Sexual Relativism

The other night I was watching episode #34 of Six Feet Under. In the episode Claire is sent on an errand to pick up a sculpture for Olivier, her professor. It turns out the sculptress is a former student of Olivier's. Claire and the sculptress engage in conversation about Olivier and the conversation veers to the topic of Olivier's sex life. The sculptress is stunned to learn that Claire, Olivier's assistant, is not sleeping with him. The sculptress asks "Is he having a boy year?"

I started thinking about sexual orientation while watching Six Feet Under but it resurfaced again while watching MTV's A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila (don't waste your time.) The Tila Tequila show is basically like ABC's The Bachelorette except in MTV's case that the bachelorette is kind of skanky and bisexual.

In the first example Olivier is never labeled bisexual and in the second point the entire premise for the show is bisexuality. You might as well stamp Bisexual on Ms. Tequila's forehead.

Now, I am not going to post about being all high and mighty and above labels. I like labels, in fact sometimes I love labels. You should see my filing cabinet. My filing system is hot. I do, however, wonder if one day sexual orientation labels will be obsolete. Hear me out. If you have ever been around me at a party after a couple beers and a sexual orientation conversation comes up... then you have most undoubtedly heard me rant about how everyone is bisexual (label) and sexual orientation is a spectrum. Some people are strictly attracted to the opposite sex others feel the same about their own sex but really most of us are somewhere in between. It’s a spectrum. I also like to theorize that someday everyone will be smack dab in the middle. When it comes down to it isn't your sexual orientation determined by who you are attracted to at that moment. Is sexual orientation relative? I think... yes!