I Promised Queer Theories
I have a difficult relationship with my body, and a lot of that conflict comes from my identity as a survivor.
I hate it, sometimes, when I think about how it was used to make me feel so worthless, and also in some sense how it was worthless because it failed to keep me safe. (And the vulvodynia. If you want to educate yourselves about a majorly neglected medical problem this holiday season, make it vulvodynia.)
And yet I also love it because of how it did keep me safe.
For me that attitude crystallized when the nurses were examining me in the hospital, mentioning that I was not bleeding very much, and I am thinking “Wow, OK, I’m in pain,” and then they say nobody is ever going to believe I was raped without any major injuries, and I was angry, for a second, at myself (why didn’t you fight back more?) but luckily in another second I was able to convert that into love, a deep wonder and awe and appreciation that my body was able to do whatever it did to preserve itself.
I was able to do that, I think, because I’d spent a pretty long time hating it at that point, and I needed a kick in the pants to turn that around, and not being dead after, well, a whole lot of kicking was the best opportunity I got.
I’ve been lucky.
And when I was at this lecture, I actually heard something that brought all of these feelings to the fore—when Professor Hoang was screening a video about “sticky rice,” Asian-American men who love Asian-American men, and one of the interviewees said that he was surprised by the experience of “sleeping with a body that’s like mine.”
My first reaction was to think “why would anyone want that?” followed by “well, I want that, actually, sometimes,” followed by “now I understand why I’ve been so conflicted over my queer identity.”
It was nearly instantaneously that a number of things suddenly fell into place. The facts of my queer identity: I first came out in high school a few weeks before the barrage of bad experiences began. Then I didn’t tell anyone I was attracted to women—didn’t think I, myself, was attracted to women—until well into Swarthmore (and well after Coming Out Week), when I started liking my body again and consequently being able to imagine sleeping with bodies like mine.
I had been explaining this denial in my head as “I learned that I had to shape myself to male sexual desires to survive, so I did” but hadn’t been satisfied with that explanation at all. Now I’m completely satisfied.
And I wanted to share it with you.
A few extra words on the overlapping topics of survivorhood and queerness—one thing a lot of queer survivors have to deal with is the “Oh, well you’re gay because you’re scared of men” reaction.
I don’t have to wrestle with this question for myself because, luckily, I had a chance to form an autonomous sexuality before I was ever abused. But speaking as the authority I’ve appointed myself, what’s bullshit about that reaction is that it’s presuming to describe somebody else’s experience for them.
I used to say “That’s completely stupid because sexuality is genetic and if every female victim of male-perpetrated childhood sexual abuse (let’s not forget about all the other kinds of abuse out there) were lesbians, there would be so many lesbians, dude.”
(Interesting story: when Freud was treating hysterical women, one of his first explanations for the phenomenon was that hysteria was caused by childhood sexual abuse, but he later backed off of that explanation and became convinced that some of his early patients were actually lying. Admittedly without having done much research into it, I see this as typically male (and typically Viennese) denial of a pervasive social problem. My source here is the wonderful Judith Herman’s Trauma and Recovery.)
And no, dude, there’s not that many lesbians, dude. But I’ve come to realize that it’s also important to leave space for people who do believe that their sexuality is connected to their experience of abuse; here’s an argument as for why.
What I’ve come to think is that we need to respect people’s personal narratives, essentially, because those narratives will always have something to teach us.
(Also, if I could print off all of these columns and hand them in to my professors as a final project, my next three days would look a lot less miserable.)
So with that I’m signing off as your sex columnist this semester. It’s been an emotionally exhausting process, and for that reason I’m extra grateful to everyone who took the time to connect with me, because you all made it immensely rewarding.
And I hope I connected with some of you.
I think we can all do a better job of practicing sexual self-awareness (and careful and caring communication), and I think that these values (with safer-sex information as an important basis) are ones that sex-positive people need to do a better job of promoting.
Over and out.
May your breaks be full of less guilt and more sex,
Dr. Strokes
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#1: 12/17/2008 at 1:24 a.m.
Mind, your sexuality is not determined totally by genetics. Especially if homosexuality is under strong selective pressure (i.e. you're less likely to have offspring), heritability is lower. Not that the heritability is not there, and sib comparisons seem to show a pretty strong bit of genetic determinism, but there is an environmental component to almost all phenotypic variation.
You know what that was? That was me absolving myself in the event I did horribly on my evolution final...this is called sleeping partly through said final and freaking the hell out.
Take that, science! You're bloody hard!
— Argos | Unregistered, Swarthmore
#2: 12/17/2008 at 1:35 a.m.
Thank you, good doctor, for a semester of insightful and engaging columns. Just one little thing, on the causality of sexuality, it seems to me that assuming that any one thing could cause such a complex thing is simplistic and dangerous. Sexuality is likely all of the above, genetic, epigenetic, environmental, experience, what have you.
— j | Unregistered, Swarthmore
#3: 12/17/2008 at 5:03 a.m.
Your assessment of Freud is pretty accurate (nobody in Psychology buys much of what he says anyway). Note, however, that there is concern of the opposite happening: cases in which particular doctors use hypnosis techniques to promote uncovering "repressed" memories of childhood sexual abuse. See Spanos 1994 for pretty horrific evidence (I could email it to you. Much like Argos I have recently finished my cog psych final...). I could email it to you if you want...
— Peter '11 | Unregistered, Swarthmore
#4: 12/17/2008 at 7:03 a.m.
You're the best. Period.
— JC | Unregistered, Swarthmore
#5: 12/17/2008 at 8:22 a.m.
I loved this column- thanks for everything.
— A | Unregistered, Non-Swarthmore
#6: 12/17/2008 at 5:36 p.m.
Thanks for an amazing semester's worth of columns! Your posting rate was incredible and the topics you went into were awesome. I'm glad somebody else shares my passion for overanalyzing their sexual desires. And the comment threads you inspired were (almost) as fascinating as the columns themselves. Anything I can do to convince you to write a few more next semester?
— FFL | Unregistered, Swarthmore
#7: 12/17/2008 at 10:51 p.m.
Speaking of "repressed" memories of childhood sexual abuse, Carl Sagan wrote some interesting essays on the topic. They're in "The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark".
Which you guys should read anyway, because, you know, Carl Sagan wrote some goddamn amazing stuff.
— Argos | Unregistered, Swarthmore
#8: 12/17/2008 at 11:09 p.m.
Now that I've looked at a few more college sex columns, yours seems all the more remarkable. The sex columns where each week readers are told how to experiment sexually can be intriguing, but ultimately they're forgettable in the end. Well done for an insightful semester!
— SH | Unregistered, Non-Swarthmore
#9: 12/18/2008 at 2:57 a.m.
I'd just like to say thank you for a great semester. I don't know if you know this, but Dr. Strokes has built up an impressive following among straight people like myself that lead vanilla or non-existent sex lives - quite a feat for a sex columnist.
Because of you, I think about sexual desire so much more now in terms of sharing a physical experience rather than just getting with someone hot, and I doubt that's something that many teenage males can say. You've taught us that it's okay to be an intellectual and sexual person at the same time, and that the two can even converge more often than not.
I don't know if you're keeping this gig up or not next semester, but I just want you to know that if you do, you'll have an impact.
— Enlightened | Unregistered, Swarthmore
#10: 12/18/2008 at 1:40 p.m.
Maybe it's weird, but I love this column. It's fascinating. More please?
— asexual | Unregistered, Non-Swarthmore
#11: 12/18/2008 at 4:53 p.m.
It's not weird, I think most people, especially most people who have been told their desires are different from the "morm," are curious about what's going on in their heads and others'. I know I am.
— very sexual | Unregistered, Swarthmore
#12: 12/18/2008 at 5:00 p.m.
Thank you, Dr. Strokes! You are doing a great service to our community! Keep it up!
p.s. Of course, there are queer people who lead vanilla or non-existent sex lives, too! :)
— -Lexi | Unregistered, Swarthmore