In my adolescence and early teen years my physical and emotional hypersexuality was such an elemental and driving force I hardly even stopped to consider my gender perspective or orientation.
As mentioned in the book, in my continuous and spontaneously expanding search for sexual contact, when the moment came that feminine submission (as perceived by the older males who had sex with me) arrived as a way to obtain sexual contact – I became feminine. And I relished it.
Since my earliest consciousness I had adored females so much I was simply ecstatic to be (as I perceived) one of them.
And back then, when that kind of sexual experience was completed I would (nearly without thought) go back again to my self that was the third-son in my family, and the middle-child, and a somewhat less-overtly-achieving version of a still immature and supposedly “masculine” American boy.
Only to await my next opportunity at sexual contact, however that may be most expediently facilitated. Which predominantly, during my formative years, turned out to be my feminine submission to older male partners.
However, the older I got the more aware I became of the seemingly extra-odd social position/perspective that I found myself in due to my hypersexuality.
I remember as a preteen and teen in the early 1970’s that the hateful way American society treated gay men was threatening to me – but not because I thought that I was gay. My tangential fear was that if any of my sexual contact or behaviors with male partners was discovered, I would be confused as being gay. Which would have had serious consequences, no doubt.
But what I was really afraid of was being discovered for what I really was; a hyperactive pervert who was not normal (hetero), and was not gay, and was not exactly bisexual (a term not much acknowledged in early 1970’s), who would have any kind of sex with almost anyone, of almost any age (especially older and much older), and who did not care which gender was embodied during that sexual contact. All of which I fully believed would have resulted in my being put into a mental hospital.
Still, not having to deal with the internal horrors of a gender identity crisis in those preteen and early teen years was a relief.
As were, during my later teens and twenties, my vivid memories of the fully natural feeling way that I had experienced sexual contact as a younger person – because I knew then, and ever since, that I didn’t belong in a mental hospital. And I knew that whatever I was, I was exactly what I was meant to be.
Seeing that society (at that time) had no apparent definition for me, which equaled no understanding of me, helped create my belief in the idea that my understanding was what mattered. And that the common prejudiced sexual politics around me (almost exclusively about being gay) basically didn’t include or directly concern me. And for the most part, other than my development of a lifestyle of stealth, that was that.
For me, the incredibly validating value that came from being clearly and distinctly beyond the confining sex related definitions of my surrounding society, became my refuge. As stated, I was sometimes afraid of discovery and the possible legal and medically enforced consequences – but I was not internally afraid of the moral judgements of society, or of any serious gender confusions.
Ultimately, because of my personally caring emotional nature, the most difficult issue and conundrum that I would grapple with was the deception and dishonesty of my stealth lifestyle. Which, for the most part I successfully counter-balanced with my respect of personal privacy, including my own. And which, in the end, has gotten me through my adulthood and sanely to this point in time.
Another fabulous value that hypersexuality has had for me is that even though I grew up in a very conservative city in a very conservative mountain-western state, and then lived as an adult in an equally conservative mid-western state, I don’t remember ever having the experience of questioning the right of, or the respect for, any and every kind of gender expression that I saw in the news or movies, or read about, or otherwise became aware of, or came across personally. Inside my private and personal space I admired them all.
As a child and teenager, out of necessity, in social situations where queers were being ridiculed (usually rhetorically) I did guffaw and snort and act disgusted along with the people around me. But even then I secretly felt an immediate and sincere closeness with anyone and everyone’s personal gender choices, sexual expressions, and related behaviors. In fact, the more different they were – the less alone they made me feel.
Privately, they were my community.
All these years later, one of the things that attracts my attention is how intimate and valuable an example of open-ended inclusion that hypersexual experience was, and still is. And how that perspective is certainly pertinent now in relation to the current explorations of non-binary, plural, and fluid gender identities. Which seem, even now, and even among some of the non-traditional gender identity communities, to be a particularly challenging sort of identity assertion, and one that is sometimes cornered into a stance of defensiveness.
To me, questioning the sincerity or genuineness of someone who experiences themselves as feminine today and perhaps queer masculine tomorrow, or non-binary the next week and cis/het for the next month or year after that – or any combination thereof for any duration of time – seems no different than doubting the personal recognition’s or gender transitions of anyone – ever.
And I fail to understand why anyone would attempt to validate and differentiate a single transition in gender experience, expression, orientation, or identity, from the essence of the reality of, and the right to personal identity choices and transitioning itself.
We all know that human life is an experience of change in so many ways, be it physical, emotional, philosophical, familial, professional, religious, etc. Sometimes the changes are slow or smaller, and sometimes they are surprisingly fast and much bigger, or even life changing. So why not expect multiple changes and accept fluidity in gender experiences, orientations, and identities?
As an author I recently read exclaimed, “Let your gender flag fly freely!”
To that I’ll add, “Feel the wind!”
Due to my lifelong experience of hypersexuality I’m a gender freak who is ever gladdened by the expansion of our world of gender expressions and identity variations. And I’ll always herald the full acceptance of each, as they reveal themselves.
Please read more about it in my novel. I hope you’ll enjoy.