Naturally

Why do people become gays or lesbians? I mean, people are naturally attracted to the opposite sex, so what influences some people to be attracted towards to their own sex?
–What’s Natural?

Well, there’s your problem in a nutshell. People are not “naturally” attracted to the opposite sex. There’s nothing natural, inherent, or inevitable about sexual attraction or gender identity. These things are fabulously variable and fluid. I’ll give you a great example: just last week I attended a conference in Kathmandu about strategies for defending queer rights in South Asia (organized by the Blue Diamond Society of Nepal and LLH Norway), and there I met a lovely transgender woman who spoke at the conference about identifying as a heterosexual. Now, here’s an individual who was born as a biological male, but identifies and lives her life as a straight woman. Is that “natural”?  Who cares? And there are so many more varieties: trans individuals who desire with same-sex desires, trans individuals who desire other trans people, same-sex desiring individuals, bisexuals, pan-sexuals, straight people who don’t want kids (procreation, of course, being the usual rock with which heterosexists bludgeon others with the “unnaturalness” of same-sex desire), you name it. Just going by the sheer variety of ways that people express sexual desire and experience pleasure, I don’t think it’s possible to talk about what’s natural. Some people are born with their desires hardwired into their brains and others are not. Asking the question of why some people become gay or lesbian does not make any more sense than asking why some people become straight. A better question would be, “how do we, as a society, protect and celebrate the diversity of sexual and gender identities in our communities?” That’s not the question you asked, of course, but it’s a much more productive and inclusive one.

Bringing Drag Into The Bedroom

I am a middle-aged man and I have a serious problem. I like to shave and wax myself, wear false breasts, ladies’ inner wear, saris, and makeup before having sex with my wife. I like to play the female role in bed. I want my wife to dress up as a man and make love to me. In short, I want to be the “wife”, while my actual wife becomes the “husband”. I only want this maybe 20 percent of the time we enjoy sex. For the remaining 80 percent, I am fully happy as the husband. I do not want a permanent reversal of roles. I am not a transsexual. I just want more “masala” in our sex life. I am quite happy as a man, a husband, a father and as a successful person in my career. How can I make my wife understand and cooperate?
–Looking For Some Spice

Um, you tell her. Just talking to your partner about your sexual desires is really not so hard. The challenge is doing it in a way that is respectful of the other person’s boundaries. So my advice is this: sit her down in a calm, private, non-sexual setting and tell her what’s on your mind. Tell her everything you just told me: that this isn’t something you want all the time, that you’re very happy in your marriage, and that your need to explore the boundaries of gender performance does not mean that you are gay or transgender. She may be horrified or she may be delighted. It’s more likely that her response will fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, but either way try to keep things calm. If she agrees to go with this then you have to assure her that you want to start slow and then stay true to your word–start slow. Don’t go right into full-on drag. Start out with some role-playing first—a few encounters where you act like a “woman” and she acts like a “man”. You are, of course, dealing in stereotypes about how men and women are supposed to behave and feel during sex, but those stereotypes are powerful and there can be a very real erotic charge to transgressing them.

Anyway, start off with some role-playing, and then you can work your way up to having sex in drag. And also, don’t look at this as trying to make your wife “cooperate” with you. For you to successfully incorporate this fetish into your sex life, you both need to be willing and happy participants. This means that you need to place as much emphasis on making the fantasy pleasurable for her as on making it pleasurable for yourself. Ask her what she needs to make this fantasy a happy thing for her and how frequently she feels comfortable participating in it. In the best case scenario you’ll both be thrilled with this new aspect of your sexual relationship and it will enable you to bring a more nuanced and mutually fulfilling attitude to your more vanilla sexual escapades. Even if this isn’t the fetish that rocks her world, if you’re kind and considerate about putting it on the table she will hopefully at least be neutral about participating in the whole thing. And don’t forget to ask her about her unspoken fantasies are and how you can bring them into your sex life! Remember, sharing is caring.

Lezzies For Marriage

I am male, aged 47, and a bachelor. It’s true. I have always wanted to marry a lesbian, although I cannot find one. Am I abnormal?
–Love The Lezzies

You’ve made a point of emphasizing the fact that you are 47 and a bachelor. However, you have made no mention of being gay, which is the usual reason why men ask me about marrying lesbian women. So I’m going to assume you’re straight unless you correct me. Now to the question at hand. Are you abnormal? Maybe so, maybe no. Are you a loser? Absolutely.

A lot of straight men (and lot of straight women, for that matter) get off on the idea of “lesbian” women doing their “lesbian” things with each other. I put that in quotes because they’re not actually interested actual, honest-to-God same-sex desiring women, but because what they really want to see is straight-acting women who are (in heteronormative imaginings) such nymphomaniacs that they’ll have sex with anyone, even (gasp!) another woman. Your letter isn’t really about getting know women with same-sex attractions because the fantasy isn’t about women and their desires at all—it’s about women performing a simulacrum of desire for straight men’s viewership and consumption. V.N. Deepa, a founding member of the Sahayatrika collective for same-sex desiring women in Kerala has plenty to say on this subject: “The cynical might say that the publicity that Sahayatrika has received has also been propelled by the commodification and hyper-sexualization of lesbian identity…The invisibility of women-loving women in daily life is countered by constructions of the ‘lesbian’ in the popular imagination; and a proportion of our (hotline) callers seem to imagine a lesbian not to be a woman with same-sex attractions, but instead a woman who will have sex with anyone. And our efforts to create safe, women-centered spaces are at risk of being overwhelmed by male sexual harassment/desire.” (That quote, by the way, is from Deepa’s fabulous essay titled “Queering Kerala: Reflections on Sahayatrika”, and you can find it in the 2005 anthology Because I Have A Voice: Queer Politics In India, edited by Arvind Narrain and Gautam Bhan. Holla peeps!) I have no idea why you want to marry a lesbian woman, but your reasons seem more sinister than honest, so for everyone’s sake, I hope you never find one.

Navigating The Genders

I am a 23-year-old boy. But even though I am a boy, I feel like a girl inside. I’ve always liked to wear girls’ clothing, like skirts and bras, and I have felt this way from my childhood itself. I feel that I am totally a woman. Can you tell me why this is happening to me? Are there other people in the world like me? Can I really change into a woman, and if so, how do I do this?
–J

I have to apologize to you, J, because I received your letter about a month ago and I put off responding to it because the question you’ve posed is just so dauntingly large. I’m sorry for making you wait so long. To answer your query, it sounds to me that you are a transgender woman (or gender-variant and genderqueer—I’ll be using all these terms interchangeably although there is quite an argument in the community whether it is really accurate to do so). That is to say, you are a person who has been born with the biological characteristics of a man but who identifies yourself as a woman. India has a rich heritage of communities of people who transgress and transcend the blindly accepted gender binary of “male=penis” and “female=vagina”, and who are redefining what gender means on the ground Essentially, the argument of many gender activists and theorists is that one’s gender is not necessarily linked to biological characteristics, that there are more genders under the sun than just “male” and” female”, and that it is necessary as a society to expand our socially accepted definitions in order to reflect the diversity of how gender is lived and experienced in the real world. For example, many people who identify as hijra state openly that they consider themselves women, plain and simple, and yet there are also others who identify as transgender and say that they fall into a third gender category that cannot be defined as either male or female. And that’s all to the good. The beauty of engaging with gender-variance is that it pushes all of us (including transgender individuals) to question our assumptions about gender and sex and to acknowledge the fluidity of such identities. It also allows non-genderqueer individuals to push the boundaries of their own genders: if a butch-presenting lesbian and a very femme transgender individual both identify as women, then they are both challenging assumptions about what womanhood means and expanding the limits of gender identity and embodiedness for us all—gay, bisexual, straight, transgender, and queer. All of this gender theory is my way of telling you that you are not alone. Not by any means. There are many communities of hijras in the north and aravanis in the south that you can tap into as sources of support and guidance. (You may, for example, have seen the recent news reports about the addition of “transgender” as a gender category to official documents and government applications in Tamil Nadu.)

Now, you raised the question of how to “really” change into a woman. In my book, you already are one. But of course, not everyone will see it that way, not among the aravanis and transgender population. In the opinion of many in the transgender community, one cannot truly call themselves male or female until they have undergone the sex-reassignment surgery. (This surgery essentially creates either a new set of genitalia and secondary sex characteristics for the person who elects to go through it and is often preceded and followed by a long-term course of hormone therapy.) However, the surgery is expensive and carries certain health risks, and not everyone chooses to do it. Does that make them less authentically the gender they’ve chosen? In my opinion, no. It’s ultimately your decision to make, and you have to be comfortable with it since you’re the one walking out of that hospital. We’re dealing in profound issues of identity here, and when it comes right down to it, only you can define who you are and set the terms of your own selfhood. Not me and not anyone else. It’s your right, J. So claim it.