#230

20x26.5 Acrylic, red and black string on weathered composition board Emergence

Spiritual side of Sexuality

The question came up on another blog, would you like to stop being queer if you could. Raised some interesting thoughts. My answer: No. No. And No.

I feel most whole when I feel something closer to a balance of male and female desires. My spiritual center--not as in, bisexual. There's too much of the male side, my body is too much male--and loving men, being able to sexually love men, better keeps that balance.

Sexual desire is pretty complicated. It's more than physical. It's cultural, political (yes! Sex in a patriarchal tyranny is political!), and also, spiritual (not supernatural spiritual...more the the way Freud used the word 'soul' to designate the whole complex of psychic and bodily life). The imbalance of male to female became for me a source of recurrent depression, chronic anxiety, self-loathing. Accepting the female side--giving it more say, more power, made it possible to reclaim something I'd lost in adolescence--the ability to love men.

In that way, my long coming out was part of my spiritual growth, and even, I think it's not too much to say-- a product of that growth. A process that is far from finished. So, no, I wouldn't want to give that up for anything. The journey is far from over.

Of all the thought I've given to writing and rewriting the narrative, trying to understand and explain the long years in between, this brief reflection rings more true to me than anything I've come up with yet.

The (rich) Noah's Arc Syndrome

It's the part in Hedge's piece about the belief of the rich that their wealth will insulate them from coming disasters that I see as more and more, a driving force in the funding of climate denial, the marginalization of the poor and everyone else, the militarization of police. This is sub-rational. A collection of ideas and beliefs and attitudes that coalesce into an unarticulated political agenda. The Noah's Arc syndrome. I've been watching this happen for decades!