Sexuality: the Gray Area

I'm REALLY enjoying Shoshie's stint over at Feministe. This time, she's written about her experience as a bisexual woman who is married to a man she very much loves and the feelings she has about having never fully explored relationships with women. She writes:

I feel like my sexuality is this weird, awkward thing that sits quietly in the corner until someone assumes that everyone there is straight, and then it has a big ol’ awkward party. It’s become a big question for me, whether or not to come out to people that I meet. Because, at this point, what difference does it make? What does it matter who I’m attracted to? Mr. Shoshie and I are monogamous, so I’m with one person for the foreseeable future. But then, sexuality does come up occasionally and then I feel weird because here’s this person that I’m friends with, that I’ve known for a year, who knows so much about me, but doesn’t know that I also like people who aren’t men. And who I find attractive shouldn’t be a big deal, but somehow it is anyways.

I love this. You see, I believe in the spectrum of sexuality. I believe fully in "the gray area." I think very few people actually fit into nice little boxes. However, society tries really, REALLY hard to make us think that there are nice little boxes. And that we do fit in them. And that we should fit in them. And most of us, at some point, believe that.

Girls, however, have a little more flexibility in these boxes, so long as female bisexuality is performed for male purposes. In my experience, this translated into an interesting phenomena I have witnessed and heard much about. Right around high school and into young adulthood, girls start kissing other girls. And it's cool! And it's hot! And it's fun!

...so long as they're not actually queer and they still go home with a guy that night.

Truth is that there's so much more gray than this. Many girls actually do like other girls, even if they also enjoy sex with dudes. And all that kissing, while culturally accepted as a performance for men, might come from a place of actual attraction. It's foolish to deny that. Wouldn't it all be a lot easier if we embraced the gray and the only female sexuality we saw, was authentically owned by the woman displaying it?

Guess I live in a dream world sometimes.