She-males, Semantics, and the Sexual Wilderness

Having this Internet doohickey sure can open your eyes to things you...ya know? Might never have...seen...thought about.

Like...uhhh...(warning: "porn" pics to illustrate an important point--->) these are all "boys"...umm..I mean they have that one thing that still...hoo-boy..."qualifies?" them as...oh fuck it: they're chicks with dicks. She-males. Pre-op transsexuals.

And this totally fascinates me. I've looked at some porn and seen some pretty good-looking...I'll call them she-males. And this continues to get more and more interesting, because of the gender identity thing. I wrote a bit about it in a different context HERE.

But here's what's really cosmically hilarious to me. Over and over I stumble on a very real problem out there, a problem having not to do with those people who choose to modify their bodies with hormones and surgeries and all that...but with your run-of-the-mill heterosexual male who's attracted to she-males (also called t-girls, among other things), and worries if this makes them "gay."

                               Andrej Pejic, a New York runway fashion model. A male,
                               Pejic models both men's and women's clothes. Whattya 
                                           think? 

Recently on the San Francisco Craig's List's Rants and Raves I saw a subject line that read "If a straight man has sex with a post-op transsexual is he gay?" (Please note the word "is" here; I'm gonna harp on it a bit later on.)

There were a handful of replies. One person said this makes you "not exactly straight"..."he'd be bisexual and toward the heterosexual side..." (Note the form of "is" here: "be." I appreciated the assumption of the continuum of gender identity hinted at here.)

Another respondent seemed to mix the person in question with transvestites. I must note that the "post-op" is often mistaken: often intelligent people don't know that "post-op" refers to those who elected to go all the way and switch genitalia; the porn stuff is almost always "pre-op," or guys who elected to alter their bodies so they looked like females in every way possible, save for saving their penis. Add to that: the original query from Craig's List could be talking about a female who became male, post-op and all, and we just don't know for sure what was meant, but I assume - and everyone who responded assumed also - that the straight male had sex with someone who had female characteristics...and we can see how wonderfully weird this stuff can get when we try to talk about it!

Most of us are conditioned - myself included - to the idea of two sexes, two genders, or a few genders. But these very feminine-looking (and often quite pretty!) humans with natural penises...this seems like another example of a cultural guerrilla ontology. Let me see if I can explain myself...

Another respondent to the Craig's List query wrote that the question reminded him/her of the LGBT "crisis" in San Francisco, of "some lesbians getting sex changed to be 'male-ish' and start having sex with Gay (sic) men." Which I had no idea was happening. This person added that former lesbian girlfriends are "puzzled." I would think so!

Maybe it's just me, but I find all of this totally marvelous; Nature continues to flummox our best attempts to nail Her (It?) down.

I loved this person's response: "It doesn't really matter if other people don't understand them; maybe it makes sense to themselves; but even that's irrelevant because it's their bodies and lives to do with as they wish after all." Rarely do you see this level of intelligence on Rants and Raves.

One person said yes, it makes you gay, and furthermore this nullifies that "gay gene" or "I was born that way" hypothesis. Which made no sense to me. Does it to you?

Others, predictably: "You're a fag now" "How disgusting" "Using this as an excuse to not admit you're gay" Etc. (Dan Savage got a variation of this question in 2009, and what a terrific response: skip down to the third letter, starting with "I'm a 24 year old guy...")

Personally, I have never had sex with a she-male, but I find some of them very attractive. I don't know how I'd actually respond physiologically if I..."had the chance." But that's what I find so very interesting: I'm attracted to the femininity I perceive in some she-males (I'm not sure if the term "androgyne" would also apply here); they have all the curves and facial features I've grown to find very appealing. Maybe if I was with one and her voice sounded too masculine I would be turned off enough to not have sex? I don't know! But Scarlett Johansson has a deep, throaty voice and I dig her. Is it because I "know" Scarlett "is really" female (or if not it's so far a very well-kept secret) that I wouldn't give it a second thought (assuming in some dreamland I had the chance) and go at her like a wild man?

And why, if a she-male was pretty enough and charming enough, would I let that thing dangling between her legs be a deal-breaker? I have one too. It can be thought of as a very large clitoris. (I said it "can be.")

Okay, so I have no problems with gay men. I have many warm friendships with them. I will divulge that I once experimented to see if I could be bisexual, and it just wasn't there for me. (There's still a dispute over whether bisexuality really exists, but I'll have to write about that some other day.) But he didn't look anything like "her":

                                            Honestly, I can't say for sure what I'd do
                                            with this gorgeous she-male. But I do 
                                                      wonder...

What gets me is the rampant homophobia in the "it makes you gay" stuff. As if those categories are so reified they're like - pardon the pun - straitjackets. Once you've shown your hand, you're "out" and forever NOT ONE OF US. Not "normal." Normal stands for a statistical finding. If it appears you are not in the majority, well, then you just might be a threat to us somehow. Who knows, some invisible entities might spread to us "normal" people and then you and your non-normal kind are CONTAMINATING us! We used to be PURE!

Okay, so here's the deal with gender and semantics: when we use the "is" of identity, we shortchange ourselves here. Nature has thrown us a change-up (sorry, football fans!), and we've swung way ahead of the pitch. We can be smarter. If you think you "are" straight, go ahead and say it, either to yourself or to everyone. If you think you "are" gay...same deal. If you say someone else "is" a fag because of some action, well, fine, but you seem to show yourself a boor. Anything we say about someone's sexual preference or - far more complex - gender seems only our own way of trying to make sense of, or categorizing others' actions or tastes or preferences or presentations. Ultimately, in a free society, we need to acknowledge that gender and sexuality is far, far more complex - and, I'd argue, wonderful - than our impoverished upbringings prepared us for.

(That one time you accidentally wandered into the wrong bathroom? Did you say, "Oh no! Oops! I think I am male/female now!"? Nope, didn't think so...)

So, if I one day do have some sort of sexual encounter with a very feminine-looking person with a penis, you can say to yourself, "He is gay!" I don't care. I think it's misleading in the first place, and in the second place, so what? There's nothing wrong with "being" gay in the sense of "queer" behaviors! And most importantly: we made up those words. Actions are not the words we use to describe them. The words act as conventions. They make things convenient for us, because, after all, we do desire to communicate with each other. We tend to gossip.

We seem to make linguistic, categorical errors with very little care or thought, and in so doing make ourselves appear ignorant, cruel, and maybe even stupid. We can go a long way toward - maybe completely? - cure this malady by trying as hard as we can to get rid of "is" and its forms (am, are, was, were, be) from our language when describing others' sexualities or presentations of gender. When I mentioned the term "guerrilla ontology," a term I got from Robert Anton Wilson, the "ontology" part is traditionally an area of philosophy (like epistemology or aesthetics) that concerns itself with the aspect of Being. In Indo-European languages, the copulae (is, am, was, are, were, be) neurolinguistically encourages us to think of the ontological status - the Being-ness - of something as possibly more "real" than some things warrant. ("I am a bevotrax and she is a clatronix. He was vinpoled, but not anymore. Together, we are all skeezinixes! In truth, we always were!")

Here's how I see it: The guerrilla ontology of she-males seems like a sneak attack that totally surprises us, and forces us to adjust our thinking, perceiving, and language in an attempt to grapple with that area of "sex" or "gender." It's another reason I like this stuff: the intellectual fucking involved.

We have human experiences, sometimes unusual ones. Phenomenologically, they go on in "real time," and maybe we ought to try to always remember, there is a pre-language aspect of everything we do! Everything else: reflections, descriptions, conversations, categorizations....these constitute the realms of increasingly ABSTRACT thought, and our language may not "be" up to the task.

Finally: I'm just going to come right out and admit it: I prefer females with vaginas. People might call me "straight." Okay...But that doesn't mean you can treat me poorly. And she-males present us with a terrific teachable moment, don't they? Some will "get it." Others will most definitely not...

Oh yes: would do you make of Andrej Pejic, the "Prettiest Boy In The World"?

                                          Another androgyne image. I didn't fact-check
                                           to tell whether this "really is" a male or 
                                          "really is" a female. I like not knowing.
                     

Sex Has Caught My Eye: Gender/Identity Issues

Since writing about sex and culture got all my ad dough pulled, I figure what've I got to lose now? So yea: sex has caught my eye...when doesn't it? Am I right?

Gender and Identity: We Got Issues
How easy I've had it, being...oops! I mean self-identifying as a heterosexual male. "Being" implies too much ontological certainty, and I can speak for myself, but when I'm reading about others, I realize I can't speak for them. They have their... choices? I will give them the benefit of the doubt. They are dealing with their not-feeling-like-I-fit-in-the-traditional-Heterosexual-Homosexual model thing. They are far more diverse than we "I always felt like I was gay (or straight)" types. I've been thinking a lot more about this stuff since around January of this year, when a good friend told me the lurid trials of an extended family member who has gone from male to female - or is in transition - and I met someone else in a similar situation. It's funny-weird how when we pay attention to these things and start thinking about them, many other instances seem to jump into our lives, seemingly taking metaphysical advantage of the situation. Case in point: it was right around this time that I stumbled upon a book review of independent scholar Hanne Blank's book Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality.

What does it "mean" to be "straight"? We assume it's as old as dirt, and that most people have gone around calling themselves "straight" for the last 10,000 years. But not so. It's only about 150 year old, this gender identity of "straight." It's another social construction, at least according to Baltimore-based Blank, and I appreciate her gnomish Hermetic turn-the-tables move with this book.

She writes as if we must explain heterosexuality, and I think she's right: we may as well. But what's hilarious is she uses many of the same tropes that have been used when writing/thinking about explaining homosexuality. She's published erotica and has made an in-depth study of the meaning of virginity; she's had carnal relations with women yet lives with an XXY man now. One of those. The kind that give nightmares to Santorum types. I think they think it's catching, or they might have It already.

                                     Klinefelter's Syndrome "male," or however they want to 
                                     self-identify. They have an extra X chromosome. 

This is deeply amusing science, taking the assumptions of iconic "problem" books of naming, labeling, Linnaean-ishly classifying, and rationalizing - the DSM-IV being the best example - and holding a mirror up to that culture.

I first became aware of the riff from homosexuals that there are no homo- or hetero- people; there are only sexual acts, from reading Gore Vidal. While I think this sort of argument can appeal to intellectuals (it appealed to me, even though I had gay friends who "were" so much more than their acts!), I'm not sure it helped improve gay people's lives much. When the lumpenproles in backwater areas need to bash someone they perceive as even lower than themselves in the primate status hierarchy, they will, books like Blank's not factoring in much.

For anyone who wants to challenge the false-to-facts iron shackled-binarism of hetero vs. homo, here's a good book that argues for those desperately needed metaphors of the continuum and fluidity in human sexual identity.

Along these lines, a little fanfare for the Aussies, who now allow a third gender identity on their passports, "X."

It seems there's a fairly widespread confusion about sex genes/biology and "gender." Gender is a subjective feeling of "female-ness" or "male-ness." I have never seen any persuasive reason why we ought not allow allow people to express their gender in any way they want. But then in that sense I'm a classic liberal: cruelty is the worst thing we can do.

Sexual Identity and Non-Aristotelian Logic: A Proposal
I think I'm also predisposed to combat Aristotle's pervasive Law of the Excluded Middle. By and large, "Arry," - as Ezra Pound called him - invented modern, two-value logic, the values being "true" and "false." There can be no middle ground in Arry's Logic. Since then very many multi-valued logics have been developed and made use of by scientists and others. When it comes to sexual orientation, I'll be ironically conservative and say we ought to start with four values and develop our sex-logic from there.

Let us suppose there are 1.) heterosexuals 2.) homosexuals 3.) people who define as bisexuals or those who feel their gender does not match their biology 4.) asexuals. This last one? There are people who have no desire for sex with anyone, ever. According to Brock University psychologist Anthony Bogaert, of more than 18,000 British residents surveyed in 2004, about 1% seemed asexual. This is a lifelong non-desire for sex, not celibacy, which is a lifestyle choice. Sex for asexuals is a major yawner. Or a boring joke. In every other way, they appear "normal," a hideous word I normally steer clear of. (citation for asexuality: The Scientific American Book of Love, Sex and the Brain, by Judith Horstman, pp. 81-83)

To extend this sex-logic, we may either 1.) add more categories, and indeed I might have at least two under my #3 above; or 2.) assign numbers between 0 and 10 to each of the four categories, 10 being overwhelmingly, extremely straight or gay, for example. I see something approaching infinitude or a Very Large Number in #3 above. And remember your math: the set of points between 0 and 10 is infinite, by Cantor's definition.

No word from Down Under as to whether they are mulling a fourth choice for their passports, but I'm guessing no one really cares, especially the asexuals.

Finally, I followed the saga of actress Cynthia Nixon, who ticked off the militant political gays by telling the press that, while she lived with a man for a long time, she now lives with a woman and "chose" to be gay. She felt the backlash and clarified, saying she's bisexual, and didn't choose to be...but lucky gal: bisexuals get to choose by definition whether they want to sleep with males or females, or...any who fall in that vast chasm between. There's still a lot of dispute whether bisexuality even exists. (I hope to blog on that before I die, or get a decent-paying job, whichever comes first.)

Advantage: Bisexuality
Until then, I'm with Woody Allen, who said he was heterosexual, which is fine, but bisexuality "immediately doubles your chances for getting a date for Saturday night."

We, of a Certain Genetic Caste?

Turning in my vat of whimsy now, hoping to stay afloat, I proffer an idea from the late 20th century countercultural figure Robert Anton Wilson (who actually died in 2007), in my eyes one of five or ten most underrated thinkers, of any "class," of the last half of the 20th c. For me, Wilson seems a wildly successful (in terms of creative intellectual/artistic thought and sheer mass of production of wide scope) example of Mannheim's "free-floating intellectual." He wrote novels, plays, screenplays, encyclopedias, and a hefty mass of non-fiction. More on other aspects of his thought in subsequent OG riffages...

Of many projects, Wilson ("RAW" to his fans) greatly expanded on an idea usually credited to Timothy Leary: a sort of General Unified Field Theory applied to the biological and cultural evolution of metaphorical "circuits" in the brain/mind, most commonly known as the Eight-Circuit Model.

In his book Prometheus Rising (1983, revised ed. 1997) Wilson describes and extrapolates on the evolution of socio-sexual morality in human beings. This "circuit" is "activated and imprinted at adolescence, when the DNA signal awakens the sexual apparatus.The teenager becomes the bewildered possessor of a new body and a new neural circuit oriented to orgasm and sperm-egg fusion. The pubescent human, like any other rutting animal, lurches about in a state of mating frenzy, every call gasping for the sexual object."


Remember those days? Oh? You're still there? Moving on:


This circuit, according to Wilson, arose around 30,000 years ago (more recent research suggests it's closer to 50,000?), is imprinted in the left hemisphere of the neocortex, the imprinting sites being the breasts and genitalia, and was previously described by Freud as the "phallic" stage, and by the mystic Gurdjieff as the "false personality." In Eric Berne's Transactional Analysis it is "the parent."


Because sex is so exciting and disruptive, every culture places taboos on at least one aspect of it, for reasons unavailable to those living in that culture. ("It's the way we've always done things! God told us it was this way! Anyone who doesn't believe this is crazy, dangerous, or both!")


Indeed, for a robust, general idea of "morality," sexual attraction, mating, inheritances, genetic drift, reproduction, and the future of the species seem potent enough to make much ado...


Wilson says the "principle function" of this "circuit" is to form an adult personality, one that will care both for and about the children. Because we are the symbolic species, this involves lots of "planning, hoping, and having aspirations."


Long ago, mystical traditions worldwide intuited this circuit as one that will cause a person to become hopelessly "attached" or "stuck on the wheel of karma." Becoming a mommy or daddy certainly seems to encourage the mind to stay with worldly things. This is where the idea of celibacy arose: by negating the imperatives of this circuit, one remains free and has a chance at enlightenment, satori, nirvana, by realizing the mind of god, by getting a job as a Holy Man, etc.


[We moderns deserve some sort of credit for, at some point, insisting that we can have our cake and eat it too: I'm sure there are mommies and daddies out there who also have very active, rich spiritual lives. I have personally known a few myself. It isn't easy, from what I could see. But back to genetics and social evolution...]


Okay, so what about homosexuality? If this evolutionarily-evolved genetic circuit which has to do with morality, sex, taboo, and being a parent does as supposed by Wilson and Leary, what was homosexuality?


Wilson compares it to left-handedness, and says it was encoded in the genetic script to serve "an auxiliary function." In tribal and band societies, homosexuals were shunted into the role of the shaman, the healer, the witch-doctor. In modern, complex societies, homosexuals are pushed into the role of intellectual or artist, both of which still play a shamanic role. Other non-child-bearing "outsiders" who fit in here with the homosexuals are the heterosexual bachelor/bachelorette, the hermit, and the spinster. (Wasn't that a Pedro Almodovar film?) But the intellectual/artist plays a special shamanic role in "making, breaking, or transforming cultural signals."

In a footnote about the role of homosexuals in the genetic scheme of evolution, Wilson gets off into his characteristically bold and jazzily-creative speculative riffs, viz:

"Those who claim any perennial sexual variation is 'against nature' are underestimating nature's variety, diversity, and economy. The 'mutation' of Leonardo da Vinci, a left-handed homosexual, was needed to break up the signal of the dying medieval reality-tunnel and remake our perceptions into the reality-tunnel of post-Renaissance scientific humanism. His success is registered by the fact that a Leonardo painting is still the 'norm' of what we mean by 'realism,' i.e, most people (including right-handed heterosexuals) are living in the scientific-humanist 'space' this man invented."

Now, as a right-handed heterosexual with no children, I don't know about you, but I welcome Leonardo with open arms, as one of "us."

The present blogger sees the entire oeuvre of Robert Anton Wilson as a cornucopia of the Generalist at his/her most dazzlingly brilliant and fecund.