Oversexuality in LGBT culture

Photo by William Murphy via Flickr

Jennipher Schafer/Staff Writer

It isn’t a far reach to say that most of us in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community are portrayed in an over sexualized way.

With media images of gay men as always looking for their next hookup and lesbians as pornographic fodder for straight men it is difficult to retain focus on the issues at hand within the community itself.

Here’s the reality: the sexual appetites of the LGBT community are basically the same as they are for the straight community.  Some are a bit healthier than others, but for the most part we don’t want this excessive and impulsive image that we’ve been stuck with.

There is a stigma for bisexual and pansexual people.  Apparently we have what some call “the luxury of being straight.”  This is a reality far from the truth.

Bisexuality is by definition the attraction to both traditional genders provided they are also biological.  Pansexuality is defined as not minding either binary gender, including transgender or gender neutral people (people who prefer not to label themselves as either male or female).

We have a very real attraction to people across the board.  I can no more shut down these parts of me than a straight person or a gay person could turn them on.

When two men or two women are seen holding hands, it is assumed that the men are gay and the women are either gay or very close friends. This stigma against bisexual and pansexual people exists in both the straight and the gay community. We are labeled as greedy, fickle, or even loose. There is little or no focus on the relationship.

It is sad to say that when people speak up for marriage equality, that the opponents often argue immediately about sodomy. The debate is about equal rights, but even the conservative argument goes immediately down a sexual path instead of recognizing the reality that two people of the same gender can have a loving connection and want to pledge to honor and love their partner for life.

Only time will tell for certain, but the record as it stands now shows that same-sex couples allowed to wed have a much lower divorce rate than their straight contemporaries. Isn’t divorce more of a danger to the marriage institution than equality?

The reality is that the LGBT community is not going away. While some events seem to make the focus on being proud to be LGBT and do not delve deep enough to show other parts of our identities, we should not have to hide or be denied the same rights as others. This motion toward equality has been aptly named “the new civil rights movement.” It is no coincidence either.

In parts of the world, people can still be killed for loving someone of the same sex. They can be shunned and jailed even more widely.  The same arguments against interracial marriage in the 1960s are now being used against same-sex marriage. No, it won’t open the door to things as extreme as bestiality and child marriage. It didn’t then and it won’t now.

Our struggle isn’t about inviting others into our bedrooms. It is about the freedom to love and marry the person who compliments us, to live openly without fear of hostility, to no longer be afraid of job loss or family shame for being open about who we are, to one day know that every teenager will be able to bring their date to their family and regardless of gender know that they will be accepted.

Our struggle is to be ourselves.