The Blowfish Blog

[Greta Christina] My Sexual Resolutions

I’m one of those scary people who makes New Year’s Resolutions and takes them fairly seriously. I like having an annual tradition of taking stock of my life and my goals, thinking about what I want to accomplish in the coming year and deciding what I need to do to make that happen. I think it’s my hyper-responsibility gene kicking in. (”Happy New Year! Are you really living up to your potential?”) I even follow through on my resolutions more often than not.

Usually my resolutions have to do with my writing career: finishing a book proposal, contacting new publishers, etc. But this year, I’ve decided to take my own advice about making sex a priority. I’m going to put some conscious thought into what I want my sex life to look like in the coming year — and what actions I need to take to make that happen.

If this inspires you to make some sexual resolutions of your own — speak up in the comments and tell me what they are!

I resolve to proposition at least three people this year. You might not think it, but I’m very shy and lacking in confidence about hitting on people, and I have a bad habit of waiting for the other person to make the first move. But that’s not fair. Being the one to speak up and say, “So are we just flirting, or do you actually want to boff?” is a scary, risky thing to do, and it’s not fair to always expect other people do it. Plus the waiting game doesn’t get me laid nearly as much as I’d like. So I’m resolving to get over my shyness, and to be the one to speak up and make that first move. At least sometimes.

I resolve to do my Kegels more regularly. This one speaks for itself. At the risk of sounding like a ’70s feminist consciousness- raising seminar: I love my vagina. I want to take better care of it.

(Oh, speaking of Kegels: This is something of a tangent, but I thought y’all would appreciate it. There’s a very funny scene in an episode of “Futurama”: they’re in a gym, with various weird aliens on weird gym equipment, and there’s a passing shot of a woman sitting on a Nautilus-type weight machine. You can only see the upper half of her body, and the weights in front of her torso going up and down — and then you see that the name of the machine is the “Kegelcisor.” I’m totally in awe of how they got that one by the censors. I strongly suspect that the censors had no freaking idea what Kegels were.)

Anyway. Kegels. Important. I resolve to do them for a few minutes every day.

And expanding on that theme:

I resolve to continue taking better care of my physical health. I realize this is a pretty standard New Year’s resolution: the iconic one in fact, well past the point of cliche. But the changes I’ve made in my health in the last year or two — going to the gym more regularly, bulding my muscles and my flexibility, losing weight, taking care of my bad knee, getting something vaguely resembling enough sleep — have had a massive impact on my libido and my sex life. I feel friskier more often; I have more sexual stamina; my body has the strength and limberness to do more of what I want it to.

So while this is an embarrassing cartoon cliche of a New Year’s resolution, for the sake of my sexuality I’m making it anyway: Keep walking. Keep going to the gym two to three times a week. Keep counting calories and managing my weight. (I know weight loss isn’t important or necessary for everyone — but it is for me.) Keep up my physical therapy regimen on my bad knee. (If I can get my bad knee into good enough shape that I can stay on my knees for more than a few minutes, I’ll be a very happy camper.) Go to the doctor when I have a health concern, instead of toughing it out. Don’t get less than six hours of sleep more than twice a month. Remember that my body is a source of pleasure and joy — and treat it as such.

I resolve to try at least three sexual variations that I’ve never done before. This is more of a challenge than you might think: I’m in my late 40s, and I’ve already tried most of the sexual variations that I’m seriously interested in.

But not all of them. There’s more than a handful of variations that would make me very sad if I died without ever having tried them. And there’s far more than a handful that I have only a passing interest in but wouldn’t mind checking out. You never know when today’s idle curiosity will turn into tomorrow’s frantic obsession. (That’s what happened to me with “Mad Men.”)

It’s true that one of the great advantages of middle age is that I’ve already figured out a lot of what I do and don’t like in bed . . . and I can now spend my time just doing it. But in the same way that I don’t want to become someone who only listens to the music I liked in my twenties, I don’t want to become someone who only has the sex I liked in my twenties. I want to keep my sexual options open . . . if only so I don’t turn into a crank, griping about how sex isn’t like it used to be and young people these days are doing it all wrong.

Besides, sexual desires can change with time. Just last year, I stumbled on a sexual kink that used to be completely off-limits and has now become a favorite in the regular rotation. So I don’t just want to keep my mind open to things I’ve never tried before. I also want to keep my mind open to things I tried and rejected years ago. If I could rediscover and reclaim Led Zeppelin after years of scorning them, maybe I can rediscover and reclaim deep throating, too.

So those are my sexual resolutions.

What about yours?

Greta Christina, copyright © 2009. Be sure to check out Greta’s blog.

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[Greta Christina] All Boy-Boy Action

The topic for today’s sermon:

Women who like gay male porn.

And people who are surprised by this.

We’ll start with the facts: There are some women who like gay male porn. I’m one of them. And I’m not the only one. Look at the widespread phenomenon of slash fanfic: erotic fiction about fictional characters, typically about two or more male characters, and typically written by and for straight women. (Kirk/Spock, anyone? Or are you more of a Snape/Draco girl?) And it isn’t just written porn: there are women who like gay male porn videos, photos, comics. There’s even an entire genre of Japanese comics and graphic novels, yaoi, devoted to gay male love and/or sex stories created for a female audience. (If you’re one of these gay- porn- lovin’ women, btw — please speak up in the comments! I know more or less what I get out of gay male porn, but I’d love to hear what you get out of it.)

It’s true that this desire hasn’t been reflected very much in the video porn industry — and video porn is what a lot of people default to when they think about “porn.” But “women don’t like gay porn” isn’t a very good explanation for this. (Some better ones: Women on average are more interested in written porn than videos. And the video porn industry can be idiots sometimes: they’re terrified of putting something on screen that might turn off straight guys; they largely ignore the potential of the women’s market; and even when they try to cater to women’s tastes in porn, they tend to get it laughably wrong.)

So those are the facts: Some women like gay male porn. Enough so that there are entire porn genres that cater to it.

And yet, many people seem deeply surprised by this. Many people assume that this phenomenon doesn’t exist, and will ponder the question of why women don’t like gay porn when so many guys love the girl-girl stuff And many people are entirely baffled when they hear about women who like all boy-boy action, wondering, “What on earth do they get out of it?”

So if you’re surprised by the fact that some women like to watch/ read about two men doing it, let me ask you this:

Are you surprised by the fact that some men like to watch/ read about two women doing it?

“Girl-girl action” is so common in heterosexual video porn, it’s not even considered a fetish. It’s a completely standard menu item, like fucking and sucking. As for all girl-girl videos, they’re all over the “hetero” porn market like a cheap suit. And nobody seems the least bit surprised by any of this.

So if you’re puzzled by why some women are into porn with two guys, ask yourself: Why are some men — indeed, a whole lotta men — so excited by porn with two girls?

The answers vary, of course. Some men like girl-girl porn because they’re not attracted to men. Some are actively turned off by the sight of men; others really just prefer to look at women. They get off on femaleness — and they like to see a lot of it, undiluted by the maleness that they’re just not that into.

Well, that’s true for some women, too. Some women like gay porn because they’re hot for guys, not girls, and guys are who they want to look at/ read about. They want to enjoy maleness, and male sexuality. And even those of us who appreciate both women and men in our porn sometimes like to enjoy just one or the other. I, for one, like lots of different kinds of porn — but one of them is definitely the kind that’s all about hard cocks and hard muscles. Undiluted by soft breasts and pussies.

Moving on: Some men like girl-girl porn because they like the fantasy of a three-way (or four-way, or five-way, or whatever) that includes them. They like to watch two (or more) women do it because then they can project themselves into the scene. They like to look at all this delightful female pulchritude . . . and then imagine themselves as the center of it all.

Well, that’s true for some women, too. Some women like to watch/ read about two or more guys . . . so they can imagine themselves as the center of a whole lot of hot male attention. The delicious meat in a Kirk/Spock sandwich, if you will.

And some men like girl-girl porn for the exact opposite reason: they like the alien-ness, the difference, of women, and of lesbians. They don’t want to project themselves into the scenario at all. They see women as excitingly mysterious, exotic even. They see lesbians in particular as enticingly out of reach. And they don’t want that mysterious allure tainted by the quotidian familiarity of men.

And again, that’s true for some women, too. For some women, gay male porn is alien, exotic. Forbidden fruit, even. It’s like the key to the secret garden; a keyhole peep into a world we’re not supposed to see.

I’ve read other explanations for why women like boy-boy porn — explanations as varied as the women themselves. Some women like the fact that gay porn features seriously good-looking guys, while straight porn all too often succumbs to the “ugly guys with big dicks” phenomenon. Some like kinky porn, and they’ve found gay kinky porn to be harder and kinkier. Some like kinky porn with male tops, but aren’t comfortable watching women they don’t know get beaten and humiliated. Some like to watch intense butt-sex, and gay porn has plenty to spare. Etc. Etc. Etc. (And yes, for the record: The reasons some men like to watch girl-girl porn are wildly varied as well.)

I’m not sure what my point is here. I think my point is just this:

Yes, Virginia, some women like boy-boy porn. Exclusively, primarily, or as one of many porny varieties. And this fact is entirely unsurprising. Or it should be. The fact that some women like boy-boy porn should be no more surprising that the fact that some men — okay, lots of men — like girl-girl porn.

And if our culture took female sexual desire seriously, nobody would blink an eye at it.

Greta Christina, copyright © 2009. Be sure to check out Greta’s blog.

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[Greta Christina] Why Did Gayness Evolve?

So why, from an evolutionary perspective, are there gay people at all?

In my last column, I speculated wildly on the question of why there are so few people who are equally attracted to both women and men; why the distribution of human sexual orientation tends to clump into “more or less heterosexual” and “more or less homosexual” camps. But this intriguing and currently unanswered question begs a much larger, even more intriguing question:

Why — from an evolutionary perspective — are there gay people at all?

Current research seems to be suggesting that homosexuality is a trait people are born with. At least partly, if not mostly or entirely. The jury is still out, but that’s the direction the evidence is currently pointing to. And while it’s possible that gayness is inborn but not genetic — it could be caused by in-utero environmental factors, for instance — it’s looking like genetics are, at the very least, a significant part of the picture.

But when you accept the idea that homosexuality is genetically wired, you get faced with a very puzzling question:

Why would that be?

Why, from an evolutionary perspective, would a not-insignificant number of us have been born wanting to boff people we have zero chance of reproducing with?

Why wouldn’t that trait have been selected out long ago?

There are lots of hypotheses as to why this might be. I’m not going to argue for or against any of them here (if for no other reason, it would make this piece way too long). Instead, I want to point a very important and often overlooked fact about evolution:

To ask “What is the evolutionary reason for (X)? Why did (X) evolve?” is often the entirely wrong question.

There are many, many traits of humans and other living things that are incidental by-products of evolution. They’re not the traits that were selected for. They’re incidental by-products of the traits that were selected for.

Let me give an example. Let’s ask the question, “Why did bones evolve to be white? What is the selective advantage of bones being white?”

As you can probably guess, this is a completely misleading and even silly question. There is no selective advantage whatsoever of bones being white. Bones could be hot pink with zebra stripes for all evolution cares. Bones are white because, due to an assortment of evolutionary pressures and accidents, bones are made of calcium — and calcium is white. The fact that bones are white is an incidental by-product of the fact that they’re made of calcium.

Or, to bring it back to the more interesting topic of sex: Let’s look at the question, “Why do men have nipples?” There is no selective advantage to men having nipples. There is, however, an obvious selective advantage to women having nipples, what with keeping offspring alive and all. And there’s a selective advantage to having women and men grow with the same basic blueprint, with only relatively minor differences. So women and men are both born with nipples . . . nipples that develop in women to serve an important function, and that in men exist only for, shall we say, entertainment.

And it’s been suggested — controversially, but with good evidence to back it up — that the female orgasm works this way as well. According to this hypothesis, there’s no evolutionary reason for women to have orgasms; they play no significant role in our survival or reproduction. (The fact that many women have orgasms so unreliably, and with such difficulty, and that a good number of us don’t have them at all until later in life and in some cases not at all, is some of the strongest evidence for this.) Female orgasms are like male nipples: women have orgasms because men have orgasms, and women’s and men’s biological blueprints are similar enough that a reproductively useful function in one may still be present in the other even if it serves no evolutionary purpose.

Now, whether or not you agree about female orgasm, the general principle applies: Not every trait — not even every trait that’s passed on genetically — has been selected for by the process of evolution. Some are incidental by-products of the traits that were selected for.

And homosexuality could easily be one of these.

There’s a concept in architecture (stay with me, I promise this isn’t a tangent) that’s been swiped by evolutionary biologists — the concept of the spandrel. In architecture, a spandrel is the triangular space under a staircase (or a similar space between two arches). And obviously, it isn’t something an architect will intentionally design. An architect may try to design a staircase so the spandrel is attractive, or so it impinges on the space as little as possible. She may even try to make the spandrel useful (as storage space, for instance). But the spandrel is not the thing that was intended. The staircase is the thing that was intended. The spandrel is only there because the staircase is there . . . and because, with a very few exceptions (such as a spiral staircase), you can’t have a staircase without a spandrel.

Evolutionary biologists have swiped this concept for obvious reasons. There’s no design or intention in evolution, obviously. But the principle is the same: a useful feature with positive benefits will sometimes carry an incidental side effect, a feature that doesn’t have any advantages in itself but that has to be there for the selected feature to exist.

So even if homosexuality is inborn — even if it’s genetic — it may not be the trait being selected for.

Homosexuality may be a spandrel.

It’s possible that there is a positive evolutionary benefit in some people being gay. Some scientists have suggested that there is. But it’s also possible that being gay is an incidental by-product of some other adaptive trait that we need to survive and reproduce. It could be, for instance, that a preference for boffing women (or men) is inborn . . . and that it’s evolutionarily more advantageous for that preference to occasionally show up as same-sex desire than for it to never show up at all. Or the reverse could be true: it could be that in humans and some other animals (homosexual behavior is hardly limited to the human species), there’s an advantage to having our “identify someone you can reproduce with” wiring being more — oh, let’s not say “promiscuous,’ instead let’s say “broad.” With this evolutionary strategy, we may have a lot of sex that doesn’t result in successful reproduction . . . but the chance that we’ll reproduce with somebody becomes rather higher.

I’m not going to speculate on the likelihood of any of these specific hypotheses. I just think it’s important to remember the general principle: Not every trait serves an evolutionary purpose of survival or reproduction. Some are incidental, spandrels. Homosexuality would seem like an odd trait to have evolved, something of a barrier to reproduction that needs some serious explaining . . . but that doesn’t mean the explanation is, “Homosexuality serves (X) purpose.” The explanation could be, “(Y) serves (X) purpose . . . and homosexuality is connected in some way with (Y).”

And I think it’s important to remember this as well:

Homosexuality isn’t as much of a barrier to reproduction as people often think.

Very, very few people are entirely, 100% homosexual. Just like very, very few people are entirely, 100% heterosexual. Our behavior tends to slant more or less in these two directions, possibly due to social constraints as much as natural ones . . . but most people have the capacity to be sexually involved with both/ all genders, at least to some degree. So while homosexuality may seem like kind of a weird trait from an evolutionary standpoint, it’s really not. Unless you’re a 100% completely same-sex oriented Kinsey 6 type gay person, homosexuality is only a moderate liability in the Evolutionary Sweepstakes. (Speaking for myself: Effective modern birth control is way more of a factor in my not reproducing than being a dyke.)

Finally, I want to say this:

I know some gay people won’t like this idea one bit. Some gay people won’t like the idea of gayness being an evolutionary accident or afterthought. To them, I want to say two things.

First: We can’t reject scientific hypotheses simply because we don’t like them. That’s exactly what the homophobic religious right does: they reject the extensive evidence that queers are healthy, stable, responsible contributors to society and family, purely because it doesn’t fit their worldview. If we’re going to demand that they accept reality as it is, then we don’t get to reject reality (or possible hypotheses about reality) just because we don’t like it. There are some good arguments against the spandrel hypothesis of homosexuality . . . but “it isn’t nice to gay people” is not one of them.

Second: If we are an evolutionary spandrel . . . there’s a serious upside.

And that’s that we’re not going anywhere.

If homosexuality is an independent trait that has been selected for (or not selected against) due to some reason of its own . . . it could eventually be selected out. It does confer some selective disadvantage, after all, if not a massive one . . . and as society becomes more gay-accepting and more people are comfortable with entirely same-sex oriented sex lives, that disadvantage only gets more pronounced.

But if homosexuality is a spandrel — an incidental by-product of evolution, hitching a ride on some useful and important trait that our species needs to survive and reproduce — it’s a lot more likely to stick around.

And I, for one, am in favor of us sticking around.

Greta Christina, copyright © 2009. Be sure to check out Greta’s blog.

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