It’s amazing the kind of tortured logic people can engage in when trying desperately to be politically correct!
This is probably SUPPOSED to be a question with a solid, precise, definitive answer. (Certainly, RickJay has tried to provide a factual answer.)
But a lot of what I’m seeing amounts to “No TRUE Scotsman…”
It’s mind-boggling how so many SDMB regulars are quick to say, with absolutely NO evidence that “Abe Lincoln was gay” or “Michelle Bachman’s husband is gay” or “Tom Selleck is gay.” But they’re equally quick to insist that men who demonstrably HAVE had sex with other (under age) males are absolutely, positively NOT gay!
For me, it’s not about political correctness, it’s about health care.
I couldn’t care less who you’re fucking, or if something thinks I’m politically correct or incorrect. But if I ask “Are you homosexual?” and a person honestly doesn’t think he is because he has a wife he enjoys sex with and has kids and hates fags, but once a month he goes to the Korean bathhouse for anal sex with a man*…I could be missing some very important information, health wise. I’d miss the opportunity to tell him about new and improved condom designs for anal sex. I might not suggest he get checked out for anal cancer - a cancer that’s almost unheard of in people who don’t have anal receptive sex.
So I discard “homosexual” entirely. “Do you have sex with men, women, or both men and women?” is really what I want to know. And after that, “What sex? Penis-in-vagina, penis-in-anus, tongues, fingers, toys?” It might seem awfully invasive, but there are different health concerns with each.
Continued use of “homosexual” to mean “any man who wants to have sex with men or has ever had sex with men” makes the group so large as to be meaningless. Seriously, that’s at least 37% of American men. It would include people from other cultures, even, with other relationship models What on earth do they all have in common, socially, politically, public health-wise or in any way that actually matters? We might as well say that some people are “sinistersexuals” because they’ve had sex with left-handed people. Might be something in common, but is it a significant thing in common?
*Yes, this happens. In some cultural groups, it happens a LOT.
But we’re straying from the topic. Bottom (giggle) line…pedophiles are attracted to CHILDREN first and foremost, with gender seldom being the determining factor.
I think that a lot of men who demonstrate heterosexual behavior with adults may show less discrimination when applied to the sexes of children they sexual abuse more so because of a limitation of opportunity. That is, they are attracted to children more than they are attracted to females and, particularly given the lesser difference between boys and girls as compared to men and women, I think there may be some technical accuracy in describing some of their behavior as homosexual or bisexual, but the more deciding factor is clearly pedophilia. However, I think men who exclusively or at least primarily target boys are appropriately described as homosexual in addition to pedophiles.
But the reason I quoted this because I think the True Scotsman fallacy is apt here. All homosexuality describes is sexual attraction to men. No one would bat an eye at calling the act of a man raping a woman a heterosexual act, the heterosexual nature of the act passes no judgment on the appropriateness of the act. In the same way, appropriately classifying an act as homosexual isn’t a condemnation on all homosexual acts; the part that is being condemned is the pedophilia. Now, of course, there are people who would condemn homosexuality as well, but that’s a separate issue.
Either way, I would say that arguing over classifying sex with children as heterosexual or homosexul is kind of missing the point. Even if one does think homosexuality is bad, surely sex with children is worse.
A pedophile wants to have sex with a child. A homosexual, hetereosexual or bisexual wants to have sex with an adult.
The term homosexual has no distinct definition. So if you want to include pedophiles among homosexuals, it doesn’t really matter, it’s an arbitrary classification anyway.
Ah, that’s right. “Let’s all disregard the labels that 99% of people understand, to make 1% of people feel better.”
So define ‘homosexual’ then.
“Sexually attracted to your own gender”.
Regards,
Shodan
I think “prefers to have sex with members of your own gender” is a perfectly good definition of “homosexual,” and one that is accepted by the majority of people at the current time. Any effort to split hairs on this is, in my belief, pointless and pedantic.
So with that explanation there is no need to engage in sex to be homosexual. And you can engage in sex with someone of your own gender without being homosexual. And of course the status changes based on peoples varying desires. And there is no distinction of bisexuality.
No definition is going to make a determination of a condition that does not exist. One can define homosexual behavior explicitly, but your definition isn’t based on that, but instead an factor of ‘attraction’ which can’t be explicitly defined, and also interestingly on the term ‘gender’ which has an ambiguous definition also.
The only definition of ‘homosexual’ I accept is one of self-definition, which makes it meaningless for comparative usage.
So what?
So what?
This part about status changing makes it sound like you believe in the ex-gay movement.
I don’t know what you are talking about - homosexuality and pedophilia both exist.
If it were the case that pedophiles always attacked children of either gender, without any preference, then female children would be about 50% of victims. They aren’t - the majority of attacks are of males attacking female children. But some pedophiles prefer to attack male children. Those pedophiles can be properly referred to as homosexual, since their sexual orientation is same-sex.
The overwhelming majority of time, no, it doesn’t.
Regards,
Shodan
Many years ago I was briefly a member of a group of gay libertarians. In one of our meetings our guests were two guys from NAMBLA. They were there on the assumption that since we were in favor of getting the government out of our bedrooms, we’d be allies with them for legalizing man/boy sex.
My “gaydar” is pretty damn accurate; it’s extremely rare that I don’t pick up any gay vibes from a gay man, or that I do pick up gay vibes from a straight guy. Even if someone is significantly bisexual, I’m usually pretty good at picking up on it.
After spending a couple of hours with the guys from NAMBLA, at no time did I get even a slight feeling that they were gay. They just seemed like very strange straight guys. These were men who were exclusively attracted to children. One was attracted to boys, and the other was attracted to both boys and girls. But neither of them was at all attracted to other men, and I would have been surprised if they had. Even the guy who was attracted to boys, there’s just no way I’d ever consider him gay, no matter what definition you’re using.
Count me in with the crew who sees pedophiles as their own species, so to speak.
Ditto.
What was the group’s reaction to that? I’m guessing that was the NAMBLA guys’ first and last meeting …
Picture this in your head…
Picture a woman who enjoys abusing pre-pubescent girls. She is specifically attracted to undeveloped female breasts and genitalia. She is in jail now, because she raped her eight year old daughter.
With whom does her sexuality have the most in common? Elle Degenes, or Spike the guy who is also in jail for raping an eight year old girl?
Here is the thing.
An act can certainly be “homosexual” or “heterosexual” (well, even then it gets mixed up with intersex and transgender people, but let’s just go with it.)
But lets say you are a martian scientist, and you’ve just witnessed some human sex act and you want to document it for the book you are writing on human behavior.
Would “homosexual” or “heterosexual” be the only way you’d describe it? No. You’d probably look at the power and social dynamics of the act. You’d probably describe any penetration or touching, and what exact body parts wer involved. You might note any exchanges of material goods. You may look at location or any props. If there was any role play involved, you may describe it. The ages of the participant, their relationship, and the general context of the relationship would be interesting. A given sex act has all kinds of interesting veriables.
Human sexuality exists on all kinds of levels, and the idea that everyone fits on a homosexual-heterosexual axis, and that homosexual-heterosexual is probably the primary aspect of sexual identity, is a specifically cultural one. There are hundreds of axis to think of sexuality in terms of.
Indeed, I think more cultures consider sexual orientation to be a situational thing of little importance to person identity than look at it like we do. Those people in New Guinea who believe that a boy needs to spend several years swallowing semen before he is ready to have sex with a woman wouldn’t make sense of our description. We might say “So everyone is bisexual, but you have to act gay for a while, and then you straight, and then maybe you get gay with another young boy.” But out there, they think of that whole dynamic in completely different terms, and almost certainly wouldn’t find any meaning or value in our description.
Right, we never saw them again. The only thing everyone agreed on was that the age of consent should be lower, considering the fact that kids today are a lot more savvy and experienced than when we were kids. But the NAMBLA guys kept insisting that there should be no age of consent, that even young kids should be able to make informed decisions about their sexuality. None of us were buying it.
This need we have to label everyone leads to the mistaken belief that there are discrete divisions between types of people when it comes to sexuality. I doubt the reality is so simple.
I don’t think you can define a person’s sexual orientation simply by a sex act. Many people have both male and female experiences.
How come if a guy is married and has a kid, like Robert Reed, then divorces he’s is gay if afterward he has sex with men.
But if a man has sex with a guy and then gets married and doesn’t have sex with anyone other than his wife, he’s a closeted gay.
A lot of studies I read no longer use the term gay, straight or bisexual. They define their study as “men who have (had) sex with other men.”