Discussions of sex, sexuality, and gender have always frustrated me because they are such meaningless, fluid concepts. When I try to define sexuality, I get frustrated because I think people, as animals, do not need or follow categories and definitions for sexuality. However, I feel that it’s important to note society’s need to define sexuality, as Moran reminds us that, “from the late nineteenth century onward, the homosexual became a named category or species, whereas previously same-sex love had just been an activity undertaken by a wide variety of people” (97).
Starting with the basic building blocks of our pink and blue society: life is based on male and female. Sex, the division of the male-female binary, is often found as a synonym of gender (gender being the expression of characteristics that makes one feminine or masculine). Sex, however, is our oversimplified biological categorization at birth: an individual with a vagina is female, and an individual with a penis is male. But the concept of male and female sex is pointless because nature does not follow simple guidelines. People can be born intersex, displaying characteristics of both male and female individuals. Where do we categorize individuals that, say, were born with a vagina but with the testosterone levels of a male? Where do we categorize an individual with a vagina and undeveloped testes?
Categorizing people’s sexuality then becomes even more difficult. However, society has grown insistent upon this defining: a man that has sex with another man must be homosexual, and a woman that has sex with another woman must also be homosexual. We define people by a basic, primitive act. This defining finds itself complicated by nature’s inherent fluidity. How can we define the individual that has sex with individuals of both sexes? Our lexicon for the fluidity of sexuality has become so lengthy that it reinforces the ineptitude of defining sexuality at all: heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, pansexual, polysexual, asexual. Sexuality is such a personal, fluid experience that its definition becomes specific to the individual: autochorissexual, demisexual, graysexual. Our desire to analyze conflicts with nature’s fluidity. Most humans have an impulsive physical, emotional, and mental need to have sex with other human beings. We have taken this act and sorted it into easily understood and digestible categories. But what if we could reject these terms? What of the person who has sex with men (men being a loose term here as sex is no longer a clear identifier) and has a physical and emotional connection with a female (again, a loose term) but does not identify as bisexual? While these terms emerge to allow for flow and varied expression of sexuality, ultimately they serve as rigid sound bites.
Wouldn’t it be cleaner and more realistic to reject these simple terms for such a complex human experience? Instead of choosing one of these boxes, can one describe his/her/their sexuality as it is? (Ex: Hi, I am a genderfluid individual that finds himself physically attracted to men and occasionally women but in general other genderfluid individuals.) Sexuality is such a complicated experience that to describes one’s sexuality in one word is impossible.