Benevolent Bisexuality

This weekend, Madison Equality took a group of students to the Unity Conference at UNC Chapel Hill.

This conference featured several workshops discussing issues concerning the queer community.  One such workshop was entitled the “Benevolent Bisexual”, and it brought up an issue that is often overlooked: Why do we base our attractions on gender?

Think about it.  There are so many factors contributing to attraction, why is it that we are so focused on gender?

“Feminist theorist Catherine Mackinnon has called bisexuals “the true sexual avatars, because they love people, not gender”.  But what about the second-most determining factor that dictates how people pair up: skin color? And what about class, attractiveness, religion, physical ability or species? Why do we give gender the privilege of defining our sexual attractions?” says the program’s description.

And one of the wonderful things about experiences such as the Unity Conference is that it gives us the opportunity to bring new ideas back to our group.  Last night’s Madison Equality meeting was focused on sexual attraction and opened with a simple activity:

Would you fuck President Barack Obama?  Why or why not?

Alright, I realize that on the surface this question is shocking, appalling and borderline offensive.  However, I promise that there was a method to this madness.

It was fascinating to realize that a majority of the reasons people gave for their decisions were not based on his gender.  Many people said he was too old or too saggy, many people said that they were attracted to his intelligence and power, some even cited the fact that he is married as reason enough not to have sex with him.  Interestingly, a discussion based on race and sexual attraction occurred and people were featured on all sides of the issue.

So if this is the case, if race really is the second biggest factor in attraction, why do we not refer to ourselves as Blacksexuals?  Whitesexuals?  Latinosexuals?  Or for that matter, if what we are attracted to is humor, height or hair color, why don’t we define ourselves by these labels instead of words like “straight”, “lesbian”, “gay”, or “bisexual”?

So, I ask you to challenge yourselves: What is it that you’re really attracted to?  Is it your boyfriend’s gender or his smile?  Is it your girlfriend’s gender or her laugh?

And-of course-the question we’ve all been asking: Would you bang Barack?  (Shit, I totally would.)