The Bisexualizing Effect of Erotica

The same is true, as I've said, of other forms of sex. In watching a couple enjoy anal, vaginal, or manual (that is, masturbatory) sex, we can also enjoy the action from either the male or the female perspective or, indeed, first from one and then from the other point of view, perhaps alternating back and forth so that, this moment, we are the man and, the next moment, the woman, both penetrating and being penetrated or clutching (or massaging) and being clutched (or massaged). We can thicken and harden one moment and get wet and slippery the next, as we fill or are filled, thrust or counterthrust, give or receive.

Thus, I contend, viewing erotic or pornographic images, whether still or moving, makes bisexuals of us all. Drawings, paintings, films, and videos that involve two or more members of the opposite sex double the viewer's perspective and his or her sex and gender. Eventually, I believe, long-term exposure to such fare promotes actual as well as imaginative bisexuality, and devotees of erotica or pornography become, in fact, what they are in their imaginations--bisexuals. It seems likely that the bisexualizing effect, as it were, of erotica and pornography involving the coupling of heterosexual couples may be diminished by repeated exposure visual depictions of sex that involves exclusively gay male or lesbian lovemaking, although it may be that both members of such couples internalize these points of view and experiences so that they are also always present. If Carl Jung's concept of the anima and the animus is true, the internalization of male and female sexuality in each and all of us seems a distinct possibility, and Sigmund Freud himself believed that everyone is psychologically bisexual.

If my theory concerning the bisexualizing effect of erotica and pornography is true, as I believe it to be, it has one or two implications for literary art of this kind, from which both writers and readers may benefit.

First, writers should, in fact, alternate between the points of view of both the male and the female participants in any sex act, offering the sensations, perceptions, emotions of first one and then the other partner.