A hallmark of the sexual in contemporary society is the frequency with which it is accompanied by the problematic at virtually every stage, from anticipation to activity to retrospective contemplation. A second hallmark is the frequency with which the problematic accompanies our attempts to understand the sexuality of others. This is not to suggest that each encounter with the sexual by each individual is necessarily riddled with ambivalence, but only to suggest that its capacity for the problematic should warn against simplistic models that promise universal applicability, particularly those claiming to be predicated upon the universality of the body.
Currently, the enlarged problematizing of the sexual is amplified by the enlarged problematizing of the larger issue of gender. In their reciprocal entanglement, they have been used to reinforce the naturalization of each other. Lessening the apparent biological imperatives associated with each calls into question the naturalization of the other. A major source of the problematizing of gender has been the inconsistent transformation of the application of gender rules to virtually all social roles.
Gender Identity Role (GI/R): Gender Identity is the private experience of gender role, and gender role is public manifestation of gender identity. Gender identity is the sameness, the unity, and persistence of one’s individuality as a male, female, or ambivalent, in great or lesser degree, especially as it is experienced in self-awareness and behavior. Gender role is everything that a person says and does to indicate to others or to the self the degree that one is either male or female, or ambivalent. GI/R includes, but is not restricted to sexual arousal and response.
(Money 1985)
Such formulations insist upon assuming precisely what the individuating experience of a postparadigmatic social order increasingly precludes: a direct parallel relationship between social reality and psychic reality. It is the potential difference between the two that makes the sexual and gender into complex and sometimes elusive texts. One might almost assert as a general principle that as social life becomes less predictable and less orderly, behavior becomes more mysterious. And, in proportion, so does our sense of the world.
Some part of this increasing complexity, mandated by the absence of predictability and order in the world surrounding the individual, is subsequently reflected in behavior. Left to our own devices, few of us would have either the courage or the creativity to originate alternatives to what the world of others expects. It is the confusions of that world that create our capacity to desire alternatives and the uncertainty of the world that encourages us to try to get away with it. Having in some measure to bargain with the world, we find it necessary to bargain with ourselves. A corresponding expansion of the capacity for fantasy makes of nearly all potential tricksters—particularly to themselves.
In this context it becomes clear that the sexual can simultaneously be master and servant of desire, though, more often than not, it tends to tilt towards the latter. One must share with Stoller the idea that sexual preference, and all that it might include, is an accomplishment: for some purposes a purchase and for others a form of currency. As W. H.Auden once observed:
The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that I might love myself is very different from the image which I try to create in the minds of others in order that they may love me.
(W. H.Auden, The Dyer’s Hand, 1963, Hic et Ille)
And while congruence of the two is possible, its chances are diminished by the frequency with which neither the requirements of self-love nor the requirements with which others confront us are typically singular or happily integrated. In a post-Freudian world it should be a commonplace that there are relatively few affirmations of desire that are not at the same time an occasion for renunciation.
Many different others can offer different versions of love to different versions of the self. The coercive power of paradigmatic societies included the fact that they represented a singularity of expectation and judgment. Many modern families made but could not keep such a promise when they assured their children that they and their values represented the permanent judgments of the world. In contrast, the postparadigmatic social world is experienced as a marketplace of expectations with a considerable potential for overlap and reciprocity but not for continuity except for that realized through an exercise of will and a capacity for metaphor.
The sexual becomes problematic, then, to the degree that different aspects or senses of the self make different and possibly conflicting demands upon the sexual; it becomes even more problematic when the same situation comes to describe the others who are relevant to the sexual as either direct participants or members of the many audiences. The problem of the other or others, it must be noted, is most often not merely a problem of recruiting them to and coordinating their participation in a specific sexual event, but also a problem of establishing congruences with the actor’s nonsexual identities and involvements.
This problematic finds its counterpart on the intrapsychic level, as individuals must either integrate or isolate their desired identity as a sexual actor from their nonsexual identities (Davis 1983). The issue of the other(s) is reflected in the differences in sexual behavior that frequently occur when individuals are detached from their conventional settings or “free” from the scrutiny of a familiar audience. Similarly, the problem of the management of self-identity may find expression in the tactic of finding anonymity by hiding from oneself by the use of intoxicants or claims of intoxication.
At this point, Auden’s observation might be reformulated in more explicit sexual images: the image of myself which I try to create in my mind in order that I might sustain sexual excitement is different than the image which I try to create in the mind of others in order that they may respond to me in ways that I desire. The issue of maintaining sexual excitement comes under the heading of what can be called “intrapsychic scripting”, while the problem of eliciting desired responses from others is labeled “interpersonal scripting”. A third influential element is “cultural scenarios”, i. e. the actions, objects, persons, contexts, and costumes that are defined as having erotic meanings by the surrounding world (see Chapter 2).
The concept of scripting suggests that while the sexual act, more properly the sexual enactment, must be viewed as a very complex, multidimensional process, it is not necessarily experienced as complex. It is precisely the reliance upon the scripting process that leads actors through the action, allowing them to experience their sexual desires as powerful native forces capable of the most particularistic preferences that can be instantly recognized without being articulated.