Scary Sexuality?

I'm afraid things have been a little busy here at Dionysian Towers, so please accept my heartfelt apologies for this little hiatus. Normal service will be resumed as soon as I've worked out what normal actually is.
Some of my more eagle-eyed friends may have also noticed that this blog now has an "adult" setting. Basically this is because I don't want Google to wag its virtual finger in my direction when I post nude pictures or, as I'm about to do now, write about SEX!

YES! I SAID SEX!
Really, I mean sexuality rather than actual sex. Sex is a lot more fun to do than to write about. Sexuality, on the other hand, should be thought, spoken and written about as often as possible.

The inspiration for this came from my number-one son who, upon hearing that I could sew better than my wife, said, "How gay are you?". Okay, he was just making a joke but there's a very obvious implication there - that sewing is "gay". I recently found out that my late uncle's father worked as a jobbing tailor in the East End of London in the 1930's. He was a happily married, respectable Jewish man and any unlikely questions about his sexuality would hardly have had anything to do with his ability to sew.

We are coming back here to a particular bugbear of mine, the categorisation of human beings. Stereotypes make us less than what we really are - human.

Gay?
We tend to define a person by their sexuality. In truth we define people in many ways, one of the biggest being by their job, but sexuality is seen as a somehow important one. There are precedents, of course, which allow for certain positive generalisations: the lumping of people into "gay" and "straight" gave the world an identifiable group who managed to successfully campaign for the legalisation of homosexual sex. How much, though, of this definition can be said to be true?

I have a friend - let's call him P - who is definitely and obviously GAY (the capital letters are deliberate). He comes across as thoroughly camp - he works as a hairdresser, has perfect nails and calls everybody "darling". He even used to do a drag act many years ago. His boyfriend (and also his ex-) is quite definitely not obviously gay. You would have to ask if you saw them together.

The question is, therefore, how can we define any person as gay in any other way than by the fact that their preferred sexual pleasures are taken with someone of the same gender? There's no correlation to lifestyle apart from sexuality. If P slept with a woman, would that make him a better or worse hairdresser? Would another gay friend, S, be a better or worse prison guard if he was straight? Indeed, can he sew?

Straight?
At a recent Pagan camp a talk was to be given by Mr RH. My friend T asked his girlfriend who this was because he couldn't remember. She described RH thusly: "You know. The one you fancy!"
The thing is, T is "straight". As far as I know he has only ever has had sexual relations with women. But does it make him a better or worse driver, electrician, boyfriend because he considers another man as good-looking and charismatic? Interestingly, RH is generally rather popular with women, but very masculine men seem to hate him on sight!

Some people have described me as bisexual because I consider myself open-minded. I'm affectionate with my close friends regardless of gender and choose not to use a sexual label for myself ("Human, Pagan, Seán. Those are all the categories I need, thanks!"). Yet, I am very obviously happily married to a woman - and we have three children. What, then, would be the difference should I indulge in a bisexual act? Would my vegetables grow any faster? Could I play my flute any better? I doubt it.

I also have two female friends who are both very happily in heterosexual relationships. They don't normally find other women attractive - although they appreciate good looks when they see them just like anybody else. Yet they are strongly attracted to each other, especially when alcohol has knocked a few barriers out of the way. Does this make them lesbians? It might, but who cares? Does it make them better or worse parents?

Queer?
Human sexuality is as rich, diverse and complex as any other human trait - there is no such thing as normal with which to compare. Homo-, hetero-, bi-, are all labels for acts, not people. Some people love the opposite gender, others their own. Some people love being tied up and whipped, some people love multiple partners, some people love enormously fat people. It's even possible for one's tastes to change over the years. In the end we're all queer, because there are none of us who are normal. Is it scary to be queer?

What is scary is the deliberate definition of "normal" into a very strict and limited group of behaviours. The monotheistic religions are particularly responsible for this as a form of social control. Sadly, they have given us groups who believe that they can "cure" homosexuality. Don't believe me? Read this.
In certain cultures different types of sexuality have been considered "normal", consider Classical Greece as a pretty obvious example.

Being Different is Necessary!
The human race evolves not just physically, but also culturally. Sexuality is one of our strongest driving forces after the needs for food, shelter and the security of the tribe. A friend of mine (who may write about this himself yet) considers homo- and other non-breeding sexualities as natural results of over-population. I think they are natural results of our tendencies towards civilisation and social interaction. The Shaman/Witchdoctor/Priest of the tribe is the strange one, and quite rightly so.
There's a rather wonderful book by Stan Gooch called The Dream Culture of the Neanderthals. Yes - I too thought it would be hilarious, but it's actually pretty good. Here's what he says about homosexuality:

. . the priesthood has always been a refuge for types of homosexual and lesbian, as also for other kinds of sexual "deviance" - ie. sexual, presexual, or asexual behaviours whose aim is not the production of children. . . the homosexual/lesbian and androgynous human being has made a significant contribution to the evolution of religion. . .

I would suggest that non-breeding sexualities - which would normally die out as a behaviour pattern amongst most evolving creatures - are necessary to the evolution of both the individual human and human culture as a whole. Therefore (assuming the rule of An it harm none. . .) they should be encouraged. Those who stand for "normality" and simple categorisation are actually standing against the natural evolution of the human race. From this point of view, we need more queers!

Can we be define sewing as "gay" then? I suppose it depends whose trousers they are!

Love (in all its forms),
Seán

Disability Issues

I thought about this recently when I went to a meeting about the coming day of action in April. The meeting was held upstairs in a rather nice old pub, but one of our number couldn't come because she couldn't manage the stairs. She is classed as a disabled person, although I didn't know that until quite recently - I just thought she was a small person with wonky hips.
This led me to wondering what a "disabled person" actually is.

Tai Chi
A couple of years ago I used to teach a beginners' class in Tai Chi. One of my students was also a student activist on disability issues and asked me if I could teach a disabled person to do Tai Chi.
I couldn't answer her.
The reason is that she wanted a simple yes/no answer and there wasn't one I could give. From the point of view involved in teaching Tai Chi there's no such thing as a "disabled person", there's just a person. That person may or may not be able to do certain things, and the teaching would therefore take that into account on an individual basis.
To explain a little more clearly: If a person can't touch their toes, is stone deaf, has only one arm or has balance problems from cerebral palsy then I can probably teach them Tai Chi. If a person is blind or confined to a wheelchair then I probably can't - although I'd give it a good old try first!

Car Parking
I understand the usefulness, from a governmental perspective of considering certain people with certain difficulties as "disabled". It's useful for someone who can't walk very well to have some kind of guaranteed car parking near to where they want to go. It's also useful for a governmental agency to be able to classify people by their ability to earn a living, or need for state benefit. This sort of thing is, though, surely as far as the classification needs to go.

Pigeonholes
Regular readers of my rants will probably have guessed what I'm getting at by now: Pigeonholing! The necessities stated above notwithstanding, I've noticed a tendency amongst people to consider "disabled" as a category of person. This is what my, supposedly politically enlightened, Tai Chi student was doing.
It's probably a linguistic thing - we tend to categorise things into simplistic types so that we don't have to think about them properly. Reactionaries and activists rely on this tendency a lot - it dehumanises the enemy and makes them easier to throw things at. Most people do it. I've heard men talk about women and women talk about men as if they're all the same. I've heard whites talk about blacks, pakistanis talk about jews, and cleaners talk about caretakers - all using that same unthinking group categorisation.

A "Disabled Person"
Is it possible to say, then, that people with a blue parking pass for their car are all the same? My friend who didn't like the thought of the stairs probably would say not, and I think she'd be right.
To think in terms of a "disabled person" (and I'm as guilty as anyone else) as opposed to a person who can't perform a particular activity, or has a bit missing, belittles the person. It puts them into a little box labelled "disabled" - one might as well put them in a box labelled "broken" and have done with it.

I'm thinking about the many, many people I've met over the years and a lot of them have been considered disabled, officially that is. My mother is disabled, as is an ex-lover and my friend mentioned above. I know a deaf artist and a one-handed artist. A good friend has schizophrenia. I've known drug and alcohol addicts and a woman who lost a leg in a motorbike accident.
That's just a select few. The question is what, apart from governmental categorisation, have they all got in common? The answer is, frankly, sod all - except one thing.

They're all people.

Let's keep pigeonholes for pigeons.

Love,
Seán