Transorientation

Modern gender theory distinguishes between sex and gender, defining the former as "the physiological, functional, and psychological differences that distinguish the female and the male," and the latter as "sexual identity, especially in relation to society or culture." Sex, in other words, is something you're born with, while gender is a lot more mutable. We refer to people whose gender identity (man or woman) is not the one traditionally associated with their sex (male or female) as transgendered.

I would propose, and I'm not the first to do so, that there is a similar relationship between sexual orientation and sexual identity. Like sex, orientation--what sex or gender you are attracted to--is something you're born with; you're heterosexual, homosexual, or whatever, and that's unlikely to change, short of some kind of as-yet-unknown orientation reassignment surgery. Sexual identity, on the other hand, is more like gender in that there are many ways to express one's sexuality and these do not necessarily correspond to one's orientation. We might call an individual who is born homosexual but for whatever reasons identifies as straight (or, for that matter, one who is born heterosexual but identifies as gay or lesbian) transoriented or transorientational (I'm undecided on which term I like better).

I have never had any question about my gender identity. I was born male and I identify as a man. I have spent much of my life, though, figuring out my sexual identity. For many years I did not call myself gay because of the LDS Church's counsel that people who experience same-sex attraction should not identify themselves by those feelings. Then a few years ago, even though I was still actively LDS and married to a woman, I began to call myself--both in private and in public--gay. The words "I am gay," this self-identifying speech act, relieved me of years of built-up pressure from refusing to acknowledge this important aspect of my identity. Some people questioned the prudence of putting so much energy into building a gay identity while trying to maintain a straight marriage, while others questioned my right to call myself gay when in fact my actions and lifestyle were completely straight, but I insisted that the word could mean whatever I wanted it to, and when I called myself gay I meant that I was attracted to men, nothing more, nothing less.

I still maintain that language means whatever the speaker intends it to mean (or, conversely, whatever the listener understands it to mean), but in the past month as I've rededicated myself to a marriage to a partner who happens to be a woman, I've begun to question the value of identifying myself as gay. There is no doubt that my inborn orientation is homosexual--I am sexually aroused by men. But the life I live, for all intents and purposes, is straight--the only romantic or sexual partner I've ever had or intend to have is a woman. Still, I'm not comfortable calling myself straight. Beyond the fact that I'm attracted to people who have a certain kind of reproductive organs, I feel that much of my inner life, my thoughts, and the way I experience the world are more like those of a gay man than those of a straight man. I have found, for example, that I tend to relate better to gay men than to straight men (with some notable exceptions).

One of the strongest arguments against homosexual people being in straight marriages is that we aren't being authentic to our true selves. Many, indeed, find the sacrifice of authenticity too much to make the marriage worth it. To be clear, I'm not staying married because I'm stronger or nobler than anyone else, or for that matter, because I'm less authentic; I'm staying married because I realized that for me, the sacrifice of giving up the marriage was greater than the sacrifice of giving up what I might have had otherwise. I believe FoxyJ feels similarly about the sacrifices she's required to make to stay in the marriage versus the sacrifices she'd have to make to end the marriage. Other people consider the same options and come to different conclusions. Every individual has his or her own values, priorities, and life situation; I can only act according to my own. La Agrado, a transvestite character in Pedro Almodovar's All About My Mother speaks beautifully of the more literal cost she's paid to become a woman: "Well, as I was saying, it costs a lot to be authentic, ma'am. And one can't be stingy with these things because you are more authentic the more you resemble what you've dreamed of being."

My motivations for choosing a straight life have been called into question before because by birth I am a member of an underprivileged class and I am trying to pass, as it were, for a member of the privileged class. Perhaps it is for this same reason that while society tends to view male-born women as amusing, female-born men tend to be seen as threatening. Rest assured, my class-conscious friends, I have no interest in being part of a privileged class; I'm much too enamored of the idea of Mr. Fob the Oppressed. This is, to be honest, one of the less-than-noble reasons I cling to the label gay. What it comes down to, though, is that the person I'm in love with, am married to, and want to be married to is a woman.

Perhaps more than anything, I feel that to call myself straight without any qualifiers would be to pretend I'm something I'm not, to ignore the fact that, like a male-born transsexual in the process of becoming a woman, I'm a work in progress. So I won't call myself straight, but I'm not sure gay accurately describes me either. I'll try transoriented on for size and see how it fits.