I’ve been a huge James Franco fan, but frankly, I’m more than a little bored and annoyed at this cock teasing ego centric prick. Sure I think he is talented, and sure I find him inspirational as an artist. But when it comes to understanding sexual orientation, the guy is either an ass, just plain stupid, or some combination of both. I really hope he is straight, because I would expect a queer person who may be gay to be a little smarter about the intersection and complexity where orientation, attraction, identity, and expression come into contact, which we often refer to as sexuality.

“Well, I like to think that I’m gay in my art and straight in my life,” he told Four Two Nine magazine. “Although, I’m also gay in my life up to the point of intercourse, and then you could say I’m straight.”

Or maybe that is precisely his point, and one of the reasons I’m a fan, even if it annoys me. The general culture and so many drooling gays, only seem to care about tagging this one cute dude as gay, as if pigeonholing him that way means something.

I believe one reason Culture seems to care so much about how a person identifies is because Culture can quite caring to get to know a person once they have objectified him or her enough and fit them into a tidy little box.

But I’m not sure that’s it at all.  He also says:

“So I guess it depends on how you define gay. If it means whom you have sex with, I guess I’m straight. In the twenties and thirties, they used to define homosexuality by how you acted and not by whom you slept with. Sailors would fuck guys all the time, but as long as they behaved in masculine ways, they weren’t considered gay,”

This leads me to think he has identity (how a person self identifies), orientation (one’s biological/organic predisposition), and expression (one’s gender presentation in relation to gender norms) mixed up and treating them s if they are one and the same thing. Nothing could be further from the truth historically or in today’s world.

At least Franco is being pretty direct about his sexual activity, which he deems as straight. But note he doesn’t say he sleeps with or has intercourse with women. Is he claiming to be like a sailor from the ’30’s? Or is he making an insinuation about who he has sex with?

Either way, why the heck can’t he help out and say that sexuality is fluid and let go a tired and outdated notion that sexuality is about “straight” or “gay.” Unless his real purpose is just to be a cock tease?

via Attitude Magazine » James Franco on his sexuality: ‘I guess it depends how you define gay’.