Guilt Trip
Compulsory heterosexuality and my non monogamy
I left Matt’s dingy white tiled apartment building on a high, deciding to walk home astride the shimmering lights of New Canterbury Road, introspective the entire way. It seems as if five G&T’s is exactly enough alcohol for me to become philosophical, and as always follows a tryst that ends within three hours of me meeting the person, I felt a lingering shame, known only to myself and that only I knew was undeserved.
The shame comes from a number of places and manifests as a sharp wince of disapproval in the first moments of isolation after an act of promiscuity. Initially, when I was younger, it came from believing the world’s insistence that what I was doing was slutty, that I was partaking in a throwaway waste of my youth. It always felt untoward to me — I had just had a lot of fun, why did my brain tell me I needed to feel so shitty? Nowadays, it has morphed into a general sense of caution, a polite “Should I have done that? Did I really want to do that?” rather than an emphatic “you shouldn’t have done that!” (I admire my ability to check in with myself, despite how inconsequential the check in may be). Unsurprisingly, the voice of shame sounds eerily similar to the voice of my eating disorder, and the voice of my obsessive compulsions — a gifted actor playing multiple parts with shockingly similar delivery — my personal Kristen Stewart.
Regardless of its consistent presence, the shame is nowhere near as loud as it was when I was younger, and lasts mere hours from my tottering out of whomever’s bathroom I was in after my obligatory post-coital urination. La petite mort. I put this down to years of working on self acceptance, and of course, exposure therapy; jumping off a cliff isn’t that scary if you do it twice a week for five years.
In the instance we are currently dissecting, there were more contentious reasons for my fleeting doubt following sleeping with Matt, 34, hospital operations assistant. Now that I am in an open relationship and have become somewhat discerning of whom I sleep with outside of it, Matt might not have been the cream of the crop, for lack of a better term. Despite having excellent rapport over text that meant we had been talking everyday up until our date in that delicious way that turns you on without being textbook sexting, I felt like I was the one solely holding up the conversation in the beer garden of the White Cockatoo. He might have been nervous, or bored, but he was so dry that I really couldn’t tell. He made a few too many comments about “women” in the generalised sense, and stated that he didn’t have a favourite food (yes, I had to scrape the bottom of THAT barrel). Buddy — if you are going to call me cupcake over text, show a little joie di vivre in reality. At least he was as tall as his Hinge profile claimed.
Once alone in the bathroom cubicle I had my very own will she-won’t she moment, weighing up the outcome of my night were I to go home. I bolstered myself, told him we were bailing, and ordered an Uber to his place (he had never downloaded a ride share app). Once back in his apartment Matt livened up, and after I took a long hard look at his meticulously organised Lego figurine collection, we fucked the shit out of each other. It was incredibly enjoyable, and I even had the feeling that he wanted to cuddle afterward, foiled by my quick exit and instruction that should he ever feel like blowing his load, I was the gal to call.
Even still, a small nagging unrest bit at my heels. Both before and after the sex I imagined scenarios where people chastised me, telling me he was a shmuck, that I shouldn’t have sex with men who couldn’t string an interesting sentence together, that I really had the opportunity to aim higher, and by sleeping with this man I was validating his less than stellar attempt at socialisation.
I can pass over these reasons quickly. Eh, it’s not my job to fix men right? My job is to get my back absolutely blown out, regardless of how eloquent the person doing the blowing is. I’m also hyper aware of my internalised misogyny, and as soon as I see her rearing her fugly head, I knuckle down. Lastly, I’m in no place to hold people to any sort of imaginary standard unless they are being directly unkind, or generally crappy toward other people. No, it seems that my contemporary issues have more to do with bi-erasure than with slut shaming, which makes things decidedly more difficult for my little brain.
Being bi and having a male partner has a funny way of convincing you that you have to meet a certain quota of queer encounters to prove to yourself and to others that you are in fact gay. This internalised gatekeeping has real roots in the desire to have sex with people who aren’t men and explore my sexuality, but the belief that I don’t truely belong in my community lingers still. Sometimes if I choose to sleep with a man I feel as if I’m doing a disservice to my sexuality, that I really could be having a better time with a womxn. For the most part this is probably true — almost all of the encounters I’ve had with womxn since my boyfriend and I became open have been fulfilling, exciting, and incredibly hot. With men…it’s been fifty-fifty.
Exacerbating this is the ardent need for recognition of my queerness from other people. Having gay friends but being left out of certain references because I have a boyfriend has been strangely isolating; I feel like an angsty child excluded from a handball game. In the vein of ‘those who mind don’t matter’ I know logically that this is not intentional, but as much as I would like to believe that loving myself is enough, external recognition of your place in the rainbow fabric helps.
At the same time, I know that I benefit from the privilege my bisexuality gives me — I can fit into both queer and heterosexual spaces fairly easily without being berated in either.
The notion of “compulsory heterosexuality” has trended the interwebs recently and for me, prompted a little self exploration; popularised by feminist writer Adrienne Rich in 1980, comp-het explores the idea that in a patriarchal society the ‘normal’ sexual relationship is between a man and a woman. Under this theory, “society enforces heterosexuality, branding as deviant any noncompliance. Therefore, the so-called normalcy of heterosexuality and any defiance against it both are political acts.”
In Rich’s view, heterosexuality catalyses as a result of women’s subjection to men, is protected by their access to us, then reinforced by culture, becoming hegemonic as man benefits from male-female relationships. Modern day discussion revolves around the idea that because heteronormativity is ingrained in us we must question the very motives behind our need for men, regardless of our gender identity. Am I actually attracted to men, or am I attracted to their desire for me as a direct result of successfully capitalising on my commodified femininity and the security in society that this offers me? Woof. Tiring stuff.
In my alcohol fuelled elation as I travelled home, I weighed up the pros and cons. Do these ideas apply to me? Are they in service of or destructive of my feminism?
I decided that perhaps I didn’t need to be berated by the invisible jury spouting these arguments in my head. I might have to reconcile myself to the fact that yes, I was sexually attracted to men in a way that was unfortunately fairly uncomplicated, and primal, and foundational to who I was. At the same time, this attraction was also political, a power play, both a summation and manipulation of Rich’s ideas, and the simple fact of my acknowledgement of these things was sexy in itself. Regardless of my negative, sometimes traumatic experiences with them in the past, I can’t excise my desire for men. Does this make me ignorant? Does it reinforce the exact systematic heteronormativity I discussed above? Maybe. For me, the power lies in knowledge of these facts and the dexterity to avoid being shamed by them anymore. I love dick, I love the way men smell, I love how simple they can be, and I love being wanted by them. I also love people who aren’t men, who bring to the table the plethora of experiences they will just never be able to give to me. Can I enjoy men without being a traitor to my identity? Could enjoying them in fact, be a central part of it?
I’m sure the lesbian continuum can propagate while I continue to play for both teams.
While I doubt this is the case, I hope other people are having the same drawn out discussions with themselves about the ethics of their sexual experiences as I am — it would make me feel less neurotic. I also don’t condone any screwy male behaviour as some sort of inescapable reality of our world — I just refuse to fix them, especially Matt, who just texted me a meme about having an erection. Ce’st la vie.
