sum of all parts

Personally, I have a hard time understanding sexual identification, primarily based on the idea of genetic sexuality.

How can the population be broken down into women and men, for the purposes of sexual identification? Looking at gay communities, I can say that many men who are the object of gay male desire possess qualities that are generally considered feminine; similarly, masculine women are a mainstay of lesbian culture. Seeing such genderfuck in single sex communities leads me to question what it is about man or woman that is so different from woman/man. If the physical appearance can be overlooked and the stereotypical behaviors and mannerisms can be overlooked, then the difference comes down to what is between a person’s legs. Even then, what difference does the tackle make? Lesbians use dildos, gay guys penetrate, straight men like ass play…the sensations of sex are not genital specific.
Ask anyone to tell you about the people that they are closest to…most of the time, someone opposing the object of sexual desire (same sex for straight individuals or opposite for gay) will come up, so the problem isn’t an emotional block.

If it’s not appearance, behaviors, genitalia or emotion that defines sexuality, what is it? I can only hypothesize that it is a conditioning. As babies, we don’t know the difference between boys and girls; infants play with each other indiscriminately. It isn’t until infants are taught the difference between boy and girl that sides are chosen.

Is a person straight to fit in? Do they choose homosexuality to rebel? Was there such a dominant male presence forced upon them in their childhood that they seek out a feminine one to counterbalance it? While genetics can be blamed for certain chemical issues, there is no question that those personality traits based on conditioning are the result of stimuli earlier in life; either too much of a related stimulus, or too little.

If I know that I like dark hair, but would not rule somebody out as a potential partner just because they are blonde, that is a preference.
If I know that I like dark hair, and would rule somebody out as a potential partner because I need dark hair to be aroused, that is a fetish.

That said, it seems to me that Heterosexuality and Homosexuality are the two most widespread fetishes on the planet.
Don’t get me wrong…I have no problem with fetishism in and of itself; do what you have to do to be fulfilled and live a happy life. It disturbs me, however, to see socially encouraged fetishism on such a grand scale.

Age is much less a defining characteristic than it once was, largely due to the internet. Now that there is a meeting of minds before the presentation of the body, ageism is becoming archaic. It works both ways…just as I have friends who might have thought that I was a creepy older guy had I approached them in person, I have friends who I would have written off as naive youngsters had they approached me. These days, we get to eliminate the ‘creepy,’ ‘naive’ or whatever other generalisations before they even rear their heads. Now the first judgements are coming from much more accurate representations of who people are than appearances or years survived.

Folks are always trying to label and pigeonhole by generation…Baby Boomers, Gen X/Y, the Beat Generation and such. Traditionally, it works. In the internet age, however, things are less defined. Being thrown around now is the MySpace Generation; there are articles referencing it everywhere, but none seem capable of putting an age on it. Personally, I think that if any such name sticks and gets labeled, it’s going to be a much larger generation than we’re used to. All of us, from youngsters to geezers, were here to see in this new phenomenon and all of us joined it in its infancy; in turn all of us were equals in this new faceless, ageless universe of online communities.

I would even go so far as to say that we are a part of the first intergenerational generation.