Pitchers and Catchers

Some friends and I went to see “Brokeback Mountain” the other day. It was pretty good, not great. Two things struck me. First, I found it odd that two men were making out. Second, it brought up some questions about how we as a society define sexuality.

When I say that it was odd, I don’t mean that it made me feel weird. I thought that it might, but it didn’t. I had suspected that watching such a movie might cause some kind of visceral repulsion rooted in social taboo, but it didn’t. On the surface at least, I knew I was socially liberal – people are free to contract to do whatever the heck they want - and that apparently won the day.

When I say that it was odd, I’m referring to the aesthetics of the physical act itself. It’s often said that men are functional while women are works of art. If that’s the case, it would follow that there’s beauty to be found in female-female and male-female relations. But a function-function pairing? Is that ever going to look good? It didn’t to me in this instance. Maybe the problem was that it was two hetero actors. Maybe the problem was that they were cowboys. Maybe it was the mid-western accents that I found distasteful. As it was portrayed in the movie, two guys making out has more to do with violence than beauty. I was constantly reminded of the line from a Ben Lee song, “Your body is a dream/that turns violent/and that’s the way I like it.”

But maybe my aesthetic sense is colored by my own sexuality. I think guys look silly when they dance, but maybe if I was gay, I’d think that of women when they danced. Come to think of it, I probably only appreciate the physical movements of guys when they serve a function. For example, a center fielder loping after a ball hit into the gap – that’s a beautiful thing. But would I still find it beautiful if it didn’t serve a purpose in a baseball game? Probably not. Would a gay man really find the opposite to be true? I find that hard to believe. Maybe our aesthetic senses exist independently of our sexualities, which would lead me to conclude that women are beautiful and men are not. To every rule, there are exceptions, however. More to the point, if sexuality and aesthetics function independently, it might not matter to a gay person if they didn’t find the act beautiful (like me), so long as it remained sexual.

The jury is still out on what I should make of my reaction and whether or not it is universal. The above are some possibilities.

The other question was raised by my friend, who asked, how many different types of sexuality exist in human society? The obvious answer would be two: heterosexual and homosexual. The two terms derive from the Greek words heteros, meaning other, and homos, meaning same. What blunt objects by which to define our sexuality! It’s like defining a rainbow as something blue and not blue. It’s accurate, yes, but not very descriptive. Can something so complex as human sexuality be reduced to binary terms – this and the not-this?

Freud wrote that human relations can be mapped on the scale of passive-aggressiveness. With particular regard to sex, he felt that women were passive, their physical bodies being ‘receptacles’ for sexual union. Men, who gave during the, ahem, hokey-pokey, according to Freud, were aggressive. (These are his words, people, don’t kill the messenger! And do keep in mind that he was far ahead of his time in terms of equal rights, though certainly not up to snuff by today’s standards.) Point is, Freud suggested a correlation between sexual function and sexual personality. Keep this idea in the back of your minds, we’ll return to it shortly.

One thing I noticed about the movie was that one character was clearly the giver in terms of the aforementioned hokey and even with respect to the pokey. I’ve wondered if this is always the case. That is to say, are gay men distinctly pitcher or catchers? Or do they play iron man, to borrow a term from another sport, and play offense and defense alternatively? I had never asked anyone, but luckily my friend had. She reported that a gay friend of hers said that there are distinct roles. You either give or you receive. If true, this would have profound implications for the discussion of defining sexual orientation, I think.

Let’s return to the original question. By what terms should human sexual orientation be defined? Same and other is probably inadequate. It’s certainly possible to say that gay-receivers have more in common with hetero-receivers than either have in common with givers. Freud says that the passive party, who receives during sexual union, will have narcissistic tendencies and will seek to be loved rather than to love. The aggressor, in contrast, seeks to be the lover. Maybe there are only two orientations, then, lovers and those loved. This would seem, at least, to be a far more descriptive and predictive label than ‘same’ and ‘other.’

Of course, this can’t be the whole story, either. What of bi-sexuals? And what’s to do with lesbians? Two is clearly inadequate however you slice it, but calling everyone pitchers and catchers would be conveneint. Maybe six will do: lover, loved, lover-male preferred, lover-female preferred, loved-male preferred, loved-female preferred. I’m either on to something or nothing at all.