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Madonna - Vogue |
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This is an excerpt of a mediocre, self-stereotyping essay that can be found here, that I found more interesting than the rest of the drivel, shock-speech, and stereotyping about online cruising.
Jim Foster, a leading gay activist in the 1970s, often said, “What this movement is about is fucking.” We are defined by our sex drive -- and our political goals amount, essentially, to ensuring that we are in no way legally penalized for it. In our personal lives, even now, almost 40 years after Stonewall, coming out requires a painful exertion of energy to rout the puritan fear that gay sex is bad. To vanquish this fear, especially when first coming out, many of us become preoccupied with the pursuit of sex.
Periods of promiscuity can help us make up for lost time and can be a healthy and meaningful part of our development as gay men. “When we were teenagers, when straight people were learning how to connect, we didn’t learn that,” explains Robert Weiss, a Los Angeles psychologist and the author of Cruise Control: Understanding Sex Addiction in Gay Men.
Yet as cruising migrates to the virtual world, the challenge of integrating desires for sexual and emotional connection can become much more difficult. As teenagers, Weiss continues, “we learned that we had to survive on our own. That means inside ourselves, many of us don’t have an innate belief that other people can meet our needs, which means that we don’t believe we can connect with them. Which means I have to rely on myself, I have to live on my own.
Of course, like so many other things, this article is written from an fairly uninclusive gay male perspective, so you have to add context in your head while reading it if you don't fall into the target out.com audience. Anyway, the part that was the most important to me was that last part: the sense of disconnection and isolation that perhaps derives from the delay of emotional development when one is (self or socially) restricted from something (be it dating, talking, fucking, whatever) as a teen.
My own personal moment of self-admission came quite late, and I hadn't really done much opposite-sex dating during high school for a few different reasons (mostly self-imposed due to worries about my mental health). I mean, even now I still don't date very often. And that's fine, I guess. Regardless of my own personal anecdotes, I wonder how much of that (and that essay) applies to modern teens.
Kids these days are growing up in a very different environment, at least in Canada, even compared to what I had 10 years ago and onwards. Those entering their late teens now, who are about the same age as my youngest sibling, can't remember a time without the internet. Half of them have trouble understanding the concept of not having a cell phone. Actually, my brother's girlfriend keeps text messaging my family's home line and my parents keep picking up the phone and getting these bizarre robo-voice readings which can be pretty indiscernable when the gf doesn't bother writing words properly (which is often).
At any rate, I wonder how much of the 'bad' of the psychophysical isolation caused by the 'net is counterbalanced by growing up in an environment much less hostile to being queer. I'm not saying things are anywhere near perfect; I'm quite certain that even today, coming out in Chatham or Napanee or Timmins as a teen is not easy and probably not totally safe in comparison to the situation a teen in KW or in Toronto sensu lato would face. But perhaps there are a few more supports and understanding on the side of their peers.
I dunno.
Emo 'made it fashionable' to be sexually fluid, and these kids saw that while growing. The 80s had some of the interesting things Madonna and some of the rockers were doing (Queen comes to mind, among others). But those of us who hit our stride in the 90s didn't have much of that. We had alt-rock and boybands, the decline of 'dance' music and the ascent of hip-hop to mainstream dominance, all of which were somewhat detrimental to the visibility of teh gey in the media. I'm not saying things weren't there, as I'm sure they were, but they were subliminal and fleeting at best from my perspective.
I do wonder, though, about differences in emotional development and coming out stages between more strictly homo sexualities and those that fit more into the grey areas. Is it easier to grow up gay than bi/pan/genderqueer/whatever? I guess what I'm asking is, do these barriers that exist for queers in general that create psychological isolation etc. grow even larger when one throws in the added uncertainty of a less specific sexual orientation or non-cis gender identity?
I need to take a shower and then go to work. Sigh.
Michael.
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