253. deference

A quick update before I head back to working on my final project for this semester.

It’s so odd to be saying that again after having been done with my undergrad nearly eleven years, but here we are, working on a master’s in library science.

At least this time it’s pursuing a career and field I’m suited for!

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A few weeks ago, a friend asked what kind of guy I envision myself with. After thinking for a few moments, I responded, “It’s difficult to say. Honestly, I don’t trust myself or my taste in guys anymore because the ones I’m typically attracted to end up being unavailable—either they’re not interested in me, or they’re already taken, or they’re straight.”

It’s to the point where my reaction to seeing an attractive guy is to simply shut down because the act of processing the cyclone of negative and conflicting emotions has become too exhausting.

But it’s the third category—straight guys—that has proven to be the most frustrating because it historically makes up the majority of my unrequited crushes. We gay guys do it all the time. We fall for the straight guy, not necessarily because he’s a challenge or a worthy conquest (or at least not for me), but because he’s decent, kind, uncomplicated, and adorable.

And finding a guy like that in the gay community, especially one who’s smart and reasonably well-adjusted… well, that’s like finding a unicorn.

But I’ve been giving a great deal of thought to this question of why I tend to fall for so many straight guys when I know it’s a doomed enterprise from the beginning. Could it be that I’m that masochistic? That it’s an unconscious means of controlling the situation by choosing a path that I at least know the outcome to? That I simply enjoy being miserable?

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To answer this question, I’m turning first to a subject that I’ve also been giving some thought to lately: porn. Specifically, how it shapes our tastes and expectations as gay men, and how it redefines what we consider “normal” or “acceptable” about real life.

In other words, has fiction and fantasy so radically altered our perceptions of physical beauty that we reject otherwise decent, eligible guys [read = guys who don’t spend every spare moment in the gym, who may not have washboard abs, a v-shape frame, biceps and calves that go for days, firm pecs, etc] because they don’t meet the impossible standard we’ve come to expect from men in porn?

While the notion of porn addiction is (although, like any addiction, real and destructive) largely exaggerated by Evangelical fundies and prudish conservatives terrified by the idea of sex without shame or fear, exposure to porn is not without its mind-altering effects.

Well… here.

It comes down to a design flaw in our brains owing to the fact that we’re dealing with hardware several hundred thousand years out of date. Our brains still think it’s the year 20,000 BCE out there on the African Pleistocene.

Particularly for the male brain, sex is hardwired to the reward center of the brain—the ventral tegmental area or VTA, which is most often linked with dopamine. When you point an organ built to procreate and survive in scarcity conditions at a virtually endless supply of sexy images… well, here’s a passage from a 2013 Guardian article:

Many abused substances directly trigger dopamine secretion – without us having to work to accomplish a goal. This can damage the dopamine reward system. In porn, we get “sex” without the work of courtship. Now, scans show that porn can alter the reward centre too.

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Aside from the brain and expectation-altering effects, I’ve also been pondering why so many guys are attracted to certain genres of porn, or to certain body types, or certain subcultures (jocks, leather, circuit boys, etc).

One theory I have is that these attractions are largely about guys trying to fulfill some unfulfilled experience in their formative years. For example, guys into jock culture, who may have agonized as closeted teen boys over the fit physiques of their straight classmates in the locker room in high school, it makes sense their adult attractions would include that fantasy.

(Obviously it’s much more complex and dynamic than that, and there are a myriad of reasons people find certain qualities or activities arousing.)

Porn is more than just entertainment. It’s about fulfilling virtually every fantasy ever conceived of, which is why Rule 34 of the Internet is: If it exists, there is porn of it.

For me, porn has only deepened my growing frustration with the seeming recreational attitude of many gay men towards sex, to the point where I don’t even bother any more. It’s made me resentful and angry, which has caused me to pause and wonder if that is how porn has reshaped my expectations of sex and intimacy.

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Which leads us full circle back to my response to my friend’s question a few weeks ago.

Why do I always fall for straight guys?

My theory is that, just as the jocks may be trying to exorcise the demons from their memories of the high school locker room, I may be re-enacting my initial experiences as a deeply closeted gay boy in an Evangelical Christian community. Being surrounded by (presumably) straight and painfully attractive guys who were completely off limits shaped my brain and sexual attractions in ways that I’m not entirely sure can be undone.

Do they need to be undone?

Perhaps, if I ever want a realistic long-term relationship with a real guy who isn’t merely as a catalyst for resolving past identity wounds.

There’s the realization, too, that I don’t actually know what I’d do with a boyfriend at this point, or if there’s even enough of me to sustain a relationship. One deep dark fear is that I’m an empty shell, and he’ll wake up one day, see that, and leave.

This is a lot to work on.

For now, however, a paper calls.

187. extol

Quick-ish thought for this afternoon.

I was reading an article in the New York Times this afternoon about the 25th annual NewFest (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender film festival) in New York City this weekend. The article’s author, Stephen Holden, had this to say about it:

The face of gay liberation in 2013 is a sanitized image of polite, smiling gay and lesbian couples parading hand in hand and exchanging chaste kisses at city halls in states where gay marriage has been legalized.

But if there’s a theme to the 25th annual NewFest … it is that gay liberation is fundamentally about sex.

At first, I inwardly cringed at these sentences, and then immediately did a mental self-check for any signs of lingering, internalized homophobia. There may be some of that left over from my Protestant days, but the main thought was one of dread. I thought:

Oh shit, now some conservative Christian bigot will get up and point to this as “conclusive” proof that gay and lesbian relationships are just about promiscuity and sex…

Then I stopped myself. Turn on the television or go to any movie these days, and you’ll see some hot, hunky guy getting it on with some voluptuous, burgeoning girl. There’s no talk of fidelity, or marriage, or children. They want to fuck. Like the animals they are.

The prudish Christians who object to sensuality in film and media today do so under the notion that humans are these exalted, divine beings who should rise above their physical needs and desires to something purer. (Never mind that this is a tenet of Gnosticism.)

Biology, however, tells a different story.

Taxonomically, we are animals. Primates, technically. But we share the same primal desire to mate and reproduce as any other life form on this planet. In fact, the only thing that seems to set us aside from our closest relatives on Earth is (1) our ability to use tools with a frightening efficacy, and (2) the awareness of our physical instincts and desires, and the ability to choose to not be dominated by them. This doesn’t make us better than other beings. Just different.

When humans experience romantic attraction, we desire to express that attractive (i.e., love) via physical means. Our genes have programmed us to respond with our genitals at the moment of sexual arousal. This is completely natural. It’s only because of the teachings of the church that we’ve come to think of this as dirty or sinful. Our ancient ancestors would have considered such a view bizarre, and unhealthy.

So why shouldn’t we have a film festival that celebrates sexual attraction between two men, or two women? Well, because it’s icky, many people (who shall remain Brian Brown) might say.

It’s true that we’ve sanitized the gay liberation movement in order to appeal to our heterosexual neighbors who would otherwise support marriage equality and LGBT rights, but find the actual reality of two men or two women expressing physical love (let alone — gasp — being sexual) towards each other (in the same way that heterosexuals express physical love) off-putting.

In doing that, however, we’ve conveniently allowed them to put away the reality that we are sexual beings, just like heterosexual couples. Yes, when we’re horny, we want to fuck. We also want to just hold each other and bask in the oxytocin-induced glow of mammalian physical intimacy. Because that’s how we’re wired.

So does that mean that we should ignore the fact that in the early days of gay liberation there was a lot of indulging in kink and promiscuity? Only if we ignore the fact of the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 70s; of key parties, wife-swapping, and “free love.” Like a dam bursting, we threw off the moral bonds that had kept us in a perpetual state of sexual tension for centuries. However, the pendulum seems to be swinging back towards the center, as it usually does.

As Holden writes in his Times article, the early days of the gay movement “were gripped by a kind of erotic delirium in which men pursued a hypermasculine ideal and promiscuity was rampant.” We were creating new boundaries, new norms, and new paradigms to make sense of the sexual chaos that had been unleashed. Now, as we’re seeing increasing acceptance of LGBT people in mainstream American society, and coming closer to full equality, that iconoclastic boundary-pushing is being replaced by a more mature desire for emotional belonging and intimacy.

One of the final boundaries we have to overcome in achieving full acceptance for LGBT people is the depiction of physical intimacy in media — where nobody bats an eye when two men kiss (or bloody just hold hands) in a movie (and it isn’t a joke), or where there can be a sex scene on TV between two women and they aren’t trying to get male attention.

It created a stir in the 1950s when Lucy and Ricky were shown sharing a bed on I Love Lucy. We’ve been pushing those limits ever since; to moving from some whitewashed notion of a “moral ideal” to depicting reality as it is lived by actual, living-and-breathing human beings. Because it’s ridiculous that we same-sex couples have to keep pretending that we aren’t sleeping together or having sex; that our expression of physical love for each other never moves beyond meaningful eye contact, holding hands, or a quick peck on the lips.

That’s not real life.

Reality is that we do have hot, sweaty, messy sex. We also make dinner together. Go on trips. Have fights. Tolerate in-laws. Argue about money. And if any of that sounds familiar, it’s because it’s what all human couples do. And as soon as everyone else gets on board with accepting that, we’ll be that much closer to having a more sane country.

And a saner world.