A.

1. Scholarly studies of sexuality in film draw primarily upon critical theory of sexuality as opposed to commonsensical notions of sexuality.

2. Yet critical theory of sexuality is not widely known outside of intellectual circles.

3. What's more, critical theory of sexuality works with conceptions that often run radically contrary to what tend to prevail within commonsense.

4. In order to understand this better I want to take some time to draw out and explain these contrasts. Some of this will undoubtedly be surprising, puzzling, and challenging, but I'll be glad to do the best I can to explain.

B.

1. Let's begin with commonsense. Before proceeding, however, let me qualify what I am about to detail by indicating this is, of necessity, a very simplified, very schematic representation of both commonsense and critical theory. Actually, many subvariants exist and persist within both.

2. But let's return to the commonsense.

C.

2. Second, commonsensically, sexuality is normatively private.

3. Third, commonsensically, sexuality is normatively something that is healthiest, both physically and morally, when conducted strictly within the exclusive confines of a committed, monogamous relationship between two people.

4. Fourth, commonsensically, sexuality enjoys the highest social, and moral, stature when it is confined to heterosexual marriage, and, beyond this, to heterosexual marriage organized around and oriented toward raising a family, with children. Or, alternatively, if this option is not-yet-available, principled abstinence is often regarded as a moral equivalent.

5. Fifth, again commonsensically, while sexuality can and does serve as the subject of extensive media representation and even popular discourse (popular communication), normatively this becomes quickly highly questionable if it does not observe tasteful limits-or if it is not confined to semi-private groups in very specific, controlled, informal or casual settings where those discussing sexuality do so according to a playful slang code that they are most comfortable using, and most inclined to use, solely around others who they would not ever conceive of as likely to constitute their direct sexual interests (e.g., all-same-sex, all-heterosexual locker rooms).

6. Sixth, again commonsensically, while sexuality can and does, in practice, allow for various rituals of courtship, 'excessive' behaviors in the pursuit of sex, that don't conform to the preceding normative standards, tend to give people bad moral reputations.

7. Seventh, again commonsensically, sexuality is something that, while ultimately best when conducted as part of a romantic loving relationship, does not in and of itself exercise determinate impact, other than questionably so-as a potential unhealthy distraction, obsession, or indulgence-in other kinds of social relations and practices. What happens as part of sex-what is created in the process of 'having sex'-stays there, or at least should, even if the way people engage with each other sexually is overdetermined (determined in multiple ways and forms) by who they are and what they do elsewhere; the reverse, however, is not-or at least should not be-true (i.e., our sexualities do not, or at least should not, exercise any kind of significant influence over or impact upon how we engage in other, non-sexual, forms of social relations).

8. Eighth, again commonsensically, although sexuality is recognizably quite pervasive and quite prominent across culture, at least in some forms, it is ultimately not all that important other than as a means toward procreation or toward largely purely animal pleasure. Therefore, in fact, little serious attention need, or should, be paid to it-other than to counteract the harms it causes when not engaged in carefully and prudently.

9. Ninth, sexuality understood in terms of 'sexual orientation' emanates from biologically essential-i.e., biochemical, physiologically innate-determinants which decide, primarily at (or before) birth, whether a person will be heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual. Certain environmental factors can have a secondary role in helping bring out or direct-or repress and misdirect-these natural inclinations, but that's really all they can do. And people cannot and do not change their sexual orientation; we all have one, 'natural' sexual orientation that the majority of us discover very early in our lives and with which we stick with for the rest of our lives. Society divides, moreover, along the following lines: 3-15% homosexual or bisexual; 85 to 97% heterosexual.

10. Tenth, heterosexuality corresponds to males and females who tend overwhelmingly not only to be sexually but also gender normative (properly 'manly' and 'womanly'), while homosexuality corresponds to males and females who tend often to be not only sexually but also gender aberrant (i.e., often improperly manly and improperly womanly, usually more like what is proper for the gender that corresponds to the opposite biological sex).

11. Eleventh, sexuality is clearly distinct from sociality (especially because sexuality is or should be an exclusively private, and largely purely 'animal' realm) and from friendship, from romance, and from love-even though these can, and should, under the right (i.e., carefully socially, and morally, prescribed)- circumstances, be united, but they are only united extrinsically: they do not overlap, interpenetrate, or run continuous with each other. In other words, sexuality, friendship, and love are entirely distinct entities.

12. Twelfth, religions overwhelmingly regard sexuality as at best a 'necessary evil'. Truly religious, or spiritual, beings do not need, want, or value sexuality. And homosexuality and bisexuality are inherently immoral, even sinful behaviors.

D.

1. Now let's turn to critical theory of sexuality.

E.

1. First, according to critical theory of sexuality, "sexuality" is not simply a narrow range of discrete, private, physical acts but rather a broad range of intimate and affectional social relations, discursive articulations of (i.e., particular modes of signifying, expressing, and communicating about) these social relations, and institutional (e.g., social, cultural, political, and religious) regimes governing and regulating these social relations--all of which, moreover, exert manifest and extensive impacts upon, and effects throughout, everyday social life.

2. Second, following directly from the preceding, sexuality is pervasive and ubiquitous; it is public, it is social, it is topical, and it is highly significant-plus it is intricately interrelated with all other areas of human social existence. In short, the ways in which we make sense of and relate to sexuality (our own and that of others, including those we perceive as similar to or different from ourselves, along various lines, as well as those we find 'good' versus 'bad', again along various lines) as well as the way we engage in specific sexual practices and relations (e.g., attraction, desire, and intimate engagement with emotional as well as physical forms/means of sensation, affection, interaction, etc.) is substantially shaped by who we are, where we come from, and what we are about in a much larger nexus (complex, constellation, grouping) of social relations-while at the same time exercising a reciprocally determinate impact upon how we make sense of and engage within this larger nexus.

2a. In sum, according to critical theory of sexuality, sexuality refers to a broad human social arena, encompassing a wide array of human needs and desires, as well as means of pursuing these, for sensation, affect, and intimacy-and hardly simply a narrowly defined, decontextualized series of discrete kinds and limited varieties of especially reified (abstracted, isolated, and disconnected) physical acts.

3. Third, drawing out the implications of what I have just previously set forth, according to critical theory of sexuality, sexuality constitutes an important form, or mode, of sociality (i.e., of social relating-that is, relating between/among people within and as part of a larger community, [sub]culture, and/or society), and is intrinsically interconnected with other forms, or modes, of the same (rather than constituting something of an entirely different nature, such as a retreat to a pre-social, or a purely 'animal' way of being). People are, in short, empowered and/or disempowered in their sexual relations by the ways in which they are positioned and operate in other kinds of social relations-and vice-versa-as well as by the ways in which they think, feel, understand, believe, express, and communicate in and through sexuality vis-a-vis the ways they do so in and through other kinds of social relations.

4. Fourth, from the vantage point of critical theory of sexuality, sexuality exists, at least prospectively, and especially 'naturally', as a mode of human social behavior continuous with friendship, camaraderie, collegiality, and solidarity--and as something that could, and perhaps, 'naturally', should--operate, equally viably, both connected with and disconnected from 'romance' and 'love'. In short, sexuality constitutes one potential way of expressing, developing, completing, deepening, pursuing, or realizing friendship, camaraderie, collegiality, and solidarity-and, at the same time, sexuality can and does operate as a means of satisfying human needs and desires which may be connected with romantic love or may not.

4a. Historically, gay liberation, especially radical and revolutionary forms of gay liberation, has focused quite directly on this last point. The idea here has been that nothing 'naturally' blocks people who are friends, comrades, colleagues, or united in other forms of close solidarity from further expressing, developing, completing, deepening, pursuing, and realizing this bond by way of sexual interaction, and that, in fact, the sexual might well constitute a quite 'natural'-and not only 'natural' but also desirable and even morally/ethically good-way to sustain as well as enrich these relationships (as long as this involves the free and voluntary consent of social equals). What's more, gay liberation, again especially radical and revolutionary forms of gay liberation, has supported the idea that human beings could, perhaps even should, participate in sexual communities, and that they could maintain simultaneous sexual relationships involving, on the one hand, romantic love or long-term and committed partnership, and, on the other hand, not involving this kind of connection at all.

4b. For example, in the heyday of this movement, gay partners would often go together or separately to bathhouses, where they would enter into physically sexual relations with a number of different people, while returning home together and maintaining their committed partner, or romantic loving, bond. And, likewise, lesbian communes operating at the same period of time often involved similar kinds of open, and multi-variegated/multi-tiered forms and kinds of sexual relations. Even before this historical period, within gay and lesbian subcultures, most of them 'outlaw' or 'marginal' to one degree or another, this kind of pattern tended to be widely predominant.

4c. Gay liberation, as a constituent of the larger movement of sexual liberation in the 1960s and 1970s, aimed, at its most politically conscious as well as most politically radical, to help open up the possibility for all people to engage more freely, voluntarily, and happily in a potentially widely and fluidly shifting array of sexual relations and practices, involving substantial mutuality, reciprocity, and equality, without guilt, but instead with pride, and with delight. Many participants contended that a truly liberated, egalitarian sexual culture would, in and of itself, contribute positively and substantially toward extending human social freedom and human social equality much more broadly conceived.

4d. Following upon this very last point, again in the heyday of radical and revolutionary gay movements for liberation, 'gayness' was conceived not simply as the equivalent of 'homosexual' but rather as a social identity rooted in but extending out of and beyond a mere homosexual 'orientation', venturing forward toward a whole new way of relating to one's self and to others as a social being and as part of a larger social community. Gayness was conceived as involving both (i.) an emancipation from unnatural repressions (of vital human needs and intensely felt human desires where the free, voluntary, and mutual consensual satisfaction of these would not in fact cause any real social harm) and as (ii.) a commitment toward leading one's life, publicly, according to a manifest, express commitment to principles of social, including sexual, egalitarianism.

4e. Gayness was conceived of as a way of organizing and conducting relations based upon genuine mutuality and interdependency, where people learned to relate to and treat each other, first and last, as subjects not objects and as ends rather than as means to ends. From this vantage point, yes, identifying as 'gay' did not mean simply that one maintained a 'homosexual' 'orientation'; in fact, at the time, and even since, a number of people have identified as 'political' gays, 'political' lesbians, or 'political' 'queers' whose primary sexual orientation was, or is, heterosexual.

4f. What's more, versus commonsensical conflation of 'gayness' with 'homosexuality', the former was quite often promoted as a positive replacement for the latter which was seen as a negative, and reductive, imposition. I myself have known many gay and lesbian activists who refuse to identify with the term 'homosexual' because this was developed as a clinical term to treat 'homosexuals' as people suffering from a distinct pathology. To this day, therefore, it strikes me as somewhat jarring when people, for instance, say or write something like "since you are a homosexual . . ."; I know what they mean but I don't identify myself principally with this term.

4g. In sum, however, revolutionary gay liberation conceived of itself as developing theories, and models, which could potentially benefit the entirety of human society, and of the larger human culture, not just respond to the interests of a minority community. Of course, these radical, and revolutionary currents, have waned (often considerably) over time, and others have supplanted them in the forefront of public attention, but their legacy continues to exert itself in at least partial ways within many dimensions of many contemporary glbt subcultures. Yet, of course, like with many other marginal/oppositional subcultures and countercultures, many aspects of more radical/revolutionary forms of glbt subcultures/countercultures have subsequently been coopted, integrated, commodified, tamed, emptied of meaningful content, and even thoroughly trivialized.

5. But, to return, fifth, to critical theory of sexuality yet again, according to this theory sexuality is socially constructed, not biologically essential (or innate). A biological component may contribute partially toward what we commonly identify as 'sexual orientation' but only (very) partially at best, especially since categories for understanding, classifying, orienting, and managing human sexuality have extensively varied across time-and space.

5a. For instance, the words, and the associated ideas of, 'homosexual' and 'heterosexual' are both late 19^th century (Western) inventions. Prior to this point in time sexuality was not widely regarded, at least within Western cultures, as an attribute of persons' essential being but rather as a field of practices that diverse people engaged in to degrees inclined-and allowed. (When someone engaged in what we call 'heterosexual' relations she or he was not considered a person with a heterosexual or straight 'identity'-and the same with those engaging in what we call 'homosexual' relations: these were not considered 'homosexual' or 'gay' people).

5b. Beyond this, moreover, in a number of other cultures, to this day, the major way of classifying people according to type of sexuality does not line up with the biological sex of the partner, but rather with the preferred position one takes in sexual practice (e.g. initiator/receptor, penetrator/penetratee, top/bottom, and so on and so forth). For example, in many Latin American countries many men who are sexual 'tops' largely if not exclusively with other men do not consider themselves 'homosexual' or 'gay' persons - persons with a homosexual or gay nature/identity- and the same is true with men who engage as sexual 'tops' with both men and women: they do not by and large consider themselves bisexual persons (persons with a bisexual nature/identity).

5c. Yet, beyond both of these examples, critical theory of sexuality contends that the ways in which people not only experience sexual attraction and desire but also engage in sexual practice and interaction is strongly affected, and extensively determined by, who they are, where they come from, what they are about, and how they are positioned within their society, as well as by what is encouraged, discouraged, how and why within this society, along with what is represented, not represented, and misrepresented, how and why, within this society-among diverse other social (and cultural) factors.

6. Corollary to this last point, sixth, critical theory of sexuality proposes that all of us operate on various positions along the following multiple, interlinked continua (or spectra): homosocial-homosexual, heterosocial-heterosexual, and straight-gay. Where we locate or find ourselves along these continua/spectra, as well as the extent to which we move, or don't, across them is not by any means simply a product of our innate biology, but rather a result of social (and cultural) factors, including dominant prescriptions and proscriptions as well as degrees of familiarity/alignment with resistant or oppositional forces versus these prescriptions and proscriptions.  For example, as a number of theorists have contended, all women exist upon a lesbian continua (moving from the homosocial to the homoerotic to the homosexual) and the same goes for all men vis-a-vis a gay continua. This means that no hard and fast line separates social behavior between men and women from sexual behavior between men and women, nor does any hard and fast line separate social behavior between men and men from sexual behavior between men and men or social behavior between women and women from sexual behavior between women and women.   Nothing "naturally" fixes any of us as exclusively heterosexual or homosexual, and, more than this, straight people frequently engage in relationships and behaviors that border on or pull them in "gay" directions, even when they  strive to resist or prevent this.  This gay leaning can take the form of something as (seemingly) superficial as the cultural predominance among an increasingly wide array of fashionably dressed young urban straight males in styles that are now frequently described as "gay vague," including by many of the "straight" men who dress this way, and it can also take the form of something as (seemingly) deep as passionate, including physically affectionate and genuinely loving friendships that "straight" men often maintain with other "straight" men and that "straight" women  maintain with other "straight" women.  

7. Seventh, critical theory of sexuality often intersects with and co-develops with sexology, or the (critical) scientific study of sexuality, pioneered in the mid-19th century, but, at least in the U.S., probably, still to this day, most famously associated with the work of Alfred Kinsey, the Kinsey School, and various associates, followers, and descendants. Among other contributions, as a result of extensive field work and critical analysis, Kinsey proposed that the sexual orientation of human beings, at least in modern America, does not divide into the more familiar pattern of an overwhelming minority of exclusively homosexual and exclusively bisexual people versus an overwhelming majority of exclusively heterosexual people. According to Kinsey, sexual orientation instead 'naturally' divides along lines closer to the following scale:

0-Exclusively Heterosexual

1-Mostly Heterosexual

2-More Heterosexual than Homosexual

3-Equally Homosexual and Heterosexual

4-More Homosexual than Heterosexual

5-Mostly Homosexual

6-Exclusively Homosexual

7a. In his own research, and that of his colleagues, associates, and subsequent followers, Kinsey and others researchers working with the Kinsey Institute have found that far fewer people are actually 0s than is commonly imagined, and that in fact most fall somewhere between 0 and 6. For instance, in his groundbreaking book on male sexuality, Kinsey found that 37% of the American males he surveyed had achieved orgasm as a result of a homosexual encounter (and this includes doing so through an intense, direct attraction to another male as well as a completely fulfilled physical interaction with another male).  Recent reports indicate that a similar government-sanctioned study of sexual behavior among British men in the early 1950s was suppressed because the results indicated that at least one out of five British men had engaged in homosexual sex.   Sexologists continually find that, in actuality the extent of homosexual desire and practice, is far more pervasive than  "mainstream" "straight" culture is usually wont to admit.

7b. What's more, Kinsey and subsequent researchers have often proposed that the tendency for more people to gravitate toward the 0-2 end as opposed to 3 or the 4-6 end of the Kinsey scale is not a result of what is strictly 'natural' but instead a result of social conditioning and of social, cultural, moral, and political pressure to be and remain strictly heterosexual.  These researchers found, moreover, that even with substantial pressure to 'stick' in one place many people actually do move, often quite extensively (and multiple times, and multiple directions), across this scale over the course of their lives.

8. To make a bit of a leap for the moment, though, I want, in the eighth l point I raise, from critical theory of sexuality, to give you a quick overview of 'queer theory' (admittedly, a difficult area initially to grasp).

F.

1. Queer theory represents the convergence, on the one hand, of postmodernist critical theory and, on the other hand, of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender studies. As a result of this convergence, queer theory focuses priority attention upon a critical examination of the discursive construction of sexualities and genders (the construction of these in language and other systems of signs or modes of expression and communication) in relation to the binary oppositions of "normal" versus "abnormal," "dominant" versus "subordinate," "included" versus "excluded," and "familiar" versus "strange." In the course of this examination, queer theory deliberately problematizes prevailing notions of the distinction and opposition between each of these paired terms, deconstructing what it contends represents a "violent hierarchy" that establishes the former in a position of apparent superiority. Queer theory performs this deconstructive work by striving to show the extent to which the former category is always thoroughly dependent upon the latter, including in every attempt it makes to justify its claim to superiority. For example, you can't define or explain what heterosexuality is without doing so in relation to, and distinction from, homosexuality; heterosexuality therefore needs homosexuality to make any sense, even to exist at all-as heterosexuality.

2. In short, queer theory aims to show the normal is actually, ultimately as abnormal as the abnormal, the dominant as subordinate as the subordinate, the included as excluded as the excluded, and the familiar as strange as the strange. It's all a matter of standpoint, or perspective. More precisely, queer theory aims to demonstrate that the conception of the normal that the normal employs to argue for itself as normal depends upon first conceiving of the abnormal in order, ostensibly, to distinguish normality as that which is not abnormal. Even conceived on such a negative basis (i.e., as the opposite of what it defines as the other), queer theory contends that the normal inevitably proceeds to violate its own logic of what it proposes amounts to normality. The normal is, as such, always thoroughly contaminated, in every attempt to insist upon its normality, with the logic of the very abnormal against which it seeks to define itself. What's more, queer theory finds this same pattern at work in the attempts of the dominant to account for its dominance versus the subordinate, the included to account for its inclusion versus the excluded, and the familiar to account for its familiarity versus the strange. Again, to go back for a moment to heterosexuality/homosexuality, this means that every attempt to define and delineate heterosexuality has to refer to and relate to homosexuality-and attempting to explain the former as normal and the latter as abnormal depends upon setting up an arbitrary standard for distinguishing normal from abnormal that can easily be reversed and overturned by looking at things from a different vantage point or perspective.   As some queer theorists have bluntly argued, there's nothing in many respect "queerer" than normative heterosexuality--or "straightness."   This is, in other words, a highly unnatural state, and one that requires  multiple strange convolutions, and self-deceptions, to fabricate.  In  the practice of physically heterosexual relations, moreover, many "straight" people behave quite "queerly"--in forms and to extents that they would often not want to become widely known.

3. Queer theory marshals this deconstructive practice to support its rejection of 'essentialist' understandings of gender and sexual identity, in particular the "minoritizing" notion of lesbian and gay difference where lesbians and gays are treated as if we are a class of persons discretely distinguishable from those who are straight on the basis of a fundamentally different-and entirely separate-kind of "natural" "orientation." Instead of this minoritizing perspective, queer theory advances a "universalizing" conception that reunderstands straight and queer as inextricably imbricated, and all demarcations of gender and sexuality as highly fraught, tenuous, provisional, unstable, and ultimately incoherent-so that, in short, we all take up positions and engage in practices that overlap with and flow into each other.

5. What, if anything, then, from a queer theoretical vantage point, distinguishes queer from straight ways of social being? How, in other words, does it make any sense, given what I've just shared with you about queer theoretical understandings, to recognize straight versus queer human subjects (or human subjectivities) once we deconstruct the notion of there existing a hard and fast distinction between the two (between straight and queer)?

7. At the same time, however, queer theory accepts that distinguishing queer from straight remains a necessary consequence of the historically, and perhaps even naturally, finite limits of human imagination and forms of social organization. Insistence upon maintaining the practical semblance of a distinction between queer and straight also can serve as a kind of convenient fiction. It may, queer theory is often wont to suggest, even prevent, or at least forestall, totalitarian tendencies toward the absorption, containment, and dissipation of emergent forms of resistant, disruptive, and subversive kinds of gender and sexual difference (i.e., keeping some kinds of identity and practice markedly 'queer' prevents everything from being turned into a repressive sameness).

8. In short, for queer theory, the force of 'the queer' relies upon the preservation of a kind of boundary-effect at the same time as 'the queer' troubles, and transgresses, the boundaries that the straight trusts tend to separate itself from the queer. In other words, 'being'/'becoming'/'identifying as'/'acting' queerly means transgressing, disrupting, and subverting straight norms and conventions. What's more, queer theory conceives it to be possible sharply to distinguish queer versus straight modes of manifestation and engagement with the continuous instability, incoherence, flux, and play of gender and sexual "identity," such that 'the queer' represents the performance of an identity-effect by all those who cannot-or will not-conform to the dictates of the naturalizing illusion that gender and sexual identities are, could be, or should be straight-forward, fixed, stable, and coherent. In short, 'queers' act out the fluidity, instability, and incoherence of gender and sexual identities.

9. In sum, queer theory embraces the position of the "queer" as offering a powerful vantage point from which to critique common (mis)perceptions concerning the place (or lack of place) of gender and sexuality across the full range of social relations and institutions as well as cultural discourses and practices within which we participate throughout the course of our everyday lives.

10. In carrying out this work, queer theory finds all extant varieties of "queerity"-of what a particular community, society, and/or culture conceives of and treats as strange, odd, abnormal, bizarre, and perverse forms of human (anti-)social behavior-potentially interesting and significant, yet implies that, historically, same-sex erotic attraction, desire, and interaction most frequently functions as the paradigmatic instance of "the queer." In other words, 'homosexuality' is that which has tended to be and continues to tend to be widely regarded as 'the queerest' kind of social behavior. Queer theory frequently therefore conceives of "homosexual queerity" (as well as, less often, the perhaps even more troubling, boundary-crossing and boundary-dispensing form of "bisexual queerity") to represent the historically most unsettling, disturbing, and threatening instance of "the other" at work within-and upon-the (post)modern social and cultural imaginary (space of collective phantasy and imagination).

11. However, from the vantage point of queer theory, in the aftermath of the successes-and especially the failures-of gay and lesbian liberation in the approximately first three decades after the watershed moment of the (1969) Stonewall riots, no longer does "the homosexual" (or even "the bisexual") per se manifest a particularly powerful queerity. On the contrary, all those either unable or unwilling to conform to "heteronormative" standards for stable, consistent, and coherent forms of gender and sexual identity (and difference) today embody this potential for transgressive resistance, disruption, and subversion. For queer theorists, "queer" is, therefore, not so much an adjective or a noun that refers to the broad array of contemporary lesbigay identities, but rather a verb that marks out a shifting field of gender and sexual discourses and practices that work "to queer" both the straight and the lesbigay. This queering, in other words, proceeds by taking up the position and the interest of those who occupy the sexual margins of "mainstream" lesbigay sub-cultures as well as the far fringes of dominant-straight-culture. In sum, it is not a question of 'being' 'queer' but rather of 'doing' 'queer'.

12. As frequently as queer theory tends to privilege homosexual forms of queerity (along with, to a lesser and yet far from negligible degree, bisexual forms of queerity), many queer theorists, in contrast, tend to find transgender modes of queerity yet even queerer. Transgender queerities evidence the extent to which one of the principal pillars within the binary logic of Western "phallogocentric" thinking (where the socially symbolic 'phallus' acts as the de facto center, or virtual God, of patriarchal relations), and its attendant forms of social organization (i.e., the division of the category of gender into the apparently obvious duality of man and woman) by no means represents a simple cultural reflection of biological logic (or, to put it in ultimately just as problematic yet slightly different terms, a direct cultural response to natural necessity).

G.

1.  Why such widespread antipathy toward homosexuality (and bisexuality and transgenderism) as well as toward glbt people?