Things are in a really sorry state in this country. We style ourselves as a hip, liberated culture, but we're not. Most of us cower in the dark, afraid to admit even to ourselves who and what we are.
We're s-e-x-u-a-l. We like to touch our own bodies, and those of other people. But almost from birth we are taught this is a dangerous thing to do. We suspect there is a hidden set of rules governing what touching is naughty and what is nice, and when, but we never are certain we know all the rules.
Consider masturbation (a word that even the Surgeon General of the United States must use with caution). Our culture holds that masturbation is a nasty no-no, but is incapable of openly discussing it with its children. So most kids have a memory of a number of mysterious events that were aimed at trying to get them to stop having pleasure with themselves.
One day in first grade I had an itch in my crotch which I scratched, circumspectly I thought. The teacher saw me, hit me with a ruler, and made me sit for the rest of the day with my hands on top of my desk. That taught me that the teacher was no better than any other bully who made fun of me or hit me, but it didn't teach me anything about sex.
Adults who are, we assume, fully aware of the sexual aspect of being human, nevertheless profess shock at any explicit mention of their sexuality. A really mind-bending game for idle moments is to look at the adults around you and imagine them enjoying sex. What does it say when doing so totally changes your image of a person?
Every time there is a riot in East Lansing, care is taken to track down and arrest any woman who commits the shocking and provoking crime of exposing a mature female nipple in public. It's not that anyone is ignorant of the fact that women have nipples on their breasts, but that the female breast has become the symbol for sexuality in a culture that absolutely cannot talk about genitals.
Our mass culture is an orgy of material greed and lust. We deserve a break today, we're worth it, we need electronics, fast cars, big houses, closets full of clothes, and exotic vacations. We can have anything except a human touch and an occasional orgasm.
It's madness, sheer madness!
Madness necessary to the construction of heterosexuality as healthy and normal. Madness necessary to the construction of homosexuality as the perverted inverse of heterosexuality. Madness necessary to not being able to understand bisexuality, queer sexuality, and transsexuality.
Heterosexuality is not a sexual orientation, it is a state philosophy for the control of gender and sexuality.
Heterosexuality says that one is born knowing what one likes about one's own body and the bodies of others, that sex for pleasure is bad, though men can't help give in to it, and sex for reproduction is good, whether or not women desire it.
Heterosexuality defines sex as something a man does to a woman, and so cannot imagine sexuality without those two roles. Gender is but the necessary clothing that adorns male and female genitals.
Heterosexuality is terrified of masturbation, that one might learn the sexual response of one's body as an athlete learns its physical capabilities, and that one might realize it is possible to find pleasure with a body similar to one's own.
Heterosexuality is an oppressive state system that must be dismantled before human beings can achieve true freedom!
Queer liberation is not a struggle for some nebulous rights attached to the heterosexual concept of 'sexual orientation,' it is the struggle for the liberation of human sexuality, which is in turn the struggle for the liberation of the human soul, and is a necessary step on the path to realizing that we are each much more alike than we are different. Strike a blow for freedom! Talk about sexuality today!
[Published in the fall 1999 "Welcome Home!" issue of Q-News at Michigan State University.]