ABSTRACT
Gore Vidal’s characteristic response to a mildly cheeky question amuses and perhaps jolts us because in our culture whom we have sex with matters. Gender, the social condition of being male or female, and sexuality, the cultural way of living out our bodily pleasures and desires, have become inextricably linked, with the result that crossing the boundary between proper masculine or feminine behaviour (that is, what is culturally defined as appropriate) sometimes seems the ultimate transgression. We still cannot think about sexuality without taking into account gender; or, to put it more generally, the elaborate facade of sexuality has in large part been built upon the assumption of fundamental differences between men and women, and of male dominance over women. The genital and reproductive distinctions between biological men and biological women have been read not only as a necessary but also as a sufficient explanation for different sexual needs and desires. They appear as the most basic distinctions between peoples, deeply rooted in our ‘animal natures’.
