E.B. Barrett's Blog: Sex in an Age of Backlash
May 1, 2021
Empathy and Appropriation
As a queer and gender-fluid person born female, I never stopped to think until recently whether writing male central characters and male/male relationships was appropriation. I’m not a man. How could I appropriately write about the experience of a gay or bisexual man? Am I misappropriating?
Possibly, yes. I am open to being called out for that.
I’ve also written many characters who are not white females—as I am classified by external perceptions. The characters are who they are when they come to my imagination. I try not to write cultural or ethnic experiences to which I do not belong unless they are purely imaginary. But if I were to expressly write everyone in my stories to only be white female of my age up to the time of writing, my work would be quite limited and would contribute to an excess in the world of that perspective.
I will continue to write what the muses send me. I might have to keep some of it permanently in a drawer in order to stand out of others’ way during these much-needed times of social status readjustment.
I believe that those of us with privileged lives, and those of us with mixed privileged and non-privileged aspects of our social status, must step aside when opportunities arise for people who have had longstanding non-privileged status. I also think that a multiplicity of diverse characters written by as many respectful writers as possible could contribute to the reduction of implicit bias—the more readers encounter people of every race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, and age, the less they see the world primarily from their own “categories.”
There was a time when women were not allowed on stage and were played (and parodied) only by men. That was appropriation. Then, men played men and women played women, even if only men’s work on the page was performed in public, and that was progress. Women began sometimes being cast as men, and men sometimes portrayed women—that seemed less appropriation and more empathy and skill. It seemed that society had cracked the gender trap a bit and actors could be actors and bring anyone to life. But then, gay actors were afraid to come out for fear of being excluded from "straight" roles.
We are now adapting acting to more openness and we are stumbling along the way. If there are very few screen roles a year for trans women, then by all means, trans-women should be cast. Trans-women should also be cast as any women. I also hope for a time when a myriad of roles abound across categories and actors can embody any character for whom they can put in the work and make the case. Active empathy is one of the practices that makes art transcendent for artist and audience.
Self-adopted categories and labels free us from the oppressors’ old boxes, and then those new names will also work to confine us, so we will change them again as the need arises. The contraction and expansion, exhalation and inhalation, continues.
Possibly, yes. I am open to being called out for that.
I’ve also written many characters who are not white females—as I am classified by external perceptions. The characters are who they are when they come to my imagination. I try not to write cultural or ethnic experiences to which I do not belong unless they are purely imaginary. But if I were to expressly write everyone in my stories to only be white female of my age up to the time of writing, my work would be quite limited and would contribute to an excess in the world of that perspective.
I will continue to write what the muses send me. I might have to keep some of it permanently in a drawer in order to stand out of others’ way during these much-needed times of social status readjustment.
I believe that those of us with privileged lives, and those of us with mixed privileged and non-privileged aspects of our social status, must step aside when opportunities arise for people who have had longstanding non-privileged status. I also think that a multiplicity of diverse characters written by as many respectful writers as possible could contribute to the reduction of implicit bias—the more readers encounter people of every race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, and age, the less they see the world primarily from their own “categories.”
There was a time when women were not allowed on stage and were played (and parodied) only by men. That was appropriation. Then, men played men and women played women, even if only men’s work on the page was performed in public, and that was progress. Women began sometimes being cast as men, and men sometimes portrayed women—that seemed less appropriation and more empathy and skill. It seemed that society had cracked the gender trap a bit and actors could be actors and bring anyone to life. But then, gay actors were afraid to come out for fear of being excluded from "straight" roles.
We are now adapting acting to more openness and we are stumbling along the way. If there are very few screen roles a year for trans women, then by all means, trans-women should be cast. Trans-women should also be cast as any women. I also hope for a time when a myriad of roles abound across categories and actors can embody any character for whom they can put in the work and make the case. Active empathy is one of the practices that makes art transcendent for artist and audience.
Self-adopted categories and labels free us from the oppressors’ old boxes, and then those new names will also work to confine us, so we will change them again as the need arises. The contraction and expansion, exhalation and inhalation, continues.
July 23, 2017
The Problem of Pronouns
This morning, I read an article in The Guardian about gender fluidity, and I find myself struggling again with available pronouns.
As a child, I felt definitively that I was a boy. I eschewed female identity when and how I could, given limited options and the persistence of parents. To my parents’ credit, they gave toddler-me dolls and a workbench, and primary-school-me sewing lessons and mechanical training, so I flew under the radar for a time as a mere tomboy. My mother did worry out loud that my insistence into puberty upon boy roles in plays and at Halloween meant I was going to be a lesbian. She didn't know the half of it.
I mourned and burned with shame when hormones inevitably (at that time) forced me into the world of perceived women. The horror came in no small part because of the confining gender roles attributed to my biology and the sudden changes in what I was and was not allowed to do and who my friends could be. But social roles weren’t the only reason for the internal turmoil. Instead of being thrilled with the transforming body as many of my peers were, I hated me every step of the way. I wished for androgyny, for the shift to be limited, and was sorely disappointed. The relationship of my gender identity and my physicality is, even now, now one of détente. Mirrors and photos continue to startle me.
Having done my best to adapt, I came to think of myself in college social psychology as a female with a strong animus in the Jungian sense, and that largely settled my angst. Some days, I feel more male with a strong anima, and some days, I feel balanced. This is extremely difficult to explain to others who don’t share my difference.
I became a feminist in high school. I embraced the social justice movement to end the subjugation of the female. That will always be important to me. In the struggle, details matter, pronouns matter. Later, in editing legal documents, I doggedly searched and replaced the ubiquitous he and the less regular he or she with s/he. I knew that the stickler higher-ups would insist that I change the words back (the men-partners marked up text and handed the changes back to the women-subordinates to word process), but that they would be forced subconsciously to acknowledge their act of denial and oppression.
Biology continued to haunt me. I very much wanted to be a parent, and in my mind, the role was always mother--perhaps because I had no other framework to think of it. My partner and I planned for gender-neutral children’s names, toys, and rearing; our children would not be forced to be either a princess or a warrior. To my deep frustration, my female biology didn’t cooperate with that plan, and I was left to think, “All that damn bleeding for nothing.” Feminists say that Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels, I’ve sometimes jokingly added, “and in a white satin gown with a raging period.” Conducting intense professional activities while Armageddon takes place in one’s underclothing is a high-wire act. I’m not the only biological woman to hate the confines of the female body at times. I have also come to respect the different lenses the cycle brings to my perception.
Attraction to people across gender boundaries, which began early and has persisted through my life, did not help with my sense of not belonging to “either or.” I have had to learn to accept my bisexuality as well as my gender struggle, understanding them to be different issues in active conversation with one another. Sexuality helped me to better accept the form that nature assigned me, and also caused me to find it limiting.
The love of my life, while not markedly dimorphic, is an unequivocal he. He has embraced my differences even when I am at a loss to accept or express them. Even with an amazing partner, I do not often speak out loud about what others fail to perceive about me. I am embedded in an extended family as a wife with a traditional woman’s roles, in part because I have not insisted otherwise. As a result, some people who think they are close to me don’t really know me.
As the trans movement has become more known, I have found myself identifying with trans children on the cusp of adolescence and the horror they express at impending puberty, being forced where they do not belong. I wonder what I would have wanted to do had there been options. I don’t find myself now thinking I want to be reassigned, perhaps, because I know I don’t fit firmly in either gender. Choosing a gender now would be as great an act of self-aggression as puberty was a violation of my person.
I learned in The Guardian article that many gender-fluid persons use the pronoun we and us for individual self-reference and prefer they and them when others speak of them individually. They perhaps follow in the footsteps of some of the First Peoples of North America, understanding the existence of a third gender comprised of two-spirits or two-souls, in the probably-inadequate English translation. The Navajo had words for at least five genders. I advocate for people being called what they want to be called—names, categories, identities, and I will follow what a person wants in this regard as well. Yet, I find myself reflecting on the inadequacy of English, and I want something more apt for myself.
I am not multiple personalities. I am the same person whether expressing through one gender or another, at one age or another. My personality probability cloud may appear to others to shift depending upon whether my anima or animus or a balanced combination is in the lead, but I’m me. Women are socialized to use collective pronouns, to be inclusive and unselfish; I had to retrain myself not to shy from the I and me, and thus I am unwilling now to surrender those individual pronouns to explain further who I am in a more inclusive way. In English, the first-person is blissfully free of gender boxes. The third-person term is binary gendered and so we need a new, third way. Using the plural seems to reinforce the idea of an internal schism or variety that still falls short of explaining the richness of the whole person. My search for le mot juste continues.
As a child, I felt definitively that I was a boy. I eschewed female identity when and how I could, given limited options and the persistence of parents. To my parents’ credit, they gave toddler-me dolls and a workbench, and primary-school-me sewing lessons and mechanical training, so I flew under the radar for a time as a mere tomboy. My mother did worry out loud that my insistence into puberty upon boy roles in plays and at Halloween meant I was going to be a lesbian. She didn't know the half of it.
I mourned and burned with shame when hormones inevitably (at that time) forced me into the world of perceived women. The horror came in no small part because of the confining gender roles attributed to my biology and the sudden changes in what I was and was not allowed to do and who my friends could be. But social roles weren’t the only reason for the internal turmoil. Instead of being thrilled with the transforming body as many of my peers were, I hated me every step of the way. I wished for androgyny, for the shift to be limited, and was sorely disappointed. The relationship of my gender identity and my physicality is, even now, now one of détente. Mirrors and photos continue to startle me.
Having done my best to adapt, I came to think of myself in college social psychology as a female with a strong animus in the Jungian sense, and that largely settled my angst. Some days, I feel more male with a strong anima, and some days, I feel balanced. This is extremely difficult to explain to others who don’t share my difference.
I became a feminist in high school. I embraced the social justice movement to end the subjugation of the female. That will always be important to me. In the struggle, details matter, pronouns matter. Later, in editing legal documents, I doggedly searched and replaced the ubiquitous he and the less regular he or she with s/he. I knew that the stickler higher-ups would insist that I change the words back (the men-partners marked up text and handed the changes back to the women-subordinates to word process), but that they would be forced subconsciously to acknowledge their act of denial and oppression.
Biology continued to haunt me. I very much wanted to be a parent, and in my mind, the role was always mother--perhaps because I had no other framework to think of it. My partner and I planned for gender-neutral children’s names, toys, and rearing; our children would not be forced to be either a princess or a warrior. To my deep frustration, my female biology didn’t cooperate with that plan, and I was left to think, “All that damn bleeding for nothing.” Feminists say that Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels, I’ve sometimes jokingly added, “and in a white satin gown with a raging period.” Conducting intense professional activities while Armageddon takes place in one’s underclothing is a high-wire act. I’m not the only biological woman to hate the confines of the female body at times. I have also come to respect the different lenses the cycle brings to my perception.
Attraction to people across gender boundaries, which began early and has persisted through my life, did not help with my sense of not belonging to “either or.” I have had to learn to accept my bisexuality as well as my gender struggle, understanding them to be different issues in active conversation with one another. Sexuality helped me to better accept the form that nature assigned me, and also caused me to find it limiting.
The love of my life, while not markedly dimorphic, is an unequivocal he. He has embraced my differences even when I am at a loss to accept or express them. Even with an amazing partner, I do not often speak out loud about what others fail to perceive about me. I am embedded in an extended family as a wife with a traditional woman’s roles, in part because I have not insisted otherwise. As a result, some people who think they are close to me don’t really know me.
As the trans movement has become more known, I have found myself identifying with trans children on the cusp of adolescence and the horror they express at impending puberty, being forced where they do not belong. I wonder what I would have wanted to do had there been options. I don’t find myself now thinking I want to be reassigned, perhaps, because I know I don’t fit firmly in either gender. Choosing a gender now would be as great an act of self-aggression as puberty was a violation of my person.
I learned in The Guardian article that many gender-fluid persons use the pronoun we and us for individual self-reference and prefer they and them when others speak of them individually. They perhaps follow in the footsteps of some of the First Peoples of North America, understanding the existence of a third gender comprised of two-spirits or two-souls, in the probably-inadequate English translation. The Navajo had words for at least five genders. I advocate for people being called what they want to be called—names, categories, identities, and I will follow what a person wants in this regard as well. Yet, I find myself reflecting on the inadequacy of English, and I want something more apt for myself.
I am not multiple personalities. I am the same person whether expressing through one gender or another, at one age or another. My personality probability cloud may appear to others to shift depending upon whether my anima or animus or a balanced combination is in the lead, but I’m me. Women are socialized to use collective pronouns, to be inclusive and unselfish; I had to retrain myself not to shy from the I and me, and thus I am unwilling now to surrender those individual pronouns to explain further who I am in a more inclusive way. In English, the first-person is blissfully free of gender boxes. The third-person term is binary gendered and so we need a new, third way. Using the plural seems to reinforce the idea of an internal schism or variety that still falls short of explaining the richness of the whole person. My search for le mot juste continues.
March 7, 2017
Feminism and Freedom
I feel badly for Emma Watson. Like so many women before her, including other outspoken advocates for feminism, she is damned if she does and damned if she doesn't. I love her statement, "Feminism is not a stick with which to beat other women." A lovely photo, including her head, shoulders, waist, hands, and mostly-covered, slightly exposed breasts, at the very end of an artful fashion shoot, have become the stick with which to beat her and brand her a hypocrite. I suspect that this is a lingering thread of female subjugation by the patriarchy in which we criticize one another for ruining it for the rest of us.
And yet, while I heard outrage at Kellyanne Conway kneeling like a high school kid at a slumber party on the couch in the Oval Office during a decorous meeting of African American leadership, I did not hear feminist outrage. Where were the women decrying how she's ruining it for the rest of us too-few, high-level women professionals? At least Emma Watson was photographed in keeping with the guidelines of her profession.
I write about sex. My subjects are naked a great deal, including the women. They have--if I am doing my job well--complex lives and contexts, but I'm capturing them as free as they can be in the moment. Not all of them are running multi-billion dollar companies and living fully liberated. I support the right of women to write and read whatever fantasies they like, including rough sex and women submitting to rich men although these are not my particular fare.
If we are to be free, we can't keep shoving each other back into the same boxes that men handed us. If this means I have to trust and respect a women for choosing to wear a hijab or for displaying her bare chest like a man would show his, I will learn to swallow my judgment and think carefully before I brand her "not feminist."
And yet, while I heard outrage at Kellyanne Conway kneeling like a high school kid at a slumber party on the couch in the Oval Office during a decorous meeting of African American leadership, I did not hear feminist outrage. Where were the women decrying how she's ruining it for the rest of us too-few, high-level women professionals? At least Emma Watson was photographed in keeping with the guidelines of her profession.
I write about sex. My subjects are naked a great deal, including the women. They have--if I am doing my job well--complex lives and contexts, but I'm capturing them as free as they can be in the moment. Not all of them are running multi-billion dollar companies and living fully liberated. I support the right of women to write and read whatever fantasies they like, including rough sex and women submitting to rich men although these are not my particular fare.
If we are to be free, we can't keep shoving each other back into the same boxes that men handed us. If this means I have to trust and respect a women for choosing to wear a hijab or for displaying her bare chest like a man would show his, I will learn to swallow my judgment and think carefully before I brand her "not feminist."
August 31, 2015
The Curse of the Naked Torso
Neither of my erotic books has semi-naked people on the cover. Maybe that was a mistake, but I didn't really have marketing in mind when I chose the art. I know that sounds nuts, but I want to be proud of these being out in the world into the future, and I want the art to convey more of what is inside than the sex, which is already advertised in the category. I write for myself, because I need to write. I published for reasons I described in my last post. Only in the past month have I tried to do anything with promotion. Cart, meet horse.
The cover of Water for the Thirsty suggests lack of clothing behind cascading water, but it isn't explicit. And I can't regret the decision to use a sweater-clad young man for the face of Torn—the moment I saw the wistful photo, I saw James.
The flesh cover is nearly ubiquitous for erotic ebooks. My rate of clicks is low, which means that people aren't interested at first glance. If they clicked through and then didn't buy, I would bemoan the fact that Kindle displays the acknowledgements and prologue before the text itself, a reason not to put all that stuff at the beginning next time I publish. In fact, why did I forget that the second time around? Or, I'd have to face the fact that people are reading into the sample and aren't liking the material. But they aren't getting that far, so my ego can rest easy a little bit longer.
Perhaps ample skin is now a minimum, a threshold requirement, for anyone to even consider looking at a sample of the book. I too like abs, pecs of both sexes, and most especially, that curve of muscle right next to a man's hipbone that lacks a simple name. But when I click through on a book, it's usually because the description catches my fancy, a plot or character interests me. After all, I'm buying the words.
So, is it the cover that's lacking, or do I need a more compelling 140-character description? I've been switching them out every few days and the rate of clicks hasn't changed. And I feel constrained by the admonition against sexually explicit content in the description. The question of cover is a moot point for Torn, but I will have to consider the issue with future works.
The cover of Water for the Thirsty suggests lack of clothing behind cascading water, but it isn't explicit. And I can't regret the decision to use a sweater-clad young man for the face of Torn—the moment I saw the wistful photo, I saw James.
The flesh cover is nearly ubiquitous for erotic ebooks. My rate of clicks is low, which means that people aren't interested at first glance. If they clicked through and then didn't buy, I would bemoan the fact that Kindle displays the acknowledgements and prologue before the text itself, a reason not to put all that stuff at the beginning next time I publish. In fact, why did I forget that the second time around? Or, I'd have to face the fact that people are reading into the sample and aren't liking the material. But they aren't getting that far, so my ego can rest easy a little bit longer.
Perhaps ample skin is now a minimum, a threshold requirement, for anyone to even consider looking at a sample of the book. I too like abs, pecs of both sexes, and most especially, that curve of muscle right next to a man's hipbone that lacks a simple name. But when I click through on a book, it's usually because the description catches my fancy, a plot or character interests me. After all, I'm buying the words.
So, is it the cover that's lacking, or do I need a more compelling 140-character description? I've been switching them out every few days and the rate of clicks hasn't changed. And I feel constrained by the admonition against sexually explicit content in the description. The question of cover is a moot point for Torn, but I will have to consider the issue with future works.
August 26, 2015
Expression and Being Heard
Enough politics for a bit…. I've been a writer most of my life—nonfiction and fiction. My primary forms are short stories and poems. I never had an audience or really sought one. A newspaper article I wrote was published in the local paper in high school after I sent it in at my mother's urging. My college art magazine accepted and published one of my poems and one of my drawings, which I submitted in a single, unusual moment of exhibitionism.
From the age of thirteen, I wrote erotica and prayed that no one would ever find it.
My writing skills served me in my various jobs. As far as "artistic" writing, I wrote purely because I was driven to do so. I wasn't one of those people who dreamed of being a published writer, I always assumed that in the vast ocean of authors, I wouldn't be anything special.
In the early 2000s, I stumbled one day upon slash fanfiction during an internet search about one of the Lord of the Rings filming locations. I was shocked and intrigued. I clicked, I read. At the time, there was really only one archive and some budding Yahoo groups. I found amongst the many less interesting works, three writers whose work I was compelled to read. I waited, anxiously, for their new postings.
And then I became inspired. I wrote, I posted. Within weeks, I had hundreds of fans and torrents of comments--nearly all of them compliments, and nearly all of them written with thought and care. I'm certain that's a peculiar experience few writers in the literary world enjoy. Surprisingly, most comments were about the literary quality of the writing as well as or rather than commentary on the erotic content. That gave me strength. I started my first novel, which took me over five years to finish.
The anonymity of writing fanfic under a pseudonym was freeing. I discovered that with an idea in mind, I could write and edit rapidly. I discovered the wonder of having a beta reader, and learned to accept sometimes very personal constructive criticism. Forums and archives were springing up (and disappearing), and my work spread across the internet and the world. I enjoyed popularity for the first time in my life. It became somewhat dangerously addictive. Getting that back in balance might be a topic for another entry.
Parallel with fanfic, I was writing original stories. In 2014, I had enough for a collection, and I decided to self-publish because of some of my fanfic reader comments about how I had touched their lives. It made me feel meaningful. My strange little stories about love, sex, loss, and coping would be out there in the world, floating in the ether long after I'm gone. If even a handful of people read the stories and are affected, finding greater acceptance and happiness, how cool would that be?
It has been an odd journey. Under this pseudonym, I have no fans or followers and only one goodreads friend so far—a dear one, one of the writers who inspired me in the first place. I'm not in a position to network among friends, family, colleagues. The tree is falling in the woods and there's no one to hear. I knew that would be the case when I decided to self-publish, and it is okay. Lack of an audience hasn't stopped the flow of words. Although I have little time these days to write, I show up to the page when I can make that time. The discipline necessary to keep up fanfic works in progress taught me that. Ultimately, I write because I must; whether or not anyone ever hears what I have to say, the expression itself is a necessity.
From the age of thirteen, I wrote erotica and prayed that no one would ever find it.
My writing skills served me in my various jobs. As far as "artistic" writing, I wrote purely because I was driven to do so. I wasn't one of those people who dreamed of being a published writer, I always assumed that in the vast ocean of authors, I wouldn't be anything special.
In the early 2000s, I stumbled one day upon slash fanfiction during an internet search about one of the Lord of the Rings filming locations. I was shocked and intrigued. I clicked, I read. At the time, there was really only one archive and some budding Yahoo groups. I found amongst the many less interesting works, three writers whose work I was compelled to read. I waited, anxiously, for their new postings.
And then I became inspired. I wrote, I posted. Within weeks, I had hundreds of fans and torrents of comments--nearly all of them compliments, and nearly all of them written with thought and care. I'm certain that's a peculiar experience few writers in the literary world enjoy. Surprisingly, most comments were about the literary quality of the writing as well as or rather than commentary on the erotic content. That gave me strength. I started my first novel, which took me over five years to finish.
The anonymity of writing fanfic under a pseudonym was freeing. I discovered that with an idea in mind, I could write and edit rapidly. I discovered the wonder of having a beta reader, and learned to accept sometimes very personal constructive criticism. Forums and archives were springing up (and disappearing), and my work spread across the internet and the world. I enjoyed popularity for the first time in my life. It became somewhat dangerously addictive. Getting that back in balance might be a topic for another entry.
Parallel with fanfic, I was writing original stories. In 2014, I had enough for a collection, and I decided to self-publish because of some of my fanfic reader comments about how I had touched their lives. It made me feel meaningful. My strange little stories about love, sex, loss, and coping would be out there in the world, floating in the ether long after I'm gone. If even a handful of people read the stories and are affected, finding greater acceptance and happiness, how cool would that be?
It has been an odd journey. Under this pseudonym, I have no fans or followers and only one goodreads friend so far—a dear one, one of the writers who inspired me in the first place. I'm not in a position to network among friends, family, colleagues. The tree is falling in the woods and there's no one to hear. I knew that would be the case when I decided to self-publish, and it is okay. Lack of an audience hasn't stopped the flow of words. Although I have little time these days to write, I show up to the page when I can make that time. The discipline necessary to keep up fanfic works in progress taught me that. Ultimately, I write because I must; whether or not anyone ever hears what I have to say, the expression itself is a necessity.
August 24, 2015
Bi in an Either-Or World
In 2014, Eugene Voloch, writing for the Washington Post, presented some data collected by the National Health Interview Survey:
"Based on the 2013 NHIS data [collected in 2013 from 34,557 adults aged 18 and over], 96.6% of adults identified as straight, 1.6% identified as gay or lesbian, and 0.7% identified as bisexual. The remaining 1.1% of adults identified as “something else[]” [0.2%,] stated “I don’t know the answer[]” [0.4%] or refused to provide an answer [0.6%]."
Voloch then stated, "More specifically, 1.8 percent of men self-identify as gay and 0.4 percent as bisexual, and 1.5 percent of women self-identify as lesbian and 0.9 percent as bisexual… The results are generally in the same ballpark as past estimates — and far below the long-debunked 10 percent estimate."
According to the survey, those who identify as bi (and are willing to say so, unequivocally) are 0.7% of the population over 18. Earth is host to something like 7,362,300,000 humans, and counting while I'm blogging. That's 51,536,100 bisexual people in the entire world. Statistically, we might as well not exist. In real numbers, we're close to the population of the UK—think of the importance of the UK in the world. But we aren't a country unto ourselves, and we don't set the rules for any of the societies in which we quietly live.
It's highly unlikely that the 99.3% are going to actively accommodate the rest of us. But then I also wonder, why fear and revile us? I'm accustomed to being in rare company. I also have the rarest blood type, but I'm not stigmatized for it.
I'm not surprised that the heterosexual world would like bi people to "choose" to be straight. I'm more surprised that gay and lesbian identifying folks generally wish we would "choose" as well. We are a problem for our few political and social allies. Then again, it makes sense that cultures that allow for homosexuality, but insist upon monogamy, will necessarily urge the bi person to express only one aspect of her or his sexuality. Even if each bi person had one partner of each gender, that still leaves plenty for everyone else. That's a tongue-in-cheek remark.
I've been raised in a hetero and monogamous culture. I'm not proud of my own jealous nature that isn't suited to flexible relationships. I wonder, if I had been raised differently, if I could be more tolerant of the relationship structures that would be necessary to live as an expressed bisexual person throughout life.
Of course, expression doesn't only take place in the act of sex. Participating in art, politics, and social interactions, loving who you love whether or not you bed all of them, and allowing the space in your own mind to self-recognize—that's living bi too.
"Based on the 2013 NHIS data [collected in 2013 from 34,557 adults aged 18 and over], 96.6% of adults identified as straight, 1.6% identified as gay or lesbian, and 0.7% identified as bisexual. The remaining 1.1% of adults identified as “something else[]” [0.2%,] stated “I don’t know the answer[]” [0.4%] or refused to provide an answer [0.6%]."
Voloch then stated, "More specifically, 1.8 percent of men self-identify as gay and 0.4 percent as bisexual, and 1.5 percent of women self-identify as lesbian and 0.9 percent as bisexual… The results are generally in the same ballpark as past estimates — and far below the long-debunked 10 percent estimate."
According to the survey, those who identify as bi (and are willing to say so, unequivocally) are 0.7% of the population over 18. Earth is host to something like 7,362,300,000 humans, and counting while I'm blogging. That's 51,536,100 bisexual people in the entire world. Statistically, we might as well not exist. In real numbers, we're close to the population of the UK—think of the importance of the UK in the world. But we aren't a country unto ourselves, and we don't set the rules for any of the societies in which we quietly live.
It's highly unlikely that the 99.3% are going to actively accommodate the rest of us. But then I also wonder, why fear and revile us? I'm accustomed to being in rare company. I also have the rarest blood type, but I'm not stigmatized for it.
I'm not surprised that the heterosexual world would like bi people to "choose" to be straight. I'm more surprised that gay and lesbian identifying folks generally wish we would "choose" as well. We are a problem for our few political and social allies. Then again, it makes sense that cultures that allow for homosexuality, but insist upon monogamy, will necessarily urge the bi person to express only one aspect of her or his sexuality. Even if each bi person had one partner of each gender, that still leaves plenty for everyone else. That's a tongue-in-cheek remark.
I've been raised in a hetero and monogamous culture. I'm not proud of my own jealous nature that isn't suited to flexible relationships. I wonder, if I had been raised differently, if I could be more tolerant of the relationship structures that would be necessary to live as an expressed bisexual person throughout life.
Of course, expression doesn't only take place in the act of sex. Participating in art, politics, and social interactions, loving who you love whether or not you bed all of them, and allowing the space in your own mind to self-recognize—that's living bi too.
August 3, 2015
Reconciling Feminism, Fantasy, and Fetish
I'm a feminist and I try to act accordingly in word and deed, recognizing that I'm inherently biased, embedded in a society that still suffers from institutionalized sexism and genderism. There are times that a character isn't a fully actualized, enlightened person of the time, and I find myself writing actions that don't comport with my beliefs. This must be true of any writer engaging in the exercise of multicultural, multiple-perspective realistic fiction. I understand that the most forward-thinking writers of each era, like Shakespeare and Mark Twain, wrote scenarios and lines that were later debated for not being in keeping with the time in which they are being read. I must, therefore, fall short as well.
When the subjects are sexual fantasy and fetish, the difficulty for a feminist writer is greater. What if a character's or reader's sexual cueing was affected by reading a parent's stash of Hustler magazines? She might wish with all her heart that women wearing ball-gags didn't do it for her, but they do. Should the feminist writer avoid such subjects, or always switch the genders to try to balance out a preponderance of women-as-victim portrayals? I've struggled with this question a great many times. Ideally, perhaps each work of art should stand alone, and yet it cannot, it interacts with the context of all the other works of art into which it is introduced. I still don't have a good answer to the question. The artist does have some responsibility. I choose to believe that variety is the answer as it often is in nature.
I tend to write in that state in which it feels as though characters are real people who exist independently of me, and I'm just observing what happens among them and writing it down. I try not to censor them. I tune my ear or my observation to what is more interesting to me, which tends to filter out some of the dissonance, but not all of it. When I feel uncomfortable with something that transpires, rather than blocking it, I find myself looking around the world the character inhabits to find a balancing character to write about, or a new experience to present to the character with whom I'm uncomfortable to see whether he or she can change or adapt. Readers comment that the emergent complexity makes my stories more interesting. I appreciate that feedback and yet I find myself revisiting the dilemma in nearly every story I write.
When the subjects are sexual fantasy and fetish, the difficulty for a feminist writer is greater. What if a character's or reader's sexual cueing was affected by reading a parent's stash of Hustler magazines? She might wish with all her heart that women wearing ball-gags didn't do it for her, but they do. Should the feminist writer avoid such subjects, or always switch the genders to try to balance out a preponderance of women-as-victim portrayals? I've struggled with this question a great many times. Ideally, perhaps each work of art should stand alone, and yet it cannot, it interacts with the context of all the other works of art into which it is introduced. I still don't have a good answer to the question. The artist does have some responsibility. I choose to believe that variety is the answer as it often is in nature.
I tend to write in that state in which it feels as though characters are real people who exist independently of me, and I'm just observing what happens among them and writing it down. I try not to censor them. I tune my ear or my observation to what is more interesting to me, which tends to filter out some of the dissonance, but not all of it. When I feel uncomfortable with something that transpires, rather than blocking it, I find myself looking around the world the character inhabits to find a balancing character to write about, or a new experience to present to the character with whom I'm uncomfortable to see whether he or she can change or adapt. Readers comment that the emergent complexity makes my stories more interesting. I appreciate that feedback and yet I find myself revisiting the dilemma in nearly every story I write.
August 2, 2015
Context
Details of our world become invisible because the context is familiar; other details remain impenetrable because the context is unfamiliar.
Porn and Process
Creative expressions of sexual energy, in any art form, are key to ongoing human evolution. Debates about potentially harmful effects of porn, particularly on the developing preadolescent mind, must be had. I'm not into censorship, even when what is hitting the "airwaves" feels vile to me. I believe in great variety and thoroughly tagged transmission to allow individual choice. Where I draw the line in reality media depends upon whether the act that produced the material was coerced or truly consensual—that isn't about censorship, it's about freedom from actual victimization, thought-expression versus behavior that infringes on others' rights. I'm particularly concerned about "amateur" videos passed off as consensual without any safeguards.
In the written world, as in the mind itself, where there is only muse and artist, consent is clear. The reader joins that conversation voluntarily, deciding at any moment to lay the words aside. Yet, I find myself worried at the huge volume of written material subjugating women that is still produced and consumed by both men and women in 2015 in comparison to the other varieties of stories.
As a woman, I am affected by rage-porn in any form. There's so much of it trying to flash across my screen despite every block I can muster that I would have to guess that at least one out of every ten people with whom I'm in regular contact in my everyday life must partake of it. As both genders living in a woman's body, I also understand the limbic impulses that feed the industry, and I'm not sure that ignoring or repressing them helps.
I think that the antidote is again, variety. As more women and men make more erotica and porn in all the variations that tease the human mind, while some people will remain inexorably cued to hate and alienation of the other--probably because of formative experiences--the rest will surf everything that's available and will realize that consent isn't boring.
In the written world, as in the mind itself, where there is only muse and artist, consent is clear. The reader joins that conversation voluntarily, deciding at any moment to lay the words aside. Yet, I find myself worried at the huge volume of written material subjugating women that is still produced and consumed by both men and women in 2015 in comparison to the other varieties of stories.
As a woman, I am affected by rage-porn in any form. There's so much of it trying to flash across my screen despite every block I can muster that I would have to guess that at least one out of every ten people with whom I'm in regular contact in my everyday life must partake of it. As both genders living in a woman's body, I also understand the limbic impulses that feed the industry, and I'm not sure that ignoring or repressing them helps.
I think that the antidote is again, variety. As more women and men make more erotica and porn in all the variations that tease the human mind, while some people will remain inexorably cued to hate and alienation of the other--probably because of formative experiences--the rest will surf everything that's available and will realize that consent isn't boring.
Sex in an Age of Backlash
One of life's basic necessities, as well as one of the luxuries, sex becomes especially complex among creatures having highly developed inferior frontal gyri. The ethics and politics of sex are embedd
...more
- E.B. Barrett's profile
- 1 follower
