I have my own, very definite opinions on this subject, but this thread has made me realize that it might be useful to call for evidence to settle the following question, at least amongst this group, as best as possible:
What makes a person gay/straight?
I KNOW that this question has been debated endlessly, but I’d like to see this thread become a battle of cites rather than impatient lecturing. And I’d also like to know why it is that some people think that the INSTANT you have even the slightest sexual attraction to ANY member of the same sex, you MUST be either bisexual or homosexual. Also, where did the idea of the “sexual spectrum” first develop, and why isn’t it better known/accepted? Does mainstream America just get the heebie jeebies at anything that might cast doubt on their vaunted heterosexuality? Are we REALLY that much of a bunch of scaredy cats?
I apologize if this is a topic everyone’s tired of, but I think a collection of cites would be useful for future use, AND I just got tired of some of the rhetoric flying on the aforementioned thread. Feel free to ignore me if you wish; I just had to get this off my chest. Thanks in advance!
I think behavior should determine what people are labeled as. For instance, if you’re fe/male and you sometimes think about fe/males, but you’ve never sleep with one, then you’re at best a 2 on the Kinsey scale. While this is not perfectly straight, it’s close enough for government work. Of course, it’s always open to revision. Start doing things differently and the classification changes.
Also, where did the idea of the “sexual spectrum” first develop, and why isn’t it better known/accepted?
I thought it was Kinsey, but I don’t know for sure.
Does mainstream America just get the heebie jeebies at anything that might cast doubt on their vaunted heterosexuality? Are we REALLY that much of a bunch of scaredy cats?
Put simply, yes, I believe that’s it exactly. The mere suggestion that sexuality is a continuim with varying degrees, as opposed to firmly established positions, frightens the hell out of people. It attacks their identity as “straight” or “gay”.
I have no cites. Sorry.
-Ben
The problem with labels is that, although they have an important social purpose, they rarely indicate any kind of real clear-cut distinction. This is the case not only with labels for sexual orientation, but ones used for other distinctions such as race and gender as well.
I won’t hijack this thread with a debate on the question of the biological nature of race, but I’m sure even people who believe that there are clear genetic differences between blacks and whites realize that some children have one black parent and one white parent. What does that make these children? Not all that long ago in the US they would have been officially considered “colored”. One drop of “black blood” was enough to make you colored, no matter what you looked like or what the rest of your heritage was. This policy seems ridiculous today, although there is no across the board agreement on how to categorize multiracial individuals. Some people are happy with a seperate multiracial category, others feel that race is based solely on a person’s appearance, others consider it a matter of upbringing or a personal identity choice.
Sex and gender seems easier to work out. Most of us have moved beyond thinking that a man who cooks and cares for children isn’t a “real man”, or that a woman who works outside the home isn’t a “real woman”, and beyond that it’s just biology – right? Well, not always. Some children are born with genitals that are not distinctly male or female. Some have an outer appearance that seems clearly male or female, but lack the corresponding internal reproductive organs. Some people like this have very feminine looking bodies, but an XY chromosone set. Some people simply do not identify with the gender that corresponds to their apparent physical sex. While it may be easy enough to identify most people as male or female, the idea that there are two and only two distinct groups is a myth.
It’s the same way with sexual orientation. I don’t believe that there are two distinct groups, or three, or even a spectrum on which everyone has a set position. Despite great social pressure to be, if not straight, then at least one way or the other, I’ve known far too many people whose sexual behaviors and desires were inconsistent. In fact, I suspect that virtually everyone is this way. This isn’t to say that sexual orientation is imaginary; many people are clearly more one way than the other, and there may be some who’ve never so much as wondered what it would be like to be otherwise. But for many people orientation cannot be so cleanly defined.
Someday maybe we won’t need to worry about such definitions anymore, because it won’t matter. Until then, I think it’s important to realize that these kinds of labels are a matter of social convenience and not reflective of some sort of absolute truth.
Since sexual orientation refers to ‘who the person finds themselves attracted to’, I feel the only reasonable method to determine sexual orientation is to ask each person. Doesn’t help much on stats, but hell.
I posed this issue in the pit thread - the heterosexual male who’s been in prison for an extended stay and seeks sexual gratification from other males (since that’s the only non masturbatory outlet available), doesn’t suddenly refer to himself as homosexual, nor would I.
And as far as behavior being the determinate factor - what then, are ‘chaste’ people? asexual? Once again, if the person self identifies as homosexual or heterosexual or bisexual, who the heck am I to tell them ‘nope, you’re wrong’.
I gotta go with wring on this one. I don’t think that behavior has much to do with it at all. It has everything to do with attraction. There are countless cases of men marrying women, rasing children, and then leaving her for another man later in life. Did he suddenly become gay? No, he always was yet masked it with a heterosexual facade.
Unfortunately, if this definition is correct then there is no scientific way to validate whether a person is gay or stratight other than surveys and questionaires. These leave MUCH to be desired so we are essentially stuck forever in this debate whithout any way to answer the fundamental question.
ALso, I believe this sexual spectrum thing is way overblown. I believe that, in general, either you are gay are you are not. There are a few true bisexuals out there but they are pretty rare. Maybe I am just a Kinsey 1, but men do nothing for me sexually.
Since men - like men in prison for example- don’t mind * where * they put their family-jewels, as long as they’re parked, I’d say; Lust for someone of the same gender when you have a choice of both.
Well, what about me, then? I’m a man and think about other men exclusively, but I’ve never had sex with any men (or any women, for that matter.) Where do I fit in? I think sexual orientation is a matter of primary attraction. If you primarily are attracted to members of the same sex, you’re homosexual, to members of the opposite sex, you’re heterosexual. I’m not entirely sure where bisexuality fits in here…I guess if you have primary attraction to one sex and strong secondary attraction to the other.
Self-identification might have a lot to do with it. If somebody says, “I’m gay”, or “I’m straight.”, in general, I’ll believe them, unless I have compelling reasons not to.
In your case, Captain, I say you can’t be labeled yet. There is no behavior to use as a basis for comparison, so until something happens, outside observers simply cannot tell. It’s like asking someone “what color is that piece of paper in that sealed box over there.” The answer is, “I’ve never seen it, how could I possibly know?”
Which is not to try and take away your identity. If you believe yourself gay, then it’s far more than likely that you’re right. What I’m trying to get at here is, how can we attempt to make an objective determination of someone’s sexuality? We can’t read minds, so we can’t know your internal thoughts in an objective manner. We can ask you, of course, and we believe you. But for the real hardcore skeptics, that may not suffice. For instance, I knew a girl in college who told people she was a lesbian. She later went on to marry a guy and as far as I know, she’s perfectly happy. When I asked her why she said that, she told me that she just didn’t want to be hit on by guys, so that was her defense mechanism. (I have no idea what she resorted to when she was hit on by women.) I was a little annoyed that she had felt the need to hide behind a false sexual orientation, as opposed to just saying, “Leave me the hell alone, I’m not interested.”
So, that’s why I say… if you want a truly objective assessment, you have to look at behavior. If someone claims they’re hetero/homo but doesn’t do the things that define such, then I think we can conclude that at best they’re confused, and perhaps at worst that they’re lying.
-Ben
cmon. If a man who considers himself purely homosexual, then marries a woman and has sex with her occasionally for pleasure, then he is IMO at least partially hetero. Likewise the prison inmate who willingly engages in homosexual activity in order to quench his horniness is at least partially homosexual.
now, on the other hand, if the married man forces himself to have sex in order to convince his wife he is straight, or the man in prison engages in sex for payment, thats another story.
(i am a male)…if I were in prison, would i want to have sex with men rather than simply masturbate? no way in hell. If i lived with a man and we were legally married, would i eventually want to have sex with him? again, unh-uh. If you make the choice to willingly engage in activities outside your internally defined role, and the purpose is pleasure, how can one make the argument that one is not at least partially bi?
Well, ultimately, until we know what causes sexuality, and how to test for it, we can’t. We can’t measure desire that easily. Lets say you see me having sex with women and only women. Does that mean:
I’m sexually attracted to them
or
I want to father a child, and the only way to do that is to have sex with women (yeah, yeah, I know, artificial insemination)
or
I want everyone to think I’m heterosexual
or
I can’t find men to have sex with and am horny
or
I think having sex with men is immoral and having sex with women is moral
or
Something else.
You see an action/pattern of behavior, and you can make an assumption about motives, but that’s all you can do.
I think it’s going to eventually come down to, “Straight men have such and such a pattern in their brain/hormonal balance/whatever, and that makes them attracted to women. Gay men have a different whatever, and that makes them attracted to men. Straight women have a certain whatever that makes them attracted to men, lesbians have a different one.”
I can’t tell you right now what that difference is, or what causes it, and no one can, even though people have tried.
As a side note, I think this problem of definition is one of the things that leads to so much confusion and strife when the topic is debated. I’d like to see it cleared up, but don’t know if it’ll happen.
my position is that sexuality is defined in terms of ‘orientation’, not the acts.
Certainly a person who considers themselves a homosexual, but is raped by a member of the opposite gender, shouldn’t be considered differently because an act was forced on them.
I suspect most will agree with that. HOwever, if a male left to his choice selects females, but in a totally male environment allows another male to pleasure him orally, I don’t see why that single act changes the man’s ‘orientation’ or self determination as heterosexual.
Generally, I think most folks are on somewhere on a scale (which has been mentioned), where exclusivity towards one or the other gender are on the extremes of a continium, and a more generalized ‘bi sexuality’ in the middle.
Of a different orientation, tho, would be persons who’s sexual orientation would be best defined as being attracted to members of other species, and (as I argued in the pit thread) those whose sexual orientation is for members of our own species who are still sexually immature.
While in some cases I may personally believe that some one may be lying to themselves (as in some of the people trotted out as being ‘cured’ of gayness), I find it difficult to tell some one (in essence) what their sexual orientation must be, based on my observations.
The position you seem to take is that if a person has had any same gender experience in their lives, they are at least bi sexual, no matter what they say, or how they act now. That seems to be a curious position, since you’d be essentially telling people that you know their sexual identity better than they do.
Ah, but Captain Amazing, there IS a technique that provides at least something of an indication of sexual orientation. This has traditionally involved (obviously for males only) a device placed around the penis (sort of a penile sphygmomanometer whose proper name escapes me at the moment) which measures arousal in the course of being shown a series of either female or male erotica. I’m sure you get the idea.
Last I’d heard, there were revisions planned or underway to this technique which attempted to measure pupil dilation and similar involuntary responses instead of penile inflation. This is claimed not only be more accurate than the previous technique, but would also be suitable for measuring female sexual response.
Now, I have no idea if such techniques have been employed with a large enough sample to make statistically meaningful measurements of the frequency of homosexuality (or at least homosexual responses) in the general population, but it seems to me that they might well be adaptable to such use. More to the point for this thread, it would seem to me that such a technique might be able to more objectively assess sexual orientation in individuals.
One key problem might be, of course, that such techniques would only measure sexual responses to the specific models or photographs and might not be generalizable to an orientation towards an entire gender.
What about for those of us who don’t get much reaction from the pubic areas of random people we don’t know?
My 2 cents: if you’re solely attracted to members of your own sex, you’re gay. If you’re solely attracted to those not of your own sex, you’re straight. If you’re attracted to both, you’re bi. If you’re attracted to neither, you’re asexual.
I don’t see how difficult can this be. If a person is, for want of a better term, turned on only by the members of the opposite sex, that person is heterosexual. OTOH, if that person is turned on only by MOTSS, that person is homosexual.
Well, yeah, but as most people don’t have one in their garage, and it’s kind of hard to use it on someone without their knowledge and consent, the device is of limited use in confirming your guesses about your neighbor Bob.
