The Marquis de Sade: A Late Eulogy

“Either kill me or take me as I am, because I’ll be damned if I ever change.”

When I was 14 years old, I fell head-over-heels in love for the first time.  His name was Donatien. 

He’d been dead 186 years.

Life is so damned inconvenient.

Nevertheless, sometimes you’re given exactly what—or whom—you need, even when time and space get in the way.  At the formative age of 14, what I needed most was a mirror, something to reflect my own identity back at me, clearly and truly.  I’d never had such a mirror, which meant I wasn’t at all sure who or what I was.

Of course, other people seemed to have their own plans regarding who and what I should be.  They were more than happy to reflect their own projections back at me, to try and show me my image through the distorted mirrors of their own ambitions, needs, and fears.  My childhood was smothered in conformity.  I had parents who censored everything I saw, listened to, and read to the best of their thankfully inept abilities.  My childhood was in a word uninspired, tantamount to sitting in a waiting room. 

Somewhere in that vacant fog, I heard Enigma and their classic album MCMXC A.D, but I never pinned down the name of the artist until my teen years.  When I did, I became curious what Sandra was whispering about in Sadeness Pt 1, which of course led me to discover the Marquis de Sade.

It’s one of life’s mysteries that when you discover something essential to you, even before you get to know it, you sometimes feel it in your bones.  The moment I saw his name, I knew I needed to snap up anything and everything I could about him.

But who was Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade?  A dead revolutionary who didn’t even rate a footnote in my high school history textbook?  A violent criminal who wrote disgusting texts to justify his cruel acts?  An edgy libertine obsessed with sex, sex, sex?  It depended on who you asked. 

If any of these descriptions had actually summed him up, I think I’d have been bored silly.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Sade—the supposed depraved monster, the man who so many people assume was a moral vacuum—wrote this:

“Our reason alone should warn us that harm done our fellows can never bring happiness to us; and our heart, that contributing to their felicity is the greatest joy Nature has accorded us on earth; the entirety of human morals is contained in this one phrase: Render others as happy as one desires oneself to be, and never inflict more pain upon them than one would like to receive at their hands.”

What a beautiful sentiment from a man whose name literally has been equated to the infliction of that pain, whether in the playful sense (which I believe he’d have appreciated) or in the destructive sense (he'd have appreciated the irony).

This sentiment can be read in a short essay called Dialogue Between a Priest and a Dying Man.  This piece is often overlooked of course, because there is little here to connect to our culture’s obsession of sex, sex, sex.  Dialogue Between a Priest and a Dying Man will do nothing to titillate bored couples in the bedroom.

At the time I read it, I was an atheist, which was not appreciated in my parents' household, nor had such a perspective gained the popular ground it seems to enjoy today.  My beliefs have changed in conjunction with the evidence of my experiences, but Sade's moral philosophy remains a core one in my life.  Reason and heart alone--these are what inform my beliefs and my choices, not the dictates of others.

Sade in the French Revolution

The Marquis de Sade was quite courageous to espouse atheism at a time when the church was incredibly powerful.  In fact, he was incredibly brave to champion many of the ideas that he did.  His commentary not only on sexuality, but also on religion, nature, the human race, and politics enraged Napoleon Bonaparte, resulting in his imprisonment without trial.  In fact, Sade spent more than a third of his life behind bars in a variety of prisons as well as an insane asylum, where he died at the age of 74.

The man was by no means perfect.  He certainly was a sexual predator, and some of his indiscretions were vile.  The majority however have been greatly exaggerated, both in his time and after it (today I doubt they’d rate more than a blip in a tabloid).  His first 13 years in prison were at the behest of an angry mother-in-law.  During that time he was accused of an accidental poisoning, but the charges were later declared groundless.  Yet somehow he is remembered more for the many false and embellished charges lobbed his way than anything good he did in his life.

When the French Revolution set him free, Sade, who was opposed to the death penalty, became a judge in a revolutionary court.  He sought repeatedly to prove the innocence of those who came before him, and even saved his hated mother-in-law who condemned him to prison in Vincennes from execution.  Charged with being too lenient, he was sentenced for execution himself.  Thanks only to a typo (and the subsequent end of the Terror), his life was spared. 

Who would think a man who went down in history as a bloodthirsty, well, sadist, would literally risk his neck to save his bitter enemies—enemies who condemned him to a fate of imprisonment which he likened to “this grave where they have buried me alive”? 

Society not only offered Sade vengeance, but actually demanded he kill his fellow human beings, that he give into his most base instincts.  He refused, on the basis of his heart and his reason.

Yet the Marquis de Sade is remembered for the sadistic acts he wrote about … not the merciful acts that nearly cost him his life.

On Writing

While I haven’t had a chance to read it, I have heard the Marquis de Sade wrote an essay called “Reflections On The Novel.”  Why did Sade choose to dwell on vice in his writing?  In his own words:

“Never shall I portray crime other than that clothed in the colors of hell.  I wish people to see crime laid bare, I want them to fear it and detest it, and I know no other way to achieve this end than to paint it in all its horror.  Woe to those who surround it with roses.  Their views are far less pure, and I shall never emulate them.”

In this essay he apparently also advised never to write for money—at least not as a priority.

I’ve been thinking about this lately, because money, fame, praise, and all forms of external feedback are why the vast majority of writers write.  They write to a formula, they write to please “beta readers,” they write not to honour the highest truth in their hearts, but to please the fickle mob.  This … they call art.

Don’t get me wrong.  I don’t have anything against the person who honestly derives their greatest joy and meaning from pleasing others.  I don’t have anything against someone who writes primarily for a financial payoff and calls it what it is—content.  I also have nothing against members of television writing teams who miraculously manage to inject something genuine into a collaborative process under the heel of an ongoing profit motive.

I do have a problem with individuals who say they are creating magnificent, honest works from their hearts when they are actually pandering to the whims of the mob.  I realize the grain of inspiration at the center of their works sometimes is derived from their hearts, but they’ve allowed public opinions, trends, publishing houses and writing advice columns to make revisions.  They have twisted their works accordingly.  If this represents their hearts as they claim, their hearts too have been twisted out of true, and belong to the highest bidders.  

True will comes from the individual, not the masses.  True art reflects true will.

They’ll tell you it’s for the sake of making writing better, that their willingness to butcher their own work is proof of their seriousness.  But achieving greatness in writing doesn’t entail handing one’s words to others to vivisect.  It means doing that hard work yourself, like a painter or sculptor or any other type of artist, and doing the thousands of revisions your soul demands with the passion they deserve.  Those revisions should be driven not by the whims of the masses, but by your heart and reason. 

Writing is about becoming a surgeon, not letting others be your butchers.

I bring this up because I write novels, and I am so lucky not to be caught up in this desperate race to please others.  I am part of a tiny percentage of writers who treats their work as a sacred trust, a ritual, a link to the divine.  It is an offering I give to the gods of my experience that grant me an inspired life and do so directly.     

And every day, I hear that I am wrong.  It is everywhere in blogs and advice columns all over the web.  "Don't listen to to your heart or reason--listen to us.  We know what you want to say better than you do."

I don’t mind being part of a tiny minority, and I can even accept that my work will never be my living.  But I do mind that the other 99%  pretend nobility and sacrifice—or count someone like me as a failure among their ranks.  I’m not a member of their ranks.  The only commonality is that I work in the medium of words, as they do.

I got to wondering, “Why is that?  What set me free?  How did I learn to place value on the truth in my heart, and not on the expectations of others?”

And then I realized.  When I was 14, I had a mentor.  From across the barriers of time and death, Sade taught me what true integrity looks like:

“Either kill me or take me as I am, because I’ll be damned if I ever change.”

The priests of Sade’s fundamentalist time were gatekeepers.  They stood between the masses and salvation, telling them what to believe, how to act, what was true, and what was divine.  If they did not get in line, Hell awaited them.

Of course, the priests told them this to keep them in their place, so that they could continue to hold power over their lives.  Their mission was always to keep the disenfranchised from seeking Heaven on earth, or trying to create it themselves.  When we find salvation on our own, we no longer need priests.  We are empowered, independent, free.  We lead individual lives, lives that cannot so easily be reined in and controlled.

The gatekeepers of our time are everywhere.  The parents who deny us love unless we subscribe to their traditions, the politicians and CEOs that deny us bread unless we join their corporate machines.  The fundamentalist priests—they are still here too, telling us that their god speaks to us through their books and their sermons.  

But perhaps the most insidious gatekeepers are the nameless masses—ordinary people who have not had the courage to see that we derive knowledge from our experiences and meaning from our hearts. Having sold their integrity to others, they now seek to drag the rest down, because when they see integrity, it reminds them of just how much painful work they'd have to do to ever set themselves free.

In the world of writing, those gatekeepers are the publishing houses and the beta readers and the public who believe that great art must be subject to their discretion—that it comes from what others believe we should create, and not what we do.  " "Don't listen to to your heart or reason--listen to us.  We've let others butcher our souls.  Now let us butcher yours."

They do this for the same reason as the priests of old: power--or perceived power.  In truth, it is nothing but weakness. To quote another role model of mine, William Blake, "Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or Reason usurps its place & governs the unwilling.  And being restrain'd, it by degrees becomes passive, till it is only the shadow of desire."

That’s why I wanted to take this time to reflect on a man who changed my life.  Though he never met me, Sade held a mirror in front of me.  In him, I recognized the values in my own heart.  He showed me that actions matter more than words, that blood spilled or spared never lies, and that integrity is the cornerstone for any moral system worth devising.  When the Revolution swept over France and a whole country went mad, he chose the hard path—the path of kindness. 

He made his choices not because some priest, gatekeeper or imaginary god told him to, and not because the masses respected, liked, legitimized, or appreciated him.  As Sade said,

“All human morality is contained in these words: make others as happy as you yourself would be, and never serve them more ill than you would yourself be served. These, my dear fellow, are the only principles which we should follow. There is no need of religion or God to appreciate and act upon them: the sole requirement is a good heart.”

While the world remembers either a monster or a sex-obsessed libertine with no thought save for himself, I remember a man who spared his bitter enemies from the execution block at the risk of his life, a man who once went to prison not for assaulting a prostitute, but simply for practicing his rhetoric on her paid time, a man whose dry humour was utterly delightful.  Sex-obsessed he was, but the love of his life was his platonic best friend.  And at 74, he took the time to teach the teenage laundry maid he was screwing how to read and write.  What an utterly idiosyncratic individual.

In many ways, Sade never entirely grew up; in a childish, petulant manner, he threw a tantrum anytime he didn’t get his way.  So many of his mistakes weren’t the result of cruel, cold-blooded determination, as so many would think, but most often of a blithe, lonely innocence that sometimes didn’t realize the destruction it was wreaking until it was too late. 

Why do so many remember him differently?  Part of it is probably that history is written by the victors—and de Sade is hardly someone we’d term a victor in the traditional sense.  Part of it was the myth he himself created.  But perhaps his own words explain it best: “Truth titillates the imagination far less than fiction.”

Was the Marquis de Sade in truth a hero?  I don’t know what it takes to call someone a hero to others, and he certainly wasn’t a hero to every person he met.  But he was a hero to me.  He taught me if you really believe in something, it is worth going to extremes to speak the truth and live a life through action that honours it as best you can.  He never let others tell him how to write, what to believe, what was right or wrong, or how to live.  He never let others stand in the place of his heart or reason as false gods.  In a way, he was there for me when no one else was.  I try to live a life he would be proud of.

In discovering Sade, I discovered myself.  Fifteen years later, I don’t write this eulogy to say goodbye, but to say “hello again.”  I also do it to remind you who are reading this that other people are not your gods.  They have no right to tell you what to believe or how to act or to restrain your true desires.  Have the courage to be yourself.  Don't let anyone censor your soul.  Stand up for yourself and live a life of integrity, like Sade.

Sources:

http://www.cofc.edu/desade/papers/arce01.doc

http://neilschaeffer.com/sade/

What Polyamory Isn’t

Polyamory:  The philosophy or state of being in love or romantically involved with more than one person at the same time.

That’s the definition I get when I Google it.  It’s not bad actually.  There are variable definitions of polyamory, but that one actually fits pretty closely to my own.

I always liked this one for myself:

Polyamory:  Where partners have the freedom to allow their relationships to take their natural course, whatever that might be.

You’ll notice neither of these definitions involve sex.  Being polyamorous can mean you’re having sex with more than one person, but remember, asexual people can be polyamorous too.  I’m not asexual, but I enjoy many different types of intimate relationships.  I feel that each relationship has an utterly unique expression, because every person is unique.

Just as every person is unique, every person has their own unique approach to how they structure their life, and our orientations are filtered through what fits us.  One person’s polyamory looks different than another’s.  Diversity rocks.

But please note:

• Polyamory is not the same thing as promiscuity.  Sure, some poly people are promiscuous.  So are some mono people.

• Polyamory is not the same thing as swinging.  Many swingers certainly are poly people, but not all poly people are swingers.  Likewise, some sexually non-monogamous people may be romantically monogamous and still identify as swingers.  These are overlap categories, not interchangeable labels.  If someone tells you they are poly, do not assume they are or are not a swinger.  And do not assume every swinger identifies as poly.  It is always best to ask.   

• Polyamory is not about casual one-night-stands.  Poly people can have them of course, and so can mono people.

• Polyamory is not identical to an open relationship, though it is one form of open relationship.  Open relationships are a broad umbrella.  Some forms may focus more on casual sexual interactions and some may even exclude emotional attachments.  Remember, poly is about more than sex.

• Poly is not just a lifestyle.  It is for some people, but for others it is an orientation.  For some people it may carry situational flexibility; for others it is set in stone.  If someone tells you they are poly, they may be referring to their lifestyle, orientation, or both.  The only way to know is to ask.

The above list is included for general reference.  Hopefully what you gather here is that poly is a broad umbrella, just like mono.

What I really want to talk about is deliberate mis-use of the word "polyamory."  Not linguistic laziness or arguments over nuances.  I want to talk about when the word "polyamory" is used to disguise disrespect and justify unhealthy behaviors in relationships.

At this link, you’ll find a piece of shit eBook which demonstrates what polyamorous is not—but what some people want you to think it is.  I run across a lot of crap like this, and it really pisses me off.  This guy is essentially saying polyamory is something you tell women you’re dating until you finally find a real “in-love” relationship, at which point you can retire from that sub-par shared existence and settle into a life of happy monogamy. 

That's insulting to pretty much everybody.  I wouldn't have a problem if he just called it "non-exclusive dating for monogamous people playing the field" or something like that.  But borrowing the name of an actual orientation?  Lame.  Poly people don't have relationships with multiple people because they're dissatisfied with those people and looking for the person they can be satisfied with.  They have relationships with multiple people because all of those relationships are deeply fulfilling to them.  It isn't a means to an end.  It is the ultimate happy expression for them.

Check out these horrible excepts which are awful, awful, awful:

“To determine if you should be monogamous with a woman or polyamorous with her, you need to know how to tell the difference between loving someone and being in love with someone.”

“The next rule is that you must let her go at some point – you cannot hold on to her forever. You both should enter a polyamorous relationship knowing that you are together only temporarily, so if she finds a man who is better for her than you are, you must encourage that relationship.”

“Constantly reinforce the idea that you are not ultimately going to be the man for the women you are polyamorous with so that they don’t start to think you’re in a consummate love relationship when you’re not … Until you each find ideal mates, you must help each other to do so and learn everything you can from each other along the way.”

… Stuff like this annoys me, but what really set me over the edge was that today, I talked to an acquaintance who asked me to help her by giving her perspective.  She told me she is monogamous and having a hard time adjusting to her partner suddenly announcing he must live a poly lifestyle as befits his apparent orientation.  When I started the conversation, I expected her to give me a situation where both she and her partner were behaving reasonably and having a hard time understanding each others’ orientations.

Instead, she tells me about a guy who sounds like he read this eBook and adopted it as his dating mantra so he can hedge his relationship bets.  I don't know if he's a bad guy or just a lost guy.  He's not the subject of this blog--just one person who has fallen into a familiar pattern I have seen many times before.

I am tired of people grabbing the word “polyamory” and hiding behind it like a shield while they treat their partners with disrespect or hedge their bets in their relationships.  It doesn’t matter whether the person doing it is poly or monogamous.  What they are doing is disrespectful, to their partners, and to responsible poly people who are working hard to cultivate meaningful, lasting, powerful relationships.

Here is a list of unhealthy things polyamory is not:

• Polyamory is not cheating.  Polyamory is not about having sex behind your partner’s back.  Nor is it about “legitimizing” cheating.  Just telling someone else “I’m having sex with other people” with total disregard to their emotions is a violation.  Will everyone in a poly or hybrid relationship be comfortable 100% of the time?  Probably not (life is messy), but no one should be disregarding anyone’s feelings or needs.  Poly is not a way to say, “I am going to and have sex with whomever I want, and if you don’t like it, you can fuck off.”  That is just craptastic behavior.

• Polyamory is not a flag you can wave so you can go irresponsibly shagging whomever you want with no responsibility or consequences.

• Polyamory is not about having someone “on the side.”

• Polyamory is not a way to conveniently hedge your bets on one relationship while you evaluate another.   

• Polyamory is not an excuse to run off on your partner and avoid dealing with issues in the relationship.

• Polyamory is not about breaking the rules or trust in a relationship.  There are many shapes that poly and hybrid relationships can take.  The rules set by parties in a relationship can vary, but those rules are to be respected and honoured.

• Polyamory is not an excuse to avoid commitment, or a relationship structure that the poly person engages in until he or she finds “the one” and then settles into a life of blissful monogamy, leaving behind a trail of broken relationships and “expendable” partners. 

• Poly is not about disregarding your partners’ emotions or emotional needs.

• Poly is not an excuse to avoid one person and replace your intimacy with them with another because you are too much of a coward to deal with the problems between the two of you.  This is not about avoiding responsibility.  It is about taking responsibility for multiple intimate relationships, and all the challenges that go therewith.  

• Polyamory is not a quick fix for a relationship that is in trouble.  Again, avoiding an issue by turning to someone else for comfort will resolve nothing on its own.  In some situations, it may make things worse. 

• Poly is not something you do because you are unhappy with your current partner. 

The takeaway here should be this:

To people being hurt in relationships:

If someone is behaving like an abusive, selfish jackarse to you, it is not because of that person’s orientation.  That is not what being poly is about, any more than it is what being mono is about.  Anyone of any orientation can behave like a jerk.

Having healthy poly relationships and healthy mono or hybrid relationships involves the same qualities:  trust, respect, honesty, compassion, patience, communication, and decency. 

If those qualities are absent, it is not an orientation issue.  It is just a bad relationship—or a relationship that is damaged and needs help, if you think it’s worth fighting for.

To people hurting others:

If you want to be a jerk, or a coward, or hedge your bets in your relationships … stop hiding behind “polyamory.”  I don’t care if you’re actually polyamorous or not.  Maybe you are, maybe you aren’t.  Whatever your orientation is, you will not find or create happiness or stable relationships by behaving like a jerk or coward.

And all you are doing is hurting the rest of us—those of us who are poly and strive to lead responsible lives and build healthy, happy relationships.

It really sucks when I tell someone I am polyamorous and they think I am saying I am a cheating jerk who has found a loophole to get away with it.

Building any solid relationship is really hard work. 

Building multiple ones is even harder.  It doesn’t involve less work or less insecurity.  It involves more of both.  It isn’t an escape from responsibility.  It’s exactly the opposite.  It is a responsibility to be your absolute best to every person you become intimate with.

While there are many differences between us, in that sense, poly and mono people are exactly the same.  We owe the people we love the very best we can give them.

Link Time! John Oliver on Transgender Rights

I love this guy!  Great segment on the rigors of being transgender in a world that prizes social constructs over individual lives and identities.

Link Time: Gendering Emotions

Since I'm still on my hiatus, I will share this nifty little infographic thingy I ran into today:

http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/06/the-media-mens-emotions/

Enjoy!

And huzzah on marriage equality in the USA!  Never thought I'd see the day!  We're one massive step closer to a friendlier, more open and accepting society.

Link: How to Screw Up Your Relationship

I'm taking a bit of a break for a couple of months from posting.  It takes a loooong time to get a single entry written, since they are all essentially essays, and I am taking some time to plan my next round of posts.  I have some short posts on polyamory in the works, and also plan to do a series soon on BDSM and spirituality.

In the meantime, please enjoy this great PDF that someone shared on FL today:

How to Screw Up Your Relationship

I have not read any of the other material on the site (More Than Two), but if it as good as that PDF, it must be amazing.  That's one of the single best relationship guides I've ever read.  The advice is equally applicable to mono and poly people.  I love that, because talking as someone with a hybrid relationship who gets a lot of hits on this blog from people in similar relationships, it is easy for people to lose sight of the fact that showing basic respect in a relationship involves the same essential principles no matter what your orientation is and no matter what shape your relationship(s) take.

And ... this resource is quite funny - I love the formatting with the tips.  Enjoy!

Persephone

My Hat's Off to You, Maria Bello

My friend Mike over at The Other Side's Thoughts recently posted a link to an article in the New York Times by actress Maria Bello.  Mike often posts great links, but this one particularly blew me away.  Off the top of my head, I don't actually know if I've ever seen a film or a show with Ms. Bello in it, but her article makes me want to be a fan.

In the article, Maria Bello talks about her son Jackson asking her about her love life, because he's realized she's not telling him something, which turns out to be that she's become romantically involved with her friend Clare.  But what I love about this article is that Bello isn't simply coming out as bisexual; she is coming out as (in her words--or her son's words, actually) "whatever."  Her story really is uplifting to read for me as a polyamorous person, and one who treasures important relationships in any shape they take.  Bello questions the definition of the word "partner," one I have always struggled with.  It's the word I usually use to describe the man I live with, mostly because "boyfriend" seems to summon up images of prom and high school drama, not serious commitment and a long-term relationship.  Yet my definition of the word "partner" is also broader than most peoples'--and so is my idea of whom it is okay to commit to.  

"And I have never understood the distinction of “primary” partner," Bello writes.  "Does that imply we have secondary and tertiary partners, too? Can my primary partner be my sister or child or best friend, or does it have to be someone I am having sex with? I have two friends who are sisters who have lived together for 15 years and raised a daughter. Are they not partners because they don’t have sex? And many married couples I know haven’t had sex for years. Are they any less partners?"

Bello talks about how various people in her life are all people she defines as partners--her ex, because they share her son, Clare, with whom she shares a romantic relationship, platonic friends, and even her family members, because after all, they are there for each other in an equally committed way.  "Whomever I love, however I love them, whether they sleep in my bed or not, or whether I do homework with them or share a child with them, “love is love.” And I love our modern family."

That's just one of the best things I've read in ages.  I also love Bello's story about finally realizing she was in love with Clare--after a long time overlooking the fact because the relationship wasn't the result of racing hormones like most sexual relationships she had jumped into in the past.  We live in a culture that upholds impulse decisions as the model for what "romantic" should be.  Calling someone "steady" or "reliable" is often seen as an insult--even though these are the very qualities that are absolutely necessary for a stable, happy family--whatever shape that family takes.   "We had an immediate connection but didn’t think of it as romantic or sexual," she writes.  "She was one of the most beautiful, charming, brilliant and funny people I had ever met, but it didn’t occur to me, until that soul-searching moment in my garden, that we could perhaps choose to love each other romantically.  What had I been waiting for all of these years? She is the person I like being with the most, the one with whom I am most myself."

What's interesting to me is that is what realizing I am in love with someone almost always feels like--whether that love is felt or expressed platonically or not.  It's that realization that you've built a wealth of wonderful shared experiences with someone, and that you have that perfect intimacy with that person based on a real, meaningful connection.  Ms. Bello doesn't sound to be demisexual, but as a demisexual person, I can relate very much to how her relationship with Clare developed.  It's very different from the "in love" of racing hormones that most people talk about when they talk about falling in love (and which she talks about too, with her past relationships).  But it's the "in love" that's worked for me.

Maria Bello's article is courageous, and so is her choice to value all the important relationships in her life.  It really makes me happy to see someone of this stature sharing her journey like this.  As she concludes at the end of her article, "Maybe, in the end, a modern family is just a more honest family."

Is BDSM an Orientation or a Lifestyle?

Somehow I managed to stumble on a Slate article recently with the link-baity title, "Spank You Very Much: Is S&M Dangerous?  Let’s Look At the Evidence.”  The article is written with a cynical bent by someone who up-front states that in earlier articles, he “argued that BDSM, unlike homosexuality, was inherently problematic and wasn’t an orientation.”  Following criticism, he dug into a bunch of statistics and wrote a new article.  I’m going to ignore most of it (more ground than I want to cover), but focus on this question of whether BDSM is an “orientation” vs. a “lifestyle.”  Here’s what the author said when he came back to this point in the article:

“Previously, I argued that homosexuality is fixed (an orientation), but that BDSM is flexible (a lifestyle).  Kinksters replied that BDSM, too, is an orientation.  What does the data show?  Mostly flexibility.”  He then goes on to cite a study showing that only 5% of practitioners “no longer practiced ordinary sex,” and that 40% had changed their “preference” or “behavior” from sadism to masochism or back.  He also points out that “dabblers” in BDSM far outnumber “core” members of the group.

I find this entire definition of orientation as something “fixed” incredibly short-sighted, however commonly it is accepted.  I’m not going to get into that here though.  Read me tearing that definition apart over here.

I actually do agree with some of the author’s other findings—that the BDSM community is incredibly diverse, and that the “dabblers” are the majority.  I also agree that most of the “dabblers” are motivated primarily by sexual appetite and a desire to explore rather than by BDSM desires specifically; that seems to ring true from my encounters.  That said, it is way too black and white to ask whether a kink is definitively an “orientation” or a “lifestyle" (whereas for some people it might be both, for others one or the other, and for others still, neither) and plain out wrong to suggest that kink is only a lifestyle.  Especially based on the author's rationales.  Let’s take a look at them.

• First off, this statement that “only 5% of practitioners no longer practiced ordinary sex.”  It’s off the point.  Who says all sex must include BDSM for BDSM to be part of a person’s orientation?  Obviously it is the case for a minority, but this is generally considered a difference between a fetish and a kink.  BDSM is a fetish (speaking in psychological terms as a prerequisite for sexual arousal) for some people, but for a lot more it’s a kink, which is something much broader.  Oh, let’s also not forget that not all kinky scenes require sex!  Declaring that all sex must include BDSM for BDSM to be an orientation is as ludicrous as saying all BDSM must include sex for a person not to be defined as asexual.  It's also as illogical as saying that a bisexual person is only bisexual if she is doing a man and a woman during all sexual encounters.  Come on.

• This statement that “40% had changed their “preference” or “behavior” from sadism to masochism or back.  While that may indeed indicate mere preference for some people, for others it could simply point towards shifts in awareness of an underlying orientation.  As some people will testify, it’s not always obvious which side of the whip you want to be on until you get some experience.  For others still, behavior can shift for different reasons.  For me as a switch for example, my “preference” for activities is dependent on my specific relationships and the shape they take which feels most suitable.  But my underlying orientation is a deep-seated need for sadism and masochism.  I just don’t happen to expect it all with one person or necessarily even want it that way.  Again, it would depend on the person and what feels comfortable for us.  That doesn’t make me wishy-washy, as the author seems to imply.  Just varied in my tastes and particular as to when and how they are expressed.

• Just because there are “dabblers” in something does not make it not a legitimate orientation for others!  That’s like saying that because there are bicurious people, actual bisexuality is not an orientation.  Something which is a lifestyle or an experiment or an occasional fun game to spice up the bedroom for one person can be a serious orientation for another.

What the Heck are Orientations Anyway? 

It’s hard to find a good definition of “orientation” while discussing this topic because in large part the word is way too narrowly applied anyway.  Most definitions online simply reference whether a person is attracted to men, women, both, etc., and do not reference other sexual, romantic or social behaviors.  

As an alternative, one definition I recently referenced on Wikipedia in another blog entry (here's the link again) simply summarized sexual orientation as “attachments, longings and fantasies.” Ignoring for a moment how incomplete I feel that definition is, let’s say that attachments, longings and fantasies are indeed what comprises a significant portion of a person’s orientation and respond again to the Slate author's charges about perceived "flexibility" not reflecting an orientation, but only a lifestyle.  The guy seems to define "flexibility" literally as "not doing a thing ALL the time."  So BDSM people don't do kinky activities during all sexual encounters.  So a kinky person sometimes acts as a sadist and sometimes acts as a masochist.  So what?  

• When a heterosexual man is not in a relationship with a woman, does he stop having attachments, longings, and fantasies for women? 

• When a bisexual woman is solely in a relationship with a man, does she cease to be bisexual and suddenly become heterosexual?

• For that matter, does a sexual person suddenly become asexual just because that person is not sexually active?

I think most people would recognize the obvious absurdities above.  Of course it doesn’t work that way.  People don’t stop longing for something or finding meaning in it just because it physically isn’t in their life at the moment.  This is one of the reasons psychologists distinguish between sexual behavior and sexual orientation. 

The same goes for kinksters who experience their orientation as kinky.  When out of a kinky relationship or out of the scene, these people retain their kinky selves.  They feel the deep and pervading loneliness of unmet needs when that lack becomes a long term situation.  So no—just because a kinkster may not be acting on their sadistic or masochistic fantasies at some point of time due to the mitigating circumstances of their lives, that does not mean they are “flexible” or that their needs are just a “lifestyle.”  All it means is that their needs are currently unmet. And when a kinkster in a happy kinky relationship sometimes opts for vanilla sex, it doesn't mean he's "flexible" about his kink orientation; it just means he enjoys other expressions of intimacy as well.

Towards a Broader Definition of Orientation …

All of this touches on my feeling that the word “orientation” is something which badly requires an expanded definition.  Perhaps something closer to the most general definition of the word:

• Orientation:  The determination of the relative position of something or someone (especially oneself). 

Our relative position in life encompasses all the ways we relate to people … including our sexual and romantic needs, and so much more.  What about our needs for friendship?  For community?  And yes—for kink and other forms of intimacy (overlapping or not with sex)?  All of these have a massive effect on our psychological and spiritual functioning, and yes—on our lifestyles as well.

The truth is that orientation is often more than sexual and can influence all aspects of a person’s life.  Often those effects are invisible to others (and let’s not forget that sexuality too can influence far more than whom a person has sex with). 

If BDSM is your orientation, and you know it, you can confirm that reality with every fiber of your being.  You know it in the sense of joy, safety and closeness you feel in the right relationship, that exquisite sense of being utterly aligned with another person—and in that hole in your heart when you are without one.  And as someone whose life has been relatively empty of kinky fulfillment or activities, I feel that hole in my soul every single day.  It is terribly offensive to suggest that my seemingly vanilla life reflects flexibility, when it does not.  Actually, in some less-than-obvious ways, it directly reflects my kinky nature.  To me, being true to my nature means only offering my submission or dominance to someone who is truly a worthy counterpart for me, and nobody else.  I’m not saying I couldn’t or shouldn’t learn to get out of my shell more and get more involved in the community and learn.  For me this blog is a step in that direction.  I don't want the hole in my heart to be a hole forever.

Order in an Uncertain Universe

But that same inner kinky nature that other people don’t notice … it’s there every day impacting my life in positive ways, and nothing changes that.  Being a sadomasochist and a switch has influenced everything from my preference for self-employment to my creative work to my religion, in subtle ways my fashion sense, and believe it or not, even my vanilla relationships.  Even the people in them wouldn’t realize that, because it’d be incredibly roundabout to explain.  Without my orientation, none of that stuff would actually be, because I wouldn’t be either.

This is all stuff I increasingly want to delve into in this blog, because I rarely see anyone talking about how kink impacts their lives as a whole.  This is all deeply spiritual and psychological to me, and it's time I talked about it.  That's a direction I intend to take my blog in in the future.  I know that other people can relate to this, because when I published my entry, "You Asexual Deviant, You!" a surprising number of people re-shared it (thank you!) with particular emphasis on this quotation:

"For me, BDSM is largely about how I relate to life.  It's the search for a little calm and control and trust and release in an uncertain universe."

The Slate article this post was written as a rebuttal to concludes with the following statement: "For (some) people, BDSM is a pathology. But for most of its practitioners, it’s just a game."

Does what I just said sound like a pathology?  Or "just a game?"  Anything out of balance can arguably turn into a pathology.  And for many people, yes, BDSM is just a game.  But not for all of us.  For some of us it's far more than that, and quite the opposite of a pathology.

All my life, I've been hard-pressed to identify as much in particular.  Too many things seem fleeting, surface-deep, or coincidental.  I value those things for what they are, but they are nothing to anchor a sense of self to in an anchor-less world.  But there are a few core elements that are always there, that always have been, that always will be, even if their expression changes through time and space, and even if at times I have run away from them.  And this is one of them--one of the few things I can point at and say with certainty, "Yes--this is real.  This is eternal.  That is a genuine part of me."  Deep under the turbulence and trepidation of everyday life, it's a solid center where I can experience something akin to a sense of peace.  

So yes, BDSM--or the set of desires, passions, expressions and revelations behind that framework--is there in my soul, and that is not flexible at all, whether I’m in a D/s relationship or not at any point of my life.  It makes me better, realer, more me, in fact the only me I could be.  That’s how absolutely core it is to my identity.  That's my human answer; that's my orientation, my bulwark.  Statistics, misunderstandings, assumptions and cynicism are just waves crashing against it and subsiding, fleeting, temporal and powerless.

Do Choice and Change Have Anything to Do With Sexual Orientation or Identity?

One of the most harmful and pervasive arguments against gay rights is this:

“Being gay is a choice.  It’s a preference, not an orientation.”

This argument has always bothered me, but not for the obvious reason.  The obvious reason being of course that sexual orientation generally isn’t considered a choice, and it’s absurd and vile to try and force someone to change something they can’t.

But what if they could?  Would that make it right?  I don’t see how.  To me that only would make it more vile.

It’s my thesis that orientation is occasionally chosen, and does occasionally change.  And that in itself isn’t an argument against diversity, but rather for it.

Let’s Talk Definitions

As the world’s laziest academic, I’m going to turn to Wikipedia.  They already did all the citations for me, and came up with this statement:

“Sexual preference may suggest a degree of voluntary choice, whereas the scientific consensus is that sexual orientation is not a choice.”

Scroll down and you will read this:

“Sexual identity and sexual behavior are closely related to sexual orientation, but they are distinguished, with sexual identity referring to an individual's conception of themselves, behavior referring to actual sexual acts performed by the individual, and orientation referring to "fantasies, attachments and longings.’”

So, according to these definitions:

• Sexual orientation:  Fantasies, attachments and longings.

• Sexual behavior:  What a person actually does.

• Sexual identity:  How a person perceives themselves.

• Sexual preference:  A leaning toward one thing or another with a degree of choice.  This is indicated as a rather casual thing, like preferring blue over red or vanilla over chocolate or going to the grocery store on Tuesdays instead of Wednesdays. 

These definitions are far from useless, but they still seem a bit incomplete to me.  I mean, for example, what about actual desires, which overlap but sometimes differ from fantasies?  I’m willing to wager lots of people have fantasies they’d never want to act on.  What people are comfortable doing in imaginary realms does not always mix with what they are comfortable doing in the real world.  What about the man who fantasizes about sex with strangers, but in real life feels zero attraction to strangers and zero urge to ever have sex with them (he could even be demisexual)?  What about the woman with dubious consent fantasies, who placed in the same real-life situations would feel utterly traumatized?  Or what about someone who fantasizes about a certain person, but presented with the possibility of actually being with them sexually, discovers they have no real-life interest?

Anyway, the page goes on to add the following useful observations:

• Sexual identity, behavior and orientation do not always match.

• The page is not entirely clear on whether sexual identity is hard-wired or chosen, but the implication is that conscious decision-making does play a role.  Clearly it also plays a role in behavior.

The Contradictions Start …

Here’s where things get interesting.

• According to the APA, “Most people experience little or no sense of choice about their sexual orientation.”

Most people?  This is the APA talking here.  The same Wikipedia page also mentions, “Studies have reported that choice is considered an important factor in orientation for some people.”

Wow.  Why don’t I ever hear about these studies?

Sometimes I think it’s because the LGBTQA+ community worries that talking about choice in relation to sexuality will supply ammunition to the other side—that side that argues “gay is a choice,” and that “gay people can and should change.”  I don’t believe talking about choice is ever ammunition for oppressors.  After all, it isn’t just the natures we were born with that oppressors want to take away; it’s our choices too.

Sex researchers admit they don’t even know how orientations form—whether they are nature or nurture or some combination thereof.  But that means that aside from any hard-wired biological components that go into determining orientation (which indeed would be outside our control), assuming nurture plays any role at all, choice must come into play on some level.  That’s my assertion.  Why?  Because inputs from our environment and other people inform our development.  The choices of other people can impact our orientations.  And on top of that, we make choices every day of our lives, even as small children.  Perhaps not very conscious ones, but well, mileage does vary.  Those choices affect others, and ourselves.

Researchers believe that sexual orientation manifests for most people during mid-childhood and early adolescence—counter to what I’ve usually heard, that people are born a certain way.  This is interesting to me, because this is around the time in most peoples’ lives when choices do start becoming conscious and meaningful.   Nothing in our lives develops in a vacuum.  Everything during that crucial stage is formative.  Our genetics have a formative impact on our thoughts and choices, but our choices and resulting experiences in turn have a formative effect on our neurons and future psychological and biological growth.

I’m not asserting that I believe choice plays a major role for all or even most people with regards to sexual orientation.  But for those it does … it is wrong to pretend these people don’t exist, and don’t carry the same rights as everyone else. 

Can Orientations Change?

I also believe sexual orientation may change throughout a person’s life, that it is something which is not always something fixed and innate, but sometimes quite fluid and alive.  Despite the APA’s implication that choice may play a role for some people with regards to orientation, they are pretty clear about their assertion that once the mortar has set, it’s set in stone.  Here’s what they have to say:

“There is no sound scientific evidence that sexual orientations can be changed.”

They do add that awareness of orientation is fluid and that people may become more or less aware of their innate orientations at different points in their lives. 

While I agree 100% with the assertion about shifting awareness, I still don’t agree with the first part of the statement.  Why?  Just as our experiences play a formative role in our adolescence, they continue to do so throughout our adult lives.  While most people may find their sexual orientations fixed in their younger years, who is to say there are no late bloomers (I myself am probably an example of that)?  And who is to say that a person’s experiences and choices over a lifetime cannot lead to the formation of a new orientation later in life by the same processes that formed their initial orientation? 

I want to share a few anecdotes.  These are real people with real life stories.  I know that it’s hard to quantify lives and turn them into data, and I’m not trying.  The uniqueness of these stories is what is important.

Esther

I know a woman, call her Esther, who describes herself as “having been a lesbian.”  I asked to know more, and she described a more complicated situation. 

When Esther was younger, her body only responded to women.  She didn’t experience arousal in response to men.  Contradictorily, her mind didn’t respond to women at all, and only was attracted to men.  The idea of having sex with a woman was completely off-putting to her; the idea of sex with a man was appealing, but didn’t translate into her body.  It wasn’t that she was bisexual, attracted to both men and women.  In essence, her body was homosexual, desiring women, and her mind was heterosexual; it was men she longed for and fantasized about.  As her cerebral desires and fantasies were more compelling to her than her body’s needs, Esther would have preferred to be strictly heterosexual.  She described it as a feeling of being “torn apart.”

Years later, Esther went on hormone replacement therapy for PCOS, and suddenly discovered her body was responsive to men, and no longer to women.  Her psychological draw to men remained unchanged, so she actually became fully heterosexual.  Lucky Esther?  Esther thinks that the change was half chance, half choice.  She believes the change in her body hormonally accounted for part of it, but she also believes wholeheartedly that her psychologically needs eventually drove her physical needs to “catch up” with what she wanted in her heart. 

I’m not sure what sex researches would say about Esther.  I suppose some might assert she’s a latent, permanent lesbian who has suppressed her “real” orientation under a false heterosexual identity, and that she merely has a “preference” for men or is going through a phase or that her PCOS therapy is muddying the waters.  But this is blatantly disrespectful of Esther’s psychological needs.  Not wants—needs, the needs which were always there and still are.  Who has the right to say that this is a case of repression when she now feels complete ease with her orientation?  She no longer feels torn in two. 

Others might argue that she is and always has been bisexual, but again, this would disregard the fact that she had two splintered orientations.  Part of her was distinctly heterosexual and part of her was distinctly homosexual.  I suppose another sex researcher might propose that Esther has always been fully heterosexual and that her PCOS was somehow “obscuring” her sexuality.  While hormones clearly play a role in sexuality, this assertion would ignore the fact that hormones change many times throughout a person’s life.  What if someone like Esther were to undergo another hormonal change (perhaps not related to a health condition at all) and experience another shift in bodily needs in the future?  What if she shifted back to desiring women?  Would the same researcher then argue she was always a lesbian after all?

Esther's story suggests orientations can exist on multiple levels, even in the same person.  Not only that, but whether the body’s, mind’s or spirit’s orientation is most compelling might vary from person to person.  Another woman wired similarly to Esther might have found her body’s needs more compelling than her mind’s, and would have been relieved if her mind could “catch” up to her body and allow her to be fully lesbian.  Another might have been relieved to be able to become fully bisexual. 

But in Esther’s particular case, her cerebral needs were outpacing her physical needs even before the shift in her body.  I find this fascinating, because “the body determines the mind” seems to be the default with researchers.  I guess this shouldn’t be surprising, being as no one is even sure scientifically what “the mind” is, but Esther’s story should give anyone pause.  Sometimes, the mind determines the body, or as Esther puts it, “the spirit was stronger than the flesh.”  

Eva

Now let’s talk about Eva.  Eva is a transgender person, born as a man.  Eva’s gender identity is complicated and doesn’t fit in a binary, and sums up as, “my goal is not to become a woman, but to become the feminine person I would be comfortable as.” 

Originally, growing up as a man, Eva perceived himself as heterosexual, and experienced life that way.  He was attracted to women and fantasized about women.  As Eva became more comfortable with her/his transsexual identity, her/his interests started to broaden.  The porn Eva used to download featured men and women, and Eva would relate to the porn from both sides—as the male and female participant.  Even though Eva continues to find women attractive and still fantasizes about them, s/he noticed the porn videos s/he has been downloading in recent years feature more transsexuals and fewer women.  “Right now, my ultimate fantasy is being my female self.  And since this is my fantasy, it shows up in the videos I download,” s/he explains.  “I can obviously relate more to transsexuals as I’m closer to them than I am to women, physically.”  She goes on to explain that that even though she’s always found women attractive, she also has long been drawn to activities and situations that people “traditionally associate with women.”

Eva adds, “It’s not like my interest has shifted because I still like women, but rather I embraced the notion that a sexual organ isn’t necessarily an identifier of whether someone is male or female and I learned to associate the penis with more than male.  That’s important, because I came to realize it’s not my penis I’m uncomfortable with but my maleness.” 

I asked Eva whether s/he would say her/his orientation actually changed, or had simply been discovered.  “I think I may have discovered it.  On the other hand, it’s not like my appreciation for the notion of women who were born as male was inherent.  I do think my sexuality could have gone different ways in that regard … I think the point is that your sexual identity and orientation may actually be changing constantly.”

Eva’s situation is too complex for me to dissect, but it’s another excellent example of fluidity in sexual experience as well as choice.  It’s a less unusual situation than Esther’s according to the definitions outlined earlier in the sense that this story followed a pathway of discovery more than actual conscious change, though Eva has experienced a genuine shift in fantasies and longings.  That seems to go beyond the definition of identity and wander into the territory of orientation as well.  Both have shifted for Eva. 

Eva’s words on this are interesting as well:  “I did notice a conscious shift, but looking back at my past … I have to wonder to which extent my choices were predestined.  If my life would have gone differently, I think I would still be transgender and would likely still be in the position I am now … Nature already defined me, and I just took a long time to make sense out of what I was given.  I’m quite convinced people can consciously alter their sexual orientation … though I think if you can make such a shift, there was something inside you that you’ve been ignoring.  I think nature defines you in rough terms, and the personal and sexual sophistication you ultimately get to is a culmination of experiences and developments based on and restricted by what nature gave you.  I think you can create minor neurological pathways and have some control over it as well, but you can't completely reprogram your brain. With the analogy of computers, I think you can change some of the software as long as they fit on the hardware in the first place. You can't install Windows software on a Mac, but the software you use certainly changes, and sometimes consciously so.”

Me

I feel like my own situation is nebulous, but it seems relevant to this discussion.  In this entry, I talked about how the internet had a formative role in the development of my pan(gray)romantic and pansexual identity—and how the choices I made in that time helped construct that identity.  To be clear, I consider my orientation demi-pansexual.

As a demisexual (and yes, ace spectrum identities are sexual orientations; let’s try and remember that who you aren’t attracted to matters as much as who you are attracted to), love is a prerequisite to me to form any serious attraction.  My chemistry comes more from my personal connection to someone and their particular energy and less from their physical body.  Because of this, I feel the people I chose to love in my youth influenced my sexual development during those formative years.  And yes, love is a choice.

I think it’s also worth mentioning that I have a hard time with physical contact altogether.  Handshakes and friendly hugs from strangers and even most acquaintances make my skin crawl.  With close friends I can often get comfortable with physicality.  It’s still rare for that to proceed to sexual attraction.  And often for me, simply not being repulsed by the idea of sexual contact with another human being (not just as a fantasy, but as a seriously considered reality) actually qualifies as something resembling attraction—or at least a basis for it.  I’m happy when I find that level of comfort in any form it takes.

I talk in that other blog entry about how I felt a bit like a “blank slate” sexually in some ways stepping into the world.  That probably is a reflection of the fact that attraction is so rare for me.  I went through childhood and puberty without being attracted to anybody.  I had a sex drive, but I suspected I might be entirely asexual, since there was never an urge to act on it.  Assuming orientation indeed isn’t 100% genetic and does generally develop during adolescence, did that mean I had no particular sexual orientation (beyond my latent unknown demisexuality) until sometime in high school or even college?  A very curious thought. 

Anyway, the strange result of my extremely rare attraction was the fact that by the time I started to feel any sense I might be a sexual being, I was so self-aware of my decisions that it all felt very logical and structured to me. 

My pansexual development went something like, "Well, emotionally I can latch on to any person who is really fantastic and meets all my criteria for being an awesome human being, and there aren't going to be a lot of those, so I would be silly to limit the pool of candidates to men or women, so okay, I will potentially be open to whomever impresses me as a person.  And since persons of any sex or gender can impress me, persons of any sex or gender are potentially attractive." 

Because of the above logic, I look for persons, and not for men or women.  It sounds a bit like a math equation, but it’s worked for me and I feel very comfortable with it.  Why does this sound like that equation was built from the ground up?  I’ll share more on why I didn’t feel like I had a reliable “default” in my head as an adolescent in just a second.  I did have a default, but it wasn’t from my heart—it was from my upbringing.  It didn’t reflect desire so much as social expectations. 

Eva told me a story about meeting a somewhat androgynous child when s/he was a child and still identified as a boy.  The child wanted to kiss him, but Eva didn’t know what to do about it.  Eva recalled feeling confused about the situation (and not kissing), and not being sure whether the kissing was desirable or not.  S/he adds, “Thinking back, I might have wanted to kiss but didn’t think it was right.  And I don’t mean morally right.  I mean right as in, I didn’t think it was a possibility in this reality.”

I related to this story because as a child, even though I do recall fantasies pertaining to women as well as men (though most of my early fantasies of intimacy of any sort were in more of an asexual kink vein), I was literally unaware that being gay or pansexual or anything other than heterosexual was possible, much in the same way that if you’re brought up religious, it’s a while before you realize atheism exists or that it’s possible not to believe in a supernatural deity.  I just literally had no conception that LGBTQA+ people existed, or that I could potentially be one. 

So I do recall my earliest thoughts (before the ones described previously) were something like, “Well, I ought to find myself a boy/man.”  I just thought it was “what was done,” though I wasn’t much interested in “finding” anyone at that juncture (again because of a lack of attraction).  That essentially random default was quickly supplanted by my pansexual logic when I realized women and transpersons (who I didn’t fantasize about as a child also for the simple reason I didn’t know they existed!) were on the menu, so to say, and that I could open my sexuality to anyone I damn well pleased. 

Despite how pragmatic and coolly rational that whole process might sound to someone reading it, I didn’t feel free to be myself and be happy until that revelation.  To draw a quote from the film Cloud Atlas, “Knowledge is a mirror and for the first time in my life I was allowed to see who I was and who I might become.”

The “delayed” nature of this process (as a result of my demisexuality as well as my upbringing-induced ignorance) means that logic and choice did have an unusually prominent role in informing my sexual development.  Like Esther, my cerebral mind and spirit had more of an influence on my overall development than my body, though in a very different manner.  My body had little to say on the matter of my sexuality at all; it was essentially neutral beyond a desire for rare comfort.  My mind and spirit effectively told my body what they were interested in, and my body agreed since I derive my physical comfort from my psychological comfort. 

I have no clue if a sex researcher would say that I’m latently pansexual and had to discover it, or say that I have no natural orientation at all and simply have a “preference” for pansexuality developed in lieu of one.  All I know is that my choice to open myself to love with any sex or gender also opened me up to potential attraction to any sex or gender.  I have yearnings and longings and fantasies, just like the next person.  If someone were to try to take away my rights, I would suffer as deeply.  I might prefer vanilla (don’t laugh) over chocolate ice cream—most of the time.  Something like whom I am attracted to or can enjoy a sexual relationship with is a lot more serious than that (though I'd still be pretty miffed if someone tried to take my culinary rights away).  No one has a right to call that a preference.  It’s a need.  And yes, it’s a need that consciously developed, influenced by my choices and values.  Innate or not, my decisions played a role.  That I know.

Why Do We Draw Such a Sharp Line Between Orientation and Identity?

One of the points I hope these anecdotes conveyed is that terms like orientation, identity, behavior, and preferences are helpful—but only up to a point, and all of them are more complex than they appear on the surface.  It is easier to scientifically study what comes from the body than it is to study what comes from the mind, since scientists do not even agree if the mind or free choice exists.  And the soul?  Science doesn't want to touch that with a thousand-foot pole.

Anyone who has ever been “in the closet” knows just how big a role choice can play in sexual orientation.  If orientation is comprised in part by fantasies, attachments and longings, and you have long been repressed, you have to choose to engage those fantasies, attachments and longings.  It is not automatic, even if it is innate.  In that sense, something can be destined and chosen at the same time. And what about people who go most of their lives without something, try it, and find out they can't live without it ever again?  I know there are a lot of vanilla people for example who go clear into middle age without even thinking of kink, only to discover after they try it that it's a core part of them for the rest of their lives.  Many of these people might have been latently kinky, but many probably were not.  

Another interesting observation about fantasies (as an aspect of orientation) is that they also change.  Eva pointed out that s/he was reminded of the notion that when you call a memory, you rewrite it.  Ironically, this means that even (and perhaps especially) the fantasies that are called up time and again are constantly being rewritten, sometimes in big ways, other times in minute ways—but they are always in flux with the course of our lives.

Some Concluding Thoughts

My goal with this essay isn’t to draw a lot of conclusions.  I think it’s too big and complex a topic for that.  Mostly I just want to draw attention (as usual) to the fact that we live in an incredibly diverse world, and it isn’t just sexuality which is a broad spectrum, but also the phenomenological human experience of it, and that too deserves our respect.

Whether we’re talking about orientations or identities—who creates the definitions, the labels and the categories?  We do.  Human beings.  One person’s “lesbian” is another person’s “bisexual.”  One person’s “asexual” is another person’s “sexual.”  It’s important to recognize that we not only have differences in behavior, but in perception.  If someone identifies one way and then behaves in a way that you don’t expect, there is a reason.  If it’s not understood, the best approach is to ask, not assume or slap your own label on that person.

We are not closed systems.  We don’t live in a vacuum, and every nuance of our lives has some kind of an impact on our sexuality and everything else about us.  I’ve never been Deepak Chopra’s biggest fan, but I love one of his recent statements, suggesting that even biology, including our genes and neurons, and not just our psychology, is malleable:

“Here is where a new view of free will is needed. The paradox is real. Genes determine the color of your hair and eyes, but thanks to the emerging science of epigenetics, we now know that genes are also fluid, malleable, and in fact responsive to everything we experience in the world. The same is true of the brain. Its processes follow strict laws of physics and chemistry, yet neurons, synapses, and brain circuitry are open to change simply by the way we lead our lives.”

I don’t wish to delve deep into the question of whether choice or free will exists, but I have to call into question whether there is really a difference between “chosen” and “destined,” and whether these are perhaps just words—incomplete models for the complete and ultimately unknowable reality behind both.  

When our choices are consciously and intelligently made, we do what we feel is right for us.  But what creates that sense of “right for us”?  Biology?  Environment?  Psychology?  The needs of our immortal souls?  A combination?  I doubt anyone can positively answer that question.

I question why something which is chosen or fluid necessarily should be treated as less valid or less of a fact than something innate or fixed.  Another of Eva’s observations is, “As far as I know, there is no principle in nature that says lasting things or fixed things should be valued more than the things that don’t and aren’t.  The projected hierarchy seems to be a human construct.  We like to define and label, and it’s hard to define and label something that keeps changing, hence in many contexts we value fixed notions higher than fluid ones.”

I personally feel this is a genius observation, and reflects the limits we impose on ourselves and others—and maybe we shouldn’t.  As human beings, we become uncomfortable in the face of ambiguity, but much if not all of life takes place inside that uncertain realm.  There is much to be celebrated there.

The Bottom Line:  We All Deserve Respect

One conclusion we can draw from this discussion is that everyone’s sexual orientations, identities, behaviors, and experiences deserve our respect.  And more importantly, the people behind those surprisingly variable labels and categories do.

Whether you believe sexual identity and sexual orientation are two distinct concepts or overlapping traits, whether you believe they’re fixed and innate or flexible and chosen, those beliefs shouldn’t alter the way you treat your fellow human beings.

Let’s come full circle and return to the argument from the beginning of this essay, and answer it:

“Being gay is a choice.  It’s a preference, not an orientation.”

I think I’ve covered enough ground to say that while most sane and reasonable people would not agree with the first part of the above statement, allowing them to easily reject the rest, we can infer that some people hearing that statement might feel violated by it from quite a different angle—as I myself do.  What about the person who hears that statement and does believe his sexuality was partially or totally a choice—and still far more than a “preference?”  Why should that serve as a foundation stone to discriminate against him or “re-educate” him or “cure” him or in any other way impede on his rights as a human being to live the life that is best for him, as determined by him?

And even if you still believe despite everything I have shared that only sexual identity (not orientation) can change, why is sexual identity considered fundamentally less true or less sacred than orientation?  Oftentimes, the most compelling aspects of our lives aren’t what we “arrived” in the world with—but the choices we made along the way.  What is most compelling and important depends on the individual, and that’s always a personal choice.

Whether choice plays a role in establishing a person’s sexual orientation or not will not lessen the damage to that person’s body, mind and soul if others try to take that person’s rights away.  The result is just as devastating in every case, because in every case, we are talking about fundamental integrity and freedom of will being violated.  Our choices reflect our will when they serve our best interests (again, as determined by us), and sometimes choosing is itself is an innate human need.  What if that is part of a person’s orientation?  What if that is the aspect of a certain person which is fixed, changeless and timeless?

Choice isn’t a negative.  Choice makes us human, and choice should carry rights.  We should not devalue people for the packages they came into the world in—their hard-wired orientations, wants and needs.  But we should value them for their choices when those choices empower themselves and others to live fulfilling, happy, meaningful lives.

I want to share a wonderful quote from this absolutely fabulous article over at New Republic by Brandon Ambrosino.  You should head over there and read it next:  

"The re-inventiveness of our human condition is one of our greatest traits, and it’s worth protecting both legally and philosophically."

It should not ultimately matter how a person forms his or her sexuality when we decide to treat others with respect.  We are complex beings with body, mind and spirit—and everyone has the right to give their own “yes” or “no” to different fantasies, behaviors, and experiences for their own reasons.  That is true whether that response comes from genes or from some unconscious development in childhood or from conscious decisions at any point of life.  Whether you want to call it orientation or identity, it is sacred to the individual, and no one has the right to take it away.