Identity Politics and Sexuality

Apologist Ravi Zacharias was very important to my understanding of life, his questions of origin, meaning, morality and destiny was transformational to how I built my life. He was as a matter of fact, one of the few people I actively followed. His broadcast ‘Let My People Think’ was extremely influential for my understanding of truth. For me, truth is the most important building block for a successful life and he had become my pathway to truth.

It was therefore shattering when RZIM issued a statement about allegations of sexual misconduct and abuse in connection with two day spas against him. It was even heart wrenching to read the Miller & Martin PLLC investigative report. Hard as it was, it was sadder that his legacy and life transforming teachings will now be questioned in the light of these revelations.

After these revelations in August of 2020, the bigger question for me was the questions of sexuality and how it has all through time become a subject of both shame and scandal. It is even more difficult to think that for any great legacy; a sexual life has the power to question everything.

I have in many instances shared my own sexual struggles on several platforms. Exposed to pornography at the age of eleven in JHS 1. As a ‘social recluse’ it did not take long for me to get addicted when I went through my first heartbreak around the age of twenty-one. Porn became my go to for many years. There were days I actively worked my way out but rejections made relapsing quiet frequent.

Over the years, it was obvious the trigger and underlying issues for me was childhood trauma and the many rejections I have had to deal with. My struggles however kept me alive and led me to channel my energies into many productive things. Like Paul, in those weakness I had found great strength.

Now to why I am writing this; LGBTQI. Lesbians, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex. This article began as a conversation with some work colleagues on the ongoing LGBT brouhaha. For a young man in his thirties ‘doing well’ as they like to say and unmarried I have gotten very interesting questions. Questions about my preferences. So I thought I will write about it.

Well to be clear, I love very intelligent, tall, extremely beautiful and well-statured ladies who are endowed with a significant bust. Well maybe that explains why I am still single. (Hahahaha, extremely high taste with low maintenance budget). I have become convinced with age that sexuality is not only a matter of preference but has become political. These ‘sexual political categories’ have taken form and sometimes has made us forgotten that these are grouping of people who have stories, struggling realities like all of us. Many people share common stories of predominant struggle and sometimes of years of failed recovery attempts for which reason a rebellion to ‘own’ their identity before they are exploited with such societal definitions of failings. The politics of sexuality thus only became rational and not only political so the individuals may be seen as human beings too.

At the heart truly of all of us is the quest to be seen and loved, the yearning to love and be accepted. Seen for who we truly are, even in the darkest moments, and yet accepted. Unfortunately, society can be cruel, cruel to a point where we use people’s deepest vulnerabilities against them, to further reject the very people for whom rejection had driven into these socially reprehensible acts. Society seems to find no measure in kindness or even an approach towards healing for the very things society itself may consider unacceptable.

I am the first to acknowledge that, the card of unbridled freedom in any society will lead to an absurdity, a chaos which will eventually make society ungovernable. If we are all allowed to identify as anything without a defining value standard, we will all be nothing, anything and everything at the same time. If a value system does not exist to protect the most vulnerable and most impressionable, what will become the normative value will be the preferences of the powerful and rich and not necessarily the most societal uplifting value.

Having said that society cannot be absorbingly libertarian without a valued objective, I also need to say society should learn kindness to help people deal through their issues. A structure of support which reaches out for the best in people remembering that, if we are all defined by our worst days, none of us will have any ‘goodness’ to hold on to. I will share three lesson that were helpful in my own personal struggles with the view that, readers, whether or not they may have any sexual struggle, can redefined origins, meaning, morality and destiny.

1. The journey towards destiny is a passion to pass on a better legacy. The destiny for each one of us is to be remembered for our good and positive contributions to humanity. Considering the fact that, sex is deemed a physiological need, as primary as food and water, how does one have a sexual preference that does not erode the perception of their positive contributions to society? I do not suggest that, there is one answer but my view is that, there is one pathway; Humility to be vulnerable. The problem with our age of sexual proliferation is that, many people who are struggling with all sorts of thing have the hubris to demand of others who may not find them acceptable to suck it up or they have a problem. The argument is made that; preference should not be subject to any standard of rationality. We have become a people of ‘I like what I like and you like what you like’, just deal with it. The struggle has even taken a rebellious nature and people in the minority get so obsessed with taking down the boundaries of sexual values against the better judgement of the majority in society. I think the approach for any person struggling with anything, sexually or otherwise is the humility to engage first with themselves and then with society, with a view to understand rather than to be understood. The magic lies in understanding, therein, perhaps is the keys to finding what is fundamental to all of us; to be loved, seen and accepted.

2. An objective moral code is important for societal definitions of meaning. My exposure to sex videos at eleven was an experience I can’t take back, but one I must reconcile in meaning. Why did I have to go through those experience of multiple rejections and how is that relevant to life now and the future? What may be sacred to each society may differ but disregarding that boundaries by which people construe meaning is an insult to that society. The argument that Africans should have no basis for disregarding sexual diversity because of slavery is the most insulting and reprehensible thing I have ever heard. The conclusion for each one of us should be how do we live our best lives within the constraints of values societies have come to cherish for many years. To the extent we wish those values amended, we must have basis in more than just ourselves but to what extent that those new values help society construe meaning. Societal norms exist to protect the best interest of the weak and vulnerable and so for the rich and powerful who in an economically unbalanced system like we have can afford to buy others into their preference, the real question should be to what extent is the society at large protected from the excess of power and wealth?

3. Who we wish to be is more important than who we were. Our lives are bigger than the sum of our sexual experiences. I have always taken particular interest in why a city was ever called Virginia. I subsequently discovered that it was Sir Walter Reihgley who named the islands he had found Virginia in honour of the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth the First. A name in honour of a woman who had devoted her life to country, sacrificing her very physiological need for the growth and progress of the British Values. The African has value to be valued and the discussions on sexuality should ordinarily not be the most imminent but at last we are here. The focus should be on the people we wish to become and not a generation caught up in piling sexual experiences yet unto emptiness.

With the growing influence of television in the era of sexual revolution in the 1960s ‘Blue Movie’ by Andy Warhol became mainstream. Sex and eroticism was portrayed by the media as the ultimate happiness and purpose for humanity. For a continent that was hungry, deprived and sex remaining a taboo subject, the rebellion appeal of hedonism can be consuming but the Gen X hippies of the USA for whom the sexual revolution was a big deal, they are described in somewhat sad terms; “a lost Generation who are shocking on the outside, unknowable on the inside.”

In conclusion, let us be minded of socially uplifting thoughts, that yet in our individual struggles our legacy shall not be that we lived for ourselves; consumed by individualism, with no commitment to advancing the best interest of our communities. We must therefore focus on our weakening educational system and become critical thinkers, open to questioning everything in humility, so by all means question sexuality but it should not be because one race said some sexual preferences was a good thing and thus we swallowed their preference to the disregard of our valued judgements.