Part I:  My Definitions

1.  Sexuality is a hunger waiting to devour my autonomy.  It is a way someone looks at me that says I'm not a person to be known, but only a thing to be used.  It is a way someone touches me that says I belong to anyone who wants me, that there is no part of me that belongs to me alone.  It is a statement of ownership.  It is being trapped, exposed, and invaded; being drained and then thrown away.  It is broken promises and betrayed trust.  It is the impossible price tag that someone who claims to love me puts on that love.  Sexuality is exploitation.

2.  Sexuality is when an attractive stranger walks by, and the person who a moment ago was here, was standing right beside me, was with me, is suddenly on another planet.  It is when someone who seemed to like me and seemed to be my friend finds a new boyfriend, or patches things up with his wife, or finds a new hobby that leads to meeting new people, or discovers that she really can have adult relationships with real people--and there's no time left to waste on an odd little kid who will never grow up.  It is when someone who promises to come back never does.  It is always taking second place to someone who offers something that I cannot.  It is being outgrown and left behind.  Sexuality is abandonment.

3.  Sexuality is when someone tells me that I'm not whole, that my personhood is incomplete, that a relationship in which I give everything I have is not "full."  It is hearing that because I have no sexual feelings, I have no feelings; that because I do not feel love in my groin, I cannot feel love at all.  It is when someone who has not even bothered to look at my world dismisses it as a barren rock.  It is being called inferior to "someone who is human."  It is the denigration of my experiences, my feelings, and my self.  It is when my unique faculties are thrown back at me as hopeless inadequacies.  Sexuality is reproach.

Part II:  Other People's Cures

My sexual "defect" came to the attention of members of the helping professions during my early teen years, and for the next several years I was subjected to the efforts of a series of well-meaning "Experts" to help me.  When I persisted in refusing to accept the female gender assignment that would have made my medical management easier for my doctors, it was decided that I should be assisted in adopting a male gender identity.

Presenting oneself convincingly as a male can be difficult if one is five feet two inches tall, has a high voice and no facial hair, and is several years past the usual age of puberty. But The Experts were confident that these difficulties could be overcome with the simple addition of a penis, or a reasonable facsimile thereof.  Since I did not have such an appendage, The Experts (who obviously had never tried it themselves) recommended wearing a jockstrap with a rolled-up pair of socks in it to produce a strategically-placed bulge.  I spent several weeks staring at people of both sexes, and as far as I could see, there was no visible difference in the crotches of males and females who were wearing underwear and properly fitting trousers.  It did occur to me that I might have some peculiar perceptual deficit that prevented me from noticing a difference that was evident to other people; it also occurred to me to wonder, if this was the case, how acquaintances would react if I suddenly acquired a bulge where none had been before.  Nevertheless, being a naive sixteen-year-old who believed that The Experts really knew what they were talking about, I tried it--once.  I discovered the following useful facts:

When you look in a mirror, put the socks in, and look in the mirror again, you can't tell the difference.  The socks aren't visible.

When you go about such normal activities as sitting down, standing up, walking, and going up and down stairs, the socks work themselves into visible and thoroughly unnatural-looking conformations.

When you ride your bicycle to the shopping mall two miles away, the socks work their way out of the jockstrap.  When you arrive at the mall, park your bike, and begin walking across the parking lot, the socks fall out your pant leg onto the ground.

This experience taught me as much about The Experts as it did about the proper use of socks.

Later that year, my indoctrination into the cult of phallus fixation was continued at a special clinic to which my physician referred me.  There I was seen by several Experts who took it for granted that since I did not want to be female, I must want to be male, and that therefore I would be very anxious to acquire a penis.  One of their primary concerns seemed to be to dissuade me from undergoing a phalloplasty (plastic surgery to create a phallus using skin grafted from the thighs and abdomen) and to convince me of the benefits of using a prosthetic phallus instead.  Neither option interested me.  I listened politely to the horror stories about complications from phalloplasties, and to the enthusiastic descriptions of the virtues of prostheses. After showing me two prosthetic penises and explaining how I could get one made to be proportional to my body size and to exactly match my skin color, the Expert who was in charge of my case asked if I had any questions.  I did: "What use are these?  What would I do with one?"  The Expert appeared to be quite surprised by these questions.

At the time, my primary response to all this was disinterest.  I didn't understand what all the fuss was about.  I was not interested in having sexual relationships, and I thought that if such an interest had not developed by the age of sixteen, it probably never would.  After having experienced some new and different types of relationships since then, I now feel that the emphasis on prosthetic phalluses was outrageous.  I have found, contrary to the assertions of The Experts, that I can love, that I can be "in love," that I can seek "union with [another] person in delight and passion, and the procreating of new dimensions of experience which broaden and deepen the being of both persons" (May's definition of eros, p. 73), without wanting sexual involvement.  I am even more certain now that I will never want a sexual relationship.  But if I should ever change my mind, I certainly hope that I and any partner I choose will be creative enough to come up with some mutually satisfactory arrangement that does not involve attaching a nerveless piece of rubber to my body!  Is the point of sexual intercourse to experience a deep, intense, and uninhibited communion between two people, or is it the penetration of a vagina by a penis, even if this requires inserting an artificial contrivance between the lovers?  If the latter is what's most important, then what am I needed for, other than as the person who happens to be wearing the detachable penis?  I might as well leave the penis home for my so-called "partner" to masturbate with, while I go out to a movie.  Why call that a "relationship"?

When I was eighteen, I was seen by a different Expert, who wanted to involve me in a comprehensive gender reorientation program.  His initial interview consisted of five questions: "How long have you been living as a male?"  "Have you ever had sexual intercourse?"  "Do you currently have a girlfriend?"  "Do you have a boyfriend?"  "How many times a week do you masturbate?"  Based on my answers to the last four of these questions (no, no, no, and none), he concluded that my gender identity was too weak, and that I needed his help to learn more appropriate "masculine" behavior.  When I told him that I wasn't interested in learning the behaviors he had mentioned, he replied that it was necessary for me to learn them or I would become a miserable and unhappy person.  In fact, he even offered to bet money that within five years, if I did not accept his recommendations, I would be a miserable and unhappy person. That was seven years ago.  I accepted none of his recommendations, and I consider myself a happy and well-adjusted person with a strong sense of identity.  But it's a good thing I didn't accept his bet; I'm sure I could never convince him that I'm not miserable and unhappy.  After all, I still have not had sexual intercourse, I don't have a girlfriend or a boyfriend, and I don't masturbate.  Furthermore, I'm not even "living as a male."

In fact, I was no longer living as a male three years later, when my doctor told me that I needed urinary tract surgery, and referred me to another Expert to perform the operation.  This Expert decided that, since he was going to be in the neighborhood anyway, he should perform a phalloplasty.  As I have already mentioned, these operations carry a very high risk of complications.  Even when there are no complications, the surgically created phallus doesn't do anything except sit there looking grotesque.  It can't be used to urinate through, and it can't become erect.  There are several possible solutions to the latter problem, involving the use of plastic rods or embedded hydraulic pumps.  I don't see that this is any different from the use of a prosthesis, except that it's much more expensive and dangerous, and the artificial device is permanently attached.  It's still artificial.  I remember a discussion of phalloplasty during which an Expert stressed that, if the nerves were not damaged too much during the grafting procedures, the new penis actually had feeling.  My father, looking somewhat bewildered, asked, "What kind of feeling?  The kind of feeling I have in my elbow?"  This is an important point that is usually ignored by Experts.  My impression is that genitals are important in sexual expression not because of their location, but because they have some peculiar quality of sensation that is not present or not as strong in other areas of the body.  But moving skin to a new part of the body will not give it new qualities of sensation; if anything, sensitivity will be lost. Yet when I told the above-mentioned surgeon that I did not want a phalloplasty, he predicted that if I did not either have a phalloplasty or accept reassignment as a female, I would become very depressed and would be likely to commit suicide.  "You have to follow the rules.  You can't just have it your way all the time," he scolded.  Since it was my body, and I was the one who would have to live with the consequences of any surgery for the rest of my life, I thought I had an obligation to make sure that it was done my way.  I found a different surgeon.  And I haven't commited suicide yet.

These anecdotes are all examples of the treatment of sexuality as a question of "sexual organs and how you manage and manipulate them" (May, p. 72).  The common theme is the emphasis on the pursuit of some standard of normalcy, regardless of what extreme means are necessary to reach that end.  There are other Experts who are less outspoken in their biases.  There are those who say that all sensuality is part of sexuality, and that the form the expression takes is less important than the content of what is being expressed.  This sounds much more reasonable, but my experience suggests that it is a trap.  There have been people who have acknowledged that my feelings are valid, and that if I truly love someone, then whatever form of sharing and communication springs from that love is also valid.  But if I accept this as the premise for a conversation (or for an intimate relationship), it doesn't take long to discover the catch.  My expression is valid if it is an expression of real love--but if the expression isn't fairly similar to the most popular expressions of intimacy through sexuality, then the love must not be real.  This is an even more fundamental attack on my integrity than the obsession with genitals.  It still concludes that I am dysfunctional, but rather than attributing the disorder to simple equipment failure, it presumes to judge my feelings and to call my humanity into question.  This is more than unacceptable; it is intolerable.  I define myself as asexual, because if I am asexual I have all the equipment I need.  I define my expressions of sensuality, eros, and love as nonsexual, because if they are nonsexual they are not rendered invalid by my asexuality.  I define my love as authentic, because I define my humanity as complete and unimpaired.

May, R.  Love and will.  New York: Dell Publishing Co., Inc., 1969.

Copyright (c) 1987  Jim Sinclair
 
 

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