[Newspoetry] Learning Sexual Politics

[DL Emerick]

Sexual Politics?

In Cabaret, Michael York explains to Liza Minelli, when she puts the make on him and he withdraws from the situation, "Look, I'm gay -- I've tried sex with three other women -- and got no pleasure out of it."  Later in the movie, Minelli and York have sex, causing the line to be said, "Well, obviously, those three women were just the wrong woman!"

How do know what you are liking?
straight or gay,
bi-sexual, asexual,
auto-sexual,
trans-sexual,
into bestiality,
into pederasty,
into loving little girls,
or much older men or women,
or people near your own age,
or other people's spouses,
or multiple partners,
or just incest?

These are, if questioned,
answers about sexual identity,
as if an identity were certain.

The old repressive models of sexuality
are straight-forwardly normative:
here are the permissible sexual modes.
There's no arguing with such law,
we'll stone those who violate it.

Indeed, the vatican's law is awful:
the sexual act is not for pleasure;
it is only for our reproduction,
given to us as a spiritual event,
in which God may enter the union,
between a man and a woman,
menage-a-trois style,
to stick soul in a seed --
if it ain't reproductive, it's sin.

Modern thinking stresses no-faults:
it might be all genetic-orientation;
it might be all some socialization;
it might be a mix of such things.

But, modern thinking is intent-based:
man is free so long as he uses free will,
to do the things he must do, said Kant,
which seems rather to wrap us in chains,
duty escapes the issues of whatness.

An easier answer is less definitive:
man's sexual identity is situational,
constituted by the sexual experiences,
which might be almost of any nature,
but the outcome of the encounter,
so far as it gives pleasure or not,
defines the components of identity.

The answer, then, to the question
is that you know your sexual history,
but have no idea of its future,
except insofar as you try new things,
or as your old tastes grow improved.

Sexual identity is formed in learning,
but would not be rigid or frigid thing.