One noticeable thing about UU youth and young adults is that a rather large percentage of them identify as Queer. Maybe it's just because we're more open and aware: after all, the Kinsey study found that 90% of people have at least some homosexual experience in their lives, so maybe young UUs are just more likely to admit it, or be proud of it.
But I think there is something more than that. I see UU young adults, happily settled in longterm heterosexual partnerships, clinging fiercely to a Queer cultural identity. There is something about it that really matters to us. We know that we are not really straight.
When I was 21 I was living near the UC Berkeley campus and a member of a bisexual support group. Someone on campus was interviewing people for some Queer studies thing, and I volunteered. I went to her office and she asked a series of interview questions-- how old were you when you first knew you were queer, stuff like that. The questions never seemed to be phrased quite the right way, making me feel slightly confused, but I was used to that and took it for granted. We were working through a section on formative adolescent experiences when the conversation digressed for a while. She was explaining to me why she identified as a lesbian rather than as bisexual, talking about a certain feeling she had only with women, a feeling of deep connection, of realness, a kind of completeness of love. Something clicked in my head. I knew the feeling she was talking about. I knew when I had it and when I didn't, but it wasn't about gender. "I think I'm group-sexual," I said.
"What?" she said.
"My formative experiences were with a group. I mean, not all at once, in an orgy or anything, I mean, not usually. But a sexual community. We talked to each other, we were together. I mean, we had private relationships, but we knew the group bond was primary, we all knew that... I don't know how to explain. But I know that I do not feel... right... unless I have that. I look for that. Something is still empty, otherwise. The way you say you feel about men."
I was happy to have thought of the answer to her question. But what happened next was weird. She put down her pencil, and said, "I've never heard of anything like that before," and kind of stared at me.
Here she was, a professional sex researcher in the free love capital of the country, and she had never seen anything like me before.
I didn't think my experiences were that weird.
My sexual ideas are not that weird. At least, among UUs, they're not. I was designing a flyer for an UUYAN event a while ago and we were talking about how to handle the sexual policy thing. I was saying that I don't like the legalistic "sign here" thing they had done on the OPUS flyers, because I don't think that's appropriate for adults. But, I was saying, we have to find some way to let people know that this is a loving space, but we're not having an orgy here. The planning group started frowning a little, so I laughed and said, Well, OK, I mean it is an orgy, but it's not that kind of orgy.
They all laughed, and knew exactly what I meant. No one dropped their pencils or anything.
In UU land, I am not some kind of sex radical. I'm a fairly conservative, responsible person. I'm just UU-sexual, that's all.
There are a lot more aspects to being UU-sexual than just the experience of sex in community, although that is a deep one, for sure. And it's not just about conferences, either. I think the difference is actually theological. The relationship you have with God is the same as the relationship you expect with your lover. The differences are deep. I found some of it pretty well articulated in the Queer spirituality and Lesbian cultural books from the seventies and eighties (many of which, I later realized, were published by Beacon Press). It's the main reason why I knew I was a Lesbian all through my teens and young adulthood, even though the actual relationships I had were 98% with men. Those books were saying exactly who I was. Even just the idea that Queer culture has, that sexuality is an important part of everyday life, part of society and intellectual life, not just "behind closed doors," was important. Or the belief that your body is a good thing. Or the idea that you are probably going to be close friends with your ex-lovers, even after you break up, and that this intimacy and bonding is part of what holds the community together. Or that rigorous monogamy is not the be-all and end-all of sexual ethics and integrity.
It's not just about conference culture, either. Here's another story.
Nine or ten UU young adults, gathered for a weekly evening drop-in circle. The majority of the people who are in the room are not conference goers, were not necessarily raised UU, are not AYS graduates, although some of us are. The topic is sex and dating. We are passing a pine cone around the room, allowing each person a chance to speak uninterrupted. I start to notice a surprising thing: we come from a lot of different sexual and religious backgrounds and identities, but by some coincidence, each person happens to mention that they are someone who feels very comfortable talking frankly about sex with their partner, or potential partner. Not only comfortable, but like it was obvious, like how else could you feel? One after another, people shake their heads in bewilderment, remembering partners and most other people in their lives, who feel uncomfortable or just unable to talk about sex.
What's the name for a sexual identity where your body is still attached to your verbal self, your talking mind? Talk-osexual?
As a teenager I knew that sex was not about particular physical acts so much as it was about life energy. Something that radiated from nature and the trees as much as from myself or my lover. Not a hard driving force, but a liquid energy that suffused everything.
I got in trouble, my freshman year in college, because I hadn't yet learned that this was in any way unusual. I was lounging around with my new women friends in the dorm, just chatting after midnight sometime, and I said, "Wouldn't it be great to have sex with a dolphin?" They all stared at me in horror. "Um, dolphins are really... big," one of them finally said. I didn't really understand. Years went by before it dawned on me that they had been thinking of a very literal physical image, one that had really and truly not crossed my mind when I spoke. At the time, I really didn't understand why they didn't find the life energy of dolphins pleasurable.