Tuesday, April 6, 2010

sexuality?

sexuality: it is allegedly some sort of inborn erotic compass that attracts an individual to this gender or another or else whose pointer has arrows at both ends. since there are purportedly only two genders one can be attracted to, viz. one's own or one's opposite, sexuality comes in only two legitimate flavors: gay and straight (bisexuals are often perceived to either have a broken compass or else to merely be confused as how to read it or else as falsifying the reading). evidently, then, all that is needed to establish one's sexuality is to determine which of the two genders is the object of love (but not all love) as well as the object of physical affection (but not all physical affection). it seems to me that there are countless ways to love and engage in physical contact. we all initiate, dissolve, and maintain a wide range of loving relations in the course of a lifetime. we all engage in countless processes of physical contact in the course of a lifetime. love is often present without physical intimacy. physical intimacy is just as often present without love. i can only assume that the idea is that there is a certain way of loving that is always accompanied by a desire for a certain type of physical intimacy and vice-versa. it must be this special type of love-physicality dyad that flows forth from one's sexuality. or is it that one's sexuality emerges within the dyad? either way, i cannot imagine which of the infinite ways of loving and equally infinite types of contact (ways and types that once were, now are, or are yet to be imagined) are self-evidently those to be cited as evincing a so-called sexuality. it seems to me that any of the particulars that might be pointed to as particular to this special sort of love-mode and concomitant physical desire will not only be arbitrary (at best) but will often fail to be exclusive to the special and indicative love-physicality mode. and, two genders? the qualifications for one gender or another are also largely arbitrary and always include too few or too many. further, is the love-desire attraction a biological attraction (based, for example on penises and vaginas) or is it an attraction to types (e.g. to masculine people or feminine people)? if we can nary construct a definition of so-called romantic love that neatly separates it from so-called non-romantic love while remaining other than farcical and we can nary conceive of a definition of gender that splits the human race neatly into two camps, what are we to make of this meta-concept, sexuality?