Sexual identities and the "stifling" nature of categorization

Sexually Suggestive: Valentine's Day: Time to celebrate love in all of its 'wondrous iterations'

When I was 11, I found the repeat button on my stereo system. Dave Matthews' "Before These Crowded Streets" was spinning around in the CD player and before long, track number eight, "Crush," was looping sweet sounds in and out of my ears for hours on end. There's a part in that song—"Let's go drive 'till morning comes, and watch the sunrise and fill our souls up"—that blew me away the first time I heard it. Those words were so real I could almost taste them. It was like Dave was talking to me, telling me what love was going to be like.

Sexually Suggestive: Time flies, so ‘live life while it happens’ in sex and relationships

Bowdoin students are a fortunate bunch. We have so many tools for learning and living at our fingertips, it's hard to believe that any one of us could ever complain about our situation here in Brunswick, Maine. One of the only things that I find deserving of serious lament at Bowdoin is time—there's not enough of it. I'm about to graduate in May, so I'm admittedly a little biased on the subject, but if you'll bear with me I think I have a point. The four years that we spend in college can be particularly formative with regard to our sexual identities.

Sexually Suggestive

Sexual identities and the "stifling" nature of categorization

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

February 27, 2009

Whenever I come out to someone, particularly a straight someone, there are two questions that I can expect to be asked sooner or later. Question number one: Did you always know you were gay? Question number two: How do lesbians have sex?

These aren't easy questions to answer, by any stretch of the imagination, so I usually answer them jokingly: I was straight until proven otherwise, and lesbians have sex by holding hands in the dark, of course! I suppose I use my sarcasm as a defense mechanism because of the deeply personal nature of both questions. The definition of my sexual identity and my conception of what it means to "have sex" are two things that I've struggled to understand for years now, and I have yet to find a satisfactorily clear definition for either.

As a first year, when I first "came out," I remember wondering what "closet" I had come out of. I didn't think I'd been hiding anything anywhere. Then, all of a sudden, with the affirmation that I was attracted to people of my own sex, I inherited a legacy of struggle and confusion that I felt compelled to live up to by going back into my personal history trying to understand what I'd been hiding or suppressing. All of a sudden, I was no longer just Alanna—I was Alanna the lesbian. It felt like I'd been morphed into an entirely new person, with a new sexual past, present, and future. But nothing had really changed; all I'd done was say something about myself—I hadn't even kissed a girl yet!

Considering my lack of experience, sexually and culturally, in my new identity, you can imagine the kind of chaos that went through my head when people started to ask me how lesbians have sex. I used to think, "How the hell should I know? I've only been one for five minutes!" Then I'd think, "Well, if this is what I am, then I'd better find out how they have sex, otherwise I won't fit into either category, gay or straight!" It became this mutually constitutive thing where my sexual orientation dictated the way I was supposed to have sex and the way I had sex dictated what my sexual orientation was. But the idea of sexual acts and desires defining who I was wasn't actually that new of a concept for me: I felt that way back when I was "straight" too.

I remember being really frustrated with virginity—truth be told, I still am. What does that word mean? Have I somehow missed out on something if I haven't been vaginally penetrated by a penis? Is that all I have to do in order to join the "big girl's club"? Am I a worse person for having been penetrated in this way, have I let my morals fall to the wayside? Why do I think it's important to really know the first person I get vaginally penetrated by, when I don't think it's as important to know them before engaging in most other sexual acts? All these questions and more used to plague my thoughts, both before and after I "came out." I think I actually expected something supernatural to happen after I was penetrated by a guy for the first time—good thing I didn't hold my breath for that one.

I should make it clear that I'm not trying to demean heterosexual identities or sex acts. It's entirely possible that someone's first experience with heterosexual intercourse is totally storybook and wonderful. What I'm trying to get at here are the limitations that sexual identities like virgin or lesbian, slut or prude may have. Because, if we're thinking about it logically, can we really call a woman who is has intimate sexual encounters with other women on a regular basis a "virgin" simply because she's never had heterosexual intercourse? Am I to believe that all gay men have anal sex? Is it true that all straight men enjoy receiving oral sex from their female partners? If a woman can only orgasm from oral sex, does that mean she hates sexual intercourse? These are just a few examples of the potential limitations and frustrations that strict definitions of sex can cause.

I use to think that the reason these things bothered me so much was a result of my sexual orientation. Now, I'm not so sure. Of course, when I first "came out," I was totally preoccupied with all of this stuff. But now, as I feel more settled in my sexual identity, I still feel stifled by the strict categorizations placed on sexual expression in our society. And, the more I think about it, the more I begin to understand that identity and sexuality are loaded issues for everyone, not just enthusiastic queers in their early 20s who write sex columns for their college newspaper.

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