I encountered someone saying, “I have no problems with a person’s sexual orientation and choice, I have a problem with anyone being openly sexual or flaunting their sexuality in front of me regardless of their choice of orientation.”
I am a card carrying atheist. I was raised in one of the worst fundamental christian extremist groups and now live in near isolation from abandoning it nearly 10 years ago. All sexuality was bottled in my life and surroundings. This is still my comfort zone. A part of me wants to hold on to a similar ethos as the person I mentioned above, but I feel like I’m not very confident it is the right inner philosophical balance either.
I’m partially disabled now, so this is almost completely hypothetical. I am honestly looking to grow in my understanding of personal space and inner morality as it relates to others. Someone enlighten me please. Where does this go, what does it mean to you?
I have a problem with anyone being openly sexual or flaunting their sexuality in front of me regardless of their choice of orientation.
A straight couple walks past pushing their baby in a pram
“How dare they flaunt their sexuality at me!”
That is the kind of intuitive conflict I’m looking for to find balance. I know there is more in this space that I have not encountered. This hits hard.
I’m not really part of the LGBTQ+ community, just a (mostly) straight guy who’s subbed here so I can experience other viewpoints and help grow my own understanding, so take what I say as you will, but ultimately it boils down to:
It doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter to you, the casual observer, what other consenting adults are doing. Seriously, it’s not your story, so why bother trying to insert yourself into it? Say you see a couple of guys holding hands in the street; how long are you going to hold onto that memory of them? Realistically, they’ll walk by and within ten minutes you’ll have forgotten they exist, so why let yourself notice them in the first place? Or more to the point, why assign any kind of morality to them?
As a society, I think we could be far better at letting people just live their lives without assigning our own thoughts and emotions onto them. We don’t have their lived experience, so we shouldn’t get upset when they don’t conform to our internal rulebook.
But that can be hard to do when we as a species are wired to make quick assessments. Those quick assessments have helped us to evolve to where we currently are, it helped our ancestors rapidly figure out who could be trusted, whether an animal was likely to try and eat us, whether our food could poison us. But none of that makes any sense when it comes to looking at a consenting couple living their lives in public, and immediately placing them in an ‘undesirable’ box.
All you can do is what you’ve done here; engage with people from different backgrounds, and try to learn to understand that, regardless of who they have sex with (or not), or whether their outward look conforms to whatever genitals you suspect they have, they’re just people trying to live their lives and be left alone.
I am going to play devil’s advocate here for the sake of discussion on if it matters what consenting adults do in public.
Let’s say we have two moms going to the local library. One is very conservative and the other very liberal, but both are busy-body ‘Karens’. They see flyers for 2 events: one is kids story time with a drag performer, and the other is a ‘jack-ass’ style competition in the park in front of the library – promoted with pictures of people (constentingly) getting kicked in the groin. Both Karens are shocked that their kids would be exposed to such outrageous behavior and do not want the kids copying such behavior – but each only object to ONE of those events.
Both are going to complain to their city council and try to get their peeve banned. Do either of them have a point? Would it matter if it wasn’t an ‘event’ and just people going about their daily lives (kids smacking each other around or dressing up for fun)?
My instinct is to say that it should all be allowed, but I can imagine some argument about the deterioration of society or some such.
“Quantifiable harm” might be a distinction to draw here. There are immediate, obvious, and potentially life-long physical complications from a jack-ass style competition that are literally physically tangible. There is no arguing with “Little Timmy’s ball got kicked off and he’s going to be a eunuch for life.” The ‘harm’ caused by children attending a story time with a drag performer isn’t quantifiable in the same way.
From what I understand of drag, it is a style of expression akin to an art form or a theatrical performance. Just as any other art can be overtly sexual, drag can be too, but like movies, music, and sculpture it can be used to express a wide range of complex topics.
The mother reacting poorly to the story time is misinterpreting the concept of drag likely due to preconceived biases or social influence, and that interpretation should be corrected through exposure and conversation. Ideally they would seek that learning out, having recognized that the flyer made them uncomfortable. Maybe they go to the story time without their child and respectfully watch to see if such activities would be appropriate in their eyes for their child in the future.
The jack-ass competition sounds like a real legal liability for the library and city given the physical harm likely to be brought to participants, so I doubt it would be likely to exist. I also doubt many parents would sign their kids up for such a competition.
Assuming the flyer were there and approved to be there, it would not be an issue for the reason stated either. You can not and should not expect the world to hide your child from everything harmful, if they notice and ask about it, it can be a learning experience for them to talk about why they can’t participate. It’s also not the first time they have seen that sort of behavior, their classmates act like that on the playground and the cartoons they watch have it in every episode. Tom and Jerry or Bugs Bunny comes to mind.
Society isn’t degrading, the arguers view of society is being challenged by reality. They can learn and adapt or learn and remain but either way the onus is on them to exist with society.
Ideally they would seek that learning out, having recognized that the flyer made them uncomfortable.
Yes, Ideally. Very rare though. Far easier to blame the other person for “making them feel uncomforable” and then trying to change the other person. Personal freedom is limited by what society can tolerate.
So to really clarify. In my past I have had no problem calling out heterosexual people in my friends group for outright lude behavior. Like, a slap on the ass in public and some quick innuendo that would fly past the average pre-teen unnoticed is perfectly fine. Holding hands or a plutonic peck on the cheek or lips is fine. It’s the constant prolonged banter, hands in the pants, groping type of behavior that has made me uncomfortable regardless of orientation.
I went to high school at an advanced, State run, semi private institution that was located in a predominantly black neighborhood in the US south. The school was 90% black. I’m white and I quickly learned that there are times when racism went both ways. There were many taboo words and things that can’t or shouldn’t ever be said in such situations. I had just as many, if not more, black friends that were often willing to stand up for me when I was the minority in a larger group.
I have felt a similar type of need to avoid saying anything when it comes to open lude behavior and the LGBTQ+ community; like I can’t say anything as some kind of reparation for the sins of my ancestors kind of thing. This is not something that everyone does or anything like that. It’s the kind of situation where there are a couple dozen people in the group and there is that one person that wants to push everyone to their limits and beyond.
This is internally polarizing for me and I don’t want to leave that unaddressed. It is an internal conflict point that slows my growth and perspective. So, does one say something, or avoid circumstances where the offending person is present? It feels like a lose:lose situation. If I say something it will likely light a fuse I’m not prepared to absorb the blast from, or I’m labeled as prejudice because of applying the same sense of morality across the board and so avoiding the person is my only option that avoids conflict. At the same time, I don’t want the person to feel oppressed or ostracized.
I can only think of twice in my life that this has happened, but it is a mental wall that I never tried to address or get past. It is what polarized me in a way I didn’t acknowledge as significant until now.
i generally agree with what you’ve said here, but think that you might be joining the ideas of someone who says they are uncomfortable by these things and someone who passes judgement on others for these things. while these are not mutually exclusive, i think that someone who is uncomfortable by PDA from couples of all orientations exist and should be acknowledged.
ie me. i’m a sex averse/repulsed asexual, and feel very uncomfortable by some forms of PDA (regardless of orientation) while also trying to not pass judgement on others for being someday romantic/sexual in public. i’m not trying to insert myself into anyone’s story, and i i’m not trying to make anyone conform to my internal rule book, like you’re suggesting- i just get uncomfortable when people are sexual with each other in basically any context. and i don’t think that should be shunned or degraded.
Well, the attitude of the person you encountered is problematic for a few reasons. The most common is that its almost never applied evenly due to the sexualization of queer bodies; two straight people holding hands or flirting or is fine, but a queer couple doing the same is “flaunting their sexuality”. To some, a trans woman just existing is “flaunting sexuality” due to how theyve been trained to think of and conceptualize trans women.
But assuming the person isnt a hypocrite, its still problematic, because what theyre talking about is a large range of behaviors, ranging from “no sex in public but kissing etc is ok” to shomer negiah to full segregation based on sex. Many (tho not all!) humans are sexual beings with sexual desires and motivations. To say that they cannot express that aspect of themselves in public at all is to prevent them from being their full selves in public. Thats not to say that people should be able to just have sex whereever they want, but that people should be able to express the feeling “i like and am attracted to you” in public (within the bounds of consenting adults, of course).
Many (tho not all!) humans are sexual beings with sexual desires and motivations.
Thanks for the acknowledgment of asexual people like me 😊
Assuming people actually apply the attitude consistently instead of only to non-straight people, I’m not sure what to think, honestly. There are always going to be people who are made uncomfortable by PDA from any couple, including straight couples. Back when straight was default I knew people who would react unhappily to a straight couple making out and even basic kissing was really pushing it. It seems somehow callous to condemn these people if they apply this standard to everyone equally, it feels like saying “your discomfort is wrong, fix it and stop being so sensitive.” But I also understand that often, if something won’t make a majority of people uncomfortable and isn’t disrespectful/actively harmful it’s usually the responsibility of the uncomfortable person to remove themselves from the situation.
Social norms have conditioned me into not finding a couple groping each other in public a socially acceptable thing, even if I don’t feel any discomfort with it. The only taboo against displays of affection that I think lies in something other than making people feel uneasy is “no sex in public” because of all the fluids produced. If not cleaned up well and quickly, it sounds ripe for infecting people who unknowingly, say, sit on the same bench someone had sex on. Especially if they have a small cut on the back of their thigh, and it touches where the fluids were… Same logic as “use a toilet, don’t go in public.” No biohazards in public please.
I’m totally fine with any PDA that isn’t actual sex in public, and the sex reservation is only because of the concern I mentioned above for STDs. I’m making a lot of devil’s advocate arguments against my own perspective because I also want to respect others’ comfort levels and I’m not sure where exactly the line should be drawn.
I think one issue here is that discomfort is subjective. Discomfort is valid and an important way to gauge how we treat people. But its important to understand why someone is uncomfortable.
For example, if someone is uncomfortable with me talking super loud in a small room, then the solution would probably not be to change my tone of voice or the topic I’m talking about. Its the volume thats bringing them discomfort.
If someone is uncomfortable with others kissing in public, we might argue that its reasonable not to kiss in public for their comfort.
But what’s the real cause of discomfort with two men kissing? Is it the kissing or their very existence? If two people loving each other brings someone discomfort because this person just doesn’t aprove of their lifestyle, what’s the solution, then?
The comfort they are likely seeking is to never have to acknowledge that others are different from them. And they can only get that by limiting the freedom of those “others”.
I should probably clarify that I’m thinking of people who are uncomfortable with PDA from any couple, people who would be equally unhappy with a man and a woman kissing as a man and a man. Not people who are okay with PDA from straight couples but not from gay people.
Yeah, I’m sorry if I explained it poorly. I tend to ramble.
If you are uncomfortable with all forms of PDA, thats valid. The source of your discomfort is the act. Not who’s doing it. And it would be a reasonable discomfort to accomadate.
If your discomfort was because of who is doing the act, then thats just prejudice. If the only accommodation that would work to comfort someone is harmful to others, then they need to look inward for a solution.
The point I kind of forgot I was making halfway through is that, while discomfort is valid and should be accommodated in society, discomfort is very subjective. Not everyone can explain their own discomfort accurately, and those that can might lie about it instead. So we have to be careful and try to recognize the difference between, “Your behavior makes me uncomfortable,” and , “Your existence makes me uncomfortable.”
I appreciate your point aboutcondemning peoples discomfort, its definitely a sensitive area that needs care. To be clear, everyones discomfort is valid, but its how we react to that discomfort that I would take issue with. Restricting other peoples expression of love because of my own discomfort seems wrong (with exception of fluids/infection risks/etc, as you named).
I suppose to me it depends on the intention of the space; if the intention of a space is specific and pda is interfering with that intention, thats an issue. Especially when its a mandatory shared space like work, where you have to show up and cant avoid things.
I’m actually not sure how PDA interferes with the intention of work. Hypothetically, I could sit in someone’s lap and I could be doing my work, and they theirs (at least, if we both use laptops). I definitely see the point about the mandatory shared space, though.
so like, i also had a very christian upbringing, tho i moved past a lot (not all! it took work to shed all that garbage) of those teachings on gender and sexuality thru coming to terms with being trans. like, living without the burden of christian morality and guilt is incredibly freeing.
bringing this around to pda. i also used to find it off-putting, but it really isn’t about you, its ok for human beings to be affectionate with each other, and this is usually only applied to gay people anyway, are you uncomfortable when you see someone hug their grandparents at the airport?
also, a lot of humans are sexual beings, like there really is no reason to object to people being open about their orientation that isn’t based in religious bullshit.
I have trouble getting past some of it too. I don’t get out much. Sometimes it feels like being uncomfortable is also not knowing what happens if I was not hiding behind the no PDA wall. Coming to terms with this is kinda what I hope to accomplish here, I just don’t know how to say it in a very good way. Honestly, this community is probably the only place I would dare try. Thanks for that.
If 2 people were having sex on a table in a restaurant, that would be unacceptable. If a parent kissed their child goodbye while dropping them of at daycare, that would be acceptable. Everything else is somewhere in between. The challenge is where to draw the line and is it applied evenly.
If a parent and child can hold hands, can a hetero couple? If so, can a gay couple? Where do you draw the line, and who draws the line for all of society?
I draw the line at a hetero couple entering a shop with the guy keeping his hand shoved down the girl’s pants. That’s just unsanitary.
Wouldn’t have a problem with some nudists with towels, though.
Bottled sexuality isn’t healthy, mentally or physically. (Asexuality is different.)
Maybe it’s time to start coming out of your comfort zone that way? At least in terms of your thinking if not your doing.
I have a high enough regard for sex and its importance in to mental, physical and relational health to believe it deserves respect. It is powerful. Many of our subcultures don’t give it respect, either seeking to limit and control it overly or going too far in the opposite direction. I’d like that to change, but people are going to people and there’s next to nothing I can do to influence others on that. Only in myself and (back before female middle age made me invisible) who I chose to share my sexuality with.
Consent is another of my guiding principles, where all involved agree on whatever sexual activity is happening. But I don’t consider things like holding hands or being out and about with a partner or family to be sexual activity. They’re about relationships and they’re probably not bringing on sexual arousal in the participants. And most of the things people do in public are more about relationship than sex.
Does anything in this help you?
Over the last days, thinking about this, writing then canceling a half dozen times, then finally posting, and pondering responses, I think the mentally bottled sexuality has been my primary hindrance of emotional growth.
Growing up in an ostracized small religious group meant default friends because there were only 2-3 kids in an age group. These “friends” coexisted more than developed relationships. I don’t know how to develop real relationships beyond those of convenient coexistence. I can readily acknowledge I am emotionally shallow, but unlike intellect where I feel free to pursue curiosity unabated, I don’t have a clue where to go with emotional growth. It seems like addressing unrecognized prejudices may be a good starting point. Maybe looking to people bold enough to stand out on their own even against social pressures, is a good idea.
I think we all turn invisible at 30 too.
They say that identifying the problem is half the battle. You’re doing alright with that, self-aware, self-honest, reflective and articulate. I’m not seeing someone emotionally shallow in all that you’ve expressed here, more like a lack of experience.
Throwing out some ideas for you to mull over and experiment with:
Ask questions and listen to and reflect on different answers, as you’ve done here.
Talk therapy, if you have access to something affordable.
Journaling, which is like talk therapy with yourself and a notebook. Focus on exploring your feelings and areas you’d like to grow in. It won’t be perfect. That’s the point.
Observe others, find roll models (like the bold ones you mention above), but hold your observations lightly. It’s easy to get it wrong. This is where fiction is very useful; any misassumptions are between you and the book and the author is a good guide.
Reading. Reading. Reading. Emotion-centered fiction. Action-centered fiction where the emotions are present but not well articulated. Non-fiction about emotions, including memoirs.
Visual stories too. Look for emotional arcs, how the characters affect each others’ emotions, how your own are affected.
(Wee aside, Chinese and Korean dramas often go deeper into emotions than US, UK and European ones. There are a lot available for free on youtube and elsewhere.)
Seek out music that stirs your emotions.
Journal about your reactions to any of the above that you engage in.
Imagine. Make up your own stories. It can be fan fiction in your head but keep it coming back to how everyone feels, how they express that, how it influences others.
Imagine. What you would like to be, what your near-future self is like in a healthy relationship and friendships.
Bring your natural curiosity. This is a new field to explore and learn about.Hopefully a few of those will resonate and work for you, or suggest things which will. You can do this :)
i think this is a great discussion topic, thank you for bringing it up! i should preface this also by saying that my perspective comes from that of a sex averse/repulsed asexual- so in both real life and tv/books/fiction, i get uncomfortable by sexual topics generally speaking. this does extend to some forms of PDA for couples of all orientation as well, though i should clarify that i have no issue with what consenting adults do in their homes, as that is not my business.
others have already pointed out that the exact phrase you included tends to unfairly target queer people, so i will touch on it as though it were being equally applied to straight and queer people. if others being sexual in public makes you uncomfortable, there is nothing wrong with staying in that mindset in my opinion, especially if it is your comfort zone as is. while moving out of it could be personally beneficial if possible (not being uncomfortable is more pleasant than being uncomfortable), it’s not morally wrong to be uncomfortable. don’t let anyone make you believe otherwise.
while passing judgement on others for being sexual in public is a separate topic, and one many here would say is immoral, idk how to feel. i really try not to judge others for PDA, but if it’s like, really intense… i think it’d be lying to say i don’t judge others at all for it. but i don’t think that’s objectively morally wrong or something, i just have my own quiet opinions and keep them to myself. that’s okay too.
For me, a simple, intuitive, and practical way to discuss and evaluate morality is to evaluate net social harm/good.
The only real social harms that can come from sexual behavior between consenting adults are unplanned pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease.
Many comments were about the side topic of public PDA. I think another way to view consent is from the angle of the basic human need for autonomy (choice). We all have a right to decide when we want to be sexually stimulated or not. What stimulates pleasant sensations for one person may stimulate unpleasant sensations for another. There is a continuum that is highly situationally dependent. Society tries to work around this by setting clear expectations around perceived sexual stimulation. What is expected on Paris streets is different from what is expected in Chicago. What is expected on a beach in Spain is quite different than what is expected on a beach in Maine. (While public nudity isn’t inherantly sexual, some may find it titillating if not accustomed). We get into trouble when the expectations are not clear, not well communicated to outsiders, there are people who intentionally try to act outside of what is expected, or a person’s individual proclivity isn’t a good match for what is expected.
If you want to become more open to sexuality, consider the truth that “whenever I am upset, I have the opportunity to become curious and increase my awareness”. Change comes from awareness. Since you encounted sexual neglect (purity culture?) as a child, you may benefit from EMDR therapy to help unravel and heal. A book that was transformative for me is “Enjoy Sex (How, when and if you want to) A Practical and Inclusive Guide by Meg-John Barker”.
Try this thought experiment.
A straight man kisses another straight man in public. Both hate it.
The act itself is not sexual and doesn’t represent their orientation. All the discomfort or whatever you may feel after watching it has nothing to do with them, but with you own point of view.
All the rest I could say was already mentioned before here. This is just to reframe the problem.