SEXUAL DESIRE: How do we know who and what we really want?
September 14, 2021
Glennon Doyle:
Everybody welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. We are so grateful that you keep returning. Thanks. So Abby and Amanda and I are talking about sexuality today. So we’re not talking about the act of sex. Okay? That episode was a couple weeks ago and we nailed that. We’re done. We totally understand sex now. So today, sex queens out there.
Amanda Doyle:
Speak for yourself. Speak for yourself silent sex queen.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s just so funny because I am so neither silent nor a sex queen and that’s why that title, I just love so much.
Abby Wambach:
I beg to differ.
GD:
Oh babe. Thanks. Thanks. So today, we’re not talking about the act of sex or the manifestation of sex. We’re talking about what sex feels like inside of us before and after it’s acted upon. Okay? So what we mean is we’re talking about the desire inside of us that eventually perhaps compels us toward the act of sex. So it’s like we’re not talking about the eating of the cupcake. Okay? But the hunger that compels us to pick a certain flavor and devour it. Okay? We’re talking about hunger about desire, about what turns us on and off and why and when and how labels and frankly, being a woman, can cause us to stop exploring completely our own desire. Okay? But first, most importantly, we are talking about how Abby Wambach discovered she was gay while out to dinner with her parents at the Macaroni Grill. It’s just a story as old as time. Who among us has not discovered we were gay at the Macaroni Grill with our mom and dad? Before we get to the Macaroni Grill story, answer this question, Abby Wambach, are you a gold star lesbian? Define it and then answer the question.
AW:
So gold star gay is a person who has never had to experiment with somebody of the opposite sex to prove that they were gay or not or have an experience. So a gold star lesbian is somebody who’s only been with women and a gold star gay man is somebody who’s only been with men. Right? So I, surprisingly enough am not a gold star gay.
GD:
Do, do, do, do.
AD:
It’s like purity culture for queers.
GD:
Exactly. It’s so annoying.
AW:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, when I was growing up, my sexuality was confusing because I had this Catholic church up on my back telling me I’m going straight to hell. So it’s like, well, I got to… I mean, I got to try this thing.
GD:
Right. So who did you date first? Don’t tell names, but generally.
AW:
Yeah. I had a boyfriend in high school for many years, for like four years actually.
GD:
Okay.
AW:
And he was wonderful. He was wonderful. We had a wonderful time.
GD:
But it’s getting so pissed right now. No, never. I only am jealous of women. Not boys ever. Who could be jealous of boys?
AW:
And by the way babe, I’m sorry about this next part.
GD:
Oh, I know the Macaroni Grill. So just go ahead. I’m going to be brave. Tell us what happened that night.
AW:
So this one day, I went to dinner with my parents. I had my school uniform on which consisted of corduroy navy blue pants, hot. A white turtleneck.
GD:
Oh.
AW:
And just a winter jacket because it was cold. So it was like super sexy this day. I was feeling it.
GD:
Yes. Yes.
AW:
And you know at the Macaroni Grill, the waiters and waitresses, they come over and they write their names in crayon upside down. They’re like able to actually write their own name-
GD:
On the paper tablecloth?
AW:
Yeah. On the paper tablecloth. So our waitress walks over and she writes her name upside down and happens to graze with her hand my pinky finger.
GD:
Who the hell did she think she was?
AW:
And ever since this moment, my life has been totally different.
GD:
Okay. I need to hear about the graze. The moment of the graze, what happened inside of you? What was it?
AW:
It felt like electric, it felt energy. It felt like whoa, what just happened? It was like-
AD:
Were you like there she is?
GD:
No. There someone else. It was just a there someone else.
AW:
There’s a person who interests me.
GD:
Yes.
AW:
And you know I, unfortunately, at the time I was like a senior in high school and kind of famous already in my hometown. So I was very anti-fame. I didn’t want people to only see me as a soccer player. So I never ever talked about myself or my whatever, my talent. And so when she touched my finger and I was like what the heck is this going on? I just immediately just was word vomiting on how good I.
GD:
This sounds familiar actually.
AW:
This is my game. This is all I had. I was like yeah, I play soccer.
GD:
She was like, no, no, cheese fries or onion rings?
AW:
Macaroni Grill, it was nachos or pasta.
GD:
Oh, okay. I’m sorry. Got it. Got it. Got it.
AW:
And so, yeah, it was this really interesting and beautiful moment for me because I had spent the previous four years literally with my ex-boyfriend wondering what this was supposed to feel like.
GD:
Did it ever feel like that zappy thing with the boyfriend?
AW:
No. No. And this was not his fault, right?
GD:
Of course not.
AW:
I tried really hard to feel all of those feelings and it was just a literal graze that made me go oh, I understand. I am completely, now I get it. Now I understand that I was like I was just going down the wrong way on a one way street. I was just like-
GD:
Babe, can you briefly tell us how you followed up that experience? Because I love this so much. It’s just so everything I love about you.
AW:
Well, this is my hope. At the time, I felt hopeless romantic. So because of this very minuscule amount of fame that I had in my city growing up in Rochester, New York, I typed out a letter and I explained the entire interaction, what happened, how I felt, but I left it anonymous for fear of, I don’t know, being caught as gay and being found out. And then I sent it to the Macaroni Grill-
AD:
No, you didn’t.
AW:
… anonymously.
AD:
No, you did not.
GD:
To just information, just general the Macaroni Grill. So babe, what did the letters say? Just give us a few sentences.
AW:
Yeah. Just like hey, I was a customer of yours. I felt something. There was an energy there. I don’t know what to do about it because I’ve never felt this way about a girl and all of these things. And so then I sent it to her anonymously and I said if you have any inkling who this could be, just call me. Look me. My parents’ number is in the phone book, look me up.
GD:
Yes.
AW:
And she freaking called me.
AD:
Wait, wait, wait. If it was anonymous, how did… So because-
AW:
She felt it too is how. She felt it too.
GD:
She felt it. And she knew it was Abby Wambach. Def she knew-
AD:
The finger graze heard round the world.
GD:
Yes.
AD:
Oh my God.
GD:
This woman is freaking powerful. And I hope I’m so glad that lady didn’t write her book first.
AD:
Wait.
GD:
Her untamed book first.
AD:
So she called your parents’ phone number and said hi, this is crayon girl from the Macaroni Grill?
AW:
That’s right. And I was so nervous because I answered the phone thankfully and then I kind of played it off like I didn’t know what she was talking about because I was so nervous. I didn’t know how respond. And she was like so I got this letter and I was like a letter? What do you… Okay. What do you mean? She said, oh, you didn’t write me this letter. Okay. I’m so sorry to bother you. I was like no, no, no. I wrote you the letter. I just didn’t know. I’ve never done this before. This is like the late 90s dating app, this is like how we used to do it people.
GD:
Right. And then? Just real quick because we don’t need to get into the details of this. You did get together, you did some making out. The making out was different than the making out with the boy in what ways? Not anatomically. I just need to know like the feeling.
AW:
I mean, it was like oh this makes sense. There wasn’t like a forcing of anything. It was just a… It’s like the difference of like hearing a song that you love listening to and that feels good and it’s like whatever you’re expecting next to hear, you kind of hear. And then the other side of the coin is like you’re just listening to a song and it’s like a song and it just doesn’t do anything for you.
GD:
Okay. So would you say that the graze and that first experience, did you know that you were gay after that? And do you consider yourself gay? What’s your label and when did you quote know?
AW:
Yes. I felt like the minute I… First of all, having this experience with your parents to your left and right was the most odd thing that ever happened to me. But after this experience I was like oh, this is making a lot of sense. This is why. It just like made… A lot of my life was like oh. I had been kind of avoiding it and ignoring it and denying it for so long that this moment was like oh no, this is what I’ve been hoping to feel with this boy. This is what I thought I was supposed to feel but never did and was forcing that subject. And so now it just made sense. And so this was an identity that felt more real and true and one that was scary as hell, by the way, because then I had to like go about tell my friends and that’s a whole different conversation, but yeah, I started to label myself as gay. I wasn’t at the lesbian word quite yet because that just felt so freaking aggressive early on in my gayness.
GD:
I got that. So you were gay. You landed on a gay non-lesbian for a while?
AW:
No, I never. No, I just never. I don’t know. There was something when I was younger. I mean, it’s probably just the homophobia inside
GD:
Yes, of course. Yeah.
AW:
That the word lesbian scared the hell out of me. Right? So I got comfortable enough with gay, the word gay and now I’m fine with lesbian.
GD:
Yeah. Okay, so-
AW:
Are you doing okay honey?
GD:
No, I’m great. I’m great. I’m still mad at her, that waitress, but-
AW:
You’re mad at her?
GD:
Yeah. Just in general. I’m mad at everyone that has anything to do with you. So I had a similar experience with you, right? I mean, I remember the grazing moment. I remember the seeing you and having the oh my God moment. But the story I want to tell about the sexuality thing is something that I’ve never told anyone except you because you were there, but I’ve never spoken about it or written about it or anything. And babe, this is the time. So we met, we had our there she is moment at a librarian’s convention where I saw you and understood that something wild was happening inside of me that had to do with desire and sexuality. And I used to explain it as like love at for sight, whatever people say that is. And I actually don’t think it’s that weird and magical. I think it was desire. The first desire that I felt, right?
Because love at first sight sounds like something magical that like fairy dust comes and sprinkles on some people and not on other people. And that isn’t how I think of it anymore. I just think I felt real desire for the first time. I whoa, right? But it was so confusing to me. And so you and I were trying to be friends or something. I don’t know what we were doing for a while. We were trying to, through email, figure out what was happening between us for a good while. And one weekend. Okay. I had to go speak at this convention of some sort and all I can tell you is that I got Uber or something from the airport to this convention and it was in Pennsylvania. Okay? And so the car started driving me through all of these mountains to the middle of what I felt like was nowhere. It was beautiful, this beautiful rolling country, but nothing around. And pulled up to this hotel that was, I think it was in Pennsylvania, Dutch country. Okay?
So it was so precious and also all wooden and very kind of old fashioned looking. So when I walked into my room, there was, I just remember seeing a sampler. There was a big sampler on the wall that said that I was supposed to fear the Lord. That’s all I remember. There was a big fear the Lord sampler. But the weird thing is that the fear the Lord sampler that was hand stitched was above a green triangular huge hot tub that was in the middle of the bedroom. So it was like Amish boogie nights, if you will. Just jarring, right? Just confusing. I didn’t know what vibe I was supposed to be going for. Sexy or completely unsexy. I was alone. It was for a mental health convention. Okay. So what I remember is that you and I earlier in that day had been having talk about sexuality. Okay? And gayness and straightness and queerness and the spectrum, which is how we used to think of it, like a spectrum. Like everybody falls somewhere along the line on a spectrum. Just a line. Right? Which now feels way too binary and uncomplicated to feel real.
But that’s what we were talking about that day, and I was kind of hinting to you that maybe I might not feel as straight as my life would suggest to the world that I was. So I’m standing in the bathroom of this Amish porn room and starting to get ready for this convention. And I texted you something that said I don’t know, I’m trying to. Maybe I am. Maybe I have more gay in me than I know. And you texted me back and said well, if you want to know take this Kinsey scale test. Okay? So you sent me this quiz and it was the Kinsey scale. And I took the quiz and I said what did you get? And I remember… Do you remember?
AW:
What?
GD:
My score was much higher than yours.
AW:
Yeah. You were higher on the Kinsey scale, meaning you had more gayness properties.
GD:
Yes. And I just remember thinking, wait, I am gayer than Abby Wambach? That feels like… Isn’t she the gayest gay that ever… This feels like important information. And then this thing happened from which there was no turning back. You, I’m standing there in the bathroom having just taken the Kinsey test. And you said but listen, none of these quizzes will tell you if you’re gay. Here’s the thing that will tell you that you’re gay. I want you. She said where are you? I said I’m in the bathroom in Amish land. You said I want you to listen to this song that I’m going to send you. And after you listen, you will know if you’re gay.
AW:
Now, all the people who are listening to this right now are like send me the song.
GD:
I know, I know.
AW:
I need to know if I’m gay or not.
GD:
Okay. So, and I just would like to disclaim this by this is not a test of whether you’re gay or not.
AW:
Okay. Thank you.
GD:
But I will tell you it worked for me. Okay. So you sent me this song Drive by Melissa Ferrick.
AW:
And all the lesbians are around the world applaud.
GD:
Okay. So all I can tell you, my precious We Can Do Hard Things listeners is that I pressed play on the song. I freaking my entire, the thing that we’re talking about, the desire, sexuality, this wild energy inside of us, just ping, ping, ping, all of the lights up, all of the desire, all of the turned on, all of it, all of it, all of it. By the end of the song, I was like well, that’s it. I am gay as gay can freaking be. It’s over. It’s over for me. Melissa Ferrick solidified it. And yeah, that was it. That was it. And by the way, I still… You know that I have all kinds of issues with labels so we’ll talk about that later. But that’s when I knew that there was no turning back and now I would like to know sister, when did you know you were straight?
AW:
Thank you. This is a very important question.
AD:
It’s a good question.
GD:
Are you straight?
AD:
Well, I mean, I’ve never to listened that song, so I can’t be sure. But, I mean, I guess I knew I was straight when I wasn’t burdened with any anxiety or struggle with not fitting into the assumption that I was heterosexual. And also we should say, if we’re saying heterosexual and homosexual in this pod, I realize that homosexual is not a favorite term and it’s outdated, but we might say it because it might be historically relevant. But it just didn’t occur to me that I wasn’t like quote unquote normal. And so I never wrestled with any of that. And I do remember when you talked about that desire thing, I remember the first time I felt attraction of any kind and I was in the fifth grade and I was watching one of your softball games sitting on a hill and this boy rode his bike up the hill and he just kept riding it like up and down the hill by me. And we didn’t say anything to each other, but we were just looking at each other.
And it was the first time that I became aware that there could be force field between people just based on nothing, but just pheromones or I don’t know what, but it was like I remember being a little bit shocked by that situation because there was no talking and there was any kind of contact, but I was like that was a thing that just happened. That was just how it worked out for me. And I never wrestled at all with my sexuality. And I want to talk about that because it’s relevant to this podcast, which is that I think that my not wrestling with any of it has been a disservice to my life because I feel like if questions of sexuality are like, it’s again, exploration, it’s like a decision tree of sorts, I’d never really got off the trunk of the tree because I feel like when I didn’t feel like a misfit and I knew I was a heterosexual and that was kind of the end of my inquiry. It was like attracted to boys, check. Analysis complete. Moving on to other things.
And I, when you said that we were going to be doing this talk about sexuality, I was genuinely confused because we had already talked about sex. We had already talked about gender and I was like what else is left? We already did that. I didn’t. And I think that’s when I realized that, because I’ve never wrestled with any of those questions about sexuality, I never asked any of the questions or got answers that a lot of people who have that kind of not fit at the beginning actually wrestle with. Like how you think about your sexuality, your sexual identity, your value system, what you experience, what makes you attracted and interested in your preferences? I mean, these are things that I never explored. They’re things that require by definition imagination and experimentation and I…
GD:
For everybody, right? Not just people in an outside group. For everybody of any sexuality.
AW:
I think that that’s, yeah, that’s what she’s trying to say here is she’s just missed out on the exploration of her own sexuality because-
GD:
She checked the first box.
AW:
… that the first box gets checked. And that’s such a gift that us gay folks not being in the majority get, because we are forced to, right? Sister go. I’m fast. This is so fascinating to me because-
GD:
Do you feel like you were stunted? Like you were actually stunted by being part of the check the first box group?
AD:
I mean, I get that, all of the stuff that marginalized sexualities comes at a very high price. You lose people, the massive discrimination in society, all of that. And yet, there is a part of me that’s envious because it is an area of my life that is completely unmined. Just pathetically, uncritically explored. There’s so much of my life that I really think about and really think like who am I in this area? Who do I want to be? What is true to me? And I never, because I never had to define anything for myself, I never did.
GD:
So it’s like is unexamined sexuality even worth having? It’s so fascinating because it reminds me of other things like faith. Okay? When people feel okay with their religion that that was handed to them. I mean, when people feel like misfits or outsiders. I mean the wrestling. I never felt like I fit inside of Christianity. So the wrestling I had to do with religion, with faith. I mean, you know the years of just wait, what this religion, what is this? Why don’t I feel like I could fit here or there or anywhere leaves me with a very examined faith. And when I ask people, sometimes there’ll be somebody inside Christianity and I’ll say, okay, but do you seriously believe that most people are going to hell? And they will… Sometimes they will like say it to me, well, I haven’t really thought that all the way through. And I’m like are you freaking kidding? So it’s like that. It’s like if you don’t feel like a misfit, you don’t wrestle with enough to make your own.
AD:
And it’s majority group identification. That’s that. When you have been in the… We call it privilege, right? When you are in the position to be in the majority group, you have the luxury of never examining anything within your majority group. So it’s the same way with white people. I mean, with you don’t… Very many of us don’t see ourselves as having any race or culture. We are the default. We are the normal. It’s the people who have races and cultures are the people who are not the default. And so we don’t examine any of that and what it means to be white and how we operate in the world. And it’s true that because I had this hunch where I was like is it just me or is it just… Are other people out there with these highly developed sexual identities that will have something to say on this podcast who are hetero?
And it’s true that heterosexuals are rarely asked whether they experience themselves as having a sexual identity, much less about like whether they have conceptualized it in this way. And we do have less developed thing. And it’s so interesting the way they talk about it, it’s called unreconciled heterosexuality. As in like no reckoning. You’ve never reckoned with it because you’ve never actually been asked to, been forced to answer the question of what does it mean to you to be a sexual human. And I mean, I certainly haven’t.
GD:
Yeah. Are you interested in doing more of that? Do you feel like… Because you’re saying you hadn’t even thought of any of this before we decided to do a podcast about this. Has thinking about this and the research you’ve been doing, I know you’ve been sitting with all of this, do you feel like reopening this idea of what you’re? Because it’s kind of like if we think of I’ve been thinking of sexuality as kind of like appetite. If we compare it to food, right? It’s like okay, we don’t just decide I like Indian food. That’s it. We then… There’s a million different kinds of Indian food and how the spices go and how the… There’s all these different layers of investigation that you can do about your own appetites. Right? So do you feel like doing more of that or are you just happy with being straight checking the box?
AD:
Well, I don’t think it’s just straight or not straight. What I’m saying about not developed sexual identity doesn’t have to do with am I secretly a queer person because I’ve never asked that question.
GD:
No.
AD:
It has to, and some of us probably, yes. The answer is yes. But I think even beyond that. What does it mean to identify, to listen to my body, to identify my sexual hungers, to think about what I might actually like, what I might actually not like, to really get to the heart of that. And I think I am interested in that and I mean, I think it reminds me of when you, last week, went to that Van Gogh exhibit and so it’s supposed to be this 360 projection of all of these beautiful art in the room where you can walk around it and I called you right after. I was like how’d it go? And you were like it was nice. It’s really nice. And I was like, ah, okay. That’s interesting. It’s supposed to be like really spectacular, but that’s great. And then you realize later that the whole time you had been in the sitting room before. You never actually like went-
GD:
We missed it.
AD:
The whole time, you’re the family masked up just sitting in the waiting room, thinking that was the exhibit.
GD:
Because they had, just to be clear, they had some things on the walls.
AD:
Right. Right.
GD:
So it was tricking us into thinking-
AW:
No, no, no. You guys walked in-
GD:
And our family, we have trained our kids to… They are so conditioned that they better be grateful for what everything we take them to that they all just sat there and stared at the walls. And then we left and they were like it was great, thanks. And then we figured out we weren’t in it. There was a whole massive, gorgeous experience that we just paid for the tickets. It was like the times where I go to McDonald’s and I pay and then I just leave. Okay. I forget to stop at the window and pick up the food. I just get anxious and drive away. It was like that. It was the Van Gogh.
AW:
Well, I think we had the experience of literally walking in and I was last and my family just sat down in the very first space that they could see with their eyes rather than exploring the whole space. Right?
AD:
Exactly.
GD:
Okay. So this is what sister is getting to.
AD:
Exactly. That’s what it is. That’s what I want for my sexuality. I don’t want to find out at the end of this that I spent the whole time in the waiting room where I assumed I was supposed to stand.
GD:
And you’re just acting grateful.
AD:
It has. I just don’t. I don’t want to find out that there was this whole other room just a little exploration away that would’ve taken my breath away. I don’t want to be unreconciled. I want to have a reckoning and I want to actively conceptualize this and do the things I’ve never explored. And it’s scary because you have to be brave enough and vulnerable enough to ask the questions I’ve never asked and try the things.
GD:
Yes. And say words.
AD:
And say words.
GD:
But like to all the people listening right now, because I think we need to clarify also what this can mean, because we’re not saying that you are doubting, that you suddenly think you’re gay or that when you say you want to go to the other room that you mean you have to try a bunch of different partners or. We’re not talking about that. You are committed in a relationship, you’re talking about exploring your individual. We’re not talking about changing labels.
AD:
No.
GD:
We’re talking about something deeper than that, way deeper than that like exploring your individual sexuality with your partner.
AD:
As if I had one. That just because I am a heterosexual person does not mean that I should not have a depth of understanding of my own self that I have explored in what I want. And I think part of being in the majority group and never having to climb off the trunk of the tree, that I’ve just never ever thought about those things.
AW:
Well, and I’m obsessed with some of the, I don’t know, like the real sex shows that you watch growing up where it was kind of like a sexual awakening that people go in and take classes. And some of the things that they teach women especially to do is to literally just look at your body, right? To actually get a mirror and look down there and see what parts are down there. And literally look at yourself. So many of us are terrified or don’t or have never actually inspected our own sexual parts. Our sex parts. And so that’s a step that you can do without a partner. I don’t know. I think that sometimes we think about these new rooms we might have to go into has to include somebody else, but to explore your own sexuality, I think that that’s a very individualized thing.
GD:
I mean, I was in a bathroom by myself with a fear the Lord sampler. It was me, a very vengeful God threatening me not to be a lesbian, a hot tub, Melissa Ferrick, Abby Wambach. But at the end of the day, I was by myself. Right? For me all the life changing things happened in the bathroom. It’s like that… They said God is in the details, but actually she’s in the bathroom. That’s the place I get realist and ask the… It’s like you have that party self and then you have the bathroom self where it’s just for you real, really you in the bathroom mirror. That’s how I think about the sexuality thing. I think it’s too easy to think oh, I just have to go try a bunch of different partners.
AW:
Right.
GD:
It’s actually very deeply personal. It’s questioning. It’s starting to question yourself and allowing those thoughts like how many times did I actually think? I actually think I was meant to be with a woman. I had those thoughts. I just completely ignored them.
AD:
To your point about it not being, the other room isn’t people, the other room isn’t other partners or isn’t necessarily other partners or even other genders. To me, it’s the other room isn’t even necessarily about sex for me. When I know the things that are about the important parts of my life are always the same things. They’re about my need to control everything. They’re about my unwillingness to be vulnerable. They’re about my fear of everything. I’m thinking about how do I integrate myself and the richness I want for that part of my life with the what I know deeply about myself and the way that I struggle. And why do I think that that wouldn’t live over there too?
AD:
Yeah.
AW:
That’s so freaking beautiful.
GD:
And I think it’s so interesting to think that some of the people who have found the most easy belonging in groups would have the least need for deep self-exploration. And the people who have felt like misfits in most of those places, faith, gender, sexuality, even mental health when I think about that, how I had to struggle for any sort of anything that worked, right? In terms of mental health. But how much I learn in all of those areas because I always felt like a misfit in all of those places. And so to those people who felt like misfits their whole lives, there are silver linings, right? And to people who felt comfortable in all of those faces, there’s exciting new work to do that maybe was robbed from you by feeling easy belonging. I remember when right after Untamed came out and all anyone asked me is what are you? We’d start an interview. What are you now? And no label has ever felt right and we can talk about that at a different time. But I think what feels right to me is what you’re saying is that I was unleashing, getting deeper into this wild individual sexuality that I had.
AD:
So Abby, does it bother you that Glennon won’t claim the label lesbian or queer or gay that she can’t settle on a label?
GD:
Well, I will settle. Queer I think works, but go ahead babe.
AW:
Yeah. Well, I think… I don’t know. I’m just thinking a lot about what sister was talking about in terms of choosing a label. I think that when you choose a label, I think that the stifles you no matter what. Even as a gay person, I think that maybe when I started to say I’m gay, then I think I stopped exploring parts of my sexuality. So I don’t know if it’s about even gay or straight. I think it’s about the labeling of it. So I don’t know. I needed to say that. I think that that’s actually important for every person to hear, no matter how you define your sexuality. And Glennon, as it relates to you, I trust you in the way that we are committed to each other in our marriage and in our friendship and in our sexual lives together. And it is not my problem. It is not my job or problem to deal with your sexuality or your label. I’m just going to be here and listen and try to mirror to you all the things that you show me or tell me. But I think that our bigger conversation is are labels actually it? Are we actually trying to define something that is undefinable and put a label on something that is? You can’t.
GD:
Right. And what you said when we talked this weekend is that the reason it doesn’t bother you that I won’t choose a sexuality or can’t. It’s not that I won’t. I’m not trying to be difficult. I just actually can’t find a word that feels correct. And I’m a writer. Words are really, really important to me. I will not. I’m always trying to desperately use these freaking symbols that are letters and words to accurately send a signal to you that actually really represents a true thing inside of me. And it’s unbelievably frustrating to me. They say a writer is someone for whom writing is harder than the average bear. It’s excruciating to me to try to find words that are true enough. And there is no label that is true enough for me in regards to sexuality, but there’s also no label that is true enough for me in regards to faith. Right? There is no label that’s true enough for me in regard to gender.
AW:
I think that you definitely rebel against anyone trying to put you in any cage, even yourself. I think that we can even play this game with our own psyche because some of these labels feel inclusive like oh, it’s a community, it’s this. That makes me feel safe and seen and experienced, right? But I think that over the last couple of years, I’ve watched you lane by lane untangle yourself from some of the labels because I think at the end we have kind of… We keep finding that the labels are too rigid.
GD:
It paints you into a corner. To me, everything after I am, any word that comes after I am feels like a promise that I do not want to make or keep for the rest of my life, because it’s like painting myself into a corner. The only word that I can feel correct about is queer, but it means more to me than just these are all the genders that I prefer to have sex with. That’s not what it… I would describe my faith as queer. My gender as queer. To me, queer just means not that thing that you’re saying. Not that. That’s all it means to me, is I don’t know how to describe it. All I know is not that.
AD:
And it’s important to acknowledge that your ability to say that is-
AW:
A privilege.
AD:
… a privilege that you don’t need the security of those boxes in that specific community of protection that a lot of those labels offer. But it is really interesting because the whole labeling resulted as of until the 1860s, there was no word heterosexual and there was no word homosexual. I mean, that was like 100 and what? 40 years, 60 years ago? This is a very, very new phenomenon. There was never a discussion of people. It had never occurred to people that we could categorize humans based on sexual desire until 160 years ago. It’s a very new phenomenon and it was the two words were developed at the very same time. And when that happened, very quickly, the word homosexual went from something that was an action, right? Something that people did to a completely pathologized way to describe not what people do, but what a person is. The personhood of that person, it became a kind of, to define it, deviant and psychiatry adopted it. It started as a legal concept. Psychiatry adopted it, attached all these meanings to it.
Now we had all this medical data to show that people who engage in this or wish to are infused with all these character traits. Okay? And so it’s really a fascinating situation where they’re defined at the very same time. 30 years later heterosexuality was defined initially as an abnormal or perverted appetite toward the opposite sex. They were both like this is odd behavior. Okay? Then all the psychiatrists latched on to homosexuality, decided for the first time to transform it into something people do to something people are and it came with a whole identity.
GD:
And it doesn’t just, just wrapping up here, it actually doesn’t make sense on a deep spiritual level or an intellectual level in terms of the way that the human mind, which has a lot to do with desire, right, works. We know that the second we label something, our curiosity turns off about it. So this is why the Buddhist talk about having beginner’s mind. So the way that you can practice that is like you look at a rose, okay? For a second, you have this moment of awe about it. And the minute that your mind says rose, it categorizes it, labels, the awe goes away. Okay? You look at your child or your partner or whatever and you have the second where your mind is not there and your eyes go wide and then your child. And you categorize it and the awe goes away. So there’s something about labeling your sexuality too. Right? What you’re saying, straight, gay, lesbian. Then you feel like check, that’s over. Right? So just the idea of labels are important to some people, not important to other people. What we’re suggesting is that always they can shut us down if that’s as deep as we go, right?
That we can come to our sexuality or desire in ourselves. In regards to that, with this beginner’s mind of like what if you when someone says what’s your label? What if that’s not the most important question? Right. What if we could come to our sexuality with this beginner’s mind and feels a little bit more awe about it?
Let’s go to the next right thing which we, I think is cool. Abby and I went to this cool retreat thing a while back and our friend Esther Perel was there, who a lot of and if you don’t, you should look her up. She’s amazing. And Erica Chitty, this other brilliant kind of intimacy sexuality teachers were talking to us about some of this idea, that sexuality is just kind of an uncultivated, undiscovered abyss in most of us. And she said that one of the ways that we can start to get in touch with ourselves is to ask, we had to do this with each other, with strangers. It was quite awkward for me. But we had to fill in a blank. The fill in the blank was I turn myself on when I. Okay. And so there was no like you turn me on when I am turned on when. But like I turn myself on when.
And of course for the first five minutes, I was like well, I can’t do this. This is impossible. What the hell is she talking about? I hate everything. I hate retreats. I hate all of it, blah, blah. But actually, when you start thinking… And then we had to do I turn myself off when. Okay? And it’s actually quite interesting because it makes you start to think of your sexuality and your desire as your responsibility and your… Because usually you think about a partner or whatever like you turn me off when you don’t shower or you turn me off when blah, blah, blah. But this idea that our sexuality is our own to ignite or extinguish.
AW:
Personal responsibility in your own sexuality.
GD:
And empowerment.
AW:
Yes.
GD:
Like I turn myself on when I’m rested, when I’m not on my phone for six hours a night, when I’m… I don’t know. Whatever it is for you. When you feel sexy or you feel turned on or you feel the idea that you could have some agency over that. And the fact that we do things that just shut us down, right? That turn us off. So anyway, do it or don’t.
AD:
That’s so good, that’s so good.
AW:
Do it. Do it.
AD:
Because when think about your sexual life, it’s like what we were talking about the other sex episode where it’s like oh, my sex life consists of what I do with my partner or whatever. But when you think about part of your own self like I have a sexual self, whether I’m with someone or not, whether I have a partner or not, regardless of what’s happening like just I have a sexual personhood that is there whether I am ignoring it or whether I am actively exploring it. It is there.
GD:
Yes.
AD:
It is there, right?
GD:
Yes. And it doesn’t always have to be things that are totally sex. Do you know what is so, this is probably TMI, but what is that? I feel sexy when I go to freaking museums. I don’t know. Art somehow turns something on inside of me that has to you with not being productive. The art part of me is tied to the sex part of me somehow. I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s activating in a way.
AW:
Good to know. This is very good information.
GD:
Abby is going to book a another Van Gogh experience.
AW:
Yeah. Here we go. We got to get back there because we got to actually have the experience this time.
AD:
Oh God.
GD:
Okay. Listen, we love you so much. Thank you for hanging in there with us on all of these very tricky, but kind of really beautiful conversations. When things get hard this week, just remind yourself that We Can Do Hard Things. See you soon.