WOW and homo-/bisexuality

[Domarius]

Ishtvan, were your posts directed at anyone in particular, or were you just haveing a general rant against the "conditioning" theory?

 

 

On a different note, personally I think anything can cause it. Genetics, OR conditioning. And either of those things might just as likely fail as well. There's no telling how people will deal with things.

[sparhawk]

Can I choose away that gut reaction at this point in my life? No. That makes it hard for me to believe that gays can just choose to be not-gay if they want.

 

You can train it like anything else. I'm sure that you might be able to enjoy and even desire it after some time, but that depends on your contact and your perception of it.

 

Is it possible that my gut aversion to sexing the same sex was imprinted by society and upbringing? Maybe, but I don't remember ever thinking that men were hot and then having someone tell me that was wrong.

 

I remeber that I alerady was attracted to older woman at the age of 3-4. The earliest I can remember. I doubt that there was much of an outside influence for this, but if it was I don't know it anyway. So does this mean that I have been molested by an older woman (I wish I were ).

 

Maybe you could argue that my parents had a heterosexual relationship, so I was exposed to that as the "norm" from the start, but that seems like a pretty weak argument.

 

Definitely. Especially when you consider that there seems to be a higher chance for homosexuality in families with a lot of children (of both sex).

[OrbWeaver]

You can train it like anything else. I'm sure that you might be able to enjoy and even desire it after some time, but that depends on your contact and your perception of it.

 

They could probably train themselves to be bisexual, but not to be non-gay.

 

There are plenty of examples (ancient Greece etc) of people being conditioned to ADD sexual desires, but I have never heard of a successful example of conditioning AGAINST a desire (although it can be wilfully controlled or suppressed in some cases).

[sparhawk]

That was I meant.

[Ishtvan]

Ishtvan, were your posts directed at anyone in particular, or were you just haveing a general rant against the "conditioning" theory?

 

General rant, and maybe not quite a rant because I didn't really come to any conclusion.

 

I think OrbWeaver makes a good point that you can't really train yourself to stop liking the sex that you naturally like.

 

I don't have evidence to back this up, but personally I think animals (which includes us) have genetic variation in what they're aroused by. If we all found exactly the same traits arousing, that would be bad for variety in the species since we'd only mate with members with those traits, and they might not necessarily be traits that are good for survival. I think homosexuality, fetishes, etc are just consequences of this random genetic variation in things we're aroused by. Not to say that psychological development plays no role, since the brain does change physically as we experience stuff, but it definitely seems that some people are more predisposed to be aroused by something than others.

[russkiy_og]

lol

[oDDity]

I think the "gay conditioning" stuff is basically an attempt by the homophobics to deny that homosexuality has any kind of natural and/or genetic basis, as this would undermine their superstitious belief that homosexuality is "unnatural" and "wrong".

 

That doesn't help their case much.

Proving it's 'natural' doesn't necessarily mean it's good or right. Since nature works on a system of random mutation, and the vast majority of those mutations are not benefiical , and even detrimental to the unlucky recipient. Homosexuality certianly has been detrimental to many men who've been beaten up, put in jail, or killed for it, and you could never argue that it's more[/]i beneficial to be gay than straight. so the net result is negative.

[Domarius]

I guess it's just wrong to be black too.

[OrbWeaver]

That doesn't help their case much.

 

There is not much that can. Their case is based on superstition which is not supported by any rational argument

 

Proving it's 'natural' doesn't necessarily mean it's good or right. Since nature works on a system of random mutation, and the vast majority of those mutations are not benefiical , and even detrimental to the unlucky recipient. Homosexuality certianly has been detrimental to many men who've been beaten up, put in jail, or killed for it, and you could never argue that it's more[/]i beneficial to be gay than straight. so the net result is negative.

 

I was not suggesting that there is some evolutionary advantage to homosexuality. I am fairly sure it is little more than random chance, as you say, but concern for evolution is not what inspires the invective. In fact, the sort of person who rants about the evils of homosexuality is usually the same sort of person that believes the world was created in six days.

[demagogue]

Don't have time to add much, certainly not on the big question of the naturalism-ethics connection, which is hard enough in abstract. But it reminds me of an article, so I'll throw it out there:

 

The one study I read on the possible genetic-basis of homosexuality actually made a pretty good case ... It first did a cross-cultural/species and historical study and was trying to make the case that among various cultures, throughout history, and shared by our primate relatives, homosexual dispositions hit about 10% of the population (more evidently within the most open countries and ones with good statistics). Then it made the case that there's a number of behavioral traits that fit a very similar pattern, the most noticable being left handedness. Then it told the Mendel story; behaviroal dispositions of this pattern are usually halved-resessive traits. That is, there's a dominant trait for righthandedness (and hetrosexuality, it was arguing), and then there's a recessive trait that means you don't have a fixed orientation, but small developmental idiosyncracies push the orientation in one direction or another basically by chance. So in a Mendel diagram, for 75% of the population the dominant gene trumps; and for the remaining 25%, roughly 1/2 go hetro, 1/2 go homo (12.5%), but with a good bit of fuzziness or ambivalence in between, so 5% is maybe ambivalent, cutting away from the 12.5 number, and of course social pressures push the number further, the amount depending on the society. And then after all of this it got into differences in brain development and morphology between the populations, which then allowed it to propose the actual mechanism. There's already good evidence for this for lefthandedness, and it was arguing that homosexuality was in the same category of genetic basis (but not modality of behavior, of course; two totally different systems here).

 

Anyway, this was the biological case, which (the thinking is) just add up to certian hard-wired phenomenological responses to certain stims (e.g., large breasts vs broad shoulders triggering a reflexive LIP activation directing your eyes to look at it before you can stop yourself, which by the way is more hardwired than people suspect; ganglions even right behind the retna, that is, really low level, have been noted to fire for certain high level features like faces, plants, animal profiles, tits, etc.). That leaves a lot of the more behaviorally complex stuff and all the issues that go with it totally up in the air, subject to conscious control and thus social influences, culture, "training", etc., which is a whole other bag of worms, of course.

Edited May 23, 2006 by demagogue

[Unskilledlaborer]

I KNOW ITS CRUDE BUT I THINK THAT THIS GAY THING IS THE SAME AS "DOG HEARS BELL DOG START TO SALIVATE"

[Domarius]

Heh, you're refering to the "classic conditioning" theory.

[demagogue]

Pfft, not sure you're even taking yourself seriously, much less expect us to. No need to shout, though.

 

Pavlov didn't age well ... not even reflexes are very well explained by conditioning theory, much less behavior this high up the chain. Plus, have you ever seen gay kids ... seriously, it's apparent by like 3-5 years old. By 2nd grade there's no doubt. And they'll have siblings with the same environment. So what are they supposed to be conditioned by?

[oDDity]

Like I've bben saying from page 1.

You are born either hetero or homo or bi, but you can also be conditioned into bisexuality if you were bron plain homo or hetero.

The bottom line is that you cannot be condiitoned to not find women attractive if you were born heterosexual (well ok, you probably could, but it would require a pretty heavy duty and deliberate mindfuck in your early childhood for a large period of time, not something that would arise in a normal environment)

[obscurus]

OK, I'm just gonna dive in with my $0.02 here.

 

Humans are sexual, and any prefix you wish to add to that is largely and artificial and imaginary construct that does not reflect reality (oviously this excludes the 5% or so of the population who are asexual (no interest in sex of any sort with anything)).

 

Sex in humans, as it is in quite a few other species, is secondarily for reproduction, and is primarily a form of social bonding behaviour.

Evolution often results in one adaptation being co-opted into a new function like this.

Males of most species are generally not that fussed over their outlet for their sexual urges - if a female is not available, males (of most mammalian species at least) will act on their urges with the nearest next best thing, if the urge is overwhelming.

 

Dolphins (particularly males)for example, are highly sexual and will hump just about anything, animate or otherwise, for no apparent reason.

 

There are some types of invertebrates that actually are homosexual and mate: for a few species of beetle for example, it is usual for males to mate with each other. Their sperm mixes in their body, and when one of these males eventually mates with a female, that female will recieve the sperm of several males, most of which were almost exclusively homosexual.

 

People can be omnisexual, asexual, homosexual heterosexual, bisexual etc, and for the most part this is a result of a combination of genetics, the hormonal environment they were in as a foetus, and to a lesser degree their upbringing.

 

When someone claims they are exclusively gay or straight, I normally assume they are lying - humans are sexual omnivores at their core, and while we have our preferences, they are not set in stone by any means. Quite a lot of men who would claim to be gay have still fathered children naturally - maybe they just thing of some naked bloke while they are knocking up females, but very few people, whether they are prepared to admit it or not, are really that inflexible when it comes to getting their rocks off.

 

Some people don't seem to understand what the word "preference" means. It does not have any implicit connotations of exclusivity contained in it.

[oDDity]

You're confusing raw sex with sexuality.

Ok, if some guy was desperate and starved of sex for a long time, like in a prison situation, he may end up getting a blowjob of some other guy, but that would not make him a homosexual, just like eating the odd lettuce doesn't make him a vegetarian.

Wheter you happen to be using your hand, a vagina, or a mouth, is all academic really.

In order to be truly homosexual, you have to be able to fall in love with a man, have a full relationship with him, and not be able to do that with women. It's not just a simple matter of what you happen to be sticking your cock into, that's only part of it, becasue you don't necessarily have to have any emotional feelings for the person you happen to be humping, you can just be using them as a convenient aid to masturbation.

[obscurus]

You're confusing raw sex with sexuality.

Ok, if some guy was desperate and starved of sex for a long time, like in a prison situation, he may end up getting a blowjob of some other guy, but that would not make him a homosexual, just like eating the odd lettuce doesn't make him a vegetarian.

Wheter you happen to be using your hand, a vagina, or a mouth, is all academic really.

In order to be truly homosexual, you have to be able to fall in love with a man, have a full relationship with him, and not be able to do that with women. It's not just a simple matter of what you happen to be sticking your cock into, that's only part of it, becasue you don't necessarily have to have any emotional feelings for the person you happen to be humping, you can just be using them as a convenient aid to masturbation.

 

 

You have kind of missed the point there. there are no true homosexuals or heterosexuals - human sexuality an dbehaviour is too plastic for such absolutes as you have described. Humans are sexual, period. Any prefix you add to it is essentially irrelevant. Previously hetero identifying men in prisons frequently form deep emotional and sexual relationships with their cellmates - it extends far beyond the odd blowjob, and upon release they may or may not seek out relationships with women again.

Regardless of whether you are talking about an emotinally intimate long term relationship or raw sex it makes little difference. Humans are sexual, social beings, and the two are rarely easily separated. Is a man who has a long term marriage with a woman, but only has sex with men gay or straight, or is he bi in an unusual way? Relationships are rarely that simple. Or a man who has an extremely intimate relationship with another man, but who seeks out sex with women? People seek different things out of different relationships, and rarely are they so cut and dried. Statistically, exclusively homosexual realtionships are very seldom long-term or monogamous, even less so for lesbians than gay men, but this always depends on the individuals involved.

 

 

Personally, I don't care how people wish to define their sexuality, although I do find it irritating when people feel the need to flaunt and parade their sexuality (why people feel the need to have gay and lesbian mardi gras is beyond me). I choose to ignore labels such as "gay" or "straight" when dealing with people, as such information is almost always entirely irrelevent to me, and I just don't care.

[Skol]

.02c

I'm gay. So this is based on my experience and reasoning, as opposed to just assumption and reasoning.

 

First thing I'd like to argue is this dualist crap that there is pure homosexuality and pure heterosexuality. I reckon we can agree that no-one is perfectly black, and there is no perfect gendered male (intead of genetic male, obviously). In this same way, there is no perfect homosexual, and I can vouch for that. This idea of perfection is an abstraction best left abstracted; to reify it into some essence is ridiculous. To say that gay men and women are absolutely attracted to respective men and women denies them as emotional and reasoning people, perfectly capable of having sex with the opposite sex, and what grosses them out is not some weird and impossible imperative driving them towards this emotion, but its conflict with their perceived identity. The same can be said of straight men and women. In other words, you can identify with this abstraction (gay & straight), but you can never possess it.

 

Of course, the above argument appears to assume that ultimately there is a choice being made on orientation (hence nurture). No. No-one voluntarily chooses to be homosexual, and I don't think anyone in here is dumb enough to argue that. I do not know, and I think very few people know, why we are homosexual. I'm not going to argue this, because I don't find it worth dissecting, like so many people do.

 

Why is it worth dissecting? You can argue me on everything I said before this, but if you cannot supply a reasoning for this answer, all your arguments will be attacking strawmen. It's what has led to this discussion, and all discussions before it. It is central.

[oDDity]

Everthing is worth dissecting. Understanding what makes us tick is an essential step in changing and fixing it when it's broken.

(I'm not saying homosexuals are broken humans that need to be fixed, I mean our brain and body in general)

 

I would like to hear theories as to why homosexuality has been so universially loathed and despised, forbidden and taboo, punishable by death or imprisionment in the vast majotiy of cultures throughout history (with a few exceptions that prove the rule)

If it is such totally normal and natural behaviour, and we're all closest queers as some people would have us beleive, then why should this have been the case?

Why weren't these 'normal, natural urges that we all have' accepted as such?

[sparhawk]

Control, struggling for power, etc. There are all kind of reasons to pervert some percieved 'missbehaviour' and direct the stupid masses at them. It helps to divert from more actual problems.

[oDDity]

Control, struggling for power, etc. There are all kind of reasons to pervert some percieved 'missbehaviour' and direct the stupid masses at them. It helps to divert from more actual problems.

 

Yeah, that would explain a few occurances in some societies, but why did it happen in almost every culture in history? It can only because of some innate human instinct against homosexuality. That can only mean that it isn't normal or natural behaviour, if anything, distaste for homosexuality is normal and natural.

It's no good blaming religion either, religion didn't start a vendetta against homosexuals, the comandments or rules in religious texts are derived from moral codes that already existed in societies.

[OrbWeaver]

It can only because of some innate human instinct against homosexuality.

 

Not homosexuality specifically, there is a strong human instinct against anything unusual or different. This is where most forms of prejudice come from, whether it's homophobia, racism, fear of people with "strange" disabilities or whatever.

 

That can only mean that it isn't normal or natural behaviour, if anything, distaste for homosexuality is normal and natural.

 

It is certainly not "normal", as far as statistics is concerned, but that doesn't make it unnatural. Similarly, a dislike of homosexuality is natural in the same way that human aggression is natural, although this obviously cannot be used to justify acceptance of it in a modern society.

[sparhawk]

Yeah, that would explain a few occurances in some societies, but why did it happen in almost every culture in history? It can only because of some innate human instinct against homosexuality.

 

Not really. Focussing on weaker parties is deeply ingrained, because we are social beings no matter how you view it. Not sticking out of your peers is very important. I know that "subsocieties" exist which claim to try to be 'different' but among them they are still similar to each other as a group. Having some characteristics that can be singled out as being 'different' is quite uesefull for all kind of purposes and it works n both directions. For integration and for deintegration as well. Depends on which side you are on and what goal you try to achieve.

 

In fact if the differences are not noticable enough, then the agression towards perceived or claimed 'differences; is even worse, than for clearly distuinguishable groups. The nice thing is that this concept works on all levels. It doesn't really matter what you use for differentation. It can be religion, mishshaped bodyparts, ownership of something, not owning something, etc. Almost everything can be used for defining a group.

[oDDity]

My point is that if homosexuality was as 'normal' or widespread as some people like to claim, then it would be widely accepted, homosexuals wouldn't be a minority in the first place. So, obviously homosexuality is not a normal thing, it's a rare and abnormal practice, that's why they were singled out as different in the first place.

THe reason I'm labouring that point, is because some people seem to think that homosexuality is actually normal behaviour, but most poeple are afraid to admit to it.

I don't see how a situation like that could have arisen, where everyone has homosexual feelings, but represses them, and the few who don't are bullied by everyone else.

I think the word 'natural' should be ignored entirely, since it doesn't imply anything about the subject matter, it doesn't mean it's wholesome or should be tolerated.

[Gildoran]

@Oddity: I figure it's reasonable to assume that most people have sexual urges (hetero, whatever) - and yet puritanical beliefs that people should deny their urges came into existance despite that. That seems to me like a counter-example to what you just said.