Vive la Différence!

Let me say this in case it isn’t at all clear: Women and men are different.  Peter, you’ve finally lost your mind, you may be saying to yourself right about now.  How long did it take you to figure that one out?  Well, it’s not that it took me any time to discover that central tenet of life.  It’s just that it seems that part of being bisexual is that it really doesn’t matter whether you’re dating a man or a woman. Sex and gender are irrelevant.  Only the ‘human qualities’ of the person we’re dating is important.

I feel as if I hear that a great deal. And in fact, I did some rooting around on the net where I found articles from Newsweek’s 1995 “Bisexuality” to the New York Times’ 2001 “Love in the 21^st Century; Polymorphous Normal” in which people appear to dismiss the gender of their love objects as only a minor consideration.  If you take a look at the 2008 documentary Bi the Way – and I really wish you would – you will notice that even more than the gender of the love object, but even the labeling is often avoided.

What’s going on here?  Saying that gender is unimportant – like saying the label ‘bisexual’ is unimportant – is in the same league as saying race, ethnicity, class, and a raft of other attributes don’t matter either.

Now, don’t get me wrong; I wish we lived in a society that was free of racism, sexism, biphobia, homophobia, classism and other the other notorious isms.  However, even if we did, these attributes would still be noticeable and have effects on our lives.  After all, we live this life in a physical body, through which we experience the world and hopefully draw lessons.  Even the fact that I am 6’ 4” means that I interact with the world differently than someone who is 5’ 4” or 7’.

Talking about difference – which we so seldom do thoroughly and honestly in our society – doesn’t mean that I think men should be the breadwinners and women should stay home and bake cookies.  That kind of analysis – men are big, strong and courageous; women are kind, shy and fragile – is too simplistic and is in the same vein as assuming that the masculine resides exclusively in the male and the feminine in the female.  We are far to complex to be stuffed in boxes of the sort.

Talking about difference means acknowledging that we all interact with the world in a myriad of ways and that they are valid.  I don’t even know if the word ‘valid’ is correct because the differences just are and to a large extent the interactions they lead to just are as well. For example, the mechanics of physical intimacy will vary depending on the sex of the partners involved.  That’s just how it is; being intimate with a man is not the same as being intimate with a woman.  And I like that.  That’s the variety that is the proverbial spice of life.

Beyond the physical though, I know that as a man I process information differently from women.  For example, like most men I navigate by feel, using more of the visual-spatial and kinesthetic.  Women tend to use landmarks.  (No, this is not a fancy way to say that women ask for directions and men don’t even though it may seem so.)  Imagine the scenarios possible as my partner and I go off for a vacation in the White Mountains. Two different genders, at least two different storylines possible.  Given that I’m involved, it’s probable that both are very humorous!  Humorous, but quite different.

That’s the point though: We’re not the same.  What a dull and lackluster world it would be if we were!  When I use the bisexual label, I mean that I like both men and women and while there certain qualities I find attractive in both – smarts, laughter, political awareness – one is certainly not the other. As they say in France, Vive la différence!