When I became Bat Mitzvah twenty-mumblemumble years ago*, I was given a certificate by my synagogue to commemorate the occasion. At the bottom, there was a line that has been burned in my brain ever since: “All the rest is commentary. Now go and study.”
If you are also Jewish, you’re likely familiar with this line; if you’re not, it’s a reference to a story about Rabbi Hillel**. I’ll spare you the set up, but the conclusion is Hillel saying this: “That which is hateful unto you, do not do to your neighbor. This is the whole of the Torah; the rest is commentary.”
It’s a line that I have been thinking about a lot recently, as I sit down every day to pen essays for this Bisexual Newsletter™️. On some level it feels a little silly, writing essay after essay after essay all essentially making the same point: the joy you feel when you are with someone(s) who makes you happy, in the way that makes you happy, is enough, there is no justification needed beyond that. And yet, in the same way that the core principle of “Don’t be a dick to other people” still manages to justify five books of the Torah as well as the Talmud and so much more, the basic — very basic! — statement that your happiness matters more than some social construct of How Human Sexuality Works™️, necessitates essay after essay to deconstruct, well, all the social constructs that keep so many of us from truly embodying that very, very basic fact.
It’s one of my core beliefs that the majority of us are all walking around spouting beliefs that we nominally agree with but have not fully embraced for ourselves on any substantial level. How many times have you nodded along to some seminar on body positivity, only to go home and obsess about your own “flawed” figure? It is one thing to know, intellectually, that beauty standards are bogus and a range of bodies are beautiful. It’s an entirely different task to believe that you, personally, have worth even if your body doesn’t meet some arbitrary standard of “perfection.”
I think it’s a similar phenomenon with the point I am trying to communicate through this newsletter. If I asked you if you believed that people should prioritize their happiness over arbitrary identity labels, if they should pursue the love and sex that feels physically and emotionally fulfilling for them, you would, undoubtedly, say yes. But think about yourself, and your sexual desires and experiences, and how you feel about them: do you actually believe that your happiness with your partner(s) is an end unto itself? Are you truly free from that tiny little voice that insists that you’re somehow not enough, that however you are doing your sexuality and identity, you are doing it wrong? For many of you, the answer is assuredly no — not through any fault of your own, but because so much work has been put into to building an invisible architecture to block you from reaching that stupid, basic little truth.
And so, you know, that’s why I’m coming back here, day after day, writing newsletter after newsletter about the things we think, or don’t even realize we think, about bisexuality, about the conscious and unconscious biases that prevent so many of us from actually being happy. “Your joy is what matters most” may be a truly basic statement, and yet it takes page after page after page of writing, takes so much time and emotional work, to actually be able to understand it on a soul deep level.
So, yes, this is my point with The B+ Squad: The sexual and romantic relationships that make you feel fulfilled are more important than any “rules” about who you should or should fuck and/or date. That’s the whole of it, the rest is commentary.
Now go and study.
* Just kidding, it was twenty-seven years ago, I don’t care if people know that I’m forty
** Yes, Hillel, the Jewish campus organization, is named after a famous rabbi