Theses on Polysexuality
On July 18, 2010, at the Christopher Street Day festival in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, I participated in an event about Polysexuality. The other participants in the event were Steve Valk, Manuela Mock, and Ralf Harth. The event was sponsored by the Lesben- und Schwulverband in Deutschland (LSVD).
Here is the transcript of my brief opening statement about polysexuality (slightly modified for this media):
Prior to the 1970s, we lived with a system of sexuality where heterosexuality was the norm, and other styles of sexuality, like homosexuality, were regarded as deviant.
In the 1970s, following the sexual liberation movements of the 1960s, a new system of sexuality was established in Western culture. The system of recognized sexual identities was established. It was decided that 5 kinds of sexual identity are acceptable:
- heterosexual
- gay
- lesbian
- bisexual
- transsexual
This system of the 1970s was a major improvement for human freedom and happiness as compared with the previous system.
But this system is now 40 years old and it is obsolete.
We need new ideas about sexuality, a Next Generation of new ideas. I am a thinker of these new ideas, which I call Polysexuality.
I take the term Polysexuality from a book that was published about 30 years ago by Sylvère Lotringer and Semiotext(e), edited by François Peraldi, called Polysexuality. The book includes texts by Alain Robbe-Grillet, Félix Guattari, Paul Verlaine, William S. Burroughs, Georges Bataille, Pierre Klossowski, Roland Barthes, Paul Virilio, Peter Lamborn Wilson, and others.
My ideas do not necessarily correspond to ideas expressed in that book. I just like the title.
Two major influences on my thinking about Polysexuality are the philosopher of gender Judith Butler, and the scientist of cyborgs, genetics, and companion species Donna J. Haraway.
I will make 4 essential points about Polysexuality:
(1) Polysexuality wants to build a bridge between the heterosexual majority and homosexual minorities. Polysexuality is about the sexual liberation of the majority, learning from practices and subcultural styles of queer minorities. The theory and practice and poesy of queer is very interesting, but it is not restricted to homosexuals. We should develop what I call queer heterosexuality or alternative heterosexuality. This is also a feminist theory, because it is about women gaining equality through gaining more symbolic power in role-reversal relationships with male sexual partners. There are many science fiction stories about utopian societies with such role-reversal relationships. (see the book The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction by Justine Larbalestier)
(2) The main difference between the view of sexuality in existing heterosexual and homosexual ideologies, and in Polysexuality, is that heterosexual and homosexual ideologies regard sexuality as being an identity. Polysexuality regards sexuality as a desire. Polysexuality regards sexuality as fun. It is nothing more than fun and desire and experiences. Sexuality is a performance, as Judith Butler says. It should be a series of temporary performances. To regard sexuality as an identity is existentially inauthentic. It is to engage in “bad faith,” exactly as the great mid-20th century existentialist philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir defined that important term. Simone de Beauvoir, the author of The Second Sex, was probably the most important feminist thinker of all time. “Bad faith” is when I escape from the authenticity of the difficult open-ended questions of the human condition by taking refuge in the security of an identity which is, in fact, a simplification and a reduction, the false imposition of an abstract idealist idea onto materialist-existentialist reality. I think that anyone who calls themselves only a heterosexual, a gay, or a lesbian is confining their sexuality to outmoded definitions and practicing what Baudrillard would call a simulation.
(3) We live in a culture that is primarily a culture of media, TV, film, stories, Internet, and pornography. And it is a very sexual culture. All of us participate in this culture, with our psyches, from childhood on. Therefore, every single one of us is Polysexual, since every person is involved with all the portrayed sexual roles in all of these films and stories, male and female, top and bottom, hunter and hunted. Whether the media consumer is anatomically-biologically a male or a female is secondary. He or she has a psychological relationship, ranging from unconscious to conscious, with all of the depicted roles. I want to experience all the possible sexual roles that are characterized in in our visual culture. Today I am James Bond, a male heterosexual. Tomorrow I am Lauren Bacall. The next day I am Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Steve McQueen. The next day I am a lipstick lesbian. The next day after that I am an aggressive biker lesbian wearing black leather. And on the last day, I am Rock Hudson.
(4) This is all inspired by the virtual reality technology of the Holodeck on Star Trek: The Next Generation. It is related to a deep research in media theory and media studies about digital and virtual technologies. Young people today, having experienced sex chat rooms and virtual worlds like “Second Life,” have already had a much more fluid and flowing experience of sexuality, which in fact corresponds to the flow and fluidity of sexual desires as described by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in their major work, Anti-Œdipus. Sexuality as temporary desire, performance, and scene, not as permanent identity. There is no reason any more to have a sex-change operation or anything like that. If a man has a crossdressing desire, that might only be 25% or 50% of his sexuality. Maybe he is also a male heterosexual. If he makes permanent changes to his body to satisfy his transgender impulse, as the old ideas from the 1970s will try to pressure him and talk him into (you are a fag, you are in the wrong body, you must switch sides to keep our two-gender system intact), then he may do real violence to his masculine self, which may be a major part of who he is.
We need to develop a very embodied version of virtual reality, which I call the virtual-slash-real. This project is very much related to dance, and to body therapies like Feldenkrais and Alexander Technique. To Tantra practices, and to Reichian-influenced therapies. The project will take place within the frame of the coming Auseinandersetzung between humans and androids, which is the largest Gestalt of how humanity will jump-start its growth and development again, untangling the complex knots binding us to our current stagnation, taking real control of our destiny and improving our lives.
Finally, it seems appropriate to invoke a baseball metaphor. The greatest sexual player might be the switch-hitter, like Mickey Mantle. And i’m not talking about switch-hitting in the conventional 1970s sense of bi-sexual.
