APPLES AND ORANGES: Ben v. Eve
From Ben Dykes:
Eve is right that stories are important in making sense of our lives. But not all stories are alike, and we shouldn't equate complexity with total fluidity. Some straight women self-identified as lesbians in the 70s and 80s, not because they were actually attracted to women (though some were curious), but because it was a political label stemming from anger at sexism. That women are encouraged to be emotionally close with each other made it seem even more sensible. They got into relationships with other women, and left a lot of genuine lesbians heartbroken when they realized their mistake and went back to men. But the narratives many tell themselves now are either: "I am a lesbian who has relationships with men," conflating a political stance with sexual orientation; or "all sexuality is fluid," a sheer projection from their own confused experience. Genuine coming-out stories about self-discovery, hiding, coming out to parents, etc., are stylized depictions of real events and meanings, not sheer retrospective justifications.
The three orientations of homo, bi, and hetero are highly stable and established (and have correlates in traditional cultures), even if they don't answer most of the important questions. True, we shouldn't use them to shoehorn people into categories on the basis of a single fantasy or crush. But just because there are some changes in people's sexual self-consciousness doesn't mean that the orientations themselves change. Their cultural acknowledgements and elaborations change, as do inessential preferences within each of them. There's no contradiction or total "fluidity" in a married man (who likes women) having relationships with men after she dies: it means he is bisexual. He was not "straight" first, and "gay" later. We mustn't confuse behavior with orientation. He is bisexual, even if there were changes in his preference between men and women at some point in his life.
posted by maggie at
11:36 AM | Link |
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