A Hot-Eyed Moderate: Essays by Jane Rule

Author:Jane Rule [Rule, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781480429680
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2013-06-17T16:00:00+00:00

Sexual Infancy

WE HAVE SPENT TOO much sexual time either aping heterosexual marriage to exonerate ourselves or accepting outlaw status and flaunting it, trying to be either the good or the bad children of our culture. We have not spent enough time defining ourselves, our particular needs, desires, and goals. Every time I try to write about sexual and moral choices, I find myself starting back with Adam and Eve, and I’ve written the outline of a book rather than an essay before I even get to the 19th century. I feel I have to give historical, scholarly evidence for a view I have arrived at, which is that much of what has been said about human sexuality is so much hocus-pocus, whether it has to do with the evil nature of woman as the downfall of man, the homosexual component in us all which must be sublimated for the sake of human culture, or the dark, anti-social forces in man which make him a rapist and murderer.

We have no real way of knowing what kinds of sexual creatures we would be if we had been allowed to grow up in our sexuality. What we do know is that some of us are so fearful, guilty, and hung up that any sexual experience is too threatening, and many more of us cope only by hedging it round with restrictions and taboos. Those who achieve the freedom to do what they really want often get there only by means of drugs and then feel more comfortable by isolating that experience so that the implications of those appetites don’t have to be dealt with in domestic, affectionate living.

We talk too much as if our sexual tastes were fixed. That, too, is a defensive habit of mind. For we all know that we grow and change sexually as we do in every other way, if we allow ourselves to. Edna St. Vincent Millay was my favorite poet and the Catholic spinster school principal an object of my desire when I was fourteen. The first time she ever kissed me was last month when I ran into her visiting another friend in an old people’s home. Even she has changed that much! But it’s not a fantasy I still cherish. Nor do I any longer read Edna St. Vincent Millay. We grow up. We grow old.

Men, probably because they do not get pregnant, have always been able to confront their sexual needs as something separate from their domestic lives. Men mainly interested in women have had to marry or pay or rape until quite recently. What is remarkable about recreational sex gay men celebrate more and more openly is not its detachment from meaningful relationship—whore houses have provided that for centuries—but its detachment from commerce or coercion. “Instant gratification” is a term associated with infants, something that, as we grow up, we learn not to demand or expect.

What some gay men may always have known is how to recreate their infancy and childhood together. One gay bar in Vancouver is called “The Play Pen.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.