LGBT – All Our Lives

There has been something I’ve been meaning to write for a while now: I think that it’s important to note that while All Our Lives supports the practice of safe sex, there is no need for people to engage in sex for sex’s sake. I often worry that some individuals, particularly people in their twenties and thirties, may feel obligated to have sex because that is what society expects them to do. Of course, the same problem applies to teenagers, who are impacted by the same message: there is a timetable on when someone should lose his or her virginity, and they had better do it before they grow up to be a 40-year-old virgin. Anyone who ends up in that situation has something wrong with him or her, either sexually, socially or psychologically. The latter mentality is oppressive to those who, for whatever reason, choose not to have sex.

While it is certainly possible for trauma or illness to affect someone’s libido, there are many healthy, legitimate reasons for avoiding sexual activity, either in the long-term or in one’s choice of partners. Some of them may include:

-Putting off the responsibility of sexual activity until one is more established in terms of a career or education
-Not having found the right person to have sex with
-Being temporarily uninterested in sex
-Having an asexual orientation
-Avoiding intercourse that does not match one’s orientation, such as when a lesbian who has not “come out” resists pressure to have sex with men.
-Spiritual decisions regarding the relationship between the individual’s body and his or her relationship with the Divine.

Personally, I’d say that being abstinent has been one of the healthiest decisions I’ve made in my life. I am waiting to have sex with someone with whom I am deeply in love, preferably within a marital covenant. That is what “works” for me, both spiritually and emotionally.

It is true that my initial choice to abstain was rooted in a concept of self-respect that was tied to my religious beliefs. However, as time went on, I also felt that sex would be source of stress and conflict in my life. During high school, college and graduate school, I struggled to take care of my basic needs and complete my schoolwork with the excellence that I wanted to achieve. I sense that attempting to manage birth control pills, ovulation calendars, condoms, etc would have been very burdensome, not to mention anxiety-producing. When I had irregular periods in 2006, I knew that it wasn’t because I was pregnant. (I was severely stressed.) I can’t imagine how awful I would have felt if I had had to worry about pregnancy every month. Because I was abstinent, STIs or pregnancy weren’t even possibilities, so I was free to focus on other things.
I still associate my abstinence with spiritual commitment and see it as a way of honoring my identity as one of God’s creatures. However, I am also proud of continuing to make the sexual choices that are right for me. When I have sex, it will be with the right person, at the right time, or not at all.

Hence, I want to assure readers who choose not to have sex that that choice is perfectly healthy and normal. No one should ever feel pressured to have sex because they have reached a certain age, or because our society maintains an ableist association between a lack of sexual activity and psychological infirmity.

So, if you have sex, make sure it’s in a situation where you feel safe, respected, and ready. If that means not having sex, that’s ok, too.

I recently became aware of a faction within the feminist movement calling itself the “Rad Fem” and/or “Womyn Born Womyn” movement. Those ascribing to this ideology hold that gender constructs are intractable. Those who are biologically male will always be male, even if the male in question identifies as a woman. (The same holds true for biological women who identify as male, though most rad fem analysis focuses on the former.) Because transwomen were initially reared as men, they have experienced male privilege. Hence, any man who transitions into a woman is appropriating the biological identity of women and imposing male perspectives unto the collective experience of women as a group. Such individuals view this alleged appropriation as misogynistic.

We live in a country where people are free to believe whatever they want, but many RadFems, such as those on GenderTrender, ignore the boundaries of basic civility by identifying, tracking, outing and then systematically harassing specific individuals. Such people are not content to voice their opinions; they seem to have a burning compulsion to make trans people’s lives as miserable as possible. People associated with Gender Trender have attempted to get people fired from their jobs and alienated from their social circles. They have engaged in online bullying of specific trans people. As survivor of bullying, this persecution breaks my heart. These attackers have no concern for the physical, emotional, vocational or spiritual well being of their targets. It’s impossible to look into their hearts, but their behavior evokes the kind of unrestrained savagery displayed by the child antagonists of Lord of the Flies. Like their metaphorical counterparts, these attackers represent a vicious society that is controlled by humankind’s lowest instincts and which is devoid of compassion.

Radical Feminism is an anomaly in the feminism movement. There are fringe factions in every group. RadFems strike me as the Randall Terrys of the feminist movement-their hateful rhetoric is an embarrassment to the feminist movement in the same way that Terry’s besmirches pro-lifers. Similarly, the rhetoric of some in the RadFeminism movement reminds me of Peter Singer’s ableist promotion of medical rationing, involuntary euthanasia and infanticide, which he cloaks in the guise of philosophical discourse. For instance, in regard to their statements that they want transgenderism to disappear from existence, some RadFems have reassured detractors that they don’t want to physically injure or murder trans people. Similarly, Peter Singer has said that he doesn’t want to kill disabled people who can conceive of themselves over time and have a preference to go on living. Well, thank goodness for small favors! Surely society should have higher standards than that…

I anticipate that in the future there will be more and more dialogue between trans and disability advocates, as we experience similar forms of social oppression. (Bodily difference, discontinuity between the kind of body our society expects and the kind of body one actually has, interaction with the medical establishment, the current need for accommodation in regards to name changes, living arrangements, etc.) This dialogue will become increasingly valuable as the disabled community wrestles with the phenomenon of transableism, and how best to evidence respect for able-bodied persons who identify as disabled. Finally, I hope that those of us who identify as progressive, consistent pro-lifers can be party to creating a society in which every person is loved, valued, and treated with dignity.

Tag: LGBT

Abstinence is a Legitimate Sexual Choice

On “Radical Feminism” and Human Dignity