The new sexual revolution

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[/audioplayer]The first thing you need to know about the new sexual revolution isn’t how to do it: it’s how to talk it. Confining yourself to terms such as straight, gay and bisexual — which once, perhaps, covered most of what you thought you needed to know about a person’s orientation — is indicative of adherence to a ‘binary’ view of sexuality. It is fast becoming the equivalent of walking around in plus-fours, peering at human desire through a monocle.

These days, people — particularly those in their teens and twenties — are declaring themselves ‘pansexual’, ‘genderfluid’ and ‘genderqueer,’ which means they won’t be confined to the old folks’ dreary, black-and-white view of attraction or gender. Take Miley Cyrus, for example, the US pop singer and former child star of Disney’s Hannah Montana. Up until recently, the adult Cyrus might chiefly have been defined as a roaring exhibitionist. On one memorable occasion in 2013, her suggestive gyrations with a giant foam hand cowed even the confidently sleazy pop star Robin Thicke: next to Miley onstage at the Video Music Awards, he gradually took on the demeanour of an anxious Edinburgh dowager.

Then, last August, Cyrus came out as ‘pansexual’: defined as an attraction ‘towards people of any sex or gender identity’, including those who are ‘transgender’ or ‘genderqueer’. A transgender person, as many now know, is someone who does not identify with their biological sex, and wishes instead to unite their form with their feelings — for example Caitlyn Jenner, the former US Olympic athlete once known as Bruce; or Kellie Maloney, originally the boxing promoter Frank. Although both were men who became women, the travel can of course be in either direction.