Originally Posted by
Matthew Parris
When I was young, I was told the whole world was divided into heterosexual men and heterosexual women, bar a small number of unfortunate ‘homosexuals’ of both genders and possibly an even smaller number in a third category, ‘bisexuals’, who ‘swung both ways’; plus, finally, a tiny band of wretched creatures who were physically not quite one thing or the other. Being from a kindly, liberal family, I was taught that sympathy, understanding and tolerance were called for, and these things were not a moral question and not a matter for the police.
Growing up in the 1950s, I had no idea how recently this prism had been applied to sexuality, splitting white sunlight into colour-bands; or that a century beforehand these rigid categories had not existed. But before the Victorians, sex was described more by verbs than nouns — as something people did rather than were — and sexual leanings, mainstream as well as minority, were appetites to which almost anyone might on occasion be prey. Those earlier ages had been vicious in their approach to morally disapproved behaviour but relaxed in their understanding that many, perhaps most, could feel the pull.
Then came an age in which the moral disapproval and legal sanctions were to fade — a good thing — but paddocks were to be constructed with pseudo-scientific names; and we were all to be badged, placed in one paddock or another, and (later) offered assistance and counselling if we wished to change paddock.
In the 1960s and 1970s, as I matured and experimented, what I’d been told did not tally with what I encountered. I was never very promiscuous (or I’d be dead) but over the decades built up a modest personal casebook. Some of the men I slept with have gone straight despite a strong cultural barrier to a gay man doing this. Some friends I thought — knew — to be straight have gone gay, or ‘bisexual’. All in all, I’ve probably slept with as many straight men as self–identifying gay or bisexual ones: I doubt most were lying, and in some cases have reason to know they weren’t. For every ‘bisexual’ man who’s actually gay but reluctant to say so, there’s a straight man who’s actually bisexual. And there are plenty of ‘gay’ men who know that, in a different life, they could reasonably contentedly be straight. Indeed, hordes are: happy in real marriages with wives and children. And I’ve noticed in myself and heard reported from others how the shapes of our desires can shift with the years.
In what passes for the gay ‘community’, there’s something of a taboo about admitting, even to ourselves, that quite a few of us (not me) could, with a little coaxing and self-discipline, be ‘straight’. Straight men are equally reluctant to admit the converse. There exist strong reasons for this taboo among gays: first, ‘we can’t help it’ was absolutely central to our early pitch for equality, and we needed to believe it. Secondly, if sexuality really is modifiable for some, how long before someone suggests cognitive behavioural therapy minus (or even plus) the Hallelujahs?
Damn the Hallelujahs. The better view is that we’re free to choose. The coming age may extend that from sexuality to gender.
But with this sting which today’s trans lobby will hate. Don’t demand admittance to a new category. Don’t crave a different badge. Dare to believe that there are no categories, no badges, and no walls.
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