OnionBob

Do you know anything about how language works? It is impossible to "hijack" a word. A word means simply whatever most people believe it to mean. There is no point in the life of any language where it was at a stage at which it was "perfect". Language changes daily, and despite stabilisations necessary for formal writing, these changes are not imposed from above, below, or anywhere else, but develop as the need for new words or semantic shifts arises. The dictionary, for instance, does not prescribe the meanings of words, it is a descriptive document of a general concensus. The word "gay" used to mean one thing, and now it means something else. It was not hijacked, life has just changed. A hundred years ago a "computer" was generally understood to mean any person involved in the analysis or interpretation of data. That doesn't mean that our understanding of the term "computer" is wrong today, just that its meaning has changed. In fact if anything, the old terms are "less correct" due to their almost total irrelevance in contemporary society. By the way, did you know that Alan Turing was gay? I wonder if he had been straight, and spent his time procreating and raising kids, whether he would have still theorised the universal turing machine which became the basis for almost all microprocessors, including of course the computer you are using right now.

That stuff about the lions betrays another widely held myth, that somehow a social acceptance of homosexuality in some way endangers heterosexual boundaries and relationships, and that if we are "too accepting" of homosexuality it will just take over. If you truly believe that homosexuality is entirely genetic, how could it possibly become as "widespread" as you describe? No new lions would be being produced with what you describe as the "flaw". It's complete lunacy. My accusation of your homophobia is based entirely on your constant insistence on making a value judgement on homosexuality which is not based on anything but complete nonsense (and also your constant employment of horrifically offensive terms and phrases, hurriedly qualified with "WELL THAT'S NOT ME SAYING THAT UHH THAT'S WHAT PEOPLE THOUGHT IN THE PAST"). So far you have not convincingly persuaded me that homosexuality is anything but just another feature of human embodiment. If the basis of its being a "genetic flaw" is simply that "if everyone was homosexual life would stop" it's time for you to completely reassess your position. That simply isn't the case, it's not "luck" that only a small percentage of people are homosexual; if you believe that it is a genetic condition then it's built into the very structure of evolution as you are supposed to understand and espouse it (but I am increasingly convinced that you do not). If homosexuality were entirely genetic, it would be impossible for it ever to become a prevalent mode of embodiment because it could not propagate. You say that homosexuality has no "purpose" in evolution, but evolution is not a purpose-driven system. Nothing has a "purpose" in evolution, but evolution is often remapped onto narratives of western progress, which have a teleological end point to which there is a conscious control and acceleration. If it is cultural, then your entire appeal to evolution is completely and fundamentally irrelevant. Either way, as far as I can see your entire argument falls apart.

Yes you do. Fortunately it does not take much academic training to read the well-hidden nuance in the term "freak". No it hasn't. There's a couple of very simple reasons why this does not work. First and foremost is that it is a rather vague stereotype of ancient classical society often deployed but rarely backed up with any kind of real evidence. Yes, bisexuality is seen in ancient roman and greek cultural texts. But who says it was more "widespread" (again, a charged term of supplementarity) then than it is now? Who says it was more common for people to be bisexual than heterosexual (or homosexual)? And perhaps people weren't as miserable and repressive then, and those people who were bisexual were able to express it without some hideous little troll coming along and screaming at them for being in some way unnatural? Why is homosexuality detrimental? The only thing that makes homosexuality detrimental is the network of social structures positioning it as an Other to be repressed through whatever means necessary, whether that be through religious narratives, or dogmatic, reductivist secular popular scientism. In other words, there is no real reason why homosexuality should be considered detrimental to society or to individuals other than the fact that gay people have to put up with a lot of shit from people who for some reason or other think that their sexuality is in some way invalid. So in an "ideal world" homosexuality wouldn't exist - don't you think that a pluralism of life experiences and narratives makes for a more interesting world? You might want to consider reassessing your rather underdeveloped and reduced understanding of evolution, especially in your use of it to justify some quite breathtakingly blinkered social prejudices. Maybe so, but your rather viciously homophobic rhetoric elsewhere in the thread makes it clear that you don't particularly have to be told twice to have a go at recreating those kinds of perceptions. Also, I will gently reiterate once more - no "genetic reason" for homosexuality has been "discovered". Maybe some suggestions have been found in genetics - at most - but I challenge you to find a good source on a piece of research that proves categorically that what you say is true, and is acknowledged by the medical, academic and lay communities as a whole. You will not find one. Nobody has ever proven either way what is "the cause" of a person's sexuality, and I heartily recommend you read up on the plethora of information that has been written in the last twenty or thirty years on the various ways in which sexuality and gender is or is not instantiated, performed, enacted, or naturalised. There are plenty of more complex ways of interrogating the sexuality debate out there, and indeed the divide between nature and culture, which has arguably imploded and been made unstable by a lot of theoretical and scientific propositions. You just have to bother to read them.

Right. So it's biological reductivism all the way. Essentialism - that is, the appeal to some kind of essential "whatness" of a given entity (to paraphrase Diana Fuss, I think) - has often been deployed to combat discrimination against gay people. However your post is a great example of the dangers of employing it. By appealing to one of the arch scientific quasi-spiritual narratives, in this case evolution, those seeking to denigrate or devalue homosexuality in some way are able to strategically position it as some kind of genetic anomaly. The truth is that despite what you claim in your earlier post, there is no universally accepted "proven cause" for homosexuality in the same way there is no proven cause for almost any other matter of embodied experience, be it schizophrenia, cancer or liking red sweaters (interestingly homosexuality is often scientifically investigated in the way same way that a disease might be, which is what invited the first two parallels I just deployed). Genetics probably comes into it, but there is a vast network of micro and macrosociological structures implicated in the development of sexuality and expressions of that sexuality. This does not mean, however, that sexuality is something that is necessarily a matter of choice, and I find it staggering to believe that someone supposedly gifted with some kind of intelligence, enough to operate a computer to some degree of skill, can believe the idea that someone can just choose to become, for instance, bisexual. If you aren't attracted to someone, you aren't. It's that simple. If you've been straight all your life, you're no more likely to suddenly start wanting to sleep with men any more than you're likely to suddenly develop a sexual preference for cupboard doors or car windshields. You might come to terms with a a latent or repressed desire at a later point in your life, one that is not, i stress again, necessarily rooted in some kind of basic biological instantiation, but you will not create one from some kind of cartesian, objective and rational choice, maybe by leafing through gay porn in the same way you might read copies of What Hi-Fi? before you go out to buy a new stereo. Furthermore, an appeal to evolution and the earlier reference to homosexuals as "freaks" of evolution is curious. If you believe that the teleology of evolution is entirely arborial and linear, and that it accelerates towards some kind of (infinitely receding) "perfect" end, and that homosexuality is merely an unsuccessful footnote to the development of the species, you're forgetting that we do not live in a culture in which eugenic control of the right to reproduce is the only thing that affects what is contributive to the "greater good". You're basically implying that the only people who contribute to society are people who have children. In some societies and in some crowded restaurants I'd go as far to say that the opposite is true. There are plenty of gay people in history who have contributed to society and the richness of your life without having to squeeze out any kids. So here's a new question for you: why is it that only "depraved weirdos" want to "fuck each other in the ass"? What makes the desire to do that depraved? What makes those who do it weirdos? Here's a hint: you can't appeal to religion to justify this one. You're on your own. And here's another hint: just because sexual activity that doesn't contribute to procreation is not "furthering the propagation of the species" doesn't make it somehow wrong. I'm sure you wouldn't turn down a blowjob any time fast. Unless, of course, it was from a guy.

Hi. Please define these terms for me, I'm not quite sure I understand your argument. 1. "Nature". 2. "Point", as in "the point of any species". 3. "Lifestyle choice". Thanks in advance.