MiniSky: Thoughts About Everything

Via Fleshbot, I found myself procrastinating from writing while reading Am I Gay? - an advice website for people who write in with scenarios, thoughts and desires and want to know if this makes them gay.

I read a few but quickly lost interest (well, that’s not totally true – I was plenty interested in the act of procrastinating, so I kept reading, even though I was rolling my eyes). My reaction overall was – who cares?

Ok, yeah I know, this is a bit dismissive of people’s struggles with identity. I do have at least some respect for people and their personal journeys, but I can’t help but wonder why people are so keen on defining things, and why particular actions are what define identity.

The trend in risk reduction theory and education these days is to separate the act from the identity. Is AIDS a gay disease? Well, it’s possible to seroconvert through unprotected anal sex, which can unite semen with blood through tiny tears in the anus – and this is a kind of sex that many gay men like to have. But guess who else has anal sex involving penises and buttholes? Straight people. Cuz you know what? Everyone has an ass.

Ok, butthole diversions aside, the point is that acts don’t equal identity. This means that being a dude who likes anal sex doesn’t necessarily make you gay, and furthermore that even if you’re a dude who likes anal sex and one time tries it with a dude, that can’t make you gay either, because gay is an identity, not an act.

And furthermore (my, I’m soapboxy tonight) and back to my original point – what the fuck is the big deal anyway. What’s the concern over what “makes†someone gay or straight (or the amorphous realm of bisexual)? It’s all about what people think, probably. But seriously, who gives a shit? Sexuality is what happens between you and the people who you choose to experience it with, and it’s no one else’s to decide what it means and its really no one else’s business. (Unless you write about it on the internet. Doh!)

So is my thinking a sign of things to come? Well, I’m probably not THAT awesome, but I can hope. Maybe I should write a Letter To the Future about how I expect the concept of sexual identity to dissolve by year 2150 or some shit. And then pat myself on the back for a point well philosophized. But I think we’re starting to see a bit of this change in The Youths, where sexual identity is becoming more playground, less gospel.

June 15th, 2006 at 5:19 pm

The Butthole Surfers should do an entire album of chamber music called Butthole Diversions. That is all.

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