Exploring my sexuality

When I am doing a series of posts, it often feels right to go in threes. 

There is a long history of people conflating gender and sexual orientation, though I think there has been progress on that. It may be less common for people to think about the difference between sexual orientation and sexuality; that's whom you're interested in and what you do with them, right?

It may be much more about how you do what you do, and not exclusive to the bedroom.

First of all, I should say that in a lot of my feminist readings over time, I have noticed that for many men sex is mostly about force; not necessarily rape, but how hard even the consensual sex is done. 

I remember one woman who had a boyfriend like that. Later her doctor thought she had been violently assaulted because of the scarring. She hadn't really enjoyed it, but she accepted that was how it should be.

Then you have men who claim women are actually incapable of orgasm; it's the only acceptible explanation for why a woman has never had one with them. There is this new trend -- and it is so ignorant I hope it is not widely spread, but can't be sure -- where there are men saying that sperm alters women's DNA so if you have children with a non-virgin, those children will have traits from other men.

No. That's not how that works.

This mindset of sex being something for dominating and changing a woman (without pleasuring her) is really the same misogyny that pays less because they refuse to consider the work equal, while at the same time demanding more household labor and emotional labor without admitting it is labor.

My point is not to bash men (and of course they are not all like that) but to point out once again that dominator culture ruins everything. (I have spent several posts demonstrating that on the Sunday blog.)

What I am more interested in is how things can be better. Some examples come to mind.

First is the segment "Getting Real" from My Grandfather's Blessings by Rachel Naomi Remen.

She starts at a beach where a recent ileostomy has made her feel worse about her body. The many Barbie-perfect bodies (the companions of wealthy men also there) around her made that worse. Then a middle-aged woman -- older, and a little heavier, but with complete confidence -- sauntered out. All of the men and many of the women stopped and looked at her.

"It was my first lesson in the difference between perfection and sexuality."

She moves on to a patient who had always been perfectly beautiful, then needed a mastectomy, and her transformation. The most important part of it was still about the first woman:

"Real sexuality heals. In its presence I could begin to reclaim my own sense of possibility and wholeness, and I am grateful to this woman for inhabiting her body in this way. Without knowing me at all, she helped me to begin to inhabit my own life."

As traumatic as a surgery that removes part of your body can be, you don't need one to be aware of your own body's lack of perfection. If we think of sexuality as sexiness and believe it requires perfection, that can mess us up pretty badly, even if not as badly as equating sex with domination.

Somehow, we need to appreciate the marvels of our bodies and of each other to get at that healing and wholeness.

Alice Wong's Disability Intimacy: Essays on Love, Care, and Desire would surely have some food for thought, but right now I am thinking more of Audre Lorde's "Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power".

For her, the erotic should be a part of sex, but it was also part of creativity and strength. 

"Another important way in which the erotic connection functions is the open and fearless underlining of my capacity for joy."

Look, I have given you three options for further reading and they are all worth looking into. Our individual paths toward wholeness may look very different.

I know that I have felt called toward healing for some time. Part of that journey is my own healing, and part of that is bridging the rift with my body that started so young. There are ways in which I am already better, and areas that still require some work.

It's worth doing for yourself too.