Heterosexual Bisexual Homosexual

When I think of the above terms I tend to imagine a horizontal line with straight on the one end, gay on the other end, bi smack in the middle. I think all off us fall somewhere on that line and that our coordinates on the line is as unique as our fingerprints. I have met some complete gay men. I’ve met some complete straight women. I’ve met people who have been married or engaged to the opposite sex only to decide later on that they prefer their own sex. When asked, they would still me how completely they loved their opposite sex partner.

All of this usually leaves me to think of gender roles and how the whole thing works. How our sexuality is linked to our gender role and how we sometimes live out or grandparent’s version of what a “nice girl” should be to sometimes living out a role that has never been defined and is often scorned by traditional gender roles.

“Middlesex” by Jeffrey Eugines was one of the novels that made me aware of the programming that goes hand in hand with being female. The hero of his novel is a hermaphrodite that lives the first half of his/her life (including puberty) as a girl, since that is what his/her parents believed she/he was and at the age of about 17 decides to life as a man and claim both sexuality and gender role. The novel explores the little differences between the sexes like how you would check if something is stuck under your shoe (do you kick you leg up behind you and look over your shoulder like a girl or bend your leg at the knee in front of you like a boy) to the vast differences like having periods.

More recently I read “Kafka on the Shore” by Haruki Murakami. One of the characters in this WONDERFUL novel is Oshima who is a female living like a man but still likes men. A heterosexual gay in his/her own words.

These novels leave me questioning my own coordinates on the gay-straight line. And like always I end up wishing for androgyny and dual sex evolution.