Let's Talk About Sex, Baby

I will never forget the day I met an openly gay man for the first time. We became friends in five minutes flat. It was instant, the way he turned my head. He stomped and shimmied up the back steps of my house, landed at the kitchen table and with a penetrating laugh and a long, soaking look in my direction, made himself right at home. We spent a lot of time sitting around that table telling our stories and getting a feel for each other’s contours and shadows. He delivered the often outrageous and camp stereotypes and tantrums together with wonderful masculinity, competence and humour. He could bake a cake and drive a forklift. I was impressed.

I didn’t realise or understand the long-term occupation and dominance of my heterosexual consciousness until I noticed its fading, and eventual passing, within this profound relationship. Watching him embody and express his own sexual identity slapped my mind about, blurred my vision. My preconceptions stood stunned and slack-jawed as they received this almighty shaking. Not because I had previously been homophobic—I have never cared for prejudice or discrimination—but because every minute spent with him showed me, taught me, that I too could take charge of and own my sexual identity. It had never before occurred to me that I had that right.

Until I was given the chance to absorb the depth and spaciousness of my new friend’s sexual identity, mine was based upon a body that believed it was an object, a heart that was drowning in shame and a mind that was programmed to operate under the stereotype of feminine weakness. His refusal to adhere to social dogma and childhood programming meant that he did not attribute much at all to my sex or gender. Of course there were slight variations with my fallopian tubes and the like, but as far as he was concerned my weaknesses were personal flaws in character (of which, I assure you, there are few), and my strengths were attributes of my skill and talent (of which there are, of course, a great many!). His self-definition as a gay man and his openness to see me through the filter of person instead of woman showed me that there were possibilities for myself far beyond what I had ever imagined. I was much broader than I had realised myself to be.

An extract from "The Outsider's Inn - Saving Lives with Conscious Living" - Chapter 3 - Sexual Identity.

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