The Weinstein, Spacey, Porter and other sexual predator scandals that have surfaced over the past weeks call on us to examine our own power dynamics.

OPINION:

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The challenge of good sexual education, of which there is a dearth, is to empower people to make sexual choices that are theirs, and which celebrate desire and honour vulnerability. But to approach this we constantly have to negotiate and navigate cultural legacies where sexuality is, at best, ensconced within shame and guilt; and at worst, experienced as evil, perverse and criminal. LGBT+ desires know this all too well.

Like all human exchanges, sex is embedded within power dynamics. The cultural overhang of butch/femme, top/bottom, fucker/fucked still dominates so much of same-sex sexual relations, and exploratory sexual activities are too easily watered down into: “so, which of you is the man?”

The continuum of Weinstein/Spacey/Al Porter stories expose, not only the power dynamics within all sexual relations, but the potential obliviousness people (especially cis-men) have to their own privileges, which may entitle such sexual behaviours and attitudes and enable them to not see how wrong they are. But how can they admit the abuse of their power positions when we, the people around them, the media, the colleagues, the audiences choose to completely blindfold ourselves to such use and abuses?

Again we see myriad shocked, outraged, open mouths; the same mouths that could not see the horrors of Magdalen laundries, Tuam homes, institutionalised sexual abuse, clerical paedophilia. No one knew anything, so how can we be complicit? But never forget the trains to Auschwitz ran on wheels of people not seeing, on tracks of people not saying, fuelled by no one doing anything.

A Brazilian gay man came to work with me therapeutically because he couldn’t process how he was treated here in Ireland. On our gay scene he was continually objectified because of his nationality, with presumptions about him being a sex worker. If someone bought him a drink, he was then expected to ‘earn’ it. He was dismissed in our diverse community, with people saying he only wants to get married for a visa. There were mass presumptions about his sexual position, his preferences being determined by his race.

It is the same experience for other people of colour in our country, and for other groups. People online or in person don’t even understand just how racist it is to announce, “No Asians” or even “Asians only”. Likewise, LGBT+ folk who may not be as privileged in class or socio-economics are objectified, fetishised, belittled. New arrivals on the scene are dismissed as twinks, newbies or fresh meat. As for LGBTs living with disabilities, they are invisible.

Josh Rivers was recently removed from his post as editor of Gay Times after one month because of the racist, transphobic, homophobic and anti-Semitic tweets he had posted. He also belittled and dehumanised children with disabilities. He could not see, never mind own, how abusive his tweets, opinions, rants are.

“ On our gay scene he was continually objecti! ed because of his Brazilian nationality, with presumptions about him being a sex worker.

Only Al Porter can tell us what his position or privileges enabled him to believe.

In the sexual consumerism of LGBT+ lives, there are ‘wanted’ people who are desired, privileged, who control the conversations; and then there are the ‘unwanted’, the objects of derision, rejection, neglect and hate, who are spoken about or silenced.

Within the Spacey/Porter stories lurks something predatory that haunts too many of our same-sex sexual exchanges. We can internalise a belief that because we are homosexual, then this is our identity and homo-sex is what we should do. We have sex and aggressively are sexual not because we want to, but because we ‘have to’. We too often choose, and objectify people based on their gender, their bodies, their genitals, rather than on personalities, natures.

The men and women abused/misused/hurt within the narratives around Weinstein, Spacey and too many others, wanted something; not sex, or to be sexualised, they wanted recognition, advancement, to work, to live, to enjoy. They wanted to be human subjects not dehumanised objects. But their wants got lost, subsumed in the predatory wants of the Big Men, that too many of us want to be or have become.

Our internalised misogyny, racism, bigotry, classism, and prejudices dictate too much and for too long, not only how we see the world, but how we treat other people. Sex cannot be politically correct, but it should be politically sensitive.

If we are to evolve, to hold a community, to live equality, then how do we, with maturity, take responsibility for our complicity in the sexual objectification and dehumanisation of ourselves and others? Let us own our blindness, our prejudice and challenge it, firstly in ourselves, and then in others. Let us realise our privileges and not use our power over anyone in word, act or fuck.

Ray O’Neill is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist specialising in individual and relationship counselling. Call him on 086 828 0033