Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order.
—Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge
Bisexuality: that is, each one’s location in self (repérage en soi) of the presence—variously manifest and insistent according to each person, male or female—of both sexes, nonexclusion either of the difference or of one sex, and, from this “self‐permission” multiplication of the effects of the inscription of desire, over all parts of my body and the other body … [a] vatic bisexuality which doesn’t annul differences but sirs them up, pursues them, increases their number.
—Hélène Cixous, “The Laugh of the Medusa”
This is an example of what Marquand Chapel will do to (for) you.
I dream of a sexuality that’s too beautiful for categories, that’s too beautiful for anything other than
a symphony,
a poem,
or a novel.
I grew up thinking about sex in a couple different ways—but mostly in terms of prohibition. When the church spoke about sex, it spoke in these terms. Sex was mostly something I wasn’t supposed to do. It was something one “saved” for marriage—or else. The consequences of not following these rules were harsh, eternal, and supernatural. And when there wasn’t God to discipline you, there was society, which seemed to inscribe this law on my body. I was memorably disciplined against limp wrists, feminine-sounding accents, and Barbie dolls. I was warned of the effects of pre-marital sex; sexually transmitted diseases; teenage pregnancy that estranged you from your community, added undue stress to your family and often resulted in you dropping out of high school, ruining your future and relegating you to a lifetime of misery and ‘what-ifs’; and worse. You’d end up alone, abandoned by whoever knocked you up (or got knocked up by you), miserable in being forever stuck with an unwanted child—an embodied fuck-up. [1]
Let me say it again: prohibition, structured by terrible fear. This was what sex was, never mind the disclaimer that sometimes followed this prohibition—about how it would somehow magically turn into something good, holy, and wonderful on your wedding day.
There was a catch, too. This prohibition was heterosexual in context. What was prohibited above all else was homosexuality. In fact, it wasn’t just an action to be prohibited; it was a matter of something being intrinsically wrong with you. Same-sex desire was disordered, against the natural state of things, and (most importantly) forbidden by the Bible right there alongside fornication—evidence that it was against God’s will for humanity.
Over the last five or so years, I’ve found all these assumptions challenged—challenged by real people in real situations, folk whose experience just didn’t line up with the script I had received as gospel truth. These were holy encounters, relationships and conversations and struggles through which God led me to a greater love for God and for neighbor. They led me to the Episcopal Church, to my academic interests, to my sense of vocation, to some of my very best friends, to my most cherished mentors. (For more on this, see the introduction to my thesis, Rending the Chasuble.) It was a conversion to the other.
What I’m now thinking through is how this conversion to the other affects the way in which I see myself, particularly in light of the way in which I was taught to think about sex during childhood. Our thinking about things like gender and sex don’t happen in a vacuum. If my English professors taught me anything, it’s that language hides as much as it reveals. How does one invent a language through which one can articulate an understanding of one’s sexuality? This seems nearly impossible for some folk, seeing as we, in our creatureliness, cannot create ex nihilo. We’re stuck with a language we inherited, a language which seems insufficient to our tasks, a language which defines which bodies matter and, simultaneously, renders invisible (unrecognizable) those forms of sexual and gender experience our language is at a loss to describe.
But the process of learning new ways of speaking about sexuality—new forms of language which describe, to invoke Foucault, the making of sex out of bodies and pleasures—has rendered some things recognizable. Even if I can only dream of a world beyond the heterosexual matrix, I can at least now recognize the heterosexual matrix as such—and, more importantly, can recognize parts of my own life that short-circuit the workings of the heterosexual matrix. Yes, those parts of my own “heterosexual” life which don’t seem to line up. I can recognize and name when and where the system itself fails, even if I can only dream of a world in which I can name these challenges to the system in, of, and for themselves. This is the melancholia of gender trouble (one I’m not satisfied with simply accepting; the “dreaming” to which I refer is something I actively pursue through theology, cf. Elizabeth Stuart’s contribution to Queer Theology: Rethinking the Western Body, edited by Gerard Loughlin).
Just because I present and perform a heterosexual, cis-gendered male identity doesn’t mean this identity explains my life perfectly. I’ve already hinted at the limits of my gender identification above in recalling the way in which I was disciplined (by teasing, overt correction, and fear of bullying/not “fitting in”) out of things like limp wrists and feminine interests. (Dr. Kelly Baker is onto something when she claims that norms of masculinity are, in many ways, more violently circumscribed than norms of femininity.) I often joke that the last Bible study I did with the church in which I grew up was on Biblical masculinity—and that because it was perfectly clear I didn’t line up as a “Biblical man,” I stopped attending.
I also admit that I’ve been erotically attracted to men on a couple occasions. That is to say, though I am predominantly attracted to women, I have experienced desire for folk of the same sex. This has not been a central enough experience for me to categorize myself as a “bisexual,” however. Somehow, claiming that category seems disingenuous. But I must admit that it also seems disingenuous to say that I’m simply “straight.” It seems I’m “straight” with an exception, a disclaimer, a “but I” tacked onto the end—though perhaps not more so than most folk who would characterize themselves as heterosexual. [2]
I remember once being told, “I like him [a homosexual man], but I don’t agree with his lifestyle.” What’s odd, here, is how “lifestyle” is associated only with homosexuality. How often does one hear of a “heterosexual lifestyle”? It seems there are those who act in accordance with naturally, faithfully orientated desires and those who have “[sinful] lifestyles.” Perhaps this is a promising starting point for those of us who present as heterosexual: to foreground the very constructed-ness of this category and its inability to perfectly encapsulate our genuinely dynamic, fluid, complicated lives; to foreground that it, too, is a lifestyle. [3] Even my life is more complicated than its performance makes apparent. Even my heteronormative lifestyle is circumscribed by an unrecognizability, by the limited enterprise of making sex into speech.
Can you think of the color blue outside the two little words you just read? Color. and Blue. Could you identify the phenomenon of color if the category/concept of “color” didn’t exist? What would you make of color if “color” didn’t exist?
Perhaps the best we can hope for under such circumstances is to stop worshiping our idols, to start telling stories, and to let go of our fear.
Can one who performs a normative identity in relative comfort contribute to the enterprise of “gender trouble” by foregrounding how this identity is embedded in cultural assumptions, by gesturing toward the vatic bisexuality lying just beneath the surface of our gender performance, always churning, always stirring up differences, always calling attention to the incomprehensiveness of our cataloguing of the human?
I like what Cixous is doing in the passage quoted above. She suggests that “bisexuality” as normally understood is, in some way, an erasure of difference; it suggests a neutered desire, a desire for everyone, for the both, for the all. Perhaps this is why it feels disingenuous for me to identify as “bisexual” straight up, and yet, at the margins of my experience, my gender and my sexuality feel more complicated than the binary categories male/female, heterosexual/homosexual suggest.
I wonder if Cixous’s concept of vatic bisexuality might be a way beyond this dilemma, though. If the point of critiquing the heterosexual matrix in terms of gender (male/female) is to surface a third term (a gender that’s hidden by having only two categories) then the point is that more difference exists, not less. The same is true of critiquing the heterosexual matrix in terms of sexuality (homo/heterosexuality); the end is not—to use both of Cixous’s terms—bisexual, hence neutered but a vatic bisexuality.
It is to say, “there’s a something else here—a something I cannot name perfectly.”
If it sounds as if I’m speaking a foreign language, I am. I think it’s necessary, though—especially if it’s due, in part, to the insufficiency of the terms we use to describe ourselves that we’re unable to recognize certain things about ourselves. And at the end of the day, gender theory never remains theory. We are always left with bodies. [4]
God has given us sexualities that are too beautiful for categories, That are too beautiful for anything other than
symphonies,
poems,
or novels:
stories of desire, of bodies in motion, of bodies communicating grace and love
from me to you and
from you to me.
I may be “heterosexual,” but if so, it’s a queer thing. Now, how about you?
Notes
1. Let me just say: all life is misery and ‘what-ifs’—and joy and ‘alleluias.’ To invoke Cornel West (shout-out to you, Jeremy Russell), we’re born between urine and feces—and you either come to terms with this fact or you don’t. There is no in-between. Ecclesiastes seems to make this pretty clear. I’m not convinced that the heteronormative nuclear family assures anyone of perfect happiness (don’t take this as an outright dismissal of “family,” though, for I joyfully and unashamedly admit that having a family has always been one of the deepest desires of my heart). Misery is not so much a matter of if but when and, more, which. This is part and parcel of the logic of incarnation which makes possible that deep inhabitation of the world which is the condition of possibility for real joy and fulfillment. Let me be clear: I’m not valorizing teenage pregnancy. I’m speaking a “No” to those who, trapped in self-fulfilling prophecies, short-circuit the possibility and deny the beauty of these real human lives, supposedly ruined beyond redemption by their own sluttiness. “If only they hadn’t been so horny and stupid,” this sly logic suggests. What’s elided by the discourse of the slut is how our social structures are to blame for many of the difficulties women face, particularly in motherhood and child-birth. Unsurprisingly, most of our institutions aren’t built to handle child-birth at all, regardless of the age of the parents. (In this case, I’m thinking particularly of the challenge presented by many feminist academics that the academy seems to force a zero-sum choice between children and tenure, considering the publish-or-perish pressures through which the academy articulates ‘success.’) Getting pregnant—either as a teenager or as a thirty-five year old—seems to be a challenge. Perhaps, then, we ought to turn our attention toward better forms of sex education and to those particular institutional configurations which inhibit the flourishing of women and their families (I have been thinking mostly in terms of education here, yes, but the critique is relevant for institutions beyond the academy; the church, in particular, comes to mind) instead of blaming women themselves. (I also think this is, by far, the more generous pastoral response.)
2. This is my own hypothesis, one that, I admit, seems pretty unverifiable—not least because most heterosexuals lack a language through which they can recognize and articulate failings in the system. An example of this is the rhetoric of presumed heterosexuality I found in editorial pages of Breakaway—a Focus on the Family magazine for teenage boys—which claimed that having these same-sex attractions doesn’t necessarily mean you’re gay. Okay, maybe I can buy that. But it certainly doesn’t mean I’m straight either—so what now?
3. I’m trying to follow Foucault’s critique of the repressive hypothesis here in foregrounding the production of sexuality rather than claiming I need (only) be liberated from the repression of my “true” sexuality—though I agree with the critique of Foucault by Judith Butler in arguing that such productions can, in fact, produce repression, and, thus, I find the language of liberation meaningful.
4. I’m indebted to Mark Jordan’s understanding of “queer Catholicism” here (see his The Silence of Sodom for more). The next steps in constructing this [theological] language would be to contextualize a vatic bisexuality in terms of the body of Christ—in terms of, to invoke Graham Ward, the church as the erotic community. His “There is No Sexual Difference” seems particularly instructive here: “there is no sexuality or sexual difference as such, just as there is no difference as such, only distances and affinities occurring across networks of relation” (84).
