Are we human or are we woman?

Sexual. And single. Or should it be sexual but single? The two words coexist uneasily within me, and the relation they should bear remains, forgive the adjective, impenetrable. Just how does a single person attain sexual release – not the fleeting release of masturbation, but the release which brings connection, the fulfilment of human intimacy? How does one do so in an ethical way? And more, how does one do so in a safe way? Not just in terms of physical safety, but safety in terms of the heart – is there any more crushing feeling than that of having been used?

Well, perhaps there is, for other, more worldly-wise people. For myself, that feeling has been hard to come to terms with. Hard, indeed, to forget.

Much of the fear of being used is exacerbated by cultural beliefs. In my own instance, personal experiences play a very major role, and I would never downplay the reality of predation. But as a woman, I’ve had to navigate a lot of messaging around my sexuality and its relation to my personhood. Specifically, how it is antithetical to my personhood.

Take this excerpt from the book Every Young Man’s Battle. In it, Stephen Arterburn describes his thoughts on nude pin-ups on his grandfather’s walls: “Just the fact that a man could put pictures of naked women up on his walls made a huge statement about women. First, since none of these women were his wife, it meant that unclothed women were public property. These were items…things…objects for everyone to look at. Second, those images meant that they were objects that men could use for their pleasure….[the pin-ups] changed the way I viewed women, and I’m talking about all women, not just the busty models in those pictures. I began to view women as a little less than human, as if they were just a little less than men.”

Arteburn’s words reflect a widespread thesis:

The degree of a woman’s perceived humanity, exists in negative proportion to her sexual availability.

In other words, the more her sexual dimension is visible, the less a woman will be seen as human by men. To be respected by men, we must appear as “modest” as possible – must appear unaware of our own and men’s sexuality, must disguise our allure in “appropriate” couture that will not “distract” men from seeing who we “really” are. We must, in essence, disguise our femaleness – the sexual component of ourselves that, we are told, makes us appear “cheap” unless it is gently simmering somewhere just out of sight; presumed, but never proclaimed. (As one church website literally puts it, “Show interest in these young men but don’t flirt or lead them on. Our minds do not need more encouragement to imagine what you are subtly hinting at. This leads young men to womanize you [emphasis mine]”).

In this analysis, our own bodies become our enemies, rendering our humanity invisible to men. We grow up learning that we cannot exist as multidimensional beings to men – either they will see us as sexual OR as human, but if we once betray our sexual dimension to them, we will have become just objects in their eyes. And if you once allow a man sexual access to you, you are now just that cow providing free milk, and he has no further motivation to treat you like a person. (“Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?” was a line that always baffled me, as if the sole motivation to marry a person was sex – the “milk” – and there was absolutely nothing else a woman could offer besides her unpenetrated vagina).

But can it really be true that women who display their sexuality are seen by men as “public property”, as “items, things, objects”? Can it really be true that men can’t see us as both sexual and human? This is a question that will perhaps haunt me for the rest of my life, even as I rage at the idea that I must choose between one or the other.

A recent experience seemed to confirm that, having obtained sex from a woman, a man will lose his respect for her. But I am reluctant to ascribe too much credence to the idea that sleeping with a guy “too soon” leads to his inevitable repulsion for you. I am reluctant to blame female sexuality – that familiar old scapegoat – for either the wilful naivete of certain women (guilty!) or the predatory behaviour of certain men. Doubtless, there will always be men who treat women as a means to an orgasm, or an ego boost, or whatever other end they need fulfilled. And there will always be women who seek to use such men as a screen behind which to hide their own insecurities, mistakes or the simple truth of “he’s just not that into you.” Certainly, trite formulas and gendered generalisations make dating seem a lot less dangerous! But the reality of our interactions, as males and females, is surely richer, more layered, conflicted and complex than simply: you can have his heart OR his hard-on. Or, for that matter, that a man can have a heart or a hard-on, but that never the twain shall meet.

Perhaps that is just my wilful naivete speaking!

But I remain genuinely baffled by the question of sex, and objectification, and why the act of being sexual gets divorced from every other aspect of who we are as people. Why do I still sometimes struggle with the feeling that each sexual encounter takes a piece of your personhood – until there is none of it left? That to be naked with a man is to cease being my unique self? Why do I still sometimes feel that if I am used by a man sexually, that dehumanises me – as opposed to him?

A thought that would sometimes occur to me was how, every day, we go out and interact with other people – not as multidimensional humans, but as cashiers, petrol attendants, colleagues, employees, etc., etc., etc. It would be deemed strange, if not inappropriate, to have an intense interest in the personality of the cashier taking your order at the drive-thru. The reality is most people never do think of that woman at the McDonalds counter as a whole person; they are relating to her as a service-provider. And she’s relating to you as a source of income.

So, every day we go out and use other people and see them as services rather than full, complex, multidimensional beings. One could see it all as rather cynical. But we don’t generally agonise over whether we are dehumanising one another in this way. I started out life as a cashier at a fast food outlet. I don’t remember ever fearing that the customers I served could not see me as a human because I was presenting myself to them as a cashier. There were certainly power dynamics at play, and I do ABSOLUTELY think menial labour dehumanises people and reduces them to useful functions. But our whole economy is set up so that we can’t survive without making ourselves, at some level, into useful functions, and yet the prospect that this makes us less human does not keep us up at night – we still recognise ourselves, and even others, as more than what we do to put bread on the table.

So why is it that one can be a cashier and still human, an employee and still human, a random person in the grocery aisle and still human, (not a CEO and still human, though – sorry) – all these one-dimensional things we are to one another throughout the day and still human, but a woman cannot be SEXUAL and still human? Why are there somehow different rules for the sexual aspect of our identity than for any other? Why can I not be a woman AND a person?

I don’t have an answer. I want very much to believe that the separation of body and self, sexuality and personhood, is simply a hangover from neo-platonism. That I can be a woman and a person. On the other hand, I know what it is to feel used, and I know what it is to feel utterly objectified by a violent and painful experience: to feel a rupture between body and being, the sense that one’s personal self has died, leaving only a “fuck-hole” behind.

We all represent a confluence of cultural myths and personal experience. We all feel trapped and dazed by this confluence in various ways, and struggle to recognise where myth begins and experience (or rather perception thereof) ends. But to me, it seems an urgent task for women to untangle the two, or at least to try. How can we ever claim power or confidence if we remain enslaved to myths about our value?

Yet how, exactly, do we go about this task? Here, again, I have no clear answer. But accepting the fullness of all that we are seems to me the most crucial first step. This, too, however, can be fraught, and the process is not without its pitfalls. The ironic thing is, in an attempt to identify and disengage from the myths I’ve been discussing, I ended up identifying, for a time, with radical feminism – and I can see now how feminism posits the exact same fear of the body, of female sexual allure, as patriarchal civilization. That same old “woman/person” divide. During that time when I felt that doing anything to make myself sexually attractive – like wearing make-up and shaving my legs – constituted being a sell out to the cause of womankind, I was in reality denying my female power, and denying a part of my humanity.

It was precisely when I identified as a feminist that I despised the feminine, seeking in my childhood evidence of an awareness that I was being brainwashed into conformity to “gender.” (Gender, I had convinced myself, was nothing but a construct). It is only in having rejected feminism that I have been able to accept my womanhood. And it is only in embracing myself as a woman that I have been able to access the fullness of my humanity. And, indeed, the humanity of others.

I think about how religious people tend to say things along the lines of, “We don’t hate sex – on the contrary! We think it’s sacred and want to elevate it; it’s the world that is degrading sex.” Yet, even as you hear these things being said, the sense of discomfort with sex is palpable and the feeling that it is, far from sacred, something dirty and scary, remains heavily in the air. Similarly, feminists tend to say things along the lines of, “We don’t hate men! On the contrary, we want to elevate them to be free from toxic masculinity so they can be happier and freer, too.” But, just as with religious people, you feel a palpable disconnect between what is being said and what is being conveyed. You feel the feminist discomfort with men, the resentment of them, the need to control them as surely as they have ever controlled us. And in resenting men, you come to resent yourself – for your own heterosexual desires and the attraction you have towards them. In the end, you are back to being at war with yourself – pretending you have no desire to dress up for men or be attractive to them, pretending you are horribly offended when you catch one looking at your legs, pretending you want them to treat you the same way they would their male associates. Pretending to yourself. Or, when you can no longer pretend, replacing that denial with self-disgust. You are back to believing that, after all, you DO have to choose between being a woman and a person.

In the end, as a feminist fighting your differentiation from males, you are no different from a sexually repressed person fighting their urges. And you are certainly no happier. The “chaste woman” of the church ultimately bears some remarkable similarities to the “liberated woman” of the feminists – and yet they claim to be deconstructing the “chaste woman”! In the end, the feminists are still enslaved to the very ideal of necessary sexlessness they learnt in the church, albeit in a warped and inverted form.

As a single woman, I want to escape that ideal of necessary sexlessness. I’m not saying I want to throw myself into sexual hedonism. I’m celibate currently, and without a viable long-term partner, it will likely remain that way. But I truly would like to begin untangling the beliefs which have haunted me over the years, to understand and relate to my sexuality from a new and less agonised angle.

What that would look like, I really don’t know.

For now, I am content just to ask the question.