The Labeling Problems of “Same” and “Other” in Sexuality

Recently, I was remarking to a friend that while growing up, I never noted being attracted to the same sex or the other sex.  I never thought of being attracted to someone like me or different than me.  I simply thought, “Men are attractive, and so are women.”  When I eventually figured out that trans people were out there too, I thought, “More attractive people!  Awesome!”  Hell, if there were some hypothetical intelligent aliens in an alternative universe, I’d probably find them attractive as well, regardless of their sexual bits (or otherwise).

So for this reason I always have found the terms “heterosexual” and “homosexual” somewhat puzzling (as well as the respective “heteroromantic” and “homoromantic”).  “Pansexual,” the word for my orientation, happily does not make any reference to “same” or “other,” which suits me.  When I think of why I find people attractive, it is primarily because the inner person (who is utterly unique) shines.  As a very distant second, it is because their outer form is pleasing to me.  But it is never because they are the “same” as me, and never because they are “other” or “opposite.”  I simply find them beautiful.

Left to my own devices in a world with no terms for orientations, I imagine I never would have thought of coming up with terms like “attracted to same” and “attracted to other.”  I probably would’ve come up with a completely different word-system.  Something more like “virisexual” and “femisexual,” in other words, “attracted to men” and “attracted to women.”  Bisexual and pansexual probably would have stayed the same, since neither makes any comment on the sex or gender of the person who is feeling the attraction.

And what if you’re transgender?  What if you identify as two genders, or a third gender, or no gender at all?  What if your concept of gender is fluid?  For that matter, what if you aren’t even physically male or female?  What if you’re hermaphroditic?  Ideas of same and opposite apply even less.  As a transgender person identifying as non-binary, it’s easy for me to talk about my sexuality accurately, because I happen to be pansexual.  “Attracted to all categories” is fairly accurate, and makes no comment on my sex or gender.  But what if I were only attracted to women?  I couldn’t honestly say I would consider myself to be homosexual, even though I’m in a female body.  The “same” label would not be accurate regarding gender, even if it would be when referring to my physical sex.

When Labels Make It Easy to Discriminate

My friend made an observation in response to this that I thought was fairly genius.  If we did use terms like “virisexual” and “femisexual” instead of “heterosexual” and “homosexual” when referring to broad groups, it would be harder to discriminate.  Why?  Because if you roundly condemned femisexual people, for example, you would not only be condemning all women who liked women, but also all men who liked women.  The majority would be condemned right along with the minority. 

Because the labels we do have make a comment about the sex or gender of the person they are about, they are convenient for discrimination.  It is easy for someone in the majority who feels prejudicial to stand up and say, “I hate homosexuals,” because they are referring specifically to a minority, and feel safe doing so.  It would be harder for them to stand up and say, “I hate femisexuals!” because they would be referring to members of the majority as well—maybe even to themselves or their partners or members of their own political party.

You could say this is all academic, because the labels are unlikely to change anytime soon, but it does make you wonder if someone had this in mind once upon a time when they came up with words like “heterosexual” and “homosexual.” 

The Gay Narcissism Charge

Also related to this topic is the oft-heard accusation by anti-gay folks that gay people are, apparently, inherently narcissistic—it’s that whole “attraction to same” issue.  Various academics have played into this view.  In a book by a Dr. Sam Vaknin called Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisited (cited by 99 on Google), one such academic states, “There are grounds to believe that many homosexuals are repressed or outright pathological narcissists … The homosexual makes love to himself and loves himself in the form of a same-gender object.”  I’ve also heard this from fundamentalists, and there is a lot of “sacred union of opposites” talk out there as well (which doesn’t appear tied solely to one religious perspective).  Not to mention the old chestnut, “Opposites attract” that is so pervasive in popular culture. 

I get that “variety is the spice of life,” and that there is arguably something clinical about someone who pursues a relationship with someone who they perceive as identical to themselves.  It’d be a bit superfluous really, and I agree, unhealthy.  Trying to mold someone into a mirror of oneself is foolish and damaging.  It is good to value differences in others as well as commonalities.  That said, the gay narcissism charge makes no sense because every person is unique.  Variety is the spice of life … and it’s everywhere.

You Can't Put People in Boxes

Are we really so simplistic that we can categorize our identities according to 1s and 0s?  Even if you are cisgender, and even if you are attracted to only one sex or gender, there is nothing binary about your relationship.  Your partner isn’t a 1 or a 0 that matches or opposes your 1 or 0.  That would be a form of objectification.  On the contrary, your partner is a unique human being, different from every other human being who has ever lived.  You can’t quantify that.  You can’t put that neatly into a bin.  You can’t call a person your “same” or “opposite.”  That implies that you both fit neatly into finite categories, when really, you occupy your own unique space in a spectrum of infinite, wondrous diversity.  No one will ever completely fit where you do for the rest of space and time.

This is why this whole union of opposites obsession makes no sense to me.  A man is not in any truly meaningful sense the opposite of a woman.  Both are human.  Both have bodies and minds and souls.  If a man and a woman are building a relationship, their minds and souls hopefully actually do have an abundance similarities, or they are going to have a damn hard time creating a life together.  And … if you strip away all the cultural conditioning that feeds into gender concepts, men and women are a lot more alike than the culture would have us believe.  

Of course, they are not the same, however alike they are. On that exact token, a man and another man are not the same.  A woman and another woman are not the same.  Homosexual people are attracted to the same sex, but that does not make their partner a doppelganger, for fuck’s sake.  Hypothetical Man A and Woman A may be more the same on an essential level than Man A and Man B, or Woman A and Woman B.  And even if you brought together the two most similar people in the world (same sex or otherwise), you would see differences between them, created by their unique experiences and choices.  They could feasibly share meaningful interactions, and celebrate both their similarities and their differences in a loving and non-narcissistic relationship together.

In reality, unless you are a total narcissist and you truly are only attracted to the face you see in the mirror every day and the voice in your own head, none of us are really attracted to “same.”  Everyone is other.  Oversimplifying human relationships does nothing but make it easy to discriminate against minorities, while also encouraging members of the majority group to base their relationships on shallow binary concepts that reveal nothing of the true depth of both partners involved.

What makes a person unique goes way beyond skin-deep.  Someone isn’t different from you because of their sexual organs, or the same as you because of them.  Someone isn’t different than you or the same because of their gender identity either.  Inside these bundles of skin and organs and cognitive concepts, we’ve got hopes and dreams, fears, loves, principles, values, choices, imagination, experiences, and a whole abundance of other good stuff that goes way beyond sex or gender.  

Whether you’re attracted to men, women, both, neither, other sexes or genders, whatever—you look for people who can share both similarities and differences with you in ways that can enrich your life and theirs.  There’s nothing narcissistic about that.