TITLE    : Catalogue of Desire Pt. 03
STORYID  : catalogue-of-desire-pt-03
SUMMARY  : Sex--what does is suggest about human nature?
AUTHOR   : Cal Y. Pygia@lit
DATE     : 2009-12-12
CATEGORY : reviews-and-essays
FLAGS    : 
TAGS     : |sociology|lesbian|transsexual|transvestite|ladyboy|shemale|tranny|femininity|masculinity|


Literotica's table of contents, or list of "Stories By Category," represents, as its title suggests, a classification of erotica, or of such erotica, at any rate, as that which the website features. A casual glance at the categories suggests the rich variety of sexual behavior in which men and women engage. The nature of these categories also suggests something about the nature of the human beings who consume such material (which is to say, everyone).



In the previous essay, I touched briefly upon some of the categories of Literotica's contents that interest me, either personally or intellectually, skipping those which either don't appeal to me or about which I lack the requisite knowledge, experience, or skill to write. In this final chapter, I address two more such topics: lesbians and transsexuals.



Lesbianism (and when I think of same-sex sex between two women, I think of both as beautiful and feminine, as lipstick lesbians rather than as two dykes or a dyke and a femme) is a mirroring of the female and of the feminine. Reflecting tits, ass, and cunt, it doubles the sleek, soft, curvaceous beauty of woman's womanhood. By excluding the male and the masculine, lesbianism heightens the female and the feminine. Lesbianism suggests that, when the purpose of sex is pleasure, rather than procreation, men, as sex partners, are not only unnecessary, but they are less desirable than women--or undesirable altogether.



Lesbianism is repetition, but it is not redundancy. Redundancy is unnecessary or undesirable repetition, and there is nothing unnecessary or undesirable about the display of two luscious ladies locked in intimate embraces. Unlike mere redundancy, repetition is rhetorically effective; it emphasizes. Two women making love to one another emphasizes the beauty and grace of their femininity. Two tits are good; four are better. Two buttocks are good; four are better. Two pussies are good; four are better.



In their minds, men reserve women for themselves. Women, they assume, belong to them, not to other women. Lesbianism challenges, even defies, this notion, as it does patriarchal social sanctions for heterosexual (and against homosexual) couples and couplings. Women may be for men, but they need not be; women can be for other women, too, even exclusively so. The fair sex need not depend upon the male sex for its pleasure. Lesbianism equals complete independence from men; lesbianism equals women's liberation; lesbianism equals freedom.



Sex that involves only men and women, whether it is heterosexual or homosexual, eventually becomes tiresome. Both as entities in themselves and as sexual partners, shemales, as a third sex, so to speak, renew and heighten sex and sensuality by combining some of the attributes of each sex, as such crude terms as "chicks with dicks" and "dudes with boobs" suggest. Just when we begin to think that we know it all about men and women and about sex and gender, shemales come along to confuse and amuse us, opening a new array of possibilities concerning such matters. Shemales make us reconsider the meaning of such basic concepts as sex and gender, male and female, masculine and feminine, dominance and submission. Shemales help us to see, and to accept, the fact that we are "polymorphous perverse," as Sigmund Freud observed; that we are psychologically and emotionally, if not actually physically, bisexual; that there truly is a bit of woman in every man and a bit of man in every woman.



As female mimics, shemales also make us reconsider what it means for one to be a woman. Is a woman nothing more than a shapely figure? Can a man become a woman simply by being equipped with feminine breasts and by subjecting his rugged, angular physique to the feminizing influences of hormones and the corrective measures of plastic surgery and his conduct to the techniques of behavioral modification? Can a man, by looking like a woman and by learning to act as a woman, become a woman? Is femininity nothing more than tits and ass, grace and poise, smiles and small gestures? Is femininity--are females--made, rather than born? Is womanhood a thing of nature, or can it be created through the artifice of technology? Was Pygmalion right? Can man, through applied science, play God, creating woman anew, in his own image and likeness, a modern Galatea?



And if woman and womanhood, if females and femininity, are artificial constructs, aren't their opposites, man and manhood, male and masculinity, likewise social fabrications? If a man can be a man whether he fucks a woman or a man-made woman, what does this possibility suggest about him as a man? What does it suggest about his maleness and his masculinity? Perhaps, if he remains a man even while fucking a man-made woman, he would likewise retain his manhood even if he were to fuck another man. Like lesbianism, transsexuality liberates; it frees men (and, by implication, women as well) from the narrow constraints of a polarized sexuality. Men and women can both be masculine and feminine. As male-to-female or female-to-male transsexuals, they can even become members of the opposite sex. If people are free in this most basic way, they are free, indeed.



In my consideration of lesbians and transsexuals, I discern a few general statements that seem worth mentioning concerning human nature as it is revealed by men's and women's sexual interests and behaviors. Both lesbianism and transsexuality are liberating, but for different reasons. Lesbianism shows that women do not need men to satisfy them emotionally or sexually. This revelation frees women from the idea and the socially sanctioned insistence that they are here to serve and to service men, giving them the option to be lovers of men or women or, indeed, of both, as they choose and please, rather than because they believe and feel that they must be and remain the sexual partners of men exclusively.



Transsexuals, by their mere existence, contradict and defy the notion that male and female, masculine and feminine, are mutually exclusive categories. A man or a woman can become the opposite sex or he or she can become an unresolved mixture of both sexes, as shemales do, for example, when they acquire breasts and the other secondary sexual characteristics of women but retain their male genitals or transwomen do when they keep their female sex organs while acquiring male secondary sexual characteristics in lieu of these characteristics' female counterparts. 



Even when one is not oneself a transsexual, he or she may make love to one, which also raises questions about the very concept and nature of male and female, masculine and feminine, suggesting that sex and gender are complex, rather than simple, states, conditions, identifications, fictions, and constructions. Stories which involve lesbian or transsexual (or, for that matter, transvestite) characters open the mind and, one can hope, especially in an age of sexual bigotry, prejudice, and hatred, the heart as well.

