I certainly didn’t accuse you of being anti-gay, and I’m sorry if my replies made it seem that way. On the other hand, don’t you feel that your heterosexuality has anything to do with social pressure? In a society where you were completely free to follow your desires wrt sexuality, you would have no desire to even seek out a same-sex partner one time? It might not have, and that’s okay; heterosexuality isn’t an invalid orientation or anything. But I think the amount of people who would be willing to experiment would certainly go up, and there would be a large bisexual majority.
Because I really think that sex-based attraction is a false construction. Gender (or gender expression)-based, yeah, that makes sense. I am only attracted to masculine people and while that includes a lot of people with penises it doesn’t seem as false a division as separating people by their genitals. And I think that in a sex-blind society there would be a lot more people choosing their partners by gender expression (along with stuff like personality, of course) instead of sex, and it would make a lot more sense. Yet another reason to banish the concept of orientation? Or at least to reorganize it along non-physical lines?
I believe gender identity is real, innate, immutable.* Not just a delusion. Sexual orientation follows from that. I also accept the reality of individuals having a particular sexual orientation. Sure, bodies are just bodies, erectile tissue gets stimulated anyhow. That isn’t sexuality! That’s sex! Sexuality involves the mind, heart, the soul, the spirit, all that fuzzy metaphysical stuff that scientists don’t deal with but poets and philosophers do. Sexuality is one type of a human heart’s response to another human heart, with the body’s desires included, and usually it tends to be gender-based. Without including the mysteries of the human heart and gender identity, there is no sexual orientation.
*I don’t mean to imply by that statement that gender identity is limited to the conventional male-female binary. It’s a continuum with no real boundaries; the areas of emphasis shade into one another. But a person’s sense of their own position on that continuum tends to be immutable. (With the caveat: Never say never…) Personally, I find myself way at the femme end of the spectrum and I feel no inclination to be otherwise, but another person could be in the middle or anywhere in between.
How much sex occurs in the body, how much in the mind? Gender identity and sexuality are all in the mind, yes, but that doesn’t make them unreal. These are areas in which reality occurs on the mental plane. Or within the mysteries of the human heart.
So when Siege tells us she’s heterosexual, I believe her and that settles it. It isn’t for me to second-guess another person’s sexuality. And it goes without saying that I fully support her right to be whoever she needs to be. If she ever feels called to revise her orientation, that’s her prerogative and hers alone. If she’s happy this way forever and doesn’t want to change, that’s beautiful too.
Lady, you’re starting to get offensive, especially since we’ve met in real life and have friends in common. My current social circle is gay friendly, as you well know. When I say I have no desire to have sex with a woman, I mean it. There simply isn’t the spark I feel with men. I’m also very conservative when it comes to sex in general. To suggest to me that I could be attracted to a woman if I really, *really * wanted to is just as ludicrous to me as suggesting that jayjay could turn straight if only he met the right girl.
By the way, the social pressure I got growing up was that being attracted to anyone, male or female, was socially unacceptable, which is another reason I support gay rights.
You have never heard the stereotype about the homosexual man with the overbearing mother? Please.
Obviously sexuality is such a complex issue that of course it could be directly impacted by environmental issues.
What I wonder is…why aren’t we asking if women gravitate towards men because of bad experiences with women, thus making them heterosexual?
Sefronia 777
mama’s worry was a burden
they had seen her everywhere
and since her little one was now a dead man
they patted his back
and she thought
why did she let them? Sefronia777.com
Let’s evolve together
I really think you are taking my post the wrong way and reading things into it that are not there. Perhaps you did not see the part in my post where I said heterosexuality is a perfectly valid orientation. Because I did say that. Just because I believe we would do well as a society to restructure orientation along different lines or throw out the concept altogether does not mean that I believe anyone who ID’s as straight is a homophobe. I mean, I said that in the post. Clear as day.
It is becoming increasingly clear that this is not the right board for me. People take what I say too personally when most of the time I am speaking of “you” in the general and not in the specific. People are much too quick to take offense. I don’t see how anything in my post could be interpreted as saying you are homophobic. It’s making me sick just to think about it, when I tried like hell to make my message clear. I did not mean to offend, I was just talking about theory. FWIW I am sorry. It’s time for me to put this board on my block list.
Sorry Siege, maybe my dry humour needs a little time in the humidor. Roughly speaking, I saw your post about a sense of needing to apologise for being straight, and Johanna congratulating you for being gay-friendly enough to disagree with your bishop. Reading that as deeming you OK because you’re cool about gays, I chose to interpret it as meaning that being straight would not be inherently OK - only that you get a pass on account of your homophilia. Doubtless that was not Johanna’s intent at all, but I hoped I had made it clear that I was only funnin’.
(a) Scope for a separate thread, if you really think the premise will hold water for five minutes. It’s not the question the OP was asking.
(b) The species reproduces via heterosexual activity. It’d be a bit bloody bizarre if this happened in spite of the default sexual orientation being homo.
Haven’t read the whole thread, so apologies, but here’s my take:
Define ‘truly lesbian.’ I think it’s however you’re wired biologically, but social factors can overcome those. Is that ‘truly’ lesbian?
I think it’s easier for women to be with other women because ‘biologically straight’ men have more instinctual aggressive behavior - hormones fighting any social encouragement of heterosexuality.
In other words, a female ape has an easier time with a female ape than two silver-backed males sould have gettin’ it on…
I’ve always felt that the so-called “lesbians” accepted by Western society are the ones with long nails and fake breasts who secretly live to pleasure men, and that they’re just not threatening enough to social order to cause a ruckus (unlike gay men- who have further to fall). As much as I hate to quote a song by Madonna, this subject brings to mind…
davenportavenger, I’d be sorry to see you go. But follow your heart and maybe someday we’ll meet again. As we say in Witchcraft, “Stay if you will, go if you must, hail and farewell.” I was hoping it might turn out to be just a small misunderstanding that could be straightened out if we talk it over? Siege, when I reread da’s post #61, I felt she was reaching out to meet you halfway. I really didn’t see anywhere she was dissing you for being straight; it turns on interpreting a passage in her post that could be read with more than one meaning perhaps. In these cases I like to give the benefit of the doubt (if I remember to, that is).
da, I can read your suggestion that she might have swung the other way in different circumstances as not intended to offend; you were just asking her to consider the possibility of a hypothetical. I gather that she has considered it plenty in her life—Siege is clearly enlightened and informed about gay issues—so maybe it hurt her feelings if your statement could be read as implying that she hadn’t considered it yet. My personal feelings are no one intended to offend anyone else.
This is a really good point. Lately I’ve been hearing a lot of advice to use “I statements” instead of “you statements”, which seems to me to help the problem you described.
So if Malacandra (for example; may I borrow your name? you happened to be standing around) says something about me that strikes me as uncharitable, I can choose to respond:
“Malacandra, you jerk.” (makes feelings worse, escalates the conflict)
“Malacandra, you said a bad thing.” (a little better than 1 because it puts the focus on the action instead of the person, but still escalates the conflict)
“Malacandra, I really felt hurt by that remark and I would like it better if you didn’t say that to me.” (best, because it focuses on my feelings, not on telling someone else about themself; it makes a reconciliation easier and quicker)
A few months ago I was going through a difficult time trying to communicate with people online, when it seemed like everyone was getting mad at me, I knew then how bad you feel now. I even voluntarily absented myself from another message board for one month because I despaired of ever communicating amicably with anyone. When I look back on my language then, I realize I had forgotten to use I statements and started telling people about themselves. I feel that just doesn’t work for optimal communication. Since I started being more conscious of this, no one has really gotten mad at me. Maybe it really does help.
Even though in colloquial English you say “you” to mean anyone at all, to speak of something generally widespread, I’ve also heard the advice to use the pronoun “one” instead of “you” for general statements.
And I’ve always felt that, despite impressions to the contrary, men have a lot less latitude compared to women, and are punished more for departures from the norm. That again is a subject for another thread, since the OP was only asking if it’s possible for women to be lesbian by choice - by no means suggesting that this is the only way, or the commonest.
As for Madonna, that great philosopher, I fear she fails to consider the simple hypothesis that it’s not degrading for a girl to be a girl. :rolleyes:
I’m sorry I haven’t been back to the thread over the weekend. I try not to think about serious things over the weekend.
It’s an interesting turn the thread has taken, though. But we haven’t come to any sort of conclusion, have we? Some of us are quite firmly wired in what we are. Nothing wrong with that.
Some of us feel there’s a scale. I certainly do. Seems like a lot of women who “turn” lesbian are not necessarily driven by actually being lesbian, but by external factors, and may or may not reconsider, OR they were lesbian in the first place and just never realized it. Complicated.
The one thing that we have come to a conclusive decision about, I think, is that human sexuality is far too complicated and far-reaching to define on a message board!
As for davenportavenger, I do hope you won’t leave. We need all the discussion we can get.
One thing though:
Impressions to the contrary? Who thinks otherwise? I suppose it depends on what you mean, though. If you are talking sexuality, then I agree that women have more latitude. And women can be tomboys, whereas it’s still looked down upon in many places to be at all effeminate.
But - and the other women, I may need your help - are there areas where women are judged as harshly as men? By other women? Have we gotten past that? The main places I can think of are:
homemaking
getting/catching a mate
Appearances
The first two have been minimalized somewhat, as neither of those are considered exclusively a female domain anymore. In the last one, we’re still judged pretty harshly - but many of us don’t care.
Well, like the front page says, there are a lot of interesting people here, and a few total dipsticks. I think the interesting people make it worthwhile.
Well, I paid through October, so I won’t be leaving yet. I believe in getting my money’s worth.
Look, I know my views are radical, and that I sometimes come off as very abrasive. But that’s because my views are based on my idea of perfection, and I’m more idealistic than pragmatic, which means I’m more strident than nice. In a perfect society, there wouldn’t be such a thing as “gay” and “straight;” there would be individuals who are attracted to other individuals. And even if someone was 100% attracted to a certain sex, that wouldn’t have any bearing on their identity, any more than someone’s favorite color would have a bearing on their identity. But just because I believe that categorizing people as “straight” and “gay” (or even “bi”) is harmful does not mean that I believe people who experience one-sex attraction are wrong or counter-revolutionary or something. Hell, almost all of my real-world attraction is to men; I just don’t attach it to my identity. And isn’t it very possibly that in a society completely stripped of heterosexism and the concept of orientation, we would have a lot fewer “straight” people? Maybe not Siege, but those people who are just-slightly-not-straight? When you restructure society from the ground up, a lot of things are going to change. And I am talking a total 180 on all our views of gender, sex, and sexuality.
If anyone has read The Dispossessed or Woman on the Edge of Time, that’s the type of utopic view of sexuality I would favor.
I agree that it tends to be a scale, with a few solidly at both ends. I’m as straight as can be, but my wife says that I’d go gay for Robert Redford in a second. (And she’s right!) Society and environment will continue to affect how you act, based on where you are on the matrix.
da, stick around. We’re all dipsticks sometimes. Just let it roll off you and continue to fight what you believe to be the good fight, as should we all.
Haven’t, but in Heinlein’s Time Enough for Love, in the society of Tellus Secundus (a planet colonized by the long-lived Howard families) it is socially acceptable to propose “seven hours of pleasure” to another person even if neither of you knows the other’s sex. Ishtar and Galahad first hook up that way – one of them propositions the other while they’re still wearing features-obscuring environmental suits, as a medical precaution in the rejuvenation center where they work. They don’t find out that one is male and the other female until they get to the living quarters of one of them and unsuit.
I get what you’re saying (and don’t find it abrasive). I “jumped the wall” so to speak, just out of curiosity. Turns out it didn’t do much for me. I’m not saying you necessarily have to go to the other side to know whether you’re gay or bi or straight, but fewer labels would allow a percentage of the population who aren’t sure to figure out where they are without fear of becoming a social outcast.
I am frequently unsure what distinction people are making between “labels” and “adjectives”, myself. I grasp the distinction between descriptive words and prescriptive words – this is, among other things, an ongoing issue in one of my subcultures – but I don’t see how one can tell which it is from the outside.
Without the sexual meaning of the word “straight” there would still be people who only happen to form attractions to people of the other sex. And eventually someone would get sick and tired of needing to use “only happen to form attractions to people of the other sex” in situations where it was relevant to express this, and come up with an adjective that expresses the same description. Bingo! “Label”.
Some people will wind up trying to force themselves into whatever ill-fitting adjectives that they think are best for whatever reason. Even a hypothetical society in which no adjectives are given preferential status (which is not the case in any I’m aware of with regards to sexual orientation adjectives), there will be people who are mistaken about which is their descriptor at some points in their lives, or who change, or who try to fit into other categories because they want to or think they should. (I know someone who really wanted to have sex-blind attraction patterns in order to have their orientation conform to their political/social beliefs. They occasionally complained that it didn’t work.) That’s not a problem with having adjectives; that’s just human beings being really damn weird, as per usual.
I know a transwoman who was born with Klinefelter’s syndrome, the XYY chromosomes. In her case, it changed a boy into a woman. At puberty her body made estrogen and she grew tits. Her brother raped her. When she reported this to her family, they beat her up. When she was 15 her father threw her out of the family. Fortunately, she came from a rich family and he threw money after her on the condition that she never come back. She turned out to be as beautiful as a supermodel and you would never guess her passport photo shows a boy. That’s Klinefelter for you.
She said to me, “I’m not queer. I’m a heterosexual transwoman.” When I saw her, she spent all the time on the phone to her boyfriend. Now, she suffered far worse trauma from her rape than I did. My rapes were coerced against my will, but overtly nonviolent. She went through a goddamned living hell for years. I feel deep down I was born to be lesbian, and my rape experience is simply irrelevant to that one way or another. Whereas the worse trauma did not put a dent in her heterosexuality. So all I can say is… "go figure"
