Reconsidering sexuality

I've been reading all day, most of it about female sexuality and sexual identity, for a research design project at school.

My work group, The Sex Files, is exploring the fluidity, plasticity or stability -- whatever you want to call it -- of female sexual identity. For several weeks, we've been pouring over and discussing other research, most of which is aimed at determining how women label their sexual orientation and whether it changes at any point.

But this morning, we got together and decided that we'd rather overturn the whole process of sexual identity labeling by questioning the social construct of sexual orientation at its core.

In other words, our project went from "Female sexuality: Fixed or fluid over the lifespan?" to "Who the fuck are you to expect me to label my sexuality with your confining words, man?"

Or as one of my classmates *not* working on this project once said of her sexuality: "I get a little antsy when someone tries to put me in a box."

My work group -- composed of a straight woman, a bisexual woman and a lesbian, as we identify ourselves -- has been wondering just where the line ends between one label and another. Just how are we supposed to quantify a woman who reports bisexual attractions without bisexual behavior? Or one who, perhaps 20 years ago, had sex with a woman but has otherwise exclusively been in the company of men yet calls herself "bisexual"? And what to make of lesbians, many of whom have had sex with men (some of whom enjoy it), but declare they have an exclusively lesbian identity?

There are numerous other possibilities, making the quantification of sexual orientation or identity just about impossible.

What's more, those women who refuse to label themselves not only throw a wrench into the works, they also tend to be excluded from research into sexual orientation precisely because they can't be pigeonholed. Yet the refusal to be pigeonholed strikes at the heart of things, in many respects.

Much of the research also stems from trying to establish societal norms, with same-sex relationships as essentially deviant and, thus, abnormal. The categorization of same-sex attraction and behavior as something "different" from the way everyone else does it is a fundamental bias in the description of sexuality itself.

This afternoon, I was reading a piece by feminist researcher Deborah Tolman in which she revisits Adrienne Rich's notion of "compulsory heterosexuality." Back in the early 1970s, Rich pulled back the veil on how lesbians are made invisible by a social presumption of heterosexuality based on beliefs and practices that keep woman apart while overtly and covertly forcing women into relationships with men.

Tolman argued that female sexuality often develops under adverse conditions: those in which adolescent girls learn to see themselves as the object of male desire, provacateurs (all of us) who must assume the responsibility of "keeping things from going too far" with guys. Rather than embracing their sexuality as a positive thing, the vast majority of girls only learn to be a counter-balance to the uncontrollable male.

What's worse, in one study cited, 75 percent of a sampling of "several hundred" girls described their first experience of heterosexual intercourse as painful, disappointing and boring. (What's sad is not just how many of you might agree with this description from your personal experience, but the assumption on the part of so many women that it's an experience to be expected.)

Tolman talked about the problem that has been unearthed by feminist researchers who have posed research questions premised on the notion that there is a positive experience of female adolescent sexuality.

"...We have found collectively that for most girls, sexuality is most often not positive and is always complicated by the negative meanings (and quite often real material and social consequences) of their sexuality," she writes. "The outcome of the desire to know the positive posits ironic limits to the question itself: it may not be there to be found."

Now, that is one sorry statement, my sisters.

What I would really love is for one of my female friends to tell me they bucked this trend, that they had an essentially sex-positive, open, healthy concept of their sexuality from a young age. And I'd love to hear what that was like.

By the way, if you are one, the research suggests you have your mother to thank. This article states that "pleasure narrators" (girls with sex-positive attitudes) have mothers who conveyed "a sense of entitlement to pleasure and safety."

I suppose if I have one thing to say about all of this, it's that, as adult females, we can be a part of rewriting the story. Let's teach girls and young women that there is immense pleasure to be found in their bodies when it comes to sex. At the same time, let's teach them how to avoid unwanted pregnancy and disease. And let's teach them to hold men accountable for controlling themselves.

Easier said than done, I'm sure. But in light of the VAST MAJORITY of women growing up feeling shame and restriction in their sexuality, it's certainly worth the effort.

And, I suppose that while I'm off preaching from my little idyllic world, I'll add that we should be pursuing a world where the labels we use to describe sexuality today are totally obsolete. To rewrite the song a little: Be with the one you love; love the one you're with.

And by all means, enjoy your whoopie.

Of course, these are the words of a woman who's not seen any action in MONTHS. So you might want to take *all* of this with a grain of salt.