I was watching the news yesterday and Jerry Springer this morning, and these two TV programs brought up something good to talk about today. That good thing was intimacy. What is intimacy? How do you define intimacy? Who has rights to tell someone who they can or cannot be intimate with? How is one defined by who they are intimate with? Questions like these are excellent questions to ask, I believe. The reason I say they are because not too many really know the answers. I, myself, am no expert and only go based on my own thoughts and feelings on how I respond to the questions.
First, the news program had a preacher that is preaching the importance of sex in a relationship. From what I gathered from his speech, he feels having more sex in a marriage creates more intimacy. I ask, how can sex and having more of it in any relationship define how much intimate a person is with the other? To me, sex is not at all important in order for there to be intimacy, and having more sex does not mean more intimacy. Don't get me wrong, sex is good, but not to the point where it overshadows the entire relationship. Sex does not define intimacy in my eyes, and having more sex does not create more intimacy between two people. If that were the case, why are there people who have sex for money or people who cheat on there partners but only to have one night stands with another person with no intimacy with this other person involved. Based on my own views, I would say this preacher is a false profit preaching the devil's work and not that of the higher power I believe in.
This brings me to what I consider intimacy to be. Intimacy to me is a strong bond between two people who have mutual strong feelings toward each other. These feelings do not necessarily have to be developed through sex. It can be developed by just having hung out with each other, gotten to know each other, have the same interests shared with each other, or just the pleasure of each other's company. Once this intimacy is formed, sex then may be added, but it is not sex that creates more intimacy. There are still people out there that have sex without having intimacy with anyone they have sex with as escorts and prostitutes do as well as those who have one night stands and don't care to have lasting relationships. Are these sexual encounters an example of intimacy? I think not. Having sex does not mean the two are intimate with each other, so having more does not mean becoming more intimate.
Now, on Jerry Springer, they had a woman who had been dating men almost all her life, and she experimented one time with a woman. After deciding she did not enjoy being with a woman, the woman she had experimented with continued calling her a lesbian just because she had sex with a woman. Question, who has the right to label anyone's sexuality in the first place? No one except ourselves. Second question, how does an experiment with the same sex "make" someone gay or lesbian? It doesn't. No one can be "made" gay or bi or lesbian. This is a common misconception from those not in the LGBT community. One is BORN gay, bi, lesbian, or transgender. No one can just "turn" or be "made" that way. During birthing process, things happen to have a baby born already wired with attractions toward either members of the same sex, members of opposite sex, or members of either sex. There are some even born with NO attractions to either sex. Transgender happens when the baby is born with feelings of being a gender not defined by labels already set by society as a whole. Male or Female were the only two labels set in the past until all the labels now under the transgender umbrella were discovered. Still, all those labels are not one that a person "just becomes". They all are born this way. The way a person is born is one of the determining factors, along with those already mentioned, of whom they form an intimate relationship with. Just because they experiment outside of how they were born does not mean they have become gay or lesbian or even bi. However, it is possible a person born with gay tendencies to go against their genetic makeup until they experiment and find that it is what they were really born like. In other words, a person can be born bisexual and go against this by only having straight or gay relationships, but sooner or later they will have to give in to the original birth makeup as they struggle being attracted to both and not just one or the other. After giving in, it may appear this person has "gone" bi, but truth is they were born that way. The same is for a person born gay or lesbian and trying to go against this by dating only opposite sex. With a transgender, they are born either male or female, but somehow the birthing process screwed up somewhere and produced a baby that looked male or female, but inside has traits of the exact opposite. With either testosterone or estrogen levels never fully developing correctly or whatever the case may be, you end up with a baby such as this. The transgender label further divides into several different categories. Transsexual, transvestite, and cross-dresser are just a few of them. With a transsexual, a boy or girl feels like a girl or boy inside and may or may not seek reassignment surgery in order to live their life as what they feel they really are. A transvestite is a male or female that wears the opposite genders clothing only for the sexual attractions of such way of dressing but yet stay true to the gender they were born. A cross-dresser is a male or female that wears opposite gender clothing either because they feel they are the opposite gender but only wish to be this gender once in a while for whatever period of time they wish to be so or to put on shows for money or fun. A cross-dresser can also be placed under either the transsexual or transvestite depending on their true reasons behind cross-dressing. To me, cross-dressers who do it for sexual reasons can be labeled transvestites, and those doing it because they feel they are the gender of the clothing they wear can be thrown in with transsexuals. Those who do it for a show are just plain cross-dressers. If one were to really get technical, the labels cross-dressing transsexual and cross-dressing transvestite can be rightly added in order to sort out all those listed under the cross-dresser category. However, I am now back to my original question of who has the right to label anyone under anything? It does not matter what society labels you as, but rather it is what you label yourself as that truly defines what you are.
In closing, sex is not intimacy, intimacy is not created by sex but rather by the attractions guided from birth, shared interests, or how well the time is that is spent together, no one can just "turn" or "be made" to have attractions that create intimacy toward one gender or the other because it is only how we are born that mainly guides us in such a way, and no one but you has the right to label who and what you are. Take care and be safe always everyone.
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