An editor's notes on Deviance

When talking about sexual orientation, it has become something of a platitude to refer to everyone as being a 'shade of grey'. It is quite literally a dull way to look at the question, but there is certainly some truth in it. I'll back up that 'certainly' because, after a century of becoming accustomed to the technicolour perspectives of psychoanalysis - all repressed desires and misplaced fantasies - it can be easy to forget that logic can still teach us certain things.

It is commonly acknowledged (that's right, I'm kicking off my argument on the sandy shores of received wisdom)... It is commonly acknowledged that to be sexy you have to feel sexy. Even if we accept that 'feeling sexy' is a slightly vague state to describe, I think most of us would agree with that condition (I know it applies to me). Now, in order to feel sexy you clearly have to have a working knowledge of what is sexy about your own sex, whether it's physical, emotional, intellectual, or whatever. So it seems to me that there is always an element of homosexuality inherent in sexuality: you can be straight as a ruler but the ruler necessarily has two sides. Sexuality exists in at least three dimensions, like rulers but more fun.

Where am I going with this? Well, the discursive value of all sexuality was one of the reasons we decided to update Nine's brilliant LGBT section to a more general sexuality and gender section called Deviance. That, and a belief that even the broadly accepted acronym LGBT falls short of being descriptive enough. You can probably infer from that title, then, that we consider everyone to be, to a certain extent, a deviant. We hope you have mixed feelings about that - total accord wouldn't do anyone any good - and we will endeavour to keep the flow of topics challenging and interesting.