December 8, 1999
SO-101
Professor R. H. "Hoff" Hoffman
By Jerry "Clapso" Avissato
I titled this essay in a somewhat tongue in cheek manner. Still, I think that when it comes to sexual orientation,"an individuals preferences in terms of sexual partners", that is what we are primarily alluding to. Frankly, I couldn't care less who is sleeping with who and I try to live my life by generally ignoring peoples choices of bed partners. The same is true of gender, "the significance a society attaches to the biological categories of female and male." I live my life doing my best not to let these types of criteria interfere with how I relate to others. In order to avoid the dreaded subtitle I should mention here that all definitions, in italics, given in this essay are from "Society The Basics" by John J. Macionis (APA style guidelines be damned).
The Definitions of the four types of sexual orientation are clearly stated in the book. They are heterosexuality, "by which a person is attracted to a someone of the opposite sex". Homosexuality refers to a person that is "attracted to others of the same sex." A bisexual is attracted "to either sex". Asexuality refers to people who are attracted "to neither sex".
Having spent over 20 years in the restaurant business in New York City, I worked from day one with all sorts of people, from gay to strait and both male and female, and of all races. Early on, as gender and sexual preference came more into focus in the workplaces of others I just smiled and shrugged when I heard others describe the difficulties some workplaces where facing regarding these issues. Perhaps I'm either blind, or just lucky, in that I never worked in a place where either sexual preference or gender really mattered. In fact these differences we held in common just added to, not detracted from, the joy of the workplace.
The same is so of my personal life outside of work. I have friends who run the gamut of sexual orientation, even including what I term omnisexuals who seem to want to sleep with both men and woman at the same time in the same bed. Social norms not withstanding, these minor differences should not matter and I believe in present day thinking they mostly don't. That there still exists, in American society, a vocal few, mostly from the religious right, that run around making trouble about these kinds of things is a shame.
Fortunately the grand march towards civil rights we have been embarked on in this country, perhaps since its inception over 200 years ago, continues to make it difficult, if not yet impossible, for these kinds of prejudice to damage us to any large extent. So long as we all mostly ignore these sexual factors in our day to day lives, which I believe most of us do, we will all pretty much plod on toward a future time. In that hopefully not so distant future, we humans will look back and shake our heads in dismay at how silly and sad we where back in the "olden days" to even consider sex as an issue. Much, perhaps, as most of us now consider racial segregation prior to the 1960's a silly and sad commentary of those olden days.
In the end it is obvious to me that there is beauty in our diversity. As we, in about three weeks, enter the 21st century, it is perhaps a good idea for all of us to look around at whatever new years eve party we happen to be attending. If each of us realizes that just 50 years ago the different types of people we now take for granted we interact with daily would have probably not been at a similar party back then, we can see just how far we have come.
Read, Think, Speak, Write, Be!