To open this week's column, which is written in honor of Coming Out Week last week, I'd like to start with a quote from one of my favorite movies, "The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Dessert." A bit of context: the movie follows three drag queens as they drive to the center of Australia for a show. Along the way, they discuss everything from outfits to dance numbers to homophobia. Here's a choice conversation about sexual orientation:
"We've only recently discovered that young Anthony here bats for both teams."
"I do not!"
"Oh, so [you're] straight?"
"No."
"Oh, then you're [gay] after all?
"No."
"Then what are [you]?"
"I don't f***in' know."
To many people, the idea of not being able to identify yourself as a certain sexual orientation, especially as an adult, seems very strange. People are labeled as gay, straight, or bisexual, with "questioning" meaning a phase of transition between them. The prevailing attitude seems to be that once you identify as a certain sexuality (i.e. what "team you play for," to borrow a popular colloquialism), you've committed to this preference for life. No trades allowed.
Sexual preference, however, is not as simple as all this. It doesn't end after doing some introspection and labeling yourself as gay, straight or bi. Rather, it is about experiencing and acknowledging feelings of sexual attraction.
A good friend of mine, who would be termed a lesbian in traditional societal vernacular, recently informed me that she sometimes refers to herself as "rojomosexual." This means that she's attracted to women and a few choice red-headed men. Though the term "rojomosexual" sounds pretty funny, that doesn't mean that her sexual attraction to this selective list of redheads is any less valid.
In a day and age where the debate over sexual orientation has been focusing on the argument between "genetics" and "choice," how can this sort of phenomenon be explained? Isn't a case like this exceptional? According to Dr. Alfred Kinsey (a Bowdoin alum, in fact), this sort of fluidity in sexual orientation is quite normal.
Dr. Kinsey did a lot of groundbreaking work in the field of human sexuality, culminating in his publication of "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male". In this book, Dr. Kinsey demonstrates that people have a much higher tendency than anticipated to engage in sexual behavior beyond heterosexual intercourse. In fact, over the course of his work he designed a sliding scale, termed the Kinsey scale, used to measure sexual orientation. The scale runs from 1-6, with 1 being completely heterosexual and 6 being completely homosexual (0 was added later, and means asexual). Most people, when administered the self-evaluation attached to the scale, come up as neither a 0 nor a 6, but rather somewhere in between. Kinsey concluded that human sexuality is a lot less dichotomized than most people believe. In "Sexuality in the Human Male" he writes that:
"Males do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual. The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats...The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects."
The tendency to reduce experiences into right and wrong, black and white, good and bad is inherent in human nature. It helps us keep track of things. Life would be a lot more tiring and confusing if you had to categorize all your friends based upon their own unique sexuality. Jenny is "blonderosexual," while Brad is a "breasts, butts or biceps" man. But at the same time boxing people who have had homosexual relationships or hookups into a larger category of "not straight" while keeping those who are involved with members of the opposite sex in a "straight jacket," so to speak, limits our ability to explore our sexuality. The human mind doesn't function in a simple way, and to ask it to remain within these straightforward boundaries we've created isn't reasonable.
I am not suggesting that we all go out and hook up with whoever we want, regardless of gender, orientation, age, etc. My point is that respecting the sexuality of others means understanding the fact that nothing is black and white. In the case of my dear rojomosexual friend, insisting upon celebrating her as a lesbian is counterproductive. She is in tune with the fact that she is attracted to certain kinds of people, and that self-knowledge is what should be celebrated. Labeling her as a distinct sexual orientation is limiting and could be detrimental to her desire to explore her sexuality. If she so chooses, she should be allowed to sleep with Hermione or Ron. Or both. Now that would be one magical threesome.