There is an assumption running in our midst that sex can be cordoned off as some sort of transcendent phenomenon, a pure expression of nature that is, or ought to be, innocent of politics and commercial exchange. 34
"Why are you queer?" is less a question than a challenge to one's civil rights. One is not permitted to answer casually and say, "Because it feels good" or "Because no one is stopping me." One must look desperately to scientific and religious theories that are often no more plausible than Schreiber's God. Like Schreiber, one finds oneself playing paranoid martyr and paranoid detective. One says: I can't help it. Because God loves me. Because the devil is real. It was my mother, my father, my brother, my teacher, the man next door. It was a fatal book I read once. It's hormonal. It's in my genes. I have a teeny neeny hypothalamus and it keeps whispering in my ear, "It must really be rather pleasant to be a woman succumbing to intercourse." Why do you ask?