I enjoy my process of self-dissection.

(This is not to say that I am sitting in my room listening to angst filled Emo music dragging razorblades across parts of my anatomy. Cutting is both disturbing and foolish, and if it is something that anyone out there is engaging in, stop it immediately and seek help. Please.)

No, what I mean by self-dissection is that I enjoy the process of rooting around my own psyche and examining what I find there. Its an orderly, methodical thing. Not that I am a big fan of order – quite the opposite. I am a big fan of extracting the order from a thing and breaking it down to its essential chaos.

Some people call this madness. I disagree, but I also digress.

Anyway, I enjoy self-dissection because I find it interesting to see what parts of me are nature and what parts are nurtured.

Case in point:

In examining my own feelings about sex and pornography recently, I found that the images that would leap immediately and irresistibly to mind were hairy chests, zodiac medallions and butterfly collars set to a cheesy 70’s disco soundtrack.

In a word: Dated.

This seemed a bit odd to me, especially considering that I like to think of myself as something of a progressive and forward thinking individual. The fact that something so basic to a human entity – sexuality, seemed to evoke such antiquated visuals in my own mind seemed incongruous to my perception of me.

In giving it further thought, it occurred to me that I was born at the tail end of what was arguably America’s first widespread sexual revolution of the mass communication era. In my naissance, the definition of sexuality had undergone a major overhaul from the Ozzie and Harriet, separate beds model that had been standard fare in the dawn of the TV era. America had burned the bra, embraced free love and had stripped away many of the last vestiges of the taboos inherent to pre-WWII western society. Sexuality, rather than having remained an entity separate and apart from American culture had become integral to it.

And just as the new definition of sexuality had become part of our culture, it had also become a part of me.

I am not entirely sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, the idea that our culture has now become something of a barometer for the evolution of our ideas on sexuality as a society seems like a good thing, but on the other hand, I would like to think that my ideas on sexuality have evolved organically from my own essential self. And while it could be said that culture provides a baseline to measure the organic ideas against, that also implies that there is a “normal” sort of sexuality, and that anything that deviates from that baseline is, by definition, deviant.

That doesn’t work for me either. After all, even if 260 million people in America were to agree that there is one specific definition of sexuality, and one acceptable means of expressing that definition, they could, and in all likelihood would, be wrong.

Yes, 250 million people could all be wrong about something.

That being the case, what if the sexual revolution spawned in the sixties and seventies wasn’t a revolution that 250 million people believed it to be? What if it wasn’t a revolution at all? What if it was an evolution? What if it wasn’t a redefinition of sexuality in our society and culture, but a rejection of the very idea that sexuality can be defined by or as a society or a culture or a religion or a marketing firm, or by anything other than and individual?

What if it was the embracing of the idea that all ideas about sexuality do and should evolve organically from the essential self?

Now THAT has possibilities…

Idealistic? Probably a bit. Many people are comfortable with the idea that sexuality has some parameters, and truth be told, there are probably some people that prefer that it does. However, in a definition of sexuality driven by the individual as opposed to the society or culture that the individual is part of, they are free to have those parameters. And other people are free to do otherwise.

In a society/culture driven sexuality, they aren’t.

I know which one I prefer.

So, while the mental imagery that thoughts of sexuality might reveal my notions of sexuality as being on some level dated, or at the very least old fashioned, it seems my ideas on freedom aren’t.

And that is most definitely the essential me.

J. Harlequinn: Retrosexual

Recently:

No related posts