If the early 21st century will be remembered for anything, it will be this: Moving past the conventional ideas of love and sex to explore new avenues of "interpersonal relationships" as an intellectual exercise, but being hopelessly paralyzed in real life when it comes to actually exploring beyond the narrow scope of relationships we have defined now.
We see it in politics and in our media every day. On one hand, we want to know what it is we’re missing. On the other hand, we’re terrified of what our fellows would think of us if they knew we harbored such fantasies.
First we have Joss Wedon (creator of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer") presenting us with the case of Willow, a girl gone from heterosexual to lesbian in the arc of a season (Buffy). But what a lot of people seem to miss is Joss’s insinuation that Willow didn’t get turned off of boys, even though her boyfriend Oz supposedly betrayed her by leaving without a word. In fact, the way I take the entire encounter, and a chance comment to her later girlfriend Kennedy, is that Willow’s shift to lesbianism happened because she fell in love with Tara, her first girlfriend. Love, not man hate, made Willow a lesbian. And even then, I find Joss’s take on the issue to be that if Willow later fell in love with a man, it would be okay. Because the whole thing isn’t about sex. It’s about love.
A point that was made in both the Buffy and Angel shows, first when Angel went evil after having sex with Buffy and experiencing true joy, but later when he has sex with a former flame, doesn’t turn evil because it was just sex and had nothing to do with love or happiness.
Now let’s forget homosexual, lesbian, and polygamous relationships. Let’s look at what the media (written and televised) is giving us. First we have Captain Jack Harkness, of Doctor Who and Torchwood fame, who is defined as the first omni-sexual being we’ve ever met. And I can believe it. The character is presented as a man who enjoys sex with any consenting (<-keyword here) adult of any species, human or other, female or male. It’s about two consenting adults enjoying a moment (or more) of pleasure for the purpose of pure enjoyment, no strings attached.
And finally we arrive at Stargate Universe. I must admit this one surprised me. It took me until last week to understand the implications of how this show presents the issue. We have a crew of humans trapped galaxies away from Earth, but able to communicate with the locals through the use of stones that transfer minds between bodies. Meaning you and I can swap bodies for an undetermined length of time. When reunited, SGU characters hook up with their loved ones and have sex with each other *using someone else’s body*.
How does paternity and child support work out if you use some other person’s body to have sex with your estranged husband and you get pregnant from that other person? (Hasn’t happened in the show, but I keep expecting it). Another issue that hasn’t been addressed is how the body donors feel about the trust violation issue. Is there even one or are we meant to assume that it’s expected that you would use my body to have sex with your significant other in such circumstances? I was beginning to despair about the show’s uncaring attitude about this, until I saw an episode two weeks ago in which one of the characters actually refused to have sex with a body swapped character, but it wasn’t for any reason other than he had widower issues that remained unresolved.
SGU definitely strikes me as Transhuman fiction. And there in lies another source of sexual and love related exploration. In Transhuman fiction, one is not necessarily constrained to any one body and people transcend to a state of existence where we are only minds to be transcribed into databanks, FTP’d across the universe and downloaded into new forms, whatever forms we may choose. Again, gender and physical appearances become meaningless.
Since fiction tends to be an exploration of humanity’s hopes, fears, and deepest dreams, does this mean that we’re ready for the next sexual revolution? Probably not. We’re still having issues getting past "don’t ask, don’t tell." I can’t count the number of stories I’ve read about banned proms due to same-sex partners, hate crimes against gays, and even violations of human rights against women whose only crime was to be born female in a society that doesn’t value them as highly as the men.
I’m not preaching a set of values here. I know where I stand on the issue and you have the right to your own opinion on the whole issue. I’m just pointing out the dichotomy between the stories we tell each other, and the way we treat each other. As writers, I think it is our duty to tell these stories as honestly (within the rules of our fiction) as we can and to let the readers decide where they fall on the issue. Let us not preach our own opinions, but simply explore the dreams our readers, and our evolving society, presents to us.
