Is there a need to belong?

Here's a politically correct essay which nonetheless manages to raise some issues worthy of discussion. The author is a self-described heterosexual who questions the privileges which have been bestowed on her because of her sexual preference.

The privilege she complains of having is akin to belonging to a sort of inside club -- a club not for homosexuals:

How difficult it is for them to listen to the casual, constant discussion of showers and engagements and weddings and assume that everyone is interested in these heterosexual coming-of-age events. How excluded gay/ lesbian/ bisexual/ transgender folks feel when their coming-of-age events are secrets only shared with a select few, not freely discussed in the lunch room by the water fountain.

Promotions and even jobs can be denied to those not members of the heterosexual club. It's never said overtly, "We can't hire her, she's lesbian," just as it is never said, "We can't promote her, she's black." Such "isms" are not the subject of outright talk. They are the silent enemies of those who don't conform to the established, dominant cultures.

Heterosexuals assume their privilege and benefit from what MacIntosh terms "unearned power" in the blithe manner of all dominant cultures. Heterosexuals make the immediate connections with other staff. They talk with supervisors about their families, spouses, and lives in a way that assumes everyone's entering the conversation from the same platform of experience. It's so easy, so familiar, and so blind. They are assuming a sexual commonality where it does not always exist.

My question is: why not assume a sexual commonality which does exist, and simply stop worrying about it? We are all sexual (at least most of us are), so why should there be any social tyranny in the first place?

Why does it matter?

Is the homosexual person really that different? Aside from having a partner of the same sex, is there something internally different? If a black person were magically altered so that he had white skin and white features, would there still be something different? If so, precisely what?

Why must these differences, whetever they are, be considered "group" identity? Why do they matter?

I cannot think of a logical reason; however, I can nonetheless feel a reason.

Therefore, I suspect the reasons have more to do with emotion.

Something along the lines of needing to belong. To something.

Life is tough when you don't.

And if you think any of that is logically perplexing, consider the following: more homosexual men are raped by heterosexuals than heterosexual men by homosexuals.

Crazy, isn't it? Homosexual rape by heterosexuals?

Why not heterosexual rape by homosexuals?

Clearly, logic does not belong.

Yet, here's someone who proves quite logically that "the world is apparently composed of more than simply heterosexuals and homosexuals":

There are apparently hundreds or thousands or millions of sexualities. There might be as many sexualities as there are people. There might be six billion sexualities!
I tend to agree with this, because each person's taste is unique.

Once again, identity politics, with its insulting, lowest-common-denominator, one-size-fits-all, you-must-be-gay-or-straight, thinking, is the culprit. Those who need to belong are its victims.

The problem is, most people have a need to belong!

I don't want such a need, but that's an easy thing to say.

(And meanwhile, I find myself knowing less and less about more and more.)

posted by Eric on 12.17.03 at 08:56 PM





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That essay on sex and sexualities in the Indiana Observer (quite a splendid voice of individualism, I took a look at some of their other writings, too!) was excellent and profound. Many good things in there. Yes, there are, in truth, billions of sexualities. I've been using the concepts "androsexual" and "gynosexual", based on the polarity of the two sexes, but even these are not Platonically Real entities. My friend Robin Georg Olsen and I are both gynosexual men, and we often discuss the women who attract us with their beauty, but, while our tastes often overlap, there is considerable divergence in which women we find most beautiful. And that is to the good. He is seeing one kind of beauty while I am seeing another. I'm now contemplating deeper as to what kinds of women do attract me, and what precisely are the features in our respective preferences that so differentiate them. Fascinating. In short, it is overly broad to say that a gyno man is attracted to "the female sex". He is attracted to a particular, very thin, slice of the female sex, and another gyno man is attracted to another, very thin, slice, and there may or may not be overlap. Same as with gyno women (Lesbians) and with andro women and with andro men (men's men). And, though it leads to endless "what does he/she see in him/her...?", it also means we don't have one woman with a harem of a billion men all fighting over her. Good! Let's keep it that way.

Steven Malcolm Anderson   ·  December 18, 2003 02:18 PM


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