities will end up with an even further uphill struggle for visibility, respect, and political power.
A couple years ago in D.C., activists in other campaigns were promoting the notion of a broader “human rights initiative” to promote progress for all people by shifting our attitudes on what it inherently means to be human (I’ll give away the ending in as few words as possible: participatory self-articulation). Right now, most movements for political equality are fighting a war of attrition for the members of that one group to gain exceptional acceptance: “We’re okay. We’re just like you, except that one thing. We’ve been contributing for generations, you just weren’t ready to acknowledge it. Let us prove that the one thing doesn’t really matter any more and then you can let us in!” And the unspoken oath of assimilation, “We promise to be just as discriminating as the last group.” I think class is the most obvious example (volumes have been written about how the bourgeois and the elite trade places over political cycles without class values really shifting much), but there are also resonant patterns in race, education, immigration, partisanship–pretty much any demographic box any politician might ask you to check.
Fighting for the right to assimilate, no matter how staunch one’s terms (even fighting for gay marriage carries with it expectations for some adjustment to hetero-normative laws on discrimination, obscenity, and sex practices), is not the same thing as promoting a human rights initiative. The former benefits only the people explicitly implicated, and can actually create new forms of discrimination against those who complicate the assimilation. Those who blur the lines that are comfortably overcome are vulnerable to exile after assimilation. For example, while Black Americans have made huge strides in legal and cultural acceptance since the Civil Rights Era, Black/White bi-racial people are still often overlooked or treated differently by both communities, since they don’t fit into either side of the resultant racial truce. Similarly, while queer communities have yet to attain such a “truce”, they are at great risk of leaving behind bisexual people (who could “pass” more easily, but at the cost of having their identity even more debated and allegiance more questioned by both poles), to say nothing of trans and other gender-non-conforming (GNC) people.
Envision the eventual orientation truce treaty as an assimilation waiting area; a sign that reads “Mainstream acceptance through this door!” hovers over two lines: a fast-track if you’re hetero, a slower-but-still moving line for gays and lesbians. Do bisexuals have to choose to get in? Do they have to pretend to be one or the other? For how long? And people who are uncomfortable with their external sex–if and when they can get into the gender acceptance waiting area, will they be able to change lines between “male” and “female” as they transition? Will they be welcomed in the line they choose? Will they forever have to sacrifice any of the joys of androgyny or genderfluidity?
The human rights initiative necessarily leave no one behind. You teach yourself and others how to support the right of every individual to define zirself. Instead of pulling individuals or small groups out of the margins, you focus on shifting the margins–the paradigms behind their marginalization– that put them there in the first place.
It is easy to sell out our allies by working for exceptional acceptance instead of striving toward a paradigm shift. I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but between my politics and my desire, I know that I am much more likely to sell out my desires. Values, left inactive, amount to hypocrisy, while desires, left inactive, are supposed to be a sign of responsibility and even respectability. That’s why so few American politicians can survive a sex scandal. We’re not supposed to respect someone whose desires aren’t in complete check at all times, no matter how many times we ourselves have succumbed to less than ideal temptations.
Vanilla, heterosexual, monogamous, love-driven desire focused on people you already know may just be more respectable, but when you pick the fastest line out of convenience, you will miss meeting the interesting people on the other side. You miss the fuller experience of knowing yourself, of having your desires understood, fulfilled, and, yes, respected by others, and of creating new paths where others might follow while defining the most important label of all.
“Me.”
I contend it is a disservice to any authentic movement to be anything less. Is this not integral to the activist’s credo to “Be the change you want to see in the world?”
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