Erasing “Am I Normal” and Substituting “Do I Desire It?”

We’ve made it clear by now that you’re a sexual individual, as you are an individual in all other ways. You may be a lot like some other people—but you’re not just like anyone else. This is the bottom line of erotic diversity, and it’s one of the reasons why communication is crucial when it comes to sex.

You may have read magazine articles or heard in other ways about differences between people: men and women, gay and straight, kinky and vanilla, monogamous people and players, transgender and cisgender, the asexual and the sexed-up, and people at all levels of ability. Now replace all those ands with or. Do you think your choices are male or female? Gay or straight? Kinky or vanilla?

While it’s fine to base some of your understanding of sex and gender on these differences, it’s problematic in at least three ways:

What effect does this have on us? Well, if you rely on these either/or generalizations in hopes of better understanding someone, the generalized conclusions you reach won’t be true—they will not help you understand or get closer to this person you want to know. As a matter of fact, your attempt to get more information turns out, in a way, to leave you with less information—and that’s especially a problem if you act on your misinformed ideas and find that this person likes something very different than you thought they would.

Human beings seem to naturally gravitate towards simple ways of understanding the world. This has been particularly true in Western culture, where these binary ideas became popular. Eastern culture, by contrast, has the concept of yin and yang, with a dot of black in the white and a dot of white in the black—still binary but acknowledging, at least, that polar opposites exist within each.

It’s true that these general groupings are a start towards creating identities that make sense to us. There wouldn’t have been feminism without females, or a gay rights movement without homosexuals. These classifications are frequently the first way in which many of us establish who we are—but if they’re the only way, they can be limiting and confusing. If simple turns into simplistic, we’re all in trouble.

You can also fall into this trap when seeking to understand yourself—trying to fit yourself and your identity and desires into a box you think you’re supposed to fit, whether that definition truly matches you or not.

For example, when people who are bisexual first feel desire towards same-sex partners, they might think they’re gay or lesbian, and deal with coming out as such. They may adopt a gay identity and become active in the gay rights movement; if they still feel sexual desire towards the “opposite” sex and act on those desires, they may worry that they are “betraying the cause.” In fact, during the 1970s, many lesbian separatists accused bi women of “sleeping with the enemy.” To a binary, either/or world, bisexuality is confusing, and without acknowledgement that bisexuality exists and is natural, it can take years or even decades for someone to accept their identity as bisexual.

Opposing “Opposite Sex”!

People use this phrase all the time—it is a completely normalized part of the English language. But look at the assumptions it contains and teaches:

There are only two sexes/genders
They have nothing in common

Whether we think of this idea as describing gender roles and behavior or genitals and their shape and function, these ideas are not true. We’ll say more about genitals in our GPS for the Body chapter, but speaking of the body: Humans are overwhelmingly more alike than we are different! A heart or other organ can be transplanted from one person of any gender into another of any gender, if blood type allows, and we don’t call that evidence of the kind of fundamental dissimilarity we often reference when we talk about women and men. The idea of “opposites” tends to reinforce social roles and suggests that some people can’t or shouldn’t do certain things because of their gender; this leads to restricted opportunities, shame, bullying and baiting, and just plain sloppy thinking. In very few ways does thinking of females and males as opposite positively impact our lives, sex lives, and relationships. And thinking this way sets us up not to notice when people’s responses are actually very similar across gender lines.

Do you use this phrase a lot? Even saying “the other sex” instead—while still binary—may help you shake the tendency to add more “opposition” to our sex lives!

There are many more examples of gender complexity: the woman who wants to hide her body and may be labeled butch or asexual, but really just wants freedom from one-sided gender stereotypes; the straight man whose wife lies in front of him and he knows he “should” want to jump on top of her—but really he wants to suck on her toes. Heterosexual guys think they are not anal—until someone adds a little backdoor stimulation during a blowjob.

And then, sadly, a switch gets flipped. Many of us remain closed to experiences—sexual and otherwise—that we might have loved, out of fear that we are not “normal” if we experience and enjoy them. At worst—and we have seen a lot of this worst-case scenario—it’s possible we will worry so much about whether we properly fit the mold that our first self-reflection won’t be, “Do I want or like this?” but “Am I normal if I want or like it?” Whatever it is—dressing a certain way, exploring a certain kind of sex, being attracted to certain kinds of people—you do yourself a disservice and cut yourself off from life experience if you let a too-strict notion of identity guide your decisions.

Worrying about whether you are normal can sap your enjoyment and your self-esteem. Policing the boundaries of your own normality, and how you fit in, can leave you out of touch with who you really are—or who you could be, if you had a different set of priorities.

What if the question we all learned to ask wasn’t “Am I normal?” but rather “Do I desire it?” or “Do I enjoy it?” or even “Do I have enough information about it to try it in real life?” That last question is perhaps especially relevant for an Internet generation that may engage in computer sex or sexting before any skin-to-skin experiences. Some people do things considered normal for others in their category just to fit in—not because they want to do them. When you’re too focused on belonging to a general group, like our misunderstood bisexual above, it’s easy to devalue or even ignore the many elements that make you who you are, that make you happy. This is especially so if you are surrounded by peer pressure or fear losing your community or family. You might find that you don’t like the things you think you should like—but feel pressure to do them anyway because that’s what people in this group do, or at least you think they do—when it’s not common to talk openly about sexual desires or experiences, it has the effect of obscuring what “normal” really is.

People of all genders have an anus. Enjoying the feeling of someone touching it does not make you gay or straight. It makes you someone with nerve endings in your anus!

How you decide to introduce yourself as a sexual person comes down to questions that have occupied philosophers for centuries. Consider, through a sexual lens, the eternal existential question: “Who am I?” If you’ve been busy trying to fit into a mold, you might not even know. Let’s look at philosophy from another angle: Instead of “I think, therefore I am,” what if the question was “I desire, therefore I am”? As far as sexual identity—your own individuality—is concerned, that is a pretty basic statement—even if your identity turns out to be far from basic!

Maybe the philosophers had it right after all: The process begins with thinking—or, more precisely, fantasizing. Be on the alert for what you respond to erotically when you read, watch movies (not just porn, but any kind of movie), and when moving around in the world. Even non-sexual situations can contain elements of sexual desire—most of us have had the experience of seeing someone on public transit or at the grocery store that we found attractive, and sexology books are full of tales of people responding with arousal to on-the-surface-unsexy experiences like getting a birthday spanking, listening to music, taking a test, even getting punished at school.

And many people first learn how their bodies respond to touch all by themselves, through masturbation, whether they started young or got into it when they were older. At Good Vibrations we say, “If you want something done right, do it yourself!” This is a proven method of understanding the kinds of sensation you enjoy.

All this adds up to the sexual version of “Know thyself.” And this is probably not a message you learned in sex ed.

We don’t really know where most specific desires come from, although theories abound, from Freud to feminism. Why does one person like women and another like men? Why are some people responsive to so-called fetishes that other people cannot see as sexual no matter how hard they try? If you have a “type,” is that hard-wired? Many scientists think that at least some elements are inborn, and some think that fetishistic desires are likely set when a person is a small child—but the fact is, these questions remain largely unexplained and mysterious. That means that many—maybe all—of us go on a journey to understand what makes us tick sexually. And it means that when we meet another person, we can’t assume the same things float their boat that float ours—though if we like them and find them attractive, we hope for enough overlap to get us into the zone of intimacy, compatibility, or at least a good time.

So: Do you even know what works best for you? Do you have erotic thoughts that appeal to you mentally, or that you respond to in fantasy, but haven’t tried? Can you talk about these, or do you try to signal your partner/s non-verbally, or just hope you’ll find someone who’ll get it—i.e., read your mind—or magically give you the experience you desire? Another cultural myth is the idea that “Someday my Prince [or Princess] will come”—in other words, that the right partner will unlock our responses and give us access to erotic pleasure and fulfillment. This notion leads us to expect that with love, good sex follows—and, conversely, that if you just had great sex, it must be love. Sexologists tell a joke: “Someday my Prince [or Princess] will come, and so will I”— to call attention to, and gently mock, this assumption that “the right one” will change everything for us sexually.

This is a compelling idea, certainly, and within it lies a grain of truth: If you fall for someone who is more sexually comfortable or confident than you are, sex with them may well be a revelation. Also, when you are very drawn to another person erotically or in the bloom of love—and, of course, it’s wonderful if and when these occur at the same time—your body may well pre-set its arousal response higher than usual, so that any contact with the beloved (or be-lust-ed) sends you right into the sexual response cycle.

If you’ve had a chance to explore erotic experiences, you may have seen for yourself how attraction can help unlock the door to arousal, or, conversely, how you can have compelling sex even with someone who isn’t your type. This latter experience is the most important reason that being able to express your desires—and know what you want in the first place—is so important.

The moment arrives for most of us when we have an opportunity to translate what we’ve thought, wondered, and fantasized about into lived experience. Maybe this has happened to you many times already, but it’s a crapshoot whether you’ll enjoy the experience as much as you could if circumstances were perfect. But do you know what that perfection would even entail? Try to break it down: the circumstances, the partner, how you communicate, the timing and touch that’s involved, everything. It’s a lot harder to optimize your sex life if you’re not sure what actually works; at least you might be able to specify what you know doesn’t work for you. Both of these, as discussed above, are important.

Let’s assume for a moment that during solo sex, this is all a lot simpler. Sure, there may be things to learn that would make masturbation better, and there may be elements of your self-pleasuring life that are problematic—perhaps shame or guilt feelings affect the experience, for example. But when you’re masturbating, you don’t have the presence of another person—a whole other complex individual with their own desires, agenda, and communication skills—to (we hope wonderfully) complicate things.

If there’s more than one person involved—you plus anybody else, whether you just met them or they’re your long-term love—you need to communicate. What do you need and want? What are your boundaries? What do they need, want, wish to avoid? And covered up by all this detail, is there an awesome sexual experience waiting for you?

Many people try to figure this out by behavior alone. They hope, or believe, that their actions will speak louder than words, and sometimes this means they have a hard time with the words themselves. Behavior is a form of communication, of course. In fact, sometimes our actions and words don’t even convey the same message. But our ability to spell out desires and limits is without a doubt a vital element in getting our needs met and creating the best possible sex and love life for ourselves.