Letters to Dean [1981]

by Paul Rosenfels

 A LETTER TO DEAN

A discussion of the nature of sex and
celebration and an examination of the causes
of homophobia in the gay community.

July 25, 1980

 

Dear Dean,

I prefer to record my insights into sexual and celebrative mechanisms in the form of a letter to you. I do not want to direct this material to a more general audience, aware as I am that it will be received as prohibitionistic and provocative by many gay persons. The understanding of sex and celebration is essential to the defining of what it is to be a homosexual. When homosexuality is seen exclusively in terms of sexual feelings and behavior, the real heart of the homosexual experience remains unrecognized. If homosexuality is defined as the ability to fall in love with someone of the same gender, bringing into focus the mated mechanism with its accompanying polarity, its courtship behavior, and its commitment to shared growth between the partners, the homosexual life style reveals itself to have a potentially powerful impact on the quality of life. Since many homosexuals find that this invitation to deepen and broaden their personalities brings an unwelcome challenge to their psychological resources, they prefer to retreat behind the image of a sexual life operating as a thing in itself, divorced from any serious influence on the rest of their psychic existence. Of all the homophobic influences at work in today's society, the one most difficult to expose is the one found in the gay community itself. It takes a stubborn position when homosexuality is identified as a pathway to genuine psychological independence. When the visible members of the gay community are invited to take responsibility for their own maturity, using their homosexuality to develop psychic assets of potential value to all mankind, they react as if their sexual and celebrative life were in danger, resisting any such approach as if it had inevitable prohibitionistic implications. The fact of the matter is that there is corrupt and perverse homosexual sex as well as healthy sex which promotes psychological maturity. In the same way, there is wild and mindless celebration as well as healthy celebration in gay relationships. In order to identify sex and celebration which is harmonious with psychological growth, the entire dynamics of the growth process must be understood.

2

There is nothing automatic and inevitable about psychological maturity in civilized human beings. The necessity for each individual to choose a course in life which is acceptable to both himself and others stands in vivid contrast to the life story of the lower animals who need only to follow their genetically determined drives to fulfill their potential as living organisms. Since human beings find a tremendous variety in their style of adjustment to their fellow men, it is clear that their search for a healthy maturity must go through many stages of development. If the individual continues to grow throughout a lifetime, he must accept a permissive position toward the transitional stages in himself and others. Without this right to explore the consequences of his own choice of direction, he could not possibly continue to learn from his experiences. There is no place more important for this kind of permissiveness to operate than in the sexual and celebrative area. A man in process toward a future state of greater self-knowledge and self-control will accept constructive shame and guilt for the fact that he wants to be wiser and stronger than he is in certain situations, but he cannot accept arbitrary regulation of his sexual and celebrative life in the time and place he occupies in the present, even though he understands that there is something lacking in the way he handles these surpluses. Shame and guilt are out of place in this territory.

Permissiveness in sexual and celebrative matters has a genuine but limited validity. The limitation must be imposed by the individual himself, based on his determination not to allow his surplus life to undermine his ability to keep the pathways of psychological growth open. Healthy surpluses cannot be recognized until inner identity is firmly established. As self-knowledge and self-control extend their influence, the individual becomes increasingly independent in the shaping of his sexual and celebrative life. Permissiveness makes room for what is happening in the moment, but it does not alter the overall perception of the developmental goals of the total personality. By this means the individual does not damage the fullness of his participation in his surplus outlets. At the same time he retains the capacity to review and evaluate the consequences of surplus events as he moves forward into the further participation in his esthetic, adaptive, and creative life.

It is very important to a growing person to keep his warmth and pride reactions in a general form. The cohesive and experiential instincts can take many forms and directions. Sex and celebration have no such generality. Although they are surpluses which develop out of warmth and pride, they have a special and instinct guided all or none quality. Once sexual excitement and the celebrative state have been brought into being, there is a biological push behind them which is intolerant of obstructions. When these surpluses have established their presence in any given time and place, the personality has no interest in selecting alternative pathways of expression. If self-criticism is allowed to contaminate the surpluses, once they have been set in motion, a full access to sensuality and euphoria becomes impossible. Much of man's psychic life is subject to the monitoring influence of his perception of truth and right. If monitoring intrudes on sex and celebration it is like a guest at a sumptuous banquet who does nothing but find fault with the food. The way sex and celebration are evaluated is by a backward or forward look, using the mental health of the individual as a guide. One place where monitoring often works its undermining influence is to be found when individuals guide their sexual and celebrative life according to tyrannical social rules. When church and state mingle their functions in order to suppress individuality, the surpluses become a favorite target in their program to wipe out the capacity of the common man to think and act for himself. No matter how faithfully the individual performs according to pre-established patterns, he cannot escape from the loss of intensity and spontaneity which being an automaton in sex and celebration brings.

Man is capable of reversing the linkage of dominance to males, and submission to females, because this ability leads to a substantial and entirely new kind of psychological potential among civilized personalities, enriching their access to psychological growth. It is as if four genders exist instead of two. Submissive males and dominant females are capable of contributions that are unique. As dominant males and submissive females are set free from primitive domain mechanisms, their full potential for the pursuit of truth and right becomes accessible. Strong goal directed motivations make these changes possible. Where sex and celebration are concerned, however, man cannot tinker with nature's mechanisms without paying a price in loss of capacity to keep the surpluses in a harmonious place. A healthy surplus life needs an interaction between the dominant and submissive principles. The fact that dominance is not inevitably tied to the male gender, nor submission to the female gender, does not alter the primacy of the genetically controlled need for a polarized pattern in the sexual and celebrative area. Unfortunately for man's search for a natural, simple, and satisfying access to the surpluses, inner identity has had a precarious and often inadequate status in the long history of civilized man's struggle to reach mental health. As a result men lack the capacity to arrive at a model in the surplus area of their own making. Whenever they envision the existence of such models, they usually equate them to externally imposed sanctions and prohibitions. Yet without self-knowledge and self-control in the surplus area, there is no way to keep sex and celebration in the pockets where they belong.

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