Gay, Straight, Bi, Trans, Asexual, Monogamy, Polygamy...Come Again?!

People are obsessed!!

Okay, so I have to admit. To write this blog I probably do read an above average amount of magazine/newspaper articles, watch t.v., and talk to friends about sex and relationships. But STILL. It seems that recently everyone is getting very into all this labelling stuff.

I'm not one to shy away from this topic of conversation but fucking hell!! I never knew there were so many options! Even I'm left feeling ever so slightly confused.

This BBC sex season that is in full swing right now has my head swimming. In case you have missed them - or haven't had access to them here's a brief fill-in for you. Turns out there are some mental placenta munching, home-schooling, risk-taking, over-working, nappy-free, obsessive baby-making mothers out there. Who produce kids that could grow up wanting to be the gender that they aren't, or maybe get with the sex that they are, whilst also simultaneously getting with the sex they aren't in a polyamorous, bisexual, sex-exploring, webcam using, promiscuous "she's not my girlfriend", non-relationship, relationship. Got it? Good.

 

On top of all of this, shows like The Sex Education Show and How Sex Works seem to utter the word chlamydia, every 10 minutes or so. We get it. The pill is good, but condoms are better.

Anyone else feel like after all these shows they had a serious case of mind-fuck? What happened to the good old days when people just dated and you had to figure out sex with a biology textbook? I feel like I, of all people, am becoming less and less liberal with each of these shows that I watch. Mainly out of sheer  bafflement than anything else.

People can now be born one gender and decide that, naaaah, you know what? I don't want to be a boy, lets change my penis into a vagina. Done. (Maybe a SLIGHTLY dumbed down version of the truth - it's done for dramatic effect.)

There is now even a reality game show like The Bachelorette (is that what it was called?!), called Playing It Straight, but the woman has the thankless task of having to choose between a bunch of gay and straight men to date. I've seen so many transsexual men, and "men's men" gay guys in the past couple of weeks that I feel I will need to do a frisk test and psycho-analysis next time I meet a 'guy' in a club. Just to be sure of course...

But why do we even care? Okay. So it makes great t.v. But all this labelling? I don't even really care WHAT someone is, or isn't...or might be. I'm even confusing myself now.

I now know things that I didn't even know there was to know. But the information is a total overload. Par exemple, did you know a gay guy can apparently be either a "top", "bottom" or "versatile" (figure it out). Now there's a gem that - depending on your sexual preference - you may not have wanted to know. A gift from me to you.

The weird/worrying thing is, that instead of coming away from it thinking, "condoms are amazing" (the message I'm sure most of these shows are trying to promote). I find myself thinking things like, "I wonder if I could make myself gay". "What would happen if I suggested to the guy I'm seeing that we pop another girl in the bed?" "I wonder what I'd look like if I turned into a man." These thoughts last for a few minutes before I come back into reality and realise, I don't want these things - it's just the t.v. doing the thinking.

Asides from the good t.v. aspect though why is it there? Is it for us to ponder our own sexual orientation at 9pm every night? Is it for us to think "oooh, there's an app to find other horny, single people in the area *click download*"? Or is it just for us to become more aware of what our options are? Maybe people who have a feeling they aren't "normal", will figure out from watching these shows, what - of the many, many categories - it is that they fall into. (If they do, there are so many categories I'm beginning to think no one 'falls' into any of them.) I can only assume that it's the latter. Either that or the producer of BBCThree is just on overdrive right now.

This media outlet is good in the sense of raising awareness about all these types of ways of living your sex life - making you feel that there is no "correct" way. This - I like. It's very refreshing.

That said. It's been an overload recently. (ESPECIALLY the up close and personal pictures of genital warts - there is a time and a place and neither of these is on my t.v. screen, thanks.) Also, maybe if they could make the programmes once a week rather than once a day...just a suggestion.

As liberating and refreshing it is, much more of this gender/sexual orientation, crazy sex life chat and I feel I may become dazed and confused with my many options. I will have no choice but to hold the BBC personally responsible for my arrest at some top-secret, rave-esque, sex orgy party in the undergrounds of London, wondering - in a state of utter bewilderment and euphoria - how the hell I got there.

[caption id="attachment_213" align="aligncenter" width="195" caption="A swimming cap and egg timer clearly does it for some people. Each to their own."][/caption]

For those of you who missed any of the shows recently here's the one's I can recall:
Playing it Straight
How Sex Works
Cherry Healey: Like a Virgin
Websex: Whats the Harm?
The Sex Researchers
The Sex Education Show
The Joy of Teen Sex
My Daughter: The Teenage Nudist
My Transexual Summer...etcetc
And they say Britain is the most sexualised Western country. Can't possibly see why...