A Safe Schools discussion must start with the past.

I’m going to wade, a little, into the Safe Schools debate that in my last post I dipped my toe into. For those who don’t know the Safe Schools Coalition initiative, it can be divided into two things; a series of lesson plans and resources for high school teachers to discuss lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex student issues, and recommended high school policies to support those students (found amongst the resources).  To shrink the language of “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex” I will be referring to this grouping as same-sex attracted and gender-diverse.

Although in my younger years some attempt was made to put all the letters of LGBTI under the reclaimed word “Queer” that never took off. For one thing the word Queer became attached to the image of a white wealthy gay male, an inevitability of any singular identity perhaps in a world of ads chasing pink dollars. Many Lesbians insisted on their own particular identity, rather than existing as Queer’s “other”. Queer politics also had agendas that were broader than the LGBTI movement – sex-positivity for example – and whereas Queer tended to embrace Drag, some feminists saw this type of performance as offensive as “black-face”.  Still Queer has an edgeyness that LGBTI lacks. Queer is a little more punk and post-normal. For this reason the term still finds favour today.

This old debate about the universality of Queer is an obscure element of history. If you lived through it and participated in it, it’s easy to imagine that everyone knows why Queer is not generally considered an acceptable umbrella term and why some people, despite this, still use it. I’m not showing off here. I never learnt this stuff. I was just involved in it. Ask me who won any of the Grand Finals through the 80’s and 90’s and I will have to guess because I wasn’t paying attention to that history.

This idea of niche and personal histories is crucial to understanding the debates and discussions around the Safe Schools initiative. Consider the example of the Tasty Raid in Melbourne in 1994. The proportion of same-sex attracted and gender diverse adults in Australia who know of this event will be huge. In fact it will be much higher than people who know about why we do or don’t use the term Queer, a largely academic debate. The Tasty raid and the subsequent suing of the Victorian Police was a big deal, but the people who remember it don’t all remember it because they are better historians. Many just remember it because it was about their lives. They either were caught up in it or they learnt about at the time through their networks.

A more chilling example of separate history was reported in an article titled ‘Sydney’s Shame’  (http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/sydney-shame ). This story reported on systematic gay bashings leading to deliberate murders around Sydney beats, and a culture of police reluctance to investigate. We’re talking here about people found dead at the bottom of cliffs with clear evidence of being assaulted first and the death being ruled as an accident. We’re talking about “fag-bashing” viewed as an ordinary activity to do with your mates. Again this is not necessarily something same-sex attracted and gender diverse people study in specialist classes. It is simply what some have lived through and many more have been aware of as they walk home. Even when these things are reported in mainstream media they become part of the consciousness of some readers and not so much of others.

Incidentally this is what women’s experience of the epidemic of violence against women is like. They hold their keys differently. Take out their phone. Stay close to the lights and avoid the alleys. Notice who is walking behind them. Of course therefore they remember more than men the history of this violence, including incidents of violence, poor political or police responses and community reactions. They will appreciate how every single Mardi Gras through the 80’s and 90’s came with a warning to keep yourself safe as you left venues because the gay bashers always stepped up their activities around that time. They will understand how that warning is a part of some peoples history of events. By the way, maybe they still give out that warning, but living in Bendigo with my family I don’t follow Mardi Gras news much anymore; again separate histories.

The relevance of all this to how Safe Schools is being discussed, is simple. Virtually every argument in support of the Safe Schools program refers to the history of same-sex attracted or gender diverse people, often incorporating the personal history of the author. The Safe Schools programs are seen as correcting for the systematic oppression that has been the life of same-sex attracted and gender diverse adults. My last blog did something similar – it drew upon my past. The past is very much present when supporters speak of the Safe Schools program. For them an ugly homophobic past is sitting square in the middle of the discussion.

Meanwhile the criticisms of the Safe Schools program are massively ahistorical. They may criticize the program based on its merits, or they may criticize what they have heard is the program based on the merits of that, but they are definitely not evaluating the program in a historical context. How was school for these critics when they were young? Irrelevant. How were workplaces or the media or the law as these critics were emerging into adulthood? They were fine, why would that matter?

Occasionally the past is brought into the conversation from some Safe Schools critics, but it is a fantasy past. It is in fact such a fantastic past as to make their criticisms even more ahistorical for mentioning it. In these pasts everyone is neighbourly and chaste, homosexuality is barely mentioned which one supposes means that same-sex attracted people barely existed, and children respect their parents because God is in the schools where He (sic) belongs. You don’t find this sort of fantasy past promoted by serious critics of the program, but it is there amongst the petition signers and the online angry. In this past there are no gay bashings or homophobia at all. This is why I consider it to be even more a denial of history than simply not mentioning history at all.

The tendency of the more serious Safe Schools critics is to blunt any historical special interest case by generalizing the focus from homophobic bullying to all bullying.  In this way they mirror other ahistorical criticisms of other historical movements. On Q&A recently the head of the Australian Christian Lobby, Lyle Shelton responded to comments that same-sex attracted and gender-diverse kids are being bullied, with comments that all bullying is wrong for whatever reason. This is a copy of the white response to the hashtag Black Lives Matter with All Lives Matter.  While technically true there is no knowledge of history in either response. It is as if presented with the Sydney’s Shame article the ACL would say “Well, all police corruption is wrong and nobody is condoning any violence here.”

This lack of recognizing their particular history frustrates same-sex attracted and gender diverse adults. Weren’t they just sharing their painful pasts moments ago? Were the ACL and their followers listening? This only gets worse when organisations like the ACL claim to be bullied, harassed and silenced today. It was not long ago that being gay was compared to smoking by the then public face and continuing chair of the board of the ACL. The concern the ACL have always shown has been very much like a concern about the uptake of smoking, to thwart any improvement in gay lives lest it encourage more people to take up being gay. Many consider them a source of homophobia.

But it’s not even a question of whether the ACL and its current head Lyle Shelton directly spread homophobia or not. The reality is that all the time Shelton was growing up and when he was a newspaper journalist and editor, when he was a city councilor and a state candidate and when he moved to the ACL, same-sex attracted and gender diverse people have been being bullied, bashed and murdered, fired from their jobs, kicked out of their homes and turned away from services. Not a single element of this history was ever confronted by Shelton as a journalist, editor, politician or lobbyist. Shelton either never knew about this history or never cared. Most likely it simply passed him by like AFL did me. He didn’t have to decide not to take an interest in it – he simply wasn’t involved in it.

Does it seem unfair to you to judge him for this? Does it seem irrelevant to his evaluation of the Safe Schools program? Maybe so in both cases but this is what I suspect is a part of the feeling of the supporters of Safe Schools. For them Safe Schools exists within a history that entitles the voices of same-sex attracted and gender diverse people to speak and disqualifies the speech of people like Lyle Shelton and the ACL. This is a shared feeling, by the way, from supporters of the program who are as heterosexual and cis-gendered as Lyle Shelton. It’s not a Queer thing to privilege Queer voices in this discussion – it’s a historically aware thing. Many even feel it is a human thing – to allow themselves to be silenced by the testimony of the survivors of violence.

Having spoken of the frustration of the Safe School supporters, let’s consider the frustration of its critics. In their minds they are making what they feel are rational arguments. Some of their arguments are not rational at all and some of them are wildly misinformed but some of them raise legitimate areas for improvement. If the filter of personal history is driving how Safe Schools supporters feel about the program and its critics, then they can be easily hostile to any criticism being made, almost regardless of the program’s content.

The Safe Schools program has been developed with the input of numerous same-sex attracted and gender -diverse young people. It has been implemented successfully at a range of schools including a Catholic school, a tiny country school and many large state schools. This all speaks to how useful and positive a program it is, but it’s still just a program. There are bound to be ways it can improve and mistakes that have been made. It seems to me that by being engaged in historical battles Safe Schools supporters are in danger of viewing all criticisms of the initiative as attacks on LGBTI people.  That's not a healthy relationship to any program.

If this conversation about Safe Schools is to improve we are going to need people who can confront the history gap in our community. There are some examples of people who speak for conservative Christians who get the importance of history in this discussion and by that I don't mean a token nod to the problem of all bullying. Michael Jensen,  is someone I disagree with on Same-Sex marriage but he recently made a long Facebook post which indicated his understanding of LGBTI history. It has since been published by the Huffinton Post. What is important about this post was that it never tries to subsume homophobic bullying or racist bullying under the generic title of all bullying. Instead it recognized that homophobic bullying occupies a particular place in our history and delivers a particular harm that can only be imperfectly imagined by those who didn't experience it. That's humility.

John Sandeman provides another example. He is the editor of Eternity Magazine, a Christian non-denominational publication and one which has defended ACL and taken a conservative stance on LGBTI issues.  On the 25th of February this year he wrote an article for the Australian Bible Society website titled, ‘The SMH apologises to the Mardi Gras. What should Christians do?’ This was a genuine admission of the history of conservative Christians in denying basic freedoms to same-sex attracted people and in being involved in their systematic oppression.

Neither of these pieces of writing specifically mentioned the Safe Schools program although Jensen's piece comes close. Perhaps that enables their authors to be freer with their acceptance of the gains of the LGBTI movement for equality or perhaps even that it is to take their point too far. At least they start the conversation off on the right foot. We should all be able to acknowledge that Australian history is a brutally homophobic one and that this is not just more of the “general” bullying, violence or sinfulness of society. It is a specific problem with same-sex attraction and gender diversity that churches have fostered themselves.

From this point I think we should all be able to agree that some kind of program like the Safe Schools initiative is necessary and deserves the paltry eight million dollars that has gone into it. This will be a leap for some conservative Christians but I hope it is one they can make. As Stephanie Judd wrote for the ABC news site, addressing the ACL in particular:
“If you feel some Safe Schools content isn't age-appropriate, then isn't dialoguing with them for modifications to the program a better and more gracious approach than pitting yourself against them by calling for their wholesale defunding?”
Stephanie, whose byline indicates she attends an Anglican Church, goes on to say that  “In the absence of a a satisfactory alternative that addresses the problem that Safe Schools was created to fix, the ACL's statements are going to continue to be received as harsh and unconstructive.”

So long as the critics of the Safe Schools initiative come at Safe Schools with axes of outrage rather than ideas for improvement they will seem to have very little idea of lives outside their own. We can see this in their ahistorical approach to the issue. So long as they propose no alternative at all or a generalised alternative that hides the special historical case for justice of same-sex attracted and gender-diverse people, they will seem to have no idea there is even a problem to fix. On that basis they are not going to be listened to and despite what they might tell themselves it won’t be because they are being bullied now. On the other hand, a proper discussion might be had if the examples of John Sandeman and Michael Jensen, both conservatives, have a genuine influence on their peers.

They Always Keep the Minority in at Lunch.

Memory is connected to prophecy. We use our memories to tell the future and inform the present. What we remember, and how, is full of salience for the decisions we make and the causes we support. Stuff that we don’t think is relevant to our current situation we forget, and then a memory can come back loudly when it needs to speak its prophetic voice to us.

Our prophecies may be wrong. Memories are selective and unreliable. Politics is partly an exercise in competing prophecies. The world that Trump followers fear is different to the world Bernie Sanders followers fear. Those who want to stop the boats are predicting outcomes that are different to those who want to let the babies stay. But these prophecies are powerful to each of us.

For some time I have been haunted by a particular memory with a particular message about our time. Is it true? I think it speaks a certain truth.

When I was in high school, about year eight or nine, each student was required to give a short speech. One student in my class gave a speech which told us that all gay people should be shot. I kid you not. The speech was allowed to finish and the class, the whole rest of the class it seems to me in my memory, clapped.

As a high schooler I was already a leftie. The talk, my teacher’s lack of reaction, the class’s applause for the speaker, all incensed me.  Any protest I made was not received. Instead someone made a snide comment about me for dissenting.

Well, that meant it was on. For the rest of the class I winked and even blew kisses at the guy who had commented about me. He gradually grew angrier and angrier. He was smaller than me and that was probably why I focused on him. Finally he got up to hit me. I stayed calm but the teacher was no idiot and knew I’d been provoking the situation.

After class the teacher made me stay behind. I was in trouble and it was me who would be kept in at lunch. There was some sympathy from the teacher but there was also no doubt that she wouldn’t be taking any kind of recrimination against the student who gave the talk or the one who wanted to hit me. I was the one who needed to be brought into line.

The lesson is that rules are not designed, not in school at least, to be right or fair or to protect a loving view of the world from a hateful one. Rules are designed to minimize conflict. My teacher didn’t have to step in when a student said gay people should be shot because any gay people in the class were too in the closet for this to create immediate conflict. And when I made a conflict out of it, the teacher had a choice to try and affect the views of the whole class or to affect my behaviour. They chose the rational if perhaps cowardly choice to change the single student.

Today there are some religious people who believe that we live in an age of intolerance. We do, but as my memory reminds me it is an age without beginning and only an imaginary end. The intolerance these religious people claim is simply the force that I faced in high school – the desire of institutions to minimize conflict – a force they generally support when it is in their favour. As the world changes, the new minority, in many places, is the student in class who has a problem with homosexuality, who needs to make anti-gay jokes and who wants to make a point of a boy's effeminacy or a girl's machismo. The school fundamentally doesn’t care for who is right. The school will police that minority because they are easier to police than changing the rest of the school.

Now this may be unflattering to describe things this way but it shouldn’t be shocking to us. Consider a hypothetical program called “All kinds of families” In this program the notion of blended families, single-parent families, adoptive families, and families with divorced or separated parents are discussed. Does anyone think this program is interested in young Billy’s Roman Catholic views that divorce and remarriage is wrong? Is young Billy’s definition of family, with its problematising of assisted reproduction going to get a hearing? Of course not.

And here’s what the teachers are thinking. These teachers want to introduce this program for Sarah who has been sad ever since her parents divorced. These teachers note that every single piece of curriculum material from the picture books to the movies they show has two happily married people with their kids all born in wedlock. These teachers may have grasped this material with a real gratitude for it’s reflection of their own lives. For all these reasons and more, these teachers think “Billy can shut up.”

Now when “All kinds of families” was (hypothetically) introduced maybe someone wanted to include same-sex couple’s families. Maybe someone else wanted to include polyamorous partnerships and their families. Most likely if this hypothetical program was produced over a decade ago neither of those families would be included. Again this would not be because of what is right or wrong. This would be because of what stands inside or outside the majority acceptable culture. Excluding same-sex couples and their kids from the program's definition of 'all kinds of family' would minimize conflict up to recent times. Including them now might cause conflict in some places but not so much in others. That is the force that always controls school decisions. Polyamourous families are still out; Way too much conflict there.

To see how things have changed for same-sex families though we can look to Play School. The voice of those opposed to including a same-sex couple with kids on a show about diverse family types is firmly in the minority. What did the ABC think of the Australian Christian Lobby’s outrage about the issue? I reckon they thought “The ACL can shut up.”

In Victorian schools we now have the “Safe Schools” initiative. Some people are shocked that it will normalize homosexuality, bisexuality and transgenderism. In doing so they fear it will de-normalise their own ideas of sexuality in which non-heterosexuality is unnatural or just plain wrong. This, they claim, will simply shift who is ostracized from those who are gay to those opposed to gay rights. I suppose the answer to that is yes, it probably will. Can it do anything else?

Some people think it is possible for multiple competing ideas of what is sin and what should be celebrated to survive together in society. If we look at something like divorce and remarriage though I think we see that it isn’t particularly possible at all. Yes, conservative Catholics can choose not to recognize remarriages as legitimate. However nobody wants to hear it – at least not at school or in a workplace or on a publicly funded tv show for kids. Yes, the view is alive and well but is it tolerated? Outside of a personal view of how to live one’s own life it is barely tolerated at all.

This is the approach we can expect to take hold around gay marriage in the near future. That you will be required to recognize gay marriages is a reasonable prediction just as politeness requires you now to recognize remarried couples as married. Will you be permitted to add “I don’t agree with homosexuality” at the end of a toast in the staff room when two male co-workers tie the knot? You probably aren’t now. The reason is that conflict minimization is the priority in most workplaces as it is in schools.

This normalizing pressure is also the same reason that in many school environments today teachers still don’t mention homosexuality, and texts and films are all 100% heterosexual. In fact often there are no books in a high school library let alone a primary school one which include gay characters.  As a teacher I have stopped my students from using “gay” as an insult but in this regard I am atypical. This is not a reflection of what these teachers or schools believe is right or wrong. It is just the priority of minimizing conflict.

Conflict is a real concern at the moment because views have been polarised by the pending plebiscite on gay marriage.  We would expect the same polarization to be present if a plebiscite on anything else could materially affect that issue. We find this polarization present even in the religious communities which claim to be oppressed by a new intolerance from outside. If your church disapproves of gay marriage you might even be told you are not a Christian if you support it.  Meanwhile in a church supportive of gay marriage it will be hard to imagine someone opposed to it being welcomed on plebiscite night. This will probably die down once marriage reform is through.

All this might seem terribly depressing. We want to believe that changes in society are the result of enlightenment and reasoning not some force of normalization with a priority of minimizing conflict. Changes in popular opinion might well be the result of good argument. Changes in the hearts and minds of people can also occur through relationships and connections. But policies are not people. Policies change to suit public opinion, after the fact, and in doing so they are always intolerant. They will always keep the minority in at lunch. It’s time we stopped acting like this was something new.

I have my beliefs about what are rights and what are privileges and would rather step on privileges to secure every child's rights. As a human who has know the sting of feeling abnormal for same-sex attraction I hunger for a time when that sting is not delivered. As a man who has found my gender roles stupidly limiting and uncomfortable I enjoy seeing young people play with or reject gender entirely. I am generally favorable towards the Safer Schools materials as a result. But I am not going to be surprised if in some classrooms some of the conservative fears of the program come true and kids who disagree with the materials feel constrained in speaking out.

I think the best thing we can do is to be transparent about the forces we operate under. I think we can invite debate about school policies while being clear that there is actual learning to be done and every student no matter their sexuality or their views on sexuality has the right to the best environment for that learning to happen. As a teacher I try to stop any lynch mob even if they are rounding up someone who I believe has been a complete dick. But at the end of the day something is probably going to be normalised and something else is not.

Deconstructing a question about Christian attitudes to sexuality.

Recently a question came up as to why Christians receive very little flack for their negative views of sex before marriage, and a much greater and more virulent amount for their disapproval of  homosexuality. Before answering this question I want to unpack the assumptions in the question.

The first point to make is that a question addressing both sex before marriage and homosexuality can lead us to reduce homosexuality to just sex in order to compare the two as similar moral acts. In fact, I think the question unfairly implies that this can/should be done. No-one is suggesting that heterosexuality before marriage is disapproved of in its entirety by any Christians. Indeed, as the father of a young girl, heterosexuality is something which has been creepily put upon her from infancy by all sorts. People suggested within twenty-four hours of her birth that she will break boys’ hearts. Certainly dating, courtship, enjoying romantic stories, admiring others and enjoying admiration in ways that are consistent with heterosexuality are tolerated, if not celebrated, before marriage by people who still disapprove of (heterosexual) sex before marriage. People who disapprove of homosexuality seldom wait until the pants come off before the disapproval applies.

An exception to the above might be found in the celibate orders of the Catholic church. There and only there have I ever encountered a general acceptance of heterosexual or homosexual attraction equally and a separate and distinct objection to the practical rubbing of genitals together or heavy petting. (I am deliberately avoiding making any reference to sexual abuse by Catholic clergy here. It’s too serious to overlook or to glibly joke about.) In fact the Catholic Church officially considers homosexual sex to be wrong in common with oral sex, anal sex or mutual masturbation in a heterosexual married relationship. All are non-procreative. That rather rarified view of sexual sin is not a generally held one even among Catholic laity.

 

The second point to make is that Christian views on sex before marriage and homosexuality are diverse (as the above distinction drawn between Catholic clergy and laity shows). Definitely in regard to homosexuality there is vocal support for loving and committed homosexual relationships among a growing number of Christians. I would suggest that Christian opinion on homosexuality is about as pluralistic as Christian positions on birth-control or euthanasia. (I would appreciate any links to research on Christian attitudes to homosexuality if readers can suggest some).

Similarly there are many non-Christians who share a disapproval of both sex before marriage and homosexual expression, married or not. Christians don’t own the conflation of these disapprovals which the original question might suggest. However this blog’s bias is that I know Christianity far better than any other faith or even ethical system. Therefore when I answer this question I’m going to be thinking foremost of the Christians who hold both views, rather than the Muslims or Buddhists. I’d be happy to receive comments from others with different experiences.

Before attempting to answer it I’d like to tidy up this question to account for the above problematic points. At first it seems easy to just clarify who we are discussing by referring to “those Christians who disapprove of homosexuality and sex-before marriage” rather than just to Christians. However when we consider people who hold both views in question we are really just drawing a convenient category. Some people who disapprove of homosexuality and sex-before marriage are going to disapprove of them in the context of also disapproving of divorce and contraception, others are not. It’s somewhat arbitrary to treat homosexuality and sex-before marriage in isolation. For some people we will have missed the point of their views by doing so.

There are also some people who would disagree with sex-outside of marriage who might only disapprove of homosexuality on that basis too. I think my mother might well fit that space. My mother is not inclined to view homosexuality as immoral itself despite that being the attitude of her upbringing. She holds now, I think, that God makes some people that way. She has a problem with promiscuity however and she would encourage people to make a marriage commitment to be together for ever before shacking up. (Mum, please comment if I have your views wrong by the way). Now she is in a position of feeling like homosexual sex is somewhat wrong for occurring outside of marriage but she would say that this is hardly gay people’s fault seeing as we (wider society) are not allowing them to get married. I’m also arbitrarily excluding such views as these when answering this question.

It’s even harder to adjust definitions in the question for the difference between the moral acts being discussed. One is about the act of having sex and the other about a whole range of romantic and sexual expressions.  One way to resolve that difference is to consider a point at which people who disapprove of sex-before marriage and homosexuality would encounter a more similar test of their approval. That’s the point when people in some form of solid unmarried straight or gay relationship might want recognition. Now we are comparing a bit more apples and apples.

Even there can we really say that any community, other than the exclusive aforementioned catholic ordained, has a common disapproval of de facto heterosexual relationships and homosexual relationships? Hypothetically it’s possible but practically does it exist? I live in a de facto opposite sex relationship and in circles where that is frowned upon I still feel I have to additionally and dramatically come out as someone who doesn’t disapprove of homosexuality. By comparison my de facto status is barely ever an issue.

I think that despite my lack of directly experiencing it, there are people who do have a kind of sameness to their attitude towards sex-outside of marriage and homosexuality. You can see something of it in such writing as by Vaughan Roberts. Practically they may not express it in the same way however. That’s about power and privilege as much as anything. Gay people are a minority and, living in a regional town as I do, it is often just presumed by people that they are nowhere around. Statistically speaking more often they aren’t - just ask any gay rural people trying to find partners. That makes it less confrontational to condemn them than the obviously in-the-room pre-maritally fornicating heterosexuals. It’s a case of politeness… sort of.

Note: I am reflecting here on my own repeated personal experience. Evangelical Christians are regularly inviting me to events were homosexuality is presumed to be absent. Evangelical Christians are regularly holding discussions about gay relationships and “the homosexual question” with me but are much more muted about the unmarried nature of my own heterosexual relationship. I am giving them the benefit of the doubt that this is borne of some kind of politeness.

It should also be noted that an unmarried heterosexual relationship just isn’t the same kind of upset to heterosexually organized churches as a gay relationship is. My partner has been invited to attend conservative Christian mothers’ groups. Realistically the lack of a ring on her finger just doesn’t have to come up that much, unlike if any invite had to go to her and her partner as well. So there is a pragmatic basis for the different expression of moral disdain for my relationship and for a gay relationship. It’s less of a challenge to people’s own relationships.

Honestly based on my experience the only time someone who disapproves of homosexuality and sex before marriage reaches some point of convergence in expressing those views is in the appointment of a church leader or role model. Until that point the two views are expressed so differently it’s not fair to compare them. Maybe they just are receiving different flack because of the difference in their expression; maybe people receive more hostility for saying homosexuality is wrong because they actually say it more often and more insensitively than they make statements about defacto heterosexuality.

Hence I think if we want to properly investigate the question of “why Christians in particular receive very little flack for their views on sex-before marriage and a much greater and more virulent amount for their views on homosexuality” then we have to reserve that for asking about appointing people to Christian leadership positions. I think it’s a fairer question to ask.

Unfortunately it’s also a much narrower question and less interesting question. My first response is that I don’t really care what a church does with its own ministers. So no flack will be received from me regarding views on homosexuality and sex-before marriage that impacts on those appointments. That’s not entirely true as I feel sad and angry when churches exclude women from leadership but so long as belonging to those churches is voluntary I accept a level of it being none of my business.

However I have a problem with schools and hospitals that get public funding discriminating against people based on their relationship status. In fact I think I would be just as appalled at a publicly subsidized school firing an unmarried mother as I would them firing a gay man or lesbian. So in those situations it is equal flack from me in response to views on homosexuality and sex-before marriage that impacts on those appointments.

I’d really appreciate other people’s thoughts on this. I got really excited by the question at the start of this piece because I thought it might finally be the right way to approach something I've wanted to say for a while; that the morality of homosexuality is an issue in which a great many other battles over the nature of sin and god are being fought by all sides. I do think gay people and their lives are being used symbolically for other causes, like biblical literalism for example. I had hoped to come at those points from this question. However I think once I've unpacked the assumptions in this question it ceases to be a very good approach at all.

What do you reckon?

Vaughan Roberts and same sex attraction - Where to from here?

The magazine Evangelicals Now has been making some noise on the net with an interview with a minister, Vaughan Roberts, discussing his “struggle with same sex attraction”. The article has been mentioned on the Gospel Coalition site, a major U.S. evangelical and reformed theology site and by several Christian bloggers.

The article has also been blogged about by Andrew Brown of the Guardian. I found his post to be pretty poor in its insistence on re-labelling Vaughan Roberts as gay. I don’t object to re-labelling someone entirely – I’d re-label the Pope sexist and John Howard racist against their own identifications. But I don’t think it’s justified here. Vaughan Roberts gives reasons for not calling himself gay and I can respect them without agreeing with them. I don’t need to re-label him.

I disagree with Vaughan Roberts that gay sex is wrong. I think about right or wrong in such a spectacularly different way to Vaughan Roberts that saying gay sex is wrong is a little nonsensical to me. I have to consider the harms of any action to condemn it. I also consider matters of consent and rights and intent but harms are crucial. When looking at harms I don’t take broad statistics and say whether or not generally speaking something is harmful either. I try and be as specific as possible. Take driving a car for example. Is that wrong or right? Surely that depends on why and how you are driving a car. It would require me to adopt a supreme moral simplicity to ever be able to say that all gay sex is wrong… or right for that matter. It actually feels a lot easier to say that all car driving is wrong. (Except ambulances and fire engines … see what I mean)

In this regard I am not different to even those Christians who think homosexuality is wrong. If you asked many of those Christians if it was wrong to kill somebody almost all would answer that it depends. Many U.S. Christians took the same position about torturing people in Abu Ghraib; it depends. That’s something I find much harder to swallow. Certainly if you asked them if it was ok to drive a car they, like me, would recognize harms and benefits and ask for more information before making any call. A simple yes or no in these areas is generally considered as too simple by all of us.

In the matter of homosexuality, however, Vaughan Roberts and the Gospel Coalition take a dim view of any practice of it at all. I imagine that they might possibly consider homosexual rape worse than a homosexual date but even the latter is never “good”. They are able to give a simple no answer to all gay sex.

This moral position is hurtful to those who are trying to live good gay lives, who have made sacrifices for their partners, and whose loving relationships may feel like one of the best things they have done with their life. This moral position is saying all of that good feeling is misplaced and that in fact the moral heart of the universe (God) is deeply opposed to all that effort.

Vaughan Roberts specifically describes same-sex attraction as a temptation. He calls acting on that attraction sin. However before we respond to Vaughan from a position of hurt we should listen to what he doesn’t say to justify his attitude to homosexuality. In that silence I found reason to question exactly how I disagreed with him and whether any hurt made sense.

Vaughan doesn’t say anywhere that desires for a homosexual relationship reflect different priorities than desires for a heterosexual one. The very real possibility exists after this interview that gay desire is understood as just like heterosexual desire in its motivations. That’s huge. And by huge I mean massively, humongously gigantic.

Consider the difference between recognizing that:

a)      gay and straight relationships are both sought by people equally looking for someone to share their life with, to feel passion with, to make sacrifices for and to hold them while they cry over Amy and Rory’s story in Dr. Who and;

b)      Straight people are looking for the above but gay people are instead motivated by a desire to get back at daddy, spit in the eye of God, get one’s rocks off in any way possible and so on.

There is a long history of pathologising homosexual desire. This has been a cruelty to gay and lesbian people in and outside the church. Take the time to feel your desire to hug and hold your love. Imagine it being translated for you by counselors and ministers into hatred of a parent or of God or of your self. Imagine being taught to think in that language. The part of you that wants to creep a hand forward to touch the back of someone else’s, that does so timidly and lovingly, is supposed to be thought of as rebellious, God-hating, gladly perverse and mean. Challenging that language has been the preeminent struggle against church and psychology of the gay movements’ history. But Vaughan Roberts seems not to be found on the other side of that struggle.

The other thing that Vaughan does not say is that people’s lives are more terrible when they act out homosexuality than when they do not. That again is stupendously enormous. Indeed Vaughan recognizes celibacy as hard (and the way of the cross) while open gay relationships are attractive (though he attributes that to the devil). Vaughan does state that the benefits of remaining faithful to the bible have been promised in this life as well as the afterlife; however he specifically relates that to the loss of family (as in not getting married and having children in this case) and to persecutions. Vaughan doesn’t make a case for his choice of celibacy over homosexuality being reflected in emotional, material or health benefits intrinsic to those choices.

Consider again the differences between;

a)      If you experience same sex attraction you may obtain happiness if you pursue loving relationships with someone of the same gender or;

b)      No matter what the propaganda of the gay community, people who actively engage in sexual behaviour outside of married heterosexual relationships have short, unhappy and tragic lives.

Recently the head of the Australian Christian Lobby (an organization that is an embarrassment to many Christians) described homosexuality as more dangerous than smoking. Peter Jensen, Archbishop of the Sydney Anglicans shortly afterwards refused to distance himself from the comments on Australian television. “Catholic Answers” a website and magazine composed of Roman Catholic apologists makes similar claims that “homosexual behaviour kills homosexuals”. Opponents of homosexuality have tried to fold their morality into a concern for people’s health for as long as they have been prevented from just calling gay people witches. They tend to abuse general statistics on gay health indicators to support their case.

The gay movement has successfully improved this conversation about health by showing that a myriad of factors are involved. Evelyn Hooker, as long ago as 1957, proved that if gay people have communities to belong to with a positive self-image then there are no differences between straight and gay mental health. Increasingly the positive lives of gay people who are not reeling from family exclusion and social condemnation have been able to be public examples to younger gay people. Gay advocates have exposed the hypocrisy of shaming and isolating organizations like the Catholic church claiming to teach what is best for gay health. There are real parallels between this struggle and the struggle of indigenous people in Australia to challenge the language of their oppressors in calling them “a doomed race”. However Vaughan Roberts just isn’t on the other side of this struggle either.

Vaughan Roberts seems to answer both the question of the motivation of homosexuality and of the harms with what I listed as option a. (see both a) and b) points above). However the b) points are what I assume to be implied by those Christians who say that homosexuality is wrong. That’s because of the people in the name of Christianity who make those specific claims and it’s because it’s hard for me to see how you could agree with position a) in both questions and yet still say that gayness is wrong. I could only say that gay sex is always wrong if I believed that;

• homosexual and heterosexual desire for relationship are not basically the same aspiration
• and a gay life is consistently observably harming.

Grossly simplifying the whole discussion, people advocating for the celebration of same sex relationships want to move people from position b) to position a) in regard to the above two questions. That is really the entirety of the debate for someone like myself. In Vaughan’s piece it very much seems to me that he is already there or at least is able to be there without contradicting anything he says in his interview. My arguments and indeed those of any gay movements whose history I know are exhausted once Vaughan gets to option a) in both questions. How then can he and I still disagree?

Vaughan gives one reason and one reason only, for saying that he shouldn’t act on his same-sex attraction. He believes that it is the opinion of his scriptures. I do disagree with him on this. I disagree both that his scriptures are all that clear on the issue of homosexuality and that his scriptures reflect anything more than opinions on moral matters. I don’t believe they are authoritative in the way he uses them. But seriously what am I going to have to do to win those arguments? His opinion that these texts are authoritative and inerrant (and mean what he thinks) is really beyond my hope of changing with argument. As I pointed out in an earlier blog post, it can be possible for a person to have a magic book that simply can never be properly tested. I remain pessimistic about that kind of discussion.

What really interests me is the question of if that is his only argument, does it matter? If both he and I agree that homosexual and heterosexual attraction should be viewed as similar motivations and that a person might find (and bring to others) happiness in a same-sex relationship then can we oddly agree to disagree on the actual morality of homosexual behaviour? Vaughan really seems to be saying that the only reason homosexuality is wrong is the attitude of his God. That puts a gay lover at risk of metaphysical harms – i.e. Gods punishment, however I don’t believe in either that God or his punishment. It follows then that Vaughan hasn’t said anything with meaning for me. Can I therefore feel hurt by that? Should I simply say that that is his religion and I have mine?

I’m not sure about any conclusion to this. I am not interested in either sowing dissension or even striving for consensus for no good reason. Vaughan sounds just as concerned as I am about the lack of love shown people who experience same sex attraction. Maybe we should just agree to disagree. I really like his views on whether sexual orientation can change as well. But so much still seems unresolved. If a happy and healthily motivated gay relationship can still be called sin that’s not where I’d hoped we’d end up. I thought being able to convince people that gay lives weren’t sick and suffering ones would mean they would also say gay is ok. It may not though, because of some people’s allegiance to the words in their magic book.  I really don’t know where a conversation could go from here.

Note:

I realize I have made “an argument from silence”, that is I have made an act of speech out of what Vaughan hasn’t said. This ignores that he might say it elsewhere (such as in his book which I haven’t read). Or that his silence may mean something else than how I’ve interpreted it. If you think that’s the case based on knowing him better please comment. I do think it’s a pretty loud silence on his behalf given the history and context I’ve outlined.

A decent argument against legalising gay marriage.

Critical thinking is not about being the biggest, baddest arguer on the block. Critical thinking is actually about robustly attacking one’s own presumptions, more so than those of others. As part of that, critical thinking involves putting in the effort to strengthen those opinions you disagree with so that you’re not just preserving your opinion because your opponent made some silly mistake.

To give an example I like shopping at markets rather than supermarkets. If someone who disagrees with me says that they like supermarkets for their convenience of everything in one place I could point out that supermarkets are consciously designed to make you wander back and forth across the whole store finding three items (while rows of stuff is at grabbing height for children!).  Across a large supermarket with the floor space of a small market your shopping items may be under one roof but are hardly in the one place. I may have won that argument however I haven’t done my own thinking a lot of favours. It would be better if I paused and thought is there any convenience benefit to shopping at a supermarket that does stand up (such as a single point of sale which is probably what was meant by “one place”). Then I could contend with such a benefit. That’s improving your opponents’ argument first.

In the spirit of critical thinking then I have been trying to ponder what would be a decent argument that access to the legal rite of marriage should remain restricted to heterosexual adult partnerships and continue to exclude homosexual adult partnerships.* This to me is the best way to write out the question posed by the “gay marriage debate”. The question isn’t whether or not gay people should be married. That could equally be answered by the statement that nobody should get married.

I haven’t come up with anything very solid at all. What I’ve been able to do is figure out what we can safely exclude when looking for such a decent argument. This post is a walkthrough those exclusions.

Firstly it doesn’t matter what homosexual people are generally like.

Sometimes you hear arguments against gay marriage which are really just a grab bag of insults against gay people. Certain images of gay culture are derogatorily referred to (like gay male bathhouse culture) to falsely insinuate that gay people are not the marrying kind anyway. This argument largely works because gay people and their supporters get so annoyed when they hear it that they lose their cool. That looks bad and thus reinforces that the speaker was right. “See, gay people get so easily offended by just straightforward facts about gayness how could they possibly make a go at marriage where such offence is par for the course.**”

If we can stay calm in the face of vitriol however this argument is a push over. Why? I know gay people for whom I have a far more sexually permissive history. But my legal access to marriage with my partner is clear. Meanwhile these gay friends of mine (guys and girls) are all about having a mom and mom or pop and pop apple pie relationship till death parts them, God bless their gay hearts. And they are the ones who want to get married. 

It really doesn’t matter if the average or even most common homosexual is a hedonistic sensualist with a death wish, a porn addiction and a scatological fetish.  It really doesn’t. Firstly, because they probably aren’t the ones who want to get married. Secondly, because even if marriage becomes available for homosexual couples we can still say that any homosexual couple who meets those descriptions oughtn’t get married. Same as we might for a straight couple who does. The argument of what gay people are generally like would only ever contribute anything if we were arguing whether or not all gay couples should get married (right now). But we are not arguing that, any more than the current situation is that all heterosexual couples ought to be married (including all the abusive ones for example). We are merely arguing whether or not it should be a legal option for both types of couples.

Restricting marriage to heterosexual couples does not even say people with a supposed range of character flaws can’t marry. It just says they can’t marry people of the same sex. We really have lost our original topic by this point, which may have been the intent of this kind of argument. Any argument based on an alleged nature of the average gay person is basically the rhetorical equivalent of throwing sand in the face of your opponent. It doesn’t stand up to scrutiny but as it evokes a hostile reaction it can sometimes look like a win.

Secondly we can’t argue from authority.

To “argue from authority” is (in rhetorical jargon) to make a case based on someone else saying our conclusion rather than any reasons for that conclusion. So for example an argument from authority would be to say that Albert Einstein (who we all might agree is a pretty smart guy) says that time travel is impossible (or possible, I’m not sure what he said actually).

In this particular debate two kinds of arguments from authority are brought into play. One is that a particular magic book supposedly says something that means marriage should be restricted to heterosexual couples. In this post I showed how arguments about the authority of magic books are generally fruitless. There’s never a test a magic book can fail that disproves its authority. This kind of argument can drag us into this fruitless territory.

However we don’t need to disprove the authority of a magic book (or argue that it doesn’t say what is being claimed) to show this type of argument is irrelevant. We only need to show that whatever the magic book says, it still needs to be argued that all the opinions of that magic book should be enshrined in law. Given that the basis for law in this country oughtn't be the opinions of any particular magic book that’s the end of that argument.

The second common argument from authority regarding this question is to say that so-and-so gay person doesn’t think we should allow gay marriage. If a gay person thinks so then it can’t be homophobic and if it isn’t homophobic it must be true, seems to be the logic. For that to be a valid argument we would have to accept that if a gay person thinks we should allow gay marriage that that is a compelling argument too. It’s nonsensical.

Arguments from authority are not decent arguments in any situation anyway. Even Einstein had to provide reasons for his opinions.

Thirdly it is not enough to argue that there is a purpose to marriage that only makes sense for heterosexual couples.

At first this can seem like a strange exclusion. Surely if marriage serves a purpose that only makes sense for heterosexual couples, then it makes sense to exclude homosexual couples from access to marriage?

However what we haven’t done with these kinds of arguments is to show how allowing homosexual couples to legally marry prevents or endangers the exclusive purposes it might serve for heterosexual couples.

For example I can think of a fairly obvious purpose for straight couples to marry that only applies to them. Straight couples can accidentally have kids when they have sex. Obliging straight couples to make a commitment to each other before they have sex consequently provides a means of preparing their relationship for those accidental kids. Gay relationships don’t produce accidental kids so this purpose of marriage doesn’t apply to them.

However if gay people get married to express a commitment to their relationship even though they won’t have accidental kids this doesn’t do anything at all to prevent or hinder straight people getting married to express a commitment to their relationship because they might have accidental kids.  The former doesn’t preclude the latter at all.

For some people their marriage is a very religious affair. It is absolutely important to them that their legal marriage is also “in the eyes of their God”. It may even be a way of praising their God for them. It would be peculiar to suggest that in order to protect their ability to do this we have to prevent the legal marriages of people for whom this purpose doesn’t apply (non-theists and worshippers of other Gods). People currently are able to get married for all sorts of reasons, some of which are relevant to only some and not others.

What’s left?

Now having excluded the above three categories of argument I am at a loss to think of anything else that supports the restriction of access to legal marriage to only heterosexual couples. I can think of many reasons why the state shouldn’t get involved in marriage at all. I can think of arguments why marriage is all round not a good idea even. But I can’t think of a single decent argument that legal marriage ought to be restricted to heterosexual couples.

That surprises me. I am actually suspicious that my own opinion is preventing me from making the effort to come up with decent counter arguments. After all most opinions I have would be a consequence of my balance of for or against arguments. I can usually recognise a few good counter arguments to a even my strongly held views. In this case... perhaps someone else has some ideas?

_________________________________________________________________________

* The members of the partnership can both be gay as but the partnership is still “heterosexual” if one is a woman and one is a man.

** If you marry Pat Robertson.

Sex is Great.

My last two posts were on sexuality. “Sexuality” is often what people say when they mean sex but they want to sound professional.

I hope those posts were written with a sex-positive feel. That’s also something I tried for in an earlier post on “complementarianism” in the bedroom. Now I want to write about exactly what sex-positivity is and why I think it’s something to keep in mind.

Sex-positivity begins with the presumption that our culture has a negative attitude to sex. That’s a hard presumption to sustain. After all what is our culture? Is there one culture to the world, or Australia or even Bendigo (where I live)? I don’t think there is, so I want to step away from this general statement that our culture has a negative attitude to sex.

Instead I’d rather say that there are negative attitudes to sex amongst my own social networks which are unremarkable. By passing uncommented on they receive a broad tacit approval. I look around and in this regard my social networks seem typical of my local community, my country and what the U.S.A. and U.K. at least look like on T.V. Let me give an example that you also might be familiar with;

When my daughter was just born (literally days old) a member of my extended family said that we would need to get a shotgun to keep the boys away when she was older. What they were trying to say was that she looked beautiful. I find it completely pervy that to do that they had to age a just-born infant until they were of sexual age. Her infant beauty was best expressed to this man in a sexual context. That’s part of the pedophilic and sexist gaze that women have to deal with in our society. Why can’t they just be beautiful babies? But that’s not the objection I want to focus on right now.

I’m asking, in the hypothetical future why am I shotgun blocking my child’s sex-life anyway? It’s true that sex has dangers and that as a parent I will want to protect my child from those dangers when they loom. However sex also has pleasures. As a parent I want my child to enjoy her body and her life including her hypothetical future sex life. When my child’s future sexual attractiveness is contemplated why then are we supposed to go to the dangers of that first in our heads?

By contrast what if my child had have kicked into the air causing everyone to exclaim that they would have a big future in footy. People make those kind of lame predictions around infants. I’m prepared to speculate that per capita more people are injured playing football than are injured having sex. However the first place people would have gone in their minds wouldn’t have been the dangers of footy. Instead people would have imagined the joys of footy. In fact for those for whom footy means a lot they wouldn’t have been thinking about footy so much as just imagining their toe connected perfectly to the ball. Just the word Footy would have triggered a whole swell of positive memories not wariness at all.

Confession time; I’m not a footy fan. Hence it’s not a great metaphor to stick with. I do however love climbing trees. For me just the words “climbing trees” are like a sonic massage of my joy glands in the way that the word footy might be for you. Climbing trees is even more dangerous than footy though. Everyone either breaks something climbing trees or comes awfully close or they just aren’t that into climbing trees. But such danger is not my first thought.

Thinking about the dangers of climbing trees is important. It’s important to the joy of tree climbing even. You won’t after all make it to the top where the best view is, if you fall down halfway. You might have to cease your tree-climbing while a broken arm heals.  It’s unlikely but you might die and never climb a tree again. However any thought of danger only makes sense in the context of the joy of tree-climbing.  The joy is the point to considering and avoiding the danger.

When our first thought is of the dangers not the joy of tree climbing then the meaning of both joy and danger change. We might as well put fences around climbable trees or chop them all down, or stand between them and our children with a shotgun. Even the joy of tree climbing has become a danger itself as it just tempts us to climb anyway - bad, bad joy.

That thought makes me sad and angry. In fact in response I am playing a movie in my head involving my heroic liberation of trees for the climbing. Fences are torn away. Axes and shotguns are broken over my knee. Children cheer. It is a very kick-ass movie.

Sex-positivity is just applying this kind of attitude (to climbing trees) to sex. Dangers are considered in the context of joys rather than joys treated in the context of danger. Sometimes this is justified as “natural”. I don’t care for “natural” as a justification. It’s a very woolly term which makes no sense if like me you see nature as morally neutral. I don’t think because we can’t breathe water that scuba diving is some sort of perversity of the natural order for example. Likewise I’m not interested in cultivating a “natural” attitude to sex or defending sex-positivity as natural.

For me the only argument for sex-positivity is well… positive sex. Just like with footy or climbing trees I’m not really thinking about sex here. I’m just imagining my toe connecting perfectly with the ball metaphorically – if you know what I mean. If for you sex has been a negative experience then I would respect your emphasis on its dangers. That makes sense. But my experience of sex has sometimes been even better than climbing trees. It makes sense that I recall its joys for their own sake.

To do that however puts me at odds with those cultural elements which are sex-negative. The more those elements are around me the more my sex-positivity is a reactionary stance. I have to become a sex-rebel. That creates a problem.

Reactionary stances have a lot of energy behind them. They’re angry and frustrated. That makes them especially attractive to hijackers who want to use that energy. All positions can be hijacked. Look at the way the desire to feel successful is hijacked by marketers of luxury goods or how greed is hijacked by political parties to get re-elected. Reactionary positions can be co-opted in the same way but are often even more useful to their hijackers because they are regularly being ignited by what they react against. Lots of enthusiastic energy keeps being generated.

Reactionary movements also can lack self-confidence and the language to express themselves. Sex-positivity is a prime example. If you grew up like me then you are grew up surrounded by almost entirely cautionary messages about sex. You and I were also not given the language to say why this is wrong. This is a hijackers perfect opportunity. They can provide the language that puts them at the centre of any solution to the problem of sex-negativity.

One great hijacker of sex-positivity is the sex-industry. This broad grouping of businesses making toys and porn, selling sexual services or running workshops on sexual activities are not in my mind evil. Some of them are trading what they believe are quality products and services.  Some are definitely not though. Some are the worlds worst employers as well. However good or bad they are businesses. They are almost entirely motivated by profit. To the extent that they are telling you that your liberation from sex-negativity requires you feeding that profit warning bells ought to go off. They are co-opting sex-positivity for their own ends.

Let’s be really clear. There is absolutely no need to watch DVDs, read magazines, learn jargon, buy expensive gear, attend conferences and trade fairs, or join on-line forums in order to embrace the joy of tree-climbing. These commercial activities are not climbing trees. Nor are such things necessary to be sex-positive. To labor the point they are not sex. You can even dislike all those things and be hugely sex-positive. Porn merchants will try and tell you otherwise but they are trying to sell you porn.

Some other hijackers of sex-positivity are actually some spiritual and religious movements. I have encountered people who argue that their faith adherants are the only true sex-positives and that if sex-positivity is my goal then I should follow their teachings about sex, buy their books, attend their workshops, buy more books and so on. There seems to be almost as much money changing hands here as in the sex-industry. Once again though, these are not all evil people. In fact they are not even all motivated by profit but sometimes genuinely by concern.

However there is no need to understand a theology of tree-climbing. You do not have to have a metaphysical opinion on the tree before you ascend one for the love of it. Tree climbing has its own joys accessible on their own. Anyone who steps between the tree and you and claims their complicated mumbo-jumbo must be grasped for tree climbing-positivity’s sake is co-opting that stance for their own movements goals. Anyone who steps between sex and you and claims their religion must first be grasped for sex-positivity’s sake is doing the same.

On that last point please put everything I have to say about sex in the same category. It is not necessary to read my blog to explore a positive sex life. As I’ve gotten older I’ve grown resistant to attempts to hijack my sex-positivity. However there is  also a “natural” tendency to become a hijacker ourselves as we get older. There is such powerful energy behind sex-positivity. It is tempting to harness this energy to other causes -in my case, feminism. I’ve seen it harnessed to promote veganism for goodness sake. Maybe feminists and vegans do have better sex. However sex has its own joys – all on its own. You don’t really need to position yourself in a grand theory of gender or give up meat in order to find those joys.

I actually think that the pursuit of the joys of sex will lead us to make healthier decisions in the rest of our lives. However I wouldn’t want to make a religion out of it either. If we go down that route we re-open the door to all the hijackers to complicate matters again. Perhaps the other part of sex-positivity is this; It’s not a way to be cooler than everyone else, its not the salvation of our souls, it’s certainly not the answer to everything. Its just sex. And that’s good enough.

Enjoy. 

Sex Mapping (Across the Universe) Part 2. - The funner bit.

Gender based sexualities: Relatively fixed patterns of sexual attraction to one gender or another or both that give us the labels of homosexual, heterosexual or bisexual.

 In my last post I conducted a rudimentary deconstruction of gender based sexualities. I tried to show how the origin of this type of classification was to contain and reduce sexual behaviour that went against patriarchal gender organization. I rushed through a lot of information. If you want to read more I would recommend tracking down some of the writings of Denis Altman. I don't think I said anything outside the mainstream of sociological views of the western history of sexuality however.

I ended that piece promising fun and I hope I deliver with this post. To begin with lets return to the gender based sexualities. Sometimes these are referred to as boxes. You fit into either homosexual, heterosexual or bisexual. That’s a bizarre construction because bisexual is really just a box for those who don’t fit the other two. It seems strange to make it a type when it is more of an anti-type and it feels to me like its purpose is to contain in its own box the very fact that the boxes don’t always work. Think about it, how bisexual is an average bisexual? What box fits people who are a bit bisexual and bit monosexual? Bi-bi-sexual?

The category of bisexual indicates that lots of people struggle to find themselves in these discrete boxes. There are sometimes traumatic exits and entries into different categories. One way of reducing that trauma is to knock the sides of the boxes to produce a spectrum of sexuality that looks like this.

Now we can inhabit any number of points along the spectrum. We have gone from three to a potentially infinite number of categories (Eg. “mostly both but a little more into guys”.) I still feel though that a map of sexuality that looks like this is too colourless to correspond to my world. People are spectacularly diverse and a single line doesn’t seem to capture that at all. The artist in me recoils. Is this how one dimensional the world looks to you?

In my last post I described how for some people gender based sexualities describe a deep truth. For those people a relatively fixed point on this spectrum makes sense.

Then there are those of us who are more amenable and responsive to what culture is determining about sexuality around us. Or to put it another way, we meet a lot of different needs with our relationships and some people seem to be better able to adjust what they find attractive to what meets those needs. I’m thinking of the women I know who genuinely had wonderful lesbian relationships in their twenties and thirties but now heading past forty find they are predominantly attracted to men. Sometimes these people get maligned for being fair-weather lesbians; ie. now that they are out of university and toting nappy bags at play groups they seek the respectability of heterosexuality. I really don’t get why that is maligned though. It seems like a “smart” sexuality to adapt to social circumstances beyond your control. Indeed it seems like we all do something like this – turning down the hottie with the right genetics because they have a gambling problem for example rather than continuing our pursuit based on a fixed sexuality. Some people just seem to be able to adapt more effectively in regard to the gender pattern of their attractions.

Such a changing sexuality only warrants criticism if you presume that for all people there is an innate and fixed gender based sexuality that they are betraying. That to me is imposing a map onto people rather than mapping from people. That’s why if I was to map sexuality I would have to add at least one extra axis.

Now we’ve effectively doubled the positions a person can occupy with their sexuality. (Double infinity is a lot!) Some people might identify as fixed, will always prefer one gender over the other and no amount of cultural change will affect that. That explains the people who were gay and lesbian in the nineteen fifties for example. Other people (like myself) have a preference but experience shifts in their lifetime.

Note: Recognizing fluidity in some people’s sexuality is not an endorsement of proposed therapies to turn gay people straight (or vice versa if one exists) and not just because fluidity doesn’t appear to be universal. Something can change (the seasons change for example) but therapies can’t honestly claim to direct that change without any proof. Besides you can’t fix what isn’t broken.

Some people who will have stopped reading by now. Those who have left may be bored by talking about sex or even by sex itself. For them the notion of a identity rooted in sexual desire is profoundly disinteresting. Yet how do they place themselves on the single line or even our dual axis map of sexuality? They can’t. There’s no place for a person to simply respond with “Don’t care.”

I actually consider that to be quite a large flaw with our sexual map. The value of a system of identification is diminished if people are obliged to pick any category over no category. How do you establish the worth of their choice? To remedy that with our own model lets step into the third dimension with an additional axis.

There are now so many more markedly different points a person can occupy. With our two new axis we have opened up spaces that had no place on the original single line. I think that makes it harder to construct a normal category. In a whole classroom of hormone-addled teenagers there may still not be two people in exactly the same place. I hope by now there are already some blown-minds contemplating a three dimensional sexual identity. My partner and I were on interestingly different points ourselves. Where are you?

Try and imagine an outer layer to our sexuality sphere. In that outer layer there are people who are extremely fixed or fluid, preferring one gender over another, and into sex over reading or reading over sex. Let’s call them extremes. In the core of our sphere are the absolute moderates who are a bit of both in all three categories. Imagine if those were two boxes (instead of homosexual and heterosexual). It’s a very different way of looking at the world.

But we can go further. If the limits of our graph (and our three dimensional world) only permit us three axes we ought to ask ourselves if the ones we’ve chosen are the most important ones for ourselves. Particularly if we drop the gender based line we move radically away from the original gender based sexuality scheme. We can now formulate a language of sexuality that is almost completely alien from what we are usually given to work with. I think that’s a great exercise even if we return to the gender based axis as more personally useful. We will have opened our mind to very different ways of identifying our own and others’ sexuality.

When I was in Canada for a year I found it interesting that more people there identified their sexuality in terms of the type of person they wanted to be in a relationship themselves (rather than by the object of their attraction).  If someone told me about a new lover in Canada they would often say things like “they make me feel confident and happy with myself or I’m constantly on my toes and have to keep my wits about me or they make me feel strong and protective or safe and protected.” In Australia however people tend to talk about a new lover entirely in that lover’s attributes; “they’re funny, they’re ruggedly handsome, they’re a brilliant dancer, they bake a great muffin” etc.

When we switch our horizontal axis out we might want to change it for something that is more about us than our ideal partner. Using this graph as an example, who might you be standing next to, that previous graphs put you opposite?

Maps like this allow us to express natural sympathies that exist amongst people that are traditionally grouped apart. My mother once complained about the tawdry immodesty of Sydney's Mardi Gras. I told her that there were would be some lesbians and gay men that shared her feelings. Similarly you can be a Mills and Boone romantic waiting for someone to sweep you off your feet with rugged intensity - whether they are your own gender or not. Or you might find that nauseous. Why shouldn't we map sexuality along lines such as these rather than a line that may not say anything about what's most important to us?

Sexual identification is something that goes on in our society. We cop it and we do it. Originally it began as a tool to aid patriarchy but it has evolved into something else and it is still evolving. Where will it go next and what do you want to call your own sexuality? The implications of a society whose members are able to do that with unlimited variability are unknown and exciting.