In January 2013 the editors at news24 rejected this piece. A pity, because I had hoped to provoke a response from the community there, which is largely white, racist, Christian and homophobic.
When I was an adolescent I worried a lot about developing into a ‘homo,’ as gays were referred to in those days. Even in my late teens I sometimes construed my awkwardness and lack of success with girls as an indication that I was a latent pansy. It took several experiences before I really got a taste for female flesh and stopped fretting about my orientation.
It bothered me that although I had never detested homosexuals, I had dreaded becoming one of them. Why? Well, I suppose it was largely due to social conditioning and the stigma attached to ‘unnatural’ behaviour. But what was ‘natural,’ I asked myself. In order to find out, I began to make a study of sexual practices.
My older brother pointed me in the direction of the Bible, saying, “Leviticus. There’s some good stuff in Leviticus.”
When I went to Leviticus I did indeed find a list of prohibitions that was informative. Look, you don’t prohibit folks from doing something unless they are inclined to do it whenever they get the opportunity. Leviticus was telling me that men were having sex not just with other men, but also with their mothers, sisters and daughters. And furthermore, the dirty bastards were at the livestock! My studies revealed that from time immemorial men have been forcing themselves on just about every domesticated animal in the farmyard. And women haven’t been averse to getting down on all fours for dogs, goats, pigs, apes … you name it.
The more I studied the subject, the more astonished I became. It was vast and it was bizarre, and I soon realised that our excessive preoccupation with sex was the result of our ability to imagine and to be turned on by images and associations. It was the faculty of imagination that could cause a housewife to suddenly blush as she cleaned a handsome cucumber under the running tap. Or for a man to find himself busy in a make-believe bedroom not three seconds after his secretary had bent down to open the bottom draw of the filing cabinet.
“My ex used to get me to stand on the table and urinate into
a bucket on the floor when he blew a whistle,” one woman told me as I tethered
her to some heavy furniture. “That’s what really sent him into orbit.”
What my ongoing research, as well as personal experience over the years has revealed is that much of what used to be regarded as deviant, aberrant, or a perversion, is nothing of the sort, but quite normal, and an acceptable step on the way to achieving gratification.
Take oral sex, for example. Fellatio and cunnilingus are now considered standard practice and no more of an abomination than eating ice cream off a cone. And what’s wrong with anal sex, if it’s a comfortable fit?
Then there’s proxy sex, which ranges from various forms of masturbation to intercourse with a life-size doll, all three orifices accessible. For thousands of years men have been thrusting their members into narrow openings of every conceivable kind. Ever tried a fridge door? Cool. And women haven’t been shy to insert anything that could serve as a dildo, from candles, carrots and cucumbers to bottles, bones and bananas. Anything that vaguely resembles a protrusion. As a youth, I once called upon the help of a paw-paw to ravish Playmate of the Year for 1968. She was hanging on the back of the toilet door. The fruit was somewhat ripe, however, and all too soon turned to pulp, which resulted in coitus interruptis. Damn frustrating.
Then there’s all that role-playing stuff that usually involves some aspect of BDSM. BDSM is a combination of bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadism and masochism. Ropes and whips and chains and handcuffs and blindfolds and masks and leather boots and straps, and military regalia and black underwear. People strut about and bark instructions, or whine and plead for mercy, and assume undignified positions. It’s all rather ridiculous but if it gives the participants an added thrill to their sex lives, what’s wrong with it? As long as it’s SSC (safe, sane and consensual)?
When I got to necrophilia I kind of drew a line and lost interest, though. Man, if you can get intimate with a corpse, nothing is safe from you, animate or inanimate. Those chemicals that get pumped into your brain are going to make you raving mad and the only way to get you right is castration.
But let’s get back to homosexuality. It seems to me, now that I have acquainted myself with many varieties of sexual experience, that the desire for sexual intimacy with one of your own gender is entirely normal and no more immoral than, say, a woman giving her boyfriend a blowjob. In fact, I suspect that most people would be bi-sexual if the present social prejudices were to disappear. And that’s not to deny there would still be significant numbers who preferred to be strictly hetero or homo.
If I am right about this, then it means that the majority of us are being forced to repress part of our sexuality. I, personally, have been deprived of a whole lot of sensual pleasure by a conservative section of society that still has the power to decide what is moral and natural. I resent the influence these people continue to exert, and would urge other 'deviants' and 'perverts' to follow their preferences and flaunt their difference in the faces of the moral zealots, who are more often than not religious fundamentalists to boot.
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