Postmodernization of Sex and Gender

¶ … Postmodernization of Sex and Gender" by William Simon

According to William Simon, one of the gifts postmodernism can potentially give to our culture is its stress upon the need to question our norms regarding sexuality and gender. As other aspects of human character have been called into question (Simon does not name these other aspects, but perhaps he means ethnicity, race, and nationality), more than ever before, our society has come to value sex and gender as a means of establishing identity, to the detriment of society and human psychological health. Really, rather than an aspect of identity that is extrinsic to society, Simon suggests that sexuality is very likely one of the most meaning-dependant aspects of human behavior.

There are many reasons for being sexual, and all are dependant upon social relationships, not something that arises from the interior 'self.' The policing of sexuality by culture that has been enabled by this linking of sexual behavior with identity has resulted in self-scrutiny and anxiety over their behavior because of its supposed 'universality' and equal importance for all individuals. By no longer linking identity with sexuality, sexual behavior will hopefully grow more flexible, fluid, and sexual categories of identity will no longer be as confining as they are at present.

Simon makes some excellent points as to how linking sexuality and identity is not universal across all cultures, but is something that is a product of the 19th and 20th century and its obsession with psychoanalysis. However, he only provides one specific example of how in many other cultures, people are not solely homosexual or heterosexual, but engage in a wide variety of behaviors that are not tied to a fixed social and personal identity. Also, it is difficult to conceive of how Western society will look in the projected, postmodern future, given that sexuality and identity have been conjoined in the popular imagination for so long. What would society really look like, if a postmodern idea of sexuality became the norm? Simon says that things will be better, and gender, social status, and even age will be less of a determinant of potential relationships, but provides no evidence of how this will become the reality of the future. Is it not possible that once gender and sexuality have become 'policed' categories it is impossible to go back, whatever the intellectual influence of postmodernism may create in the future? Also, even if gender becomes less of a barrier in creating sexual relationships in the future, why would barriers of class or age also become easier to transgress?