Sexuality: Beyond Cultural Conditioning

By M. Neal Weinstein

Several weeks ago a friend asked me if I would be interested in discussing relationships between lesbian and straight women for an article in this month's WSW. I said no. It didn't seem a primary issue in my assessment of what's important for women to be discussing. But about a week later, I realized I had some serious thoughts about sexual differences and women's relationships which I'd never shared before.

The reason I wanted to talk about relationships between lesbian and straight women is that it makes me angry to have women backing women into corners on questions of sexuality.. I feel it's a trick of the male two-dimensional system of thinking for sexuality to become an issue that ends up dividing women in our relationships with each other. Who knows how we'd feel about homosexuality or deal with our simple sexual arousal in a culture formed and created by men and women together, or by women? Who can say?

Culture is deeply interpenetrating in the making of a person. It conditions how we think, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the making of a member of our species. Unfortunately, those men who codified culture made "differences in acting out sexual arousal❞ a basis for cultural taboo. We all suffer from the results of that. Really, the taboo against homosexuality is a very silly one. Lesbianism doesn't hinder the continuation of our species. In fact, pretty soon heterosexuality won't be required itself for species generation. Our concept of nature is changing, and that is also going to change a lot of other ideas we have and a lot of activities in which we engage. Sexual chaos is just beginning. Wait until natural selection becomes, regulated selection.

Basically, we're very simple beings. Sexuality is not a very complicated thing; it becomes complicated because of how we think about it. The way we think about sex and sexuality is a result of the way we are programmed by our culture. We have been programmed to think about sex only in certain ways to benefit only certain interests. And I think it's time for the programming to change.

We think of sexuality as desire. Desire masquerades as need these days. So it's like this: sexuality

equals desire equals need. The game is to fulfill need through some form outside of ourselves. Thus each of us becomes a potential object through which the other can get need fulfilled. As an example, most of us think about sexuality in relation to vulnerability or

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control of our need. That's how our culture teaches us to relate to sexuality. A sexually arousing situation makes me vulnerable because I am now thinking about what I have to do or not do to attain my goal,

Love's Labels Lost

By Jody Gilbert Holman

Recently I attended a LIGHT (Lesbians in GEAR Hanging Together) meeting and a Women-withWomen rap group at the Gay Community Center. I found both groups to be interesting, stimulating, and slightly disconcerting because of my lifestyle--I am married and have a four-year-old son.

There were questions and ideas that I didn't contribute because I felt like an outsider. Would these women be suspicious of my motives because of my relationship with a 'man, or would they accept my concern and desire for involvement as speaking for itself? There was definite uncertainty in my mind.

Several of my close friends have come out within the past eight years. While their new lifestyle never affected the love and friendship I felt for any of them, the reverse was certainly not true. Most of them have cooled toward me considerably. Intellectually I do not believe their withdrawal of friendship is personal. They simply have new friends and interests, and perhaps see their separatism from the heterosexual community as a political statement or simple self-preservation. On an emotional level I find it difficult not to feel rejected, hurt and ultimately angry. Inside I want to scream, “Am I not still a lov-

Pass 6/What She Wants/November, 1980.

ing friend and woman, regardless of my sexual proclivities?"

Despite the past, I have been spending increasing time in the lesbian community. I have great respect for the emotional and intellectual independence I have encountered. It is an exhilarating experience to be surrounded by women who are relating so deeply to other women for art, conversation, love, entertainment, music, sports and other needs.

Gay Liberation seems an increasingly important battle in relation to the ERA because how can women loving women even exist in a patriarchal society where women are defined only in terms of their relationships to men? That women are becoming more independent is amazing enough, but for women to love each other openly and rediscover herstory and establish a woman-centered culture overwhelms me with joy.

I want to work for gay equality but have encountered problems and questions within myself. Are feminist lesbians better feminists than I am for rejecting men sexually? What do I have to offer, as a woman whose chosen living situation includes two males? Although my ideas are radical, if my lifestyle isn't does that make me a hypocrite? Does current (continued on page 11)

to "satisfy" my need. All that thinking about getting what I "need" diminishes spontaneity and the energy available to the relationship because now we're in a goal-seeking game with one another. But the game is never supposed to be overt. It's the covert game of attaining a secret goal. The result is that when we think about sexuality or feel sexual arousal, we immediately attach it to an object outside ourselves, and believe that only through that object can fulfillment really happen. And that links into the system of thought that is the cultural game. Women haven't had much to do with creating the cultural game; it's a male-created system of thought. That way of thinking obscures what sexuality is.

Sexuality is our link to ourselves as a species. It is our "primalness". It manifests itself through a magnetic field of biological electricity. If we connect with another person through this energy, it doesn't matter what we say; everything we mean is communicated through touch. That's why sexual energy is so potent.

When we are free from thinking of each other as objects for need fulfillment, we can see what is common in our experience of sexual arousal. Sexual arousal, whether it emanates from internal stimulus or external stimulus, is still the same. From my perspective, it becomes totally involving and totally engaging when we are free from seeking. This makes a lot of energy available, that's all. What two people do with that energy in a relationship has unlimited potential.

It's uncomfortable to discuss sexuality openly because it's still a covert game involving a secret goal. Men are allowed to discuss it in socially prescribed forms. But women are not supposed to be capable of sexual arousal as separate beings. That's going to take a long time to overcome. Most women still depend upon men to circumscribe their sexuality for them. And it's a sad burden to place upon the male, because he's just not equipped to know about female sexuality any more than women are equipped to know about male sexuality. I think, bottom-line, discussing sexuality really becomes frightening in a relationship where there's not mutual agreement around engaging in sex. Fear leads us to try to control the situation so that we get the outcomes we want, so that we win the game. Everybody knows that sexual rejection is the worst thing that can happen to a person in America. And sexual rejection feels the same whether it comes from a woman or a man.

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When we have relationships in which the potential for arousal (and arousal with intimacy included) is available, we begin to regulate our sexuality. We manage it by attaching time to our thinking about it. We begin to think in terms of frequency. Again, this is culturally conditioned. We believe that if something is good, we try to get it as often as we can and as much as we can. That makes us good consumers. If sex is good, we marry it, so that it will be there every night. In fact, we seek a relationship in which sex is available to us often and label that relationship a primary relationship, because we devote more of our time to it than to other relationships. Pretty soon we stop thinking about sexuality and start thinking about having it, timing it as we have it, counting how often we have it, and regulating how long it's going to be available. Sexuality becomes the central goalseeking activity. This is no different with lesbian relationsips. It is only going to become different once women change our programming.

Length or duration of time emanates out of the need to have and maintain. It has absolutely nothing to do with sexual activities per se. It carries behind it the assumption that once a relationship extends itself into particular activites, the duration of the relation(continued on page 11)

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