Memory Project

Simone Blakeslee-Smith

We stand at the sink, he a few inches taller than I. He, in his typical soft sweater, adjusts his black rimmed glasses, tossing the loose curls of his mane back from his face, and piercing my gaze with his own through the reflection. I curl my head against his shoulder, trace fingers along tattoo over heart, as I process the image of what others see when they look at us together. The mirror is dirty, grungy dormitory status; the countertop is covered in too many things to take in. It smells like someone never learned how to wear socks with their shoes. I think stereotypical teenage stoner boy. I think about how my heart fools me into thinking I’m on vacation when I’m with him. I think how did I get here, to this?

His friend walks up, large nose sticking into my business. The two men talk to each other. I know that my facial expression is laugh worthy as I gaze up at him, doe-eyed. How did this happen? Then the friend says something, trying to make a joke I’m later informed, “Ah, what a sweet straight couple.” A few other lines. And I don’t know how it’s funny. My body bristles. I am porcupine. I am black cat.

I want to sink my teeth in defense, but he is oblivious, but I have to say something for me anyways. I eek back an, “Ew, heteronormativity.” I want them to understand that this will never be a straight relationship.

This man is continually understanding and supportive; back in his room he asks me what’s wrong. I get teary as I tell him that it’s hard to not be seen. That I couldn’t find his friend’s antics funny, because they touch too sensitive a place within me. I am defensive against the dismissal of my past, my identity, the complexity of all that I am. There is a fear within me of not being recognized, of not being seen. After all that’s happened, in my own life and in the history of women and queer women, I want to continue being a part of this expansion. He pets my hair and tells me I have his ear. I don’t need to fear. This is expansion. I kiss him. Every moment is expansion, redefinition, embracing…

I don’t want to be placed in another box, this one fashioned from the outside appearance of my relationship. I have been in too many already. It is high time I learned how to live outside of a box, to not rely on its walls to tell me where to exist. My sexuality and sexual identity don’t need to be defined by pre-determined square footage.

I’m using the term boxes to illustrate the seemingly defined boundaries of our expansion. Boxes can be comfortable, but they are built upon averages, majorities, “normal” things that others expect and we expect of ourselves if we are deemed one in this category. To call them out on their box-ness and to live outside their walls is rebellion; it is following one’s own heart as things change and one grows, instead of doing what one is instructed to do.

This is a fresh phenomenon in my own life, as well as in the lives of western women. In the book Gender and Sexuality, the authors1 explain that in the first half of the 20th century, 
“In short, the whole realm of the social, from social structures and cultures to identities and everyday activities, was dominated by biological explanation of the differences and inequalities between men and women, homosexuals and heterosexuals.”2 In France, during the 19th century, this idea existed as well. With the rise of darwinism, and social darwinism as a result, the sexualities of women became an important factor in determining the family’s social position. But more than that, the natural state of a moral woman, those who were wife material, was not sexual. In contrast, in Her Way the author1 states that, “Also, now that the double standard has diminished, a man has less of a whore/madonna complex about his wife, seeing her as a sexual being as well as a mother/‘good girl’,” whereas, “In the past, a man seeking a hotter sex life would be more likely to have an affair with a different kind of women, a ‘bad girl’.”2 This mirrors the rise of prostitution in the past, where women were seen as sexual beings but not good fits for wives, or were wife material and could not be sexual creatures; both expressions of sexuality could not exist within one person.

In the book Gender and Sexuality, the authors also discuss essentialism, which they define thusly: “Essentialism literally means any form of thinking that characterizes or explains aspects of human behavior and identity as part of human ‘essence’; a biologically and/or psychologically irreducible quality of the individual that is immutable and pre-social.”3 They go on to state, “Woman’s sexuality is seen as naturally passive, but also buried deep within her essential biological being, awaited arousal by a man.”4 Women are both seen as sexually passive and, in this quote, dependent upon males for sexual stimulation and awakening. This goes back to the biological inequalities between homosexuals and heterosexuals; it makes sense that lesbians who do not need a man to experience pleasure would both confound and threaten. Within this ideology, there is also little room for growth because everyone is fixed by their “natural” tendencies.

In addition, there were large shifts in the family unit structure due to industrialization in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Rahman and Jackson state, “Many aspects of gender and sexual relations that we now see as ‘traditional’ were established at this time: the relegation of women to the domestic sphere; the notion that men are sexually active and women are sexually passive; and the definition of homosexuality as a ‘perversion’.”1 When taking both the cultural changes and the essentialist views of biological explanation into account, it follows reason that views of women’s sexuality would be strongly affected.

In the 1800s, the essentialist viewpoint was that women’s biology made them unstable; every “monomania” was biologically rooted.2 PAGE # In the book Breaking the Codes, the author Ann-Louise Shapiro3 states that in 19th century France, “Alienists claimed, on the basis of both medical theory and clinical practice, that the female reproductive cycle was itself a kind of pathology that placed women chronically at risk. According to medical texts, a women’s life was divided into three phases- before, during, and after reproductive functioning- a cycle that left her in a permanent state of physical, mental, and spiritual disequilibrium in which she fluctuated between reason and unreason.”4 A.A.Tardieu, a french medical doctor in the mid-19th century, “summarized the medical consensus,” that even a normal period played a large part in the existence of madness and neuroses (p.101).1 What differentiated a woman from a man biologically in the 19th century, also differentiated her from reason.2 Women were seen as biologically designed to be crazy, to be other, to know less and be less than men. It makes sense that in a time period where women were regarded as biologically inferior, that their sexual pleasure or desire would be discounted or deemed deviant.

But, what is accepted as true evolves over time, just as notions of sexuality evolve over time. The ideas of the past that limit our sexual expression to such narrow configurations also can be disassembled, for we assembled them ourselves. This is demonstrated through many statistics comparing time periods, many of which chart changes due to women’s growing education levels and financial independence. In Her Way the author lists statistics: In 1976 the Hite Report3 found that 29% of women accounted for a positive attitude towards masturbation, which climbed to 61% by 1994;4 rates of premarital sex increased from 12% for women born before 1912 to 89% for those first married in the 90s;5 when comparing those married between ’65-’74 and those in the 90s, women who first had intercourse five or more years before marriage climbed from 2% to 56%;6 in the 90s only 15% of women hadn’t shared dating expenses with their male partners, while in 1979 31% of feminist women and 60% of non-feminist women hadn’t shared them.1 The author tends to state that women’s attitudes and behaviors are becoming more like “men’s,” or that they have more freedom to be sexually aggressive, have agency, and not necessarily equate sex with procreation or love. Women have begun to have more sexual freedom as they enter into the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Whereas in the 19th century women were locked into being biologically disordered and their sexual nature was deemed incompatible with morality, and in the early 20th century they were still influenced by these ideas that perpetuate a passive and subservient nature, in the late 20th and early 21st centuries our western society is seeing an expansion of sexual expression, sexual freedom, and sexual equality.

* * * * * * *

One day when I was in eighth grade, I was walking down the hallway by myself when a thought occurred to me. I asked myself if other girls felt the same way I did, thought about other girls the same way I did. I thought that boys were cute, but was questioning why I did not have the same intensity of feeling for them as my fellow girls had. There’s two other moments in time that I link to this one.

When I was a child we had a little blow-up, plastic ball pit for my younger sister. My best friend and I took two each and put them under our shirts to see what it would be like when we were older. We went and showed my mother, laughing as we did it; she laughed along hesitantly at this strange scene. I recall looking over at my friend and thinking how pretty she was. And how much I cared about her. And though this is a strange moment to spark this realization in my mind, I know that this was one of those little crushes that occur in childhood.

The other moment that I link with the middle school experience is from third grade. The class had a college student come in and teach an art class every week. She was beautiful. On one of the last days she was there, she was wearing white pants that were almost see through. I can’t believe that my eyes lingered where they did, that I was already awakening to attraction so early.

The interesting thing is, is that both of these memories popped into mind during the deep thought in the middle school hallway. The fact that I attributed nothing of real significance to them is even more striking. Maybe I just wasn’t ready to step out of the first box of sexual identity- heterosexuality, which was assigned to me by society from birth. I still believed that I was going to grow-up and marry a man. I let go of the questioning, pushed it out of my mind, and insisted to myself that my feelings were “normal” and didn’t mean anything. My feelings had to be normal, because there was no conceivable alternative.

In the book Gender and Sexuality, the authors mention Gagnon and Simon, who were both prominent sociologists of human sexualities, produced “a theory of ‘sexual scripts,’ which turned attention to the ways in which sexual interactions were socially shaped, much as all other interaction, through a combination of learned behavior and cultural codes.”1 Later, they go on to discuss the counter-essentialist, “scripting” approach to sexuality that Gagnon and Simon developed. The first dimension sited is the cultural. The authors state, “Cultural scenarios are the ‘cultural narratives’ constructed around sexuality that circulate within our society.”2 They supply “guides for sexual conduct.” Even though they mention that there are multiple scripts, and that new ones are arising, the strongest narrative that is prevalent in our society is that of a heterosexual life.

In the book Her Way, Kamen states that heterosexual couples are less likely to use the male-defined sexual script.1 Th.H.Van de Velde, who wrote the most widely read sexual manual of the 50s, said that married men “are naturally educators and initiators of their wives in sexual matters.”2 Kamen explains, “Her only job was to respond and smile politely.”3 Edward O. Laumann, of the 1994 University of Chicago National Health and Social Life Survey, “describe the traditional scenario as being pitifully brief and directed by men with businesslike efficiency.4 Later on, Kamen makes note that in the 40s silence pervaded the topic of teenage sex and there was a “covert culture” in the 50s.”5 This illustrates an image of the past where the sexual information that women were receiving was mostly from their husbands. In a system where women lack sexual education that is not purely dictated by males, they also lack sexual agency.

It makes sense that in a society where this was the case, political lesbianism would emerge. These people upheld that heterosexuality meant male domination, which in turn perpetuated the oppression and subordination of women.6 In the ‘70s Adrienne Rich was an influential radical feminist, who insisted that many social practices “coerced women into a subordinated femininity as part of a ‘compulsory’ heterosexuality.”7 Although I disagree with the extremeness of this position, we know that in France during the 19th century, lesbianism was seen as a threat to the societal structure and male power, because it demonstrated not only that women had sexual desire and did not need a man to satisfy it, but also gave a glimpse of female independence. When discussing bourgeois France in Gender and Sexuality, the authors state, “The corollary of the privilege of heterosexuality is the stigmatization of non-heterosexual identities.”1 The reader sees that this wave of political lesbian feminists, even if their conclusions were warped, were simply rebelling against a decidedly outdated and unequal ideology.

Although this is the case, Rahman and Jackson later state, “Significantly they [later generations of feminists] have insisted that the critiques of heterosexuality as an institution should not imply criticism of heterosexual women and that a more nuanced account of the complexity of heterosexual desires is needed”(Jackson, 1999, 2006b).2 This illustrates a changing perspective; blind heteronormativity, and consequently assumed heterosexuality, are negative, but being a heterosexual is not inherently a problem.

What’s interesting is that I was raised in a liberal home. I knew that gay people existed and that it was okay. But I was blinded to the possibility that I might be gay. It’s not what was expected of me and not what I expected of myself. I couldn’t even begin to imagine it for my life.

In the book Her Way, Kamen states, “This generational pattern proves sex researchers’ theory that our psyche takes a while to catch up with our behavior”(Lottes 1993, 660).3 Preceding this, the author discusses the people who came of age in the U.S. in the 60s and 70s; when asked about premarital sex, they said that they were against it at higher rates than the rates they participated in it.1 Even though people say that they believe one thing or are one way does not mean that their behavior will align with this statement. Sometimes it takes our conscious mind some time to catch up with the level of operation of the rest of our self.

This speaks to the box as well. In the research Kamen references, the people said one thing, which was consistent with what, over time, society reached concord of what was appropriate, yet their behavior indicated that they were starting to step outside the box of sexual expectations.

This is mirrored in my own life. I was already experiencing feelings that did not fit inside the heterosexual framework, yet I dismissed them because they did not fit into my current view of myself. Or I did until there was too much to deny anymore; eventually I was shoved out of the first sexual identity box of my life.

How did this happen, one may ask? About a year ago I watched a video of a woman’s lecture on sexual fluidity in women. She made the point that the research shows that the majority of the time, women’s shifts or realizations of sexual identity happen because of a certain person that has stepped into their life.

That exact thing happened with me. Twice. What really pushed me out of the assumed heterosexual box was a girl. This was only a year after the hallway, during freshman year of high school. I walked into my science class and there she was, a very mysterious, independent, and out woman. She was like no one I had ever met and I was quickly enthralled. I had never liked someone how I liked her before. It didn’t take me long to realize that this was what I was supposed to have been feeling for boys.

I was trained throughout my life by societal influences that what’s inside of the heterosexual box is what’s appropriate; to deviate from this was incorrect. I knew that this was a lie that had been told to me, but after so many years unassumingly living under its rule, being outside of the clear parameters of acceptable behavior was difficult and slightly shocking to my system. In the article “Redefining Queer,” Better1 sums up all of this perfectly, “We are taught through our consumption of culture that heterosexuality is expected and compulsory (Rich 1980)… Once she realized that people could also have relations with others of the same gender, she found that it did not matter what your body or genitals consisted of, that relationships could occur between any people who enjoy each other’s company.”2 I didn’t know how to go about all of this, how to integrate this new reality into myself, to dramatically shift my identity. I had never been told how this was supposed to be done; I had never been taught how to refigure one’s identity with a vital new piece of information.

So when it was time to share this discovery of the perceived truth of my sexuality with others, I was frightened. I wanted acceptance and, as many who come out are, was afraid that it would not be easy or even possible when outside of the box I had been born into. One of the most memorable experiences coming out was to my close friend Jess.

She was over at my house for a sleepover and she asked me who I liked. I was terrified to tell her, even though I doubted she would care much. I told her that I liked three people, even though that was a lie. “Who do you like?” Sometimes so superficial a question and answer for high school. But not right now. Not for me. I took a little piece of paper and wrote two boy names and one girl name. I somehow hoped that the maleness of the beginning would soften the blow of the ending. That it would distract, excuse… that I didn’t need to be ashamed because I only liked her a third… My hands shook violently and I buried my head in them and tried not to hyperventilate and in some magical way erase who I was and what I’d done and ignore the repetitive tapping and calling of my name and stay in my facade of safety. Finally, here are her eyes: they’re full of laughter and worry and such loving acceptance. I realize that she doesn’t care. That many people don’t care. That I can authentically be myself and that that’s okay.

In the article, “Recovering Empowerment,” Bay-Cheng1 describes the empowerment process and the components of empowerment. She states that empowerment is composed of the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and the behavioral; all are necessary for instituting a change within a society.2 She says, “While coping models strive to strengthen individuals’ abilities to accommodate the existing social environment, empowerment theory and practice in their fully realized states (i.e., incorporating intrapersonal, interpersonal, and behavioral domains) aim to transform the social environment to meet the needs, uphold the rights, and enable the well-being of those living within it” (Bay-Cheng p.2).3 This is important for the LGBTQ community as a whole and other communities as well. Our society has seen multiple sexual and gender related revolutions that could not have instituted lasting cultural change without combined communal efforts.

The author’s discussion of empowerment as being an ongoing process is also an important point. She states, mentioning that Lamb and Peterson 2011 also makes this point, “Casting empowerment as a process in which one engages rather than as a state to be achieved circumvents the fractious potential of measuring who is and who is not truly empowered.”1 Empowerment is something that people engage in, instead of a final destination.

During this time in my life, even though I did not know about this concept, I still continued to practice embracing this new truth even after I had realized it.  I came out as bi at first, but when I told people I basically just started saying my mantra out loud. “I like girls.” Each repetition was a hammer to the wall. It was a breakdown of the images I had of my future. It was an exclamation that I was different than what people expected. It was a liberating destruction of the life set up for me.

I would chant it in my head as I walked to school, part wanting myself to fully accept it, part wanting the phrase to become normal for me, part as a tool to claim it and empower myself. I did not need to feel shame; it was part of me and, therefore, I could experience it with pride. To fully realize this took time and work though.

By the end of my freshman year of high school, my friend Jess and I had grown to become best friends. We were sitting cross-legged on the floor of the cafeteria near one of the wide poles, open space all around us. It was before the first bell had rung and we were socializing before the start of the school day. Another friend came to join us. I was telling Jess more about Avayne, the girl who had so captured my attention. She looked at me, smiling- that look that says they know something big that you don’t know at all. “Simone, you’re so not bi. You’re a lesbian.”

I stared back, my eyebrows knitted together, and I answered with a reaffirmation that I was pretty sure about my feelings for women, but that I didn’t know how I felt about men. There’s this assumption that we grow up with, that we are going to get married and have children and follow this old heterosexual script. I had always just assumed I liked men. I never had a reason to question it. Now that I had, I was entirely unsure about the solidity of my attractions towards boys in the past. Were they workings of my imagination, illusions that I created by mirroring the speech and behavior of other girls, or were they legitimate interests? I hadn’t liked a boy in at least a year and so I figured the former conclusion more correct, but I was still unsure. This questioning was still all so new.

“Right, June? Don’t you think she’s a lesbian?” The friend nodded her head, but answered with a denial of knowledge one way or the other. Jess told me that I was again, that I should just accept it.

I responded along the lines of, “I don’t like how confining it is though. It seems so limiting. And the way it sounds- it makes me think of something that needs to be scrubbed off the wall or something.” It was a limiting title, stripping me of the freedom and ability to explore my sexuality further, yet I accepted it as my own anyways. I fell into that assumed progression, from labeling myself as bisexual to labeling myself a lesbian- or letting someone else, someone who’s judgement I trusted, label me.

I’m not blaming her for anything, especially because at the time I figured she was right, but instead of letting the question of “maybe men” hang there and not shut myself in a label box, I quickly ruled out males altogether.  I adopted this attitude of disgust at the thought of being with one sexually.  I wouldn’t say whether I even thought a guy was cute.  I did it for my own protection and security as much as trying to do it for other people’s expectations of me as a gay woman.  I ignored the moments I thought a guy was attractive.  I discounted the times I had had crushes on boys in my earlier years.  I pretended I wasn’t at all curious.  And I wasn’t for a long time.

But this identity wasn’t given to me. It was offered and I seized it with both hands. It was an opportunity to have a community, to have a place where I belonged, to be different, and to be something that was a clear identity all its own, a role that I could claim. The decision to accept this title as an identifier, to make it a key part of my person, did little to help me escape boxes, and instead simply put me in a new one. I denied any feelings or thoughts that did not fit with this label, which was the same thing that I was doing before. A new box became home.

We adapt to what is given to us. Or if not, we perish. In the 50s, as a survival mechanism to endure the highly pervasive heterosexual culture and gender norms, lesbians adopted extreme expressions of masculinity and femininity, labeled butch and femme, into both their fashion and personalities.1 Even though these roles may not have been completely true to character, we still see this acting out today. I grew up surrounded by these stereotypes of how one could determine if someone was gay. One can be called too feminine or pretty to be gay, said like it’s a waste if they are, and “femme invisibility”2 is very much prevalent as I have experienced. There is also the idea that masculine women have to be lesbians. To not be is seen as a betrayal or trickery. In the 70s, bisexuality was labeled by radical lesbian feminists as “political treason.”3 I still have heard that kind of talk today, with people saying that people are one or the other. All of this seems to be fighting the “heterosexual institution,” without acknowledging the spectrum of experiences and attraction possible within the individual. In the 50s it made sense because of the prejudice of the time, and even makes sense today as homophobia and hate crimes are still a problem, but as things start to open up it makes little sense to hold our queer community to such limiting and old-fashioned standards- and to hold ourselves to these as well.

Looking back I feel as though I accepted this new identity as a saving grace. I had a prewritten outline I could take as my own. I had people that were like me. I had memories and struggles and victories that I could adopt as part of myself, because I shared a similar experience or identity. Collective or community memory in a way. And why would I even need to do my own exploring if I knew I was gay anyways?

During the end of my sophomore year of high school, I met a girl. After finding out she liked girls too, I finally gathered up the courage to flirt with her. I told her we should hang out sometime during the summer. She smiled. I was so nervous. This girl was so different from Avayne as there was not just an opportunity for friendship and self discovery, but also real experience.

She was my first kiss. I had gone over to her house and we were watching a movie when I leaned in. She nervously kissed me back, but then asked me what we were. She expected me to quickly jump into something with her, though I had kissed her because I wanted to, and she wanted to, with little desire to define things with labels right away. But I didn’t know how to go about things yet, so I agreed to date her.

It didn’t last too long, and from my perspective now I don’t think I really liked her all that much. I was in it just because it was an option- I did it because I was exploring this new part of my life, taking a risk because I could. And there was payout- though more in an understanding of myself and my sexuality than a connection with another.

I remember that even though it didn’t feel quite right with her, being with a girl and saying that I had a girlfriend felt natural and normal. When I was experiencing it for myself and not analyzing everything, it didn’t feel at all like it was different than anyone else’s heterosexual experience. I guess that’s an important thing to know about being gay- the feelings towards one another are the same.

In the article “Redefining Queer,” the author states, “Today, the delinking of sexuality from marriage and the family works to affirm women’s sexuality, homosexuality, and elective sexuality”Castells 1997:236).1 As we move away from the old scripts of women’s sexuality and the heteronormativity which it has been solidly encased in so are the doors opened to different sexual expressions. Fortunately, I came out in a time and place in which these changes were heartily underway, yet it still took a while to realize that being gay or sexual or what have you was just as valid an orientation. Better goes on to say that Anthony Giddens2, a prominent modern sociologist, affirms that “sexuality is the property of the individual.”3 She writes, “Sexuality, previously gained through marital relations, has been transformed to being controlled by the individual through the agency of the body. It is in this new light of sexuality as a positive expression of self that desire is losing its negative connotations.”4 By removing the exclusionary link between sex and marriage/procreation the bonds around sexual expression are loosened and the individual is allowed agency over their own body and decisions, and in this same vein, I was freed to experience my gayness as a normal way of being.

In the article “A comparison of polyamorous and monoamorous persons: are there differences in indices of relationship well-being and sociosexuality?” the author Todd Morrison1 states, “With respect to promiscuity, Klesse (2005) suggests that women may be especially likely to face social punishment if they engage in polyamory, since anti-promiscuity discourse discourages female sexual autonomy.”2 In this section, the author demonstrates that a culture’s anti-promiscuity rhetoric perpetuates a situation in which women do not have full sexual autonomy. I would think this is because it still supports a double standard where it is fine for men to have multiple sexual partners, but women need to still maintain an air of chasteness, or at least keep their numbers of sexual partners low.

Just as the delinking of the definite link between sex and marriage breaks down compulsory heterosexuality, so does it lend itself to breaking down the shame of promiscuity (at least in the realm of safe, sane, consensual sex). As I discovered my gayness, so I discovered my own pleasure to a greater extent and did not let judgement rule who I took as a partner. Both culturally and personally, there is a move towards plastic sexuality, which is termed by Giddens and described as “sexuality for the sake of pleasure and not for reproductive purposes,” “sexuality is the property of the individual,” and “sexuality as a positive expression of self.”3

But I did let my own judgement rule who I took as a partner. I don’t mean that in the positive way, that I was listening to myself about who I wanted to be involved with, but instead the opposite. Even if there was developing, or even continuing, interest in men, I discounted it. That is until the summer after my senior year.

I had first kissed a boy the summer before. I met him during a Fourth of July music festival. He was nice, and when he asked me to go on a date with him sometime I said yes because I had had fun with him and there didn’t seem to be a reason to say no. When I told my close friends about it, they were confused and questioned me. I them that my body seemed to respond appropriately, but that it made my heart feel heavy. I know part of the reason was because I decided I didn’t like him very much, but most of the reason I dismissed the experience was because it did not fit with the identity that I had created for myself. I responded as if I had done something wrong.

Then a year later I met this boy at a friend’s small sleepover party. Something drew me to him and I spent a majority of my time there with him. By 9 o’clock the next night, when we were both finally going home, and he offered a movie at his place, I decided to just take the plunge and say yes. For curiosity’s sake, I told myself. Why not?

I woke up the next morning at his place feeling revolted. It had nothing to do with him, some to do with his gender, and everything to do with the fact that what had happened was so far from I had been telling myself and other’s about who I was. I realize now that I had let a sexual orientation label take up too much space in my identity, but at the time I was just so shocked at the unexpected turn of events and desires.

In the article “Relational and sexual fluidity in females partnered with male-to-female transsexual person,” the author Alegía1 states that, “As illustrated, the repondents believed they were heterosexual in their inherent preference for males as their sexual and relational partners, but also reported a need to identify their sexuality within the context of their reforming relationship. As such, they developed new language to organize their identity contextually…”1 Even though I knew that I was still very much into women, this is when I really learned the difference between sexual and romantic orientations. I decided that if I was going to label myself, it would be with “homoromantic bisexual,” which means someone who is only romantically attracted to women, but is sexually attracted to both men and women.

Written in a journal at the time:

“But now it’s been 4 years.  It’s about time I went back and readdressed that question that, left hanging in the air, I simply avoided.  I don’t know what this all means for the orientation that I have adopted, but I can tell you this: I met a boy.  I don’t like him romantically, though I do care about him as a person.  And the sex is great. And terrifying.  Left unaddressed for so long, the part of me that looks at boys is still stuck somewhere in the early teen years.  I don’t know where to touch them or what I should do with myself and I feel like a shy little virgin again.  But I’m not.  It’s a strange dynamic.  I know that I enjoy being with him physically, but the idea is scary. But now the question has been looked upon.  It’s there with it’s wide eyes and expectant gaze and I don’t know what it wants from me or to reveal to me.  Maybe this is the phase and this part of me must be explored to become more of the person I am destined to be.  Or to clarify the answer to the question so it’s not just left unanswered. Maybe I just needed time and space to explore my love for women before I turned back to examine this aspect of myself.  Maybe this will grow and flux into something that is more stationed in my life.  For now it is just another lesson in letting go of doing things for people’s approval or what I think they should look like or a strict image of who I’ve imagined myself to be- another lesson in letting go of the need to control, to label, to plan, to define…”

Bay-Cheng states, “Adolescent development in general, and sexual development in particular, necessarily involve some degree of experimentation and learning through trial-and-error (Fortenberry 2003; Steinberg 2007).2 As I reflect upon this moment over the summer, and many previous and since, I realize that I have not been bound to the old idea of compulsory heterosexuality, nor the “restrained and modest” and “sexual activity confined almost exclusively to marriage” of women of the 1950s contained therein.1 At 14, I wasn’t even deciding what career I wanted to be in, so how was I going to decide who I was going to like romantically and sexually? I’m not saying that people don’t know this at this age because some clearly do, but that we have to let ourselves and our opinions change with new information. This is reminiscent of Giddens theory of self, which Better describes, “By this he means that the self is constantly evolving through experience and self-reference. The reflexive project in the context of modern complexity is more autonomous to monitor its own experiences and development. The self, therefore, is not a static or passive recipient of experience.”2 We are not this “static” self unto which experience happens, but instead are engagers with it, and through this process of reflexive movement we evolve.

A few months ago I was hanging out with a friend and somehow we go to talking about polyamory. It literally means “multiple loves;” Sheff and Hammers’ define it as, “a form of association in which people openly maintain multiple romantic, sexual, and/or affective relationships.”3 This is a relationship style that is focused on emotional intimacy and openness between partners. This goes along with the idea of compersion, which the authors explain thusly: “While jealousy is based on the principle of scarcity, which can evoke feelings of fear of loss and competitiveness, the concept of compersion rests on an assumption of abundance, ‘in which there is no need to compete for the supposedly scarce commodity of love’.”4 Talking about this with someone who had participated in this relationship style was an important moment for me; it helped things in my own life click into place in my mind and helped me realize that this was a legitimate way to live. I thought about when I liked this one girl, but she liked both me and a boy and I asked her why she didn’t just date both of us. I thought about how it always seems that I like two people at the same time. And I thought about how I had a crush on this friend, and the fact that it had nothing to do with me liking my current partner less or not being fulfilled by that relationship; despite what him and others might think, the crush actually propelled me into loving and embracing who he is more.

Now, Polyamory makes a lot to sense to me, but I’m in a place where living this is not possible, as I’m very in love with a monogamous man, I’ve come to realize that the same mindset can be embodied even in a monogamous relationship.  Polyamory is first and foremost about the human ability to love multiple people; with this comes an appreciation for all relationships in one’s life.  Whether they be romantic, platonic, or familial, each connection with another individual is entirely unique; no person will bring out sides of one out, compliment, and challenge one in the same ways another will.  With this, it’s about challenging the idea that it’s “only true love” if two people are together forever; the length or ending of a relationship doesn’t determine the depth or realness of love experienced.  No love is like another- and really, they don’t need to compete.

Another fundamental aspect of this lifestyle is that love is not viewed as a limited resource.  The only limiting factor is time, but beside that, love for one person does not negate or lessen the love for another.  In my own experience, it seems that the more love I express to others, the more love I feel in myself, the more love I have to give, and the more love I receive.  To me, this is about having an open heart.  It’s about letting people be all that they are, and loving them for just that.  We meet who people are and let go of the demand that they need to fit a little model of what we think we need, or want, and the expectation that one person can fulfill all of our needs- that they need to in the first place.

Concerning the concept of compersion, which is basically happiness because of one’s lover’s happiness, translates into excitement over their successes and passions.  This is also a mode to operate from that is not one of jealousy.  Jealousy seems most of the time to stem from needs nor being met or insecurity; in which case, this is an idea that motivates one to either work on the former with one’s partner and to also have a solid sense of self worth.  It is knowing that other things that take one’s partners time are not detractors from oneself; it is about knowing one’s true value and working from this place of worth.

As with polyamory, all relationships are dependent upon the vital elements of communication and trust. But for me, this style of loving is very applicable to all forms of loving relationships.  It reminds me to know my worth and operate from this place of knowledge, to ask for what I need, to celebrate my partner’s joys, to honor all unique relationships in my life (whatever their form), to let myself feel what I feel, to be honest and open, to compromise… But most importantly for me, it is about choosing to love from a place of acceptance, letting every special individual in my life be who they are and loving them for exactly that.

The relationship that I’m in now started as a hook-up. But it quickly transformed into something else as the night after we first got together we went on a camping trip with four other people, during which I spent four complete days with him. A week later I stood in a common room of the dorms with this man in front of me, both hands solidly on his chest. I realized in this moment that I was already falling for him, that I was going to have to work through my own commitment issues and fear of deviating from my sexual identity to explore this new possibility. I got teary eyed as I knew that this moment heralded a major shift; I could already feel it building strong in my body, too late to stop even if I had wanted to.

There is a fear of not being seen and a fear of betrayal. Lesbians are told by uneducated men that they just need the right penis to set them straight, which is disrespectful and ignorant of the facts of sexuality. Just as one cannot be coerced into being straight, so the opposite is true. So, falling in love with a man after declaring myself a lesbian felt like a betrayal to the gay community. Aramburu Alegría states, regarding the reaction to partners who started identifying as transsexual after the relationship had begun, “For respondents who strongly identified as lesbian, it was not the transsexualism of their partners, but rather the transition from a sam-gender to an opposite-gender couple, that was a challenge.”1 (trans p.3). Just as there is similar confusion and uncertainty between the women he’s studying and myself, so fluidity is both shown within and between relationships. There is fear of erasing one’s sexual identity or betraying the community or not being seen, but maybe even in these situations, we are just seeing the “destabilization of the heterosexual/homosexual binary” that is happening culturally play out.2

I think though that one can both honor the validity of someone’s, or their own, sexual identity and still recognize that there is a varying degree of fluidity on the spectrum. Earlier in the piece the author states, “Contemporary women also demonstrate sexual fluidity, choosing to enter relationships with either same-gender or opposite-gender persons (Diamond 2003). These choices are often contextual, and dependent on the quality and nature of the relationship (Baumister 2000, Diamod, 2007).”1 I’m not betraying my community; I’m following my heart.

We’re laying in bed, his head on my chest, a fluffy blanket wrapped around us. I tenderly comb a piece of hair back from his forehead with my fingers. Tears start to well up, but they are not from sadness or anger or fear. There is so much love in my heart that it spills out of my eyes. I always told people in defense of my gayness that one does not choose who they love. This has been proven to me, as this man before me is the most unexpected surprise. If I would have stayed in my box I never would have been blessed like this.

In many ways, the breakdown of the second box mirrors that of the first. But, the depth in which I understand this journey has exponentially increased. Both boxes I left because there was too much evidence, and too much joy, opportunity, and growth offered outside, to stay. I have decided to embrace the messiness, to participate in the “refusal of both the one-dimensional gendered sexual roles offered to girls and women ( the slut, the prude, the tease, the alpha girl, the good girl) and the segregation of sexuality from other contexts- personal, relational, social, political, material- in which it is imbedded.”2 I allow myself and my sexuality to be big, to be expanding, to be complex… And I recognize that just as I am a work in progress, so too is my sexual identity a lifelong process. A woman that Better quotes in “Redefining Queer” states, “Epiphany, I can just be who I am and it doesn’t matter. I don’t have to not be who I am because of my fear of how people will perceive that. There’s no right way to be who I am. I can just be and people will like me or they won’t, but it’s not about fitting in. It’s about me making my own destiny.”1 In Her Way, the author quotes a woman she interviewed, “There is no code that you have to go by. That stuff is gone. As long as you’re you. That’s all that matters.”2

And to add my own final statement- A once decided upon identity doesn’t have to lock you in. People once expected us women to be passive, to be subservient, to be sexual on men’s and society’s terms, and slowly but surely we’re breaking that down- declaring that we will do what is right for us as individuals, including having sex when and how we want. I’m tired of boxes- stuffing myself into a little word, ignoring everything in my experience that points to a world beyond. I’m never going to be in a straight relationship, not because I’m not with a man, but because my experience has shown that I’m not straight and I don’t have to be one thing. You see, humans are complex- one way doesn’t work for everyone. To be authentic one has to listen to their own voice, which also means being willing to adapt, to discover, to redefine, to expand… I have to let myself adapt to the unfoldment of life (and of myself) to be able to truly experience its wonders. Things change, boxes run out of air, and eventually we have to let ourselves be all that we are.