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Special Report: Sexuality and Gender
that he is gay, not bisexual, and his concern that uncertainty about his identity could have social and political implications, points to the fact that sexual orientation and identity are understood not only in scientific and personal terms, but in social, moral, and political terms as well.
But how do categories of sexual orientation—with labels such as “bisexual” or “gay” or “straight”—help scientists study the complex phenomenon of human sexuality? When we examine the concept of sexual orientation, it becomes apparent, as this part will show, that it is too vague and poorly defined to be very useful in science, and that in its place we need more clearly defined concepts. We strive in this report to use clear terms; when discussing scientific studies that rely on the concept of “sexual orientation,” we try as much as possible to specify how the scientists defined the term, or related terms.
One of the central difficulties in examining and researching sexual orientation is that the underlying concepts of “sexual desire,” “sexual attraction,” and “sexual arousal” can be ambiguous, and it is even less clear what it means that a person identifies as having a sexual orientation grounded in some pattern of desires, attractions, or states of arousal.
The word “desire” all by itself might be used to cover an aspect of volition more naturally expressed by “want”: I want to go out for dinner, or to take a road trip with my friends next summer, or to finish this project. When “desire” is used in this sense, the objects of desire are fairly determinate goals— some may be perfectly achievable, such as moving to a new city or finding a new job; others may be more ambitious and out of reach, like the dream of becoming a world-famous movie star. Often, however, the language of desire is meant to include things that are less clear: indefinite longings for a life that is, in some unspecified sense, different or better; an inchoate sense of something being missing or lacking in oneself or one’s world; or, in psychoanalytic literature, unconscious dynamic forces that shape one’s cognitive, emotional, and social behaviors, but that are separate from one’s ordinary, conscious sense of self.
This more full-blooded notion of desire is, itself, ambiguous. It might refer to a hoped-for state of affairs like finding a sense of meaning, fulfillment, and satisfaction with one’s life, a desire that, while not completely clear in its implications, is presumably not entirely out of reach, although such longings may also be forms of fantasizing about a radically altered or perhaps even unattainable state of affairs. If I want to take a road trip with my friends, the steps are clear: call up my friends, pick a date, map out a route, and so on. However, if I have an inchoate longing for change, a hope for sustainable intimacy, love, and belonging, or an unconscious conflict
16 ~ The New Atlantis