Far from prompting me to think I should investigate homosexuality, I’ve mostly taken for granted the many teachers, classmates, students, friends, co-workers, literary figures, politicians, religious leaders and so on that I’ve been aware were gay. It didn’t seem like their most important aspect, since I was not in intimate relations with them. My Prot Irish grandfather -- a sort of comic book character with hair growing out of his nose and ears who ranted and raved about pretty much anything -- sort of immunized me from being horrified by the issue. He used to taunt my brothers when they seemed hesitant by demanding, “What are you? Some kinda homo?” That is, when he wasn’t scandalizing my younger brother by calling him “Bobo,” which was our family code word for urinating. The old man never figured that out: he was thinking of Bobo the Clown. He was so ignorant in his blind rages that his issues became ridiculous even to a child. He wasn’t invited around much.
But now that I’m interacting with Tim Barrus, I can hardly avoid thinking about homosexuality and sexuality in general. I see all sorts of wild theories and assumptions flying by on the Internet. This seems to be attached to researchers trying to discover genomic variations in “races” (undefined). Much talk about IQ’s and “making it” in the modern world. So I guess this stuff has to be addressed before we start making gays wear pink triangles instead of pink ribbons.
In part these ideas seem to be coming from people who resist the idea that culture shapes people. They wish to believe they inherited their character and other attributes. They are resistant to the idea of multiple intelligences, with some gifts suitable for one situation and other talents apparent under other circumstances. Most of all, they seem to dislike the idea that education or proper nutrition can increase intelligence, because it brings up the idea that there is an obligation that will require money and effort on the part of society to create equality, as though equality were sameness.
Gender is a major dimension along which every culture distributes assumptions and arrangements both physical and economical. The potential of gender is not distributed on a bell curve where a lot of people are in the middle and not very many on each end. Rather the distribution is U-shaped, with most of the men on one end and most of the women on the other end. This is because when the development of the fetus bifurcates into two genders, one with one kind of fleshly equipment and molecular soup that is “male” and the other with reciprocating equipment and soup for “female,” some individuals get developmentally mixed up or incomplete or doubled in some anomalous way that might be of advantage. (Consider the Duchess of Windsor or Queen Elizabeth I, both of whom evidently were anatomically atypical in a useful way, quite apart from their other characteristics. Didn't seem to hold them back.)
But the continuums of “innies” versus “outies” or testosterone versus estrogen are not the only ones. Some people end up with very high sex drives and others with low interest. Some people vary in the amount of oxytocin, the nurturing hormone, and some would assert that’s a female quality. Even such non-physiological characteristics as aggressive versus passive enter the equation. And personal attractiveness, however it is defined, makes a difference. Variously configured people step into variously arranged cultures where they might fit or might not. If they do, hurray! All systems go!
If they don’t, they can hide, form sub-groups, aggressively insist on their own way, or maybe migrate to a more sympathetic culture. All these elements are wonderful material for any writing that tries to uncover human motivation and life arcs, while making a few philosophical points along the way. But the culture itself is not passive in this matter and will interfere to keep assumptions alive. Consider that sex, as defined by spam in the battering-ram/insemination mode, is considered an unmitigated good to the point that Viagra is paid for by health plans that will not pay for contraception. This specific kind of sex supports an industry of media, drugs, practitioners, and paid partners. There is also a huge investment in keeping many matters secret, on grounds that this is the “decent” thing to do: suppression in the name of decorum, ignorance as a provider of innocence. At the bottom of the whole thing is money.
On the radio today someone remarked that the most effective kind of population control is not BIRTH control, it’s simply the suppression of health care. Underfunding health programs, not providing welfare, not subsidizing family planning, not supervising foster parents, not enforcing health rules at slaughterhouses and peanut butter factories -- these subtle strategies work better than Happy Hour combined with no seat belts. In fact, they can be manipulated to control unwanted populations: immigrants, hillbillies, blacks, native Americans -- the usual poor in their stereotypical categories. The deaths are statistical, never attributable.
An intelligent young man remarked to me that sex is a red herring. No kidding. What we really care about is money and if that means sacrificing a lot of lives, well, I’m sure there’s a quick Neocon comeback. Trickle down virtue. Sex mixed with violence and death is the biggest red herring of all, the red whale in the room, with the pink bow of romance on its tail. You can see its reflection in the flat “crystal” boxes of DVD’s scattered on the TV.
Sex sells! If there’s blood or perversion involved, the price just goes higher. Why is that? I think it comes directly out of the practice of hushing it all up, so that sex becomes a matter of privileged access: only the truly educated can know. Only the truly mature can know. Only the rich can know. (Isn’t that code for the same thing, because don’t we think of people of low pay with immaturity, a failure to really “grow up?”) Or maybe there’s a genetic entitlement, birth descent from a priest class. People seem to be easy to convince that there is some secret technique (Remember the invented “butterfly effect” on that television show that people tried to figure out? Are people still looking for the elusive “g-spot?” I suspect these are the same folks who are impressed when someone produces what they say is a secret book of the Bible.)
We are often told that men seek sex and women seek intimacy, but that’s another of those continuums and not U shaped at all, but a classical bell shape: MOST people want intimacy with some wanting too much and some people wanting almost none. Then that’s mixed with the expression of sex (which may or may not involve intimacy) of various kinds, maybe violence of various kinds. Violence becomes a kind of intimacy. Lots of cultural potential to exploit that, esp. in a time of war or high crime rates. Foxhole intimacy is closely related to foxhole religion. High adrenaline is a very effective drug.
People often suggest that men like porn and women like romance. Porn violence is supposed to involve weapons, chains, harness-leather and metal zippers. But romance is not supposed to be violent. This skips quickly over “The Story of O,” a feminist classic about whipping and submission (an elegant version of ordinary household domestic abuse), and Val McDermid, a Scots mystery writer whose horrifying torture sequences are toned down for the television shows derived from them. (She points out that the worst tortures are merely taken from the Christian Inquisition -- as she puts it, “devised by the Pope.”)
There’s also a class issue. I have a friend who, over my protests, forwards me “red neck humor” that is really repulsive, usually at the expense of fat white women. (The fat/thin continuum closely follows status: in our culture thin equals prosperity, status, achievement, intelligence.) Any category held in low esteem gives the dominant category permission to mock, punish, and even eliminate “losers.” It’s a way of maintaining dominance at the same time that getting away with it confirms the superiority of the dominator.
But sooner or later the terms of society change. Maybe they are changing right now. Which is why the defense of the status quo is getting more shrill and psuedo-scientific. When the tide goes out, surprising things are found on the beach. Maybe a raging old man with hair and steam coming out of his ears and nose.
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