What does it feel like to be gay? by Kyle Phoenix

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Sexual and Sexy Sexy Writing by Kyle Phoenix

I've been writing for decades now.  Been published in lots of places, slowly slogging towards and establishing this as my art, a pseudo-career and an expression of my business acumen and interests.  In 2013 an opportunity was presented to me to focus a lot of my work on relationships, dating, etc. into books and I have.  And it's taken off.   I'd been teaching for a decade to men and women about a wide range of topics related to sexuality and it was almost a natural expression to publish.  I started with The Kyle Phoenix Show on Time Warner Cable then started crafting a blog.

Admittedly a blog initially is a hodge podge---one' on paste board in the cyberverse that you try and make coherent and accessible.  50,000 people following, that's working out and it only took 5 years to start and 1 focused year to ramp up.  Then the challenge became how and why to write about sexuality.  While teaching workshops, particularly on sexualities aside from heterosexuality I was always challenged with finding supporting or launch pad materials that looked like the population I was facing every day, sometimes up to 150 men a week.  Don't get me wrong there are some excellent books out there, some with advice and suggestions that transcend race and I gleefully use and pass them out.  But they're all White.  Unless the arena is around race, philosophy, media and fiction---there's a lack of constructive, useful advice for Black and Latino homosexuals, bisexuals, omnisexuals, etc..  I've worked for several of the big groups around sexuality and their focuses are around HIV and one or two, around race.  Both things that with vaccines and interracial engagements are changing.

But what about just normal folk who want to date, start a business, manage their finances, learn about the emotional pitfalls and so on?  Where do we get together and ruminate constructively over that?  At first I thought it was no big whoop, that I was casting pebbles into the ocean and maybe over time it would become a little perch.  Now I realize how big my effort is and how singular I am in it.  If I get political there's a few others I can link up to; if I get HIV-medical a whole community but anything else, people of color plug in for the sex but shy away from the relationship work.  We, they, I know what's been going on---the feelings of abandonment, stigma, shame and the cheating, thievery and emotional maliciousness ain't working but we draw succor form the wrong sources.  Churches that at best backhand accept you.  (Even the term accept rankles because that wasn't the process for others.)  A media that is pulled between the dazzlingly dark underworld and seediness of DL brothers and hip hop homos.  Or the ever present interracial couples---even Northstar in the X-Men married himself a Black man---named Kyle.

Then I realized while brushing my teeth that in order to do what I do, to broadcast in all of these mediums, I have to be Out.  Sometimes I'm rollicking through chat rooms and Twitter and dialoguing with so many different men from around the country (and the world) that i forget how many Black and Latino men are quasi-Out.  Are not Out.  I've been out since I was about 18---completely,utterly, totally.  I'm also not a Christian so I don't feel belabored by the Church in the way I see other people of color are or the duplicity I notice (men hitting me up in all manner of interests but their Facebook pages are purposefully designed to just show their appreciation of movies, Trayvon Martin and the Black Church----however Freakniks is the group he saw one of my book listings in.)

So I'm really Out compared to other men and I'm really really Out writing about sex and sexuality with a focus on race but skimming around Critical Race Theory and Race Sexuality Theory.  That Outness has brought some scorn---mainly from Black and Latino males and at first I was taken aback, checked my breath, looked over my spelling, until I realized that I'm doing something so unique that I have pieces of counterparts but no singular one.  I've held a minor but public appointed political position in New York---I didn't know I was the first Out and Black man to do so.  I'm not HIV+---which is where the bulk of sexuality activists who are male and homosexual reside.  And I'm not hip hopped out with it's skimming through society and pop culture consumeristic iconography attempting to create a Movement and a way for people to "accept" (that ugly word again) someone because you like their song.

I guess I demand a level of both thinking and exposure that is wholly new in one embodied person and I'm going to have to think on what my sexuality writing and it's inherent sexy-sexy is because there's a prism between me, society and perhaps even my audience that is fascinating, challenging and dynamic all at once.


Enjoy!
Kyle Phoenix
Email: kylephoenixshow@gmail.com
Website: http://kylephoenix.com/
Blog: http://kylephoenixshow.blogspot.com/
Amazon.com: simply type in Kyle Phoenix for over 28 paperback and digital books!
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Don't forget to watch The Kyle Phoenix Show on Channel 56 (Time Warner), 83 (RCN), 34 (Verizon) and the Thursday/Friday 12am/midnight simulcast............

Sexuality: Bisexual Homosexuals and Homosexual Heterosexuals

Sexuality: Bisexual Homosexuals and Homosexual Heterosexuals

In my line of work, facilitating workshops and classes, answering emails from the TV show, I'm often challenged with the difference between actions and sexuality.  We've entered into an era of sexuality being integrated into mainstream society and though all forms of sexuality have existed since there were three people, our social designations haven't.

Let's identify first:

• Bisexual--likes male and female genders sexually.
• Homosexual--likes the same gender sexually.
• Heterosexual--likes their opposite gender sexually.
• Transsexual--feels likes their body/external male or female gender is incorrect to their identity/internal sense of gender; their sexuality may be homo, hetero or bi-sexuality.
• Omni/Pansexual--likes male and female genders sexually, regardless of external/internal gender.
• Inter-sex--someone born with genitalia that technically makes them neither male or female, or both.  Usually medical professionals and parents choose which gender to use surgery to make dominant. 
• Gender--one's physical classification to male, female, inter-sex or pre/post surgery transsexual
• Sexuality--one's internal TO external manifestation of identity and/or action; how one acts out what they feel or physically can do; this might be what someone is
• Acts--people may do things to/with their same or opposite gender

However sometimes people cross and blur the lines of sexuality, ability, action and gender.  (The accompanying video at the end will help you if you've involved with someone of the same sex.) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkEAUlWbsvE&feature=g-upl)) 

 Homosexual Men and Women Have Sex With The Opposite Sex

Quite a few homosexuals due to lack of understanding of themselves or fear of disrupting their family/life, have been in heterosexual relationships and marriages (and may have children.)  It happens.  Being in a society that demands conformity down to sexual identity can mean that people take time, even a lifetime to discover and develop their own identity.  If you're homosexual, and feel this aligns with your sexuality, your identity and your physicality---where does that identity come from?  Within.  Then if your sexual identity comes from within and you've done some heterosexual acts, how can you judge/project onto the bisexual or a heterosexual who is simply having homosexual sex?  Sex is not an infection nor a barometer of identity.  Sex is an act.  Sex is not one's identity.

Heterosexual Men and Women Have Sex With Their Same Sex
Human beings experiment   As children, as young adults, in college, in jail, in threesomes, for pleasure, adults since the beginning of time have tried things out. Found that they liked things.  Done things for a while.  A reason, a season or a lifetime but that doesn't necessarily make them that sexuality.  Sexuality isn't simply defined by actions, it's also defined by the individual.  Is a sexually abused child being molested by her aunt, a lesbian?  No.  Is an adult who has no other sexual outlet in jail or the military and engages in same sex sexual contact, a homosexual?  Not necessarily.  Is a homosexual who lost their virginity to a girl (or guy) but knew they were homosexual actually heterosexual, just confused like their Mamma said?  Nope.

Heterosexuality is an action.  Being a heterosexual is sexuality merging identity AND action.  Confusing?  Welcome to Earth, no one promised you that human beings would be simple or narrow or definitive in every one of their expressions. Honestly, if we sat down with you and did a psycho-social identity mapping about what turns you on, imagery, people, actions---we'd probably find that like most humans, you fall into a spectrum, a continuum but all your dots don't cluster perfectly to one side of the scale.  The famous Kinsey scale below measures humans who've answered a detailed questionnaire and survey below and where they flow along a continuum.  Only a very narrow portion of the population are exclusively heterosexual (all white area, or 0 column and only a narrow portion of the population are exclusively homosexual (all blue column, or 6).

The scale is as follows:

Rating	Description
0	Exclusively heterosexual
1	Predominantly heterosexual, only incidentally homosexual
2	Predominantly heterosexual, but more than incidentally homosexual
3	Equally heterosexual and homosexual
4	Predominantly homosexual, but more than incidentally heterosexual
5	Predominantly homosexual, only incidentally heterosexual
6	Exclusively homosexual
X	Non-sexual

Then this guy Klein came along and created a more definite measurement system riffing of of Kinsey's work but trying to add more nuance to the sexuality experience and define bisexuality better.

Variable	Past	Present	Ideal
A. Sexual Attraction. To whom are you sexually attracted?
B. Sexual Behavior. With whom have you had sex?
C. Sexual Fantasies. About whom are your sexual fantasies?
D. Emotional Preference. Who do you feel more drawn to or close to emotionally?
E. Social Preference. Which gender do you socialize with?
F. Lifestyle Preference. In which community do you like to spend your time? In which do you feel most comfortable?
G. Self Identification. How do you label or identify yourself?

Scale to measure variables A, B, C, D and E of the KSOG

1	2	3	4	5	6	7
other sex only	other sex mostly	other sex somewhat	both sexes equally	same sex somewhat	same sex mostly	same sex only

Scale to measure variables F and G of the KSOG

1	2	3	4	5	6	7
heterosexual only	heterosexual mostly	heterosexual more	heterosexual/homosexual equally	homosexual more	homosexual somewhat	homosexual only

Notice in here how the word variable appears and somewhat and mostly.  Those are our tip words that sexuality and identity are not static.  In fact Klein went on to develop that sexuality is far more fluidic than our society allows.  Now here's where it gets fun.  If a more tolerant, accepting, permissive society begins existing the individuals definition of what their sexuality is today, tomorrow and yesterday can and will change over a lifetime.  Humans will begin to in that Kinsey middle area define themselves as some variation of bisexual or omnisexual.

In workshops when it comes up (The accompanying video at the end will help you if you've involved with someone of the same sex.) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkEAUlWbsvE&feature=g-upl))  invariably around homosexual men feeling used by other men who are having homosexual acts with them but not interested in deeper emotionalized/romantic relationships, I present the above information.  The homosexual men then rail that these men are secretly on the down low and being deceptive by having sex with them and then returning to heterosexual relationships (and yes, this does have STD risks/implications) but I calmly ask how many men in the room have had sex with a woman.  Out of 20, maybe 7 raise their hands---I ask them to move to one side of the room.  Then I ask how many of them have had fantasies, dreams, imaginings, musings in their own sexuality about being with women of being women or referring to their bodies in more physically or emotionally effeminate ways (boy pussy, pussy, Ms. Thing, girl, girlfriend, bitch, she),another 10 move to the other side of the room.  Then I throw out who has done drag as a child, teenager, adult or was in the closet about their sexuality until 21.  Another 2 move over.

That leaves 1 guy, sometimes 2, and I say those two out of the 20, are the actual, full 6 homosexuals.  The rest of you are varying degrees of homosexuals/bisexuals/omnisexuals.

I'm just saying....

Now imagine this being done in a group of heterosexuals?  This leaves us with stunning possibilities: either your mother, family, father, peers, cousins, siblings, boss, neighbors, church, synagogue (read: society) are right---you're not a homosexual, you're  just confused and haven't met the right man or woman, and if you did you'd "straighten up".

Or, you're personally right about your personal expression of your sexuality and identity and they're wrong, other people (read: society) are wrong to define you.

Then the bigger challenge comes about: if you don't want others defining your sexuality incorrectly or pejoratively as a homosexual, how can you turn to someone doing heterosexual acts or homosexual acts and pejoratively judge/forcibly define their sexuality?

Work shoppers than ask me what's the right way to operate and I answer that I allow others to define their own sexuality and identity to me that day and I maintain the space and etiquette and human caring, that it might change tomorrow and it might change again the next day.  My irritation and annoyance wouldn't be at the changing but at them not alerting that there is a change for that day.  Suddenly sexuality is simple, huh?

(The accompanying video will help you if you've involved with someone of the same sex.) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkEAUlWbsvE&feature=g-upl)) 

Thank you for reading,
Kyle Phoenix
Email: kylephoenixshow@aol.com
Website: http://kylephoenixsite.com/
Blog: http://kylephoenixshow.blogspot.com/2012
Thanks and enjoy! You can Like Us on Facebook or Follow Us on Twitter! Don't forget to watch The Kyle Phoenix Show on Channel 56 (Time Warner), 83 (RCN), 34 (Verizon) and the Thursday/Friday 12am/midnight simulcast on http://kylephoenixsite.com/