There is new research that shows that bisexuality is real, and not merely a phase -- at least in women. Those of us who have more than a passing familiarity with our closest relatives -- the chimpanzees and bonobos -- already knew this. Bonobos especially are as a species bisexual in nature. Chimpanzees are less so, but human behavior tends to fall between that of chimpanzees and bonobos, though more on the side of chimpanzees overall (we're more aggressive, like chimpanzees). Bonobos use sex for everything -- to trade for something they want, as a replacement for aggression, etc.
The research in question, though, only goes so far as to suggest that bisexuality is an orientation, though they do note that there is some fluidity in female sexual identification. I am convinced that this fluidity is more pervasive than we think, and that various cultural norms have pushed humans into expressing our sexuality in more either-or fashion than we otherwise would. Certainly heterosexuality dominates as an overall sexual tendency, but I think it's a sort of off-center bell curve, with various levels of bisexuality along the curve. Homophobic reactions are typical in those who are in the mean of the bell curve, as the feelings are rare, but there, and can freak people out -- especially in anti-gay cultures. Very strongly heterosexual people would likely not be homophobic, as they are in no way "threatened" by such feelings, and are neither turned on nor disgusted by homosexuality (the disgust may, in fact, be the flip side of being turned on). Thus it seems to me most likely that our natural sexual orientation is along a continuum with the vast majority in the bisexual range, and few purely heterosexual or purely homosexual. However, our culture is one that insists that we be either-or, that we pick an absolute identity, and so there is a tendency for people to behave contrary to their orientation.
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I think it's interesting to consider how the continuum of sexual orientation interacts with that of gender identification. Obviously "flamers" and "diesel dykes" take more cues from the opposite sex (physiologically as well as psychologically, it would seem) but it seems more complicated than a simple inverse correlation.
Something else I've always wondered about is homosexuality and reproduction, since gay sex is necessarily "getting off" or pretending to reproduce. Are gays frustrated that they can't have offspring with their partner? Do they often secretly or openly want to have offspring with a different, opposite sex partner? Of course, the driving force behind heterosexual intercourse is also the pleasure one takes in orgasm and the partner's beauty, but in my experience a tenuous (and thrilling) psychological link to the possibility of reproduction exists even in a one-night-stand scenario.
Sociobiologists have suggested that homosexuality may be attached to altruism, in that personal reproduction may be put off to aide in sibling reproduction. Of course, that would only work in tight-knit communities. Also, reproduction can be "put off" so to speak into the arts -- and homosexuals as a group tend to be artsy.
More in keeping with the topic of the post, have you read FT's A Double Shadow? The character of Narcissus in that book is an interesting and tragic exploration of a positively defined bisexual identity. The most tragic court cards in the tarot (Queen of Swords, King of Cups) also most strongly embody gender contradiction. Not to say that bisexual identity is essentially tragic, although it is certainly tragicomic.
That one I haven't read yet.
Tragic -- hmmm. Is it hubristic? Is it an attempt to go beyond our bounds?
Comic -- is it a shortcoming we should make fun of?
Tragicomic? I.e., Novelistic? Perhaps.
Tragic as in deeply painful and paradoxically fair in its unfairness. Comic as in an absurd, incongruous, awkward marriage causing laughter, mirth, warmth. "Make fun of" connotes ridicule (to me at least) which is somewhat different.
It ain't Aristotle, but I think it's true.
I'm using "tragic" in the original, literary sense, and not just to mean something deeply painful (though the paradoxically fair in its unfairness does fit the idea of tragedy perfectly). People use the word "tragic" to describe things that aren't tragic. For example, 9-11 was not tragic -- unless we agree that the hijackers were good and were trying to make the world a better, more complex place (it doesn't matter if the hijackers thought that's what they were doing -- good intentions don't count).
Now, think about comedy. What makes us laugh? We laugh when we see or hear something that shows us something we think below us, something ridiculous. We ridicule the ridiculous. Now, we may find something in ourselves to be ""below us," and make fun of ourselves for it, trying to get people, through laughter, to join us. We do so to make ourselves a better person.
In comedy we laugh at all our shortcomings.
In comedy we cry because the great didn't quite make it.
Yeah, people often use the word tragedy inaccurately to describe the unfortunate, the misfortunate, or the melodramatic. That's not what I meant. To acknowledge that we will fail, we will be defeated and we will die, and yet struggle to give meaning to our lives anyway (what Robert Corrigan calls "the tragic view of life" in The World of the Theatre) is, in a sense, to "go beyond our bounds." But is that necessarily the same as the classical hubris? Or would conflating the two be committing the "formalistic fallacy?"
Either way, back to bisexuality: we're an animal that habitually forms pair bonds, which does not bode well for a positively stated, (more or less) clearly defined bisexual identity. Fully functioning hermaphrodites (like F.T.'s Narcissus) are very rare, so one would expect bisexuals to be driven on one level to seek the stability of a pair-bonded relationship, and on another to be driven to seek out relationships (or at least relations) with the members of the sex that their partner isn't. (In a sense, heterosexual males feel a similar tension between the pair bond on one hand and the "broadcast" reproductive strategy on the other). So either the bisexual would have to step beyond the bounds of the pair bond, or s/he would have to leave that part of him/herself unfulfilled. That's tragic, isn't it?
This past August I gave a talk to the International Society for the Study of Time conference that was about the fact that hubris is precisely having the audacity to go beyond our limits. When represented in tragedy, hubris is a virtuous vice.
If we look at human sexuality in general, I don't know that we can say it is truly tragic, then. The tendency to want to breed with as many as possible is more primitive than monogamy, but I don't think you could create a tragic situation in choosing monogamy over choosing to have sex with several. That move was made by our pre-human ancestors. The mere presence of paradox -- the drive toward both many mates and one simultaneously -- isn't quite sufficient for tragedy. In tragedy we are attempting to go beyond where humans currently are, to blaze a trail into the future. One would have to be positing a truly post-human sexuality to get a tragedy of sexuality.
Interesting. I wonder what a posthuman sexuality would look like. I find "posthuman" distasteful, but then again, I'm human.
Have you read Beck and Cowan's Spiral Dynamics? They posit that there are 1st and 2nd Tier psychologies, and that the 2nd tier psychologies are exponentially more complex than are 1st tier psychologies. In emergence theory, when you have something exponentially more complex, you have a new level of existence. Since 1st tier psychologies are human psychologoies, 2nd tier psychologies would therefore have to be post- or metahuman ones. Of course, the only way you could know if you are 2nd tier would be to read the book and decide which tier and level of psychology you are. (Fred Turner is a 2nd tier thinker, btw.)
I came into contact with the idea through a less-than-serious reading of Ken Wilbur's Theory of Everything (I didn't finish it--I really can't stand that guy), and then I read about it on your blog. But I haven't had a chance to get the book yet. It's on my "gotta read" list, but I've got my hands full right now with Time as Conflict (which I'm loving so far. In addition to being brilliant, Fraser's also really funny).
Wilbur can be annoying. A bit overly self-righteous. Love Fraser. He's a good man and very encouraging.
I am working on a synthesis of Fraser's and Beck/Cowan's work.
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