Sexuality and American Culture

I would like to begin with a quote from the Kinsey report with which I could not agree more:
"The similarity of distinctions between the terms normal and abnormal, and the terms right and wrong, amply demonstrated the philosophic, religious, and cultural origins of these concepts, and the ready acceptance of those distinctions among scientific men may provide the basis for one of the severest criticisms which subsequent generations can make of the scientific quality of nineteenth century and early twentieth century scientists" (Peiss ed., 369).
It seems antithetical to science that we would base a whole system of classification on murky cultural and religious tenets, and yet we have, and still do.  How is it possible that, regarding sexuality, we maintain certain of these distinctions still today?  It is in large part due to the craft of language.  Words describe and explain, but are often intangible, ambiguous, misleading, or simply empty.  From the side of deployment, we have government and medicine as contributors to the sea of language on sexuality, and on the side of resistance we have characters like Humbert Humbert subtly and successfully slipping subversive notions into our heads. 

The ridiculously random terms applied within the discourse of sexuality are made apparent in the US Senate Investigation of “Sex Perverts.”  “In the opinion of the subcommittee, homosexuals… are not proper persons to be employed in Government,” ( Peiss ed., 376) why?  Oh, well, of course because “they are generally unsuitable.”  We must stop and scream at this very instant.  Is this acceptable language for a governmental agency’s report?  “Generally unsuitable.”  The words are vague, empty, ultimately meaningless.  The document continues to “explain” what this means, (homosexuals have a “weakness of moral fiber”) but hardly succeeds in supporting its claim.   This argument is no more rational than any other xenophobic panic.

Within the scientific discourse, language is manipulated and abused in furtherance of the normal/abnormal binary.  Kinsey’s report points out the weakness in the linguistic and logical framework of the hetero/homo divide:
"…it has been possible to maintain this dichotomy only by placing all persons who are exclusively heterosexual in a heterosexual category, and all persons who have any amount of experience with their own sex…in a homosexual category….It would be as reasonable to rate all individuals heterosexual if they have any heterosexual experience, and irrespective of the amount of homosexual experience they may be having" (Peiss ed., 373).
Kinsey observes and takes note of the simple and inherent inequality in the application of the terms heterosexual and homosexual.  By the same rule allowing us to call anyone with any homosexual experience a homosexual, we should be able to call anyone with any heterosexual experience a heterosexual.  If we did that of course, the terms would essentially cancel each other out, and, gasp, we would not longer operate within the system of the binary.

In resistance to this system, we have Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert as a poet of perverse pleasure.  It is so easy for the reader to be convinced of HH’s love for Lolita, after all she is the light of his life, his soul.  (She is also the fire of his loins and his sin, but you see dear reader, through subtle manipulations of the text, you can be convinced otherwise.)  He recollects certain moments of tenderness, “after having had [his] fill of her,” during which he would “gather her in [his] arms” and admire her skin and her matted lashes.  He would caress her, hold her and slowly slip into feelings of shame and despair, and then “ironically, horribly, lust would swell again.”  You see, gentlewomen of the jury, poor HH is himself as a victim.  He paints himself so.  With Lo, “It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.”  He could not help himself.  Another detail to note about Hum, and about his double Clare Quilty, is their shared literary profession.  They are both writers, inventors of words, of language, and pursuers of pedophilic pleasure.  They are both pervertors and perpetrators of crimes against Dolores Haze.  And quite possibly able to do what they do because they are both so adept and convincing with words.  In fact, HH is so talented that he manages to miss the signs pointing to Quilty along the way.  (Ah, my Humble Humbert, did you not see yourself in Clare Quilty’s reflection?  Did you fool yourself while writing those words about him— about his high-brow allusions, his craftsmanship, his mania, his passion for nymphets?  Indeed, you did.  You fell into the pool of ink that flowed from your libido and you wrote him off.)

Language can both unmask and mask, clarify and muddle.  It operates in many ways in the discursive explosion of sexuality, on the sides of power and of resistance.  We must be consistently careful in our readings of terms as common to us as homosexual and heterosexual and we must challenge their general acceptance as a concrete binary.