What if we throw pediphiles into the mix. Did they have a choice or is it genetic? If it is hard wired, what should be done with these people?
What if we don’t compare apples with oranges and NOT throw pedophiles into the mix.
Or, should the next republican thread then get a pass on anyone comparing their potential to become kitten raping, puppy eating, baby kickers?
Because we are not. We are talking about the object of sexual desire, for hetrosexuals it is a mature member of the opposite sex, for homesexuals it is a mature member of the same sex, for pediphiles is it a immature person of (?) gender.
If we are talking about genetic vs. envroment vs. free will choice I see no reason we can’t include other sexual desires.
OK then; I suggest we should treat paedophiles in exactly the same way as we (should)treat homosexuals and in fact (should)treat everyone else; if nonconsenting parties suffer harm; it’s bad; otherwise, what’s the problem?
And I believe that highlights the big difference - yes, paedophiles may be acting on biological desires, however, in doing so, they violate the consent of others - it isn’t a question of ‘if you don’t really feel you have a choice, we should allow it’, but rather ‘if nobody gets hurt, except if they have consented to being hurt, then it’s nobody else’s business saying it shouldn’t be allowed’.
Uh…
A personal story: If I hadn’t been exposed to gay people, I probably wouldn’t have “discovered” my bisexuality, because I wouldn’t have identified my desires towards women as being anything I could pursue. I would have felt the same feelings, but I wouldn’t have known I could act on them, and since I have attraction to men too I wouldn’t have been struck with the same depression that gay people would have felt upon discovering that they couldn’t find mates in their preferred gender. Fifty years ago, I would have been totally straight, and probably mostly okay with that. Now, I can definitely see how the RR might use this as fodder that gays kindle further gayness, but that’s only true if you think that keeping a large percentage of the population in the dark about their true sexual nature is a good thing. I’m glad that my sexuality was “sparked,” since if it hadn’t been I probably would have felt a lot of anxiety over my attraction to women, which I wouldn’t have identified as such. I would be ignoring a major part of my identity, and while I’m not comparing my oppression in the hands of homophobia to that of strictly-gay people (since they’d clearly have it worse, not being able to date desirable people at all), it still would have had major effects. I felt so much frustration before I realized that I was bisexual. It was like part of my mind didn’t make sense, but I couldn’t put it into words. It wasn’t until I read about women in relationships with each other that everything all kind of fell together. I would hate to feel the same frustration now. Who knows how many “straight” people felt constant low-level depression and anxiety over their same-sex attractions? I bet that over the course of human history, it’s been a lot.
Obviously, I think the “Queer by Choice” concept makes a lot of sense. I think that a large minority (maybe even a majority) of people are capable of developing attraction to either sex, but that most ostensibly “straight” people choose not to act on their desires because of social convention. Whether this rejection of same-sex attraction is subconscious or deliberate might vary from person to person, but I believe that not choosing to reject your attraction to other people of the same gender is a very common phenomenon, and that’s what QtM is all about. So it’s not really the queerness that’s a choice, it’s the decision to participate in it.
Not to draw a comparison between race and sex (since they’re totally different dynamics), but what if a white man is attracted to both black and white women? Should he pursue the more socially acceptable white woman, just because he’s attracted to her too? Or should he choose the woman he’d rather go out with? Why shouldn’t such a “choice,” to date people who are socially unacceptable even if you’re attracted to a “correct” potential mate, be just as valid for gender?
I think that the insistence on gayness being a biological destiny is going to hurt in the long run, because it reduces sexual preference to the status of a disability. Even if people become okay with it, the fact that it’s written in the genes will always be a cause for stigma. I think it’s only by recognizing that all attraction–whether the result of a socially-kindled “choice” or a genetic destiny–is valid and realizing that we shouldn’t care about the “cause” (as if it’s a disease) that we’ll truly beat homophobia. Insisting on a “gay gene” might make same-sex attraction okay for the minority of people who really are genetically gay, as long as they can “prove” they’re really gay (and believe me, there will be tests for that), but it won’t help anyone in the middle of the continuum. By saying it’s okay for anyone, and treating same-sex attraction in the way that (most of us) treat different-race or ethnicity attraction, we’ll be allowing a greater percentage of people to find compatible partners and be as happy as they can be. Insistence on biological orientation seems negative and deterministic to me, though I can see why many gay people embrace it. Personally, though, I find it stigmatizing. It reduces one’s sexuality to a curse or an illness, instead of just being a part of who you are. Maybe I just don’t want to be told that I should only date men. Why should my choices be so limited? Why should anyone’s choices be so limited?
Um, I mean QbC. Don’t know what QtM is all about. 
What difference does it make? Choice or not, active pedophiles still causes massive amounts of harm to their victims, and that harm needs to be prevented. Paranoid schizophrenics can’t help having violent delusions, but that doesn’t mean we let them walk around killing any random person they think is a CIA mind-control operative. The only difference this should make in how our society handles pedophiles would be more emphasis on treatment and less on punishment. But then, I think that’s a principle that applies to our entire justice system, not to convicted sex offenders.
How this adds anything to the OP is beyond me. If I didn’t know better, I’d almost think you had an agenda in bringing the subject up in this thread.
My problem with this girl (well, not really a problem exactly) is that there’s nothing wrong with sexual experimentation. But, it’s immature to proclaim that suddenly she was bisexual or gay just because she messed around a little. What she did is establish standards, and she couldn’t really go back to the way things were beforehand. If someone is straight, experiments with the same sex, and eventually falls back into their original nature, they are either not gay, or, were gay to begin with and had repressed it, and are now gay.
I find the whole bisexual argument faulty anyway, which isn’t the same discussion. Depending on which gender you’re having sex with, feel free to call it like you see it, at the time. But if it’s only temporary, for example, if you go to college and become a “four year lesbian”, it’s absurd to spend the rest of your life proclaiming that you are a lesbian, or bisexual, because it was only a phase. I have never known anyone who proclaimed themselves to be bisexual, to stay that way for more than about four or so years. They’ve always tended to land and stay on one side of the fence after they are done experimenting.
I think the framing should be that experimenting is a choice, but your core sexual orientation is not. Once I realized I liked other men, I was no longer in a position to choose to be gay any more than I am in a position now to choose to be straight. I could pretend to be straight, but that’s all it would be – pretending.
Wow, it’s amazing the sorts of sample differences one gets from living different lives.
(I spend a fair amount of time in a couple communities where it’s non-bisexuals who are abnormal, and occasionally have to deal with “Everyone is really bisexual, the rest of you are just repressed freaks” morons.)
While I would agree that bisexuality is probably not as common as those who simply pass through as a phase towards their true orientation, I certainly would claim myself as living proof of true bisexuals and biromantics. I tried on the straight label, which didn’t fit. I tried on the gay label, which didn’t fit either. It’s only in that middle ground that I find an amount of resonance with my emotions and life. In the context of this thread, I would still not classify myself as “queer by choice”, as I have always been and, most likely, will always be a bisexual man. Bisexuality is my sexual orientation and I have never exerted influence over it. I would therefore insist that the “bisexuals can choose” argument is shallow and misleading, since I can no more control who I feel attraction to than any other person alive. The only difference is that I do form crushes and romantic attachments fairly equally across both genders.
- End of Story -
Eh. Not sure that there’s any point to quibbling with this, but it is my understanding from reading this girl’s Internet writings that that wasn’t the case. She’s not arguing that she decided to have sex with the same sex and therefore, that makes her gay; she’s arguing that she decided to change her fundamental sexual orientation (which can exist regardless of who you have sex with, or even if you never have sex at all)–a change of thinking, whether or not there’s a change of behavior.
And then, of course, that brings up the whole debate about whether there is such a thing as sexual orientation at all, yadda yadda. I believe in some circles the popular way of thinking is, “Sex is what you do, not who you are,” and that there’s no such thing as sexual orientation, just sexual behavior. But that completely ignores the feelings of, say, celibates, who may be said to have an honest inclination one way or the other even though they’ll never act upon it.
But hey, who knows?
I agree to a certain extent. I think there is a difference between experimenting and a genuine sexual orientation, which is why I earlier objected to what I saw as a too-broad definition of bisexuality. I think sexual orientation has more to do with being able to form romantic, emotional bonds with someone, not being able to achieve orgasm through sufficient friction. Getting off from a one-time handjob from another guy doesn’t make you gay.
However, I most definetly disagree with your contention that there is “no such thing as bisexuality.” I’m very much attracted to women. I am also very much in love with a man right now. If, God forbid, we break up and I start dating a woman, does that invalidate the feelings I have for him right now? If we stay together for the rest of our lives, does that invalidate the boner I get when I look at an issue of Hustler?
This is a very touchy issue on this board, for excellent reasons (which TubaDiva or Cartooniverse can speak to far more eloquently than I). But the bottom line IMO is that all sexual orientation is (a) non-chosen and effectively unchangeable, and (b) subject to moral choices by the individual. That would include homosexuality, bisexuality, pedophilia, Oedipus complex, the entire gamut of what was once called “sexual pathologies.”
On another board I am acquainted with a man who has seen fit to confide in me. Without breaking his confidences, I can say with assurance that he is (1) someone who, for extremely personal reasons, would never molest a child, (2) possessed of ephebophilic sexual attractions, (3) in a personal relationship with a 14-year-old boy that can be characterized as loving, and (4) emphatically will not act on any desires he may feel (which I gather are present) towards that boy. Instead, he plays a Big Brother sort of role replacing the totally absent father as a male role model and caring adult in the boy’s life. And he is an excellent example of why I feel that damning pedophiles with a broad brush is as wrong as the sorts of things that the Dobsons of the world do with gay people.
(And I feel obliged to reiterate what I hope is obvious: sexual predators are sociopathic IMO and should be dealt with accordingly. But it is the individual who should be judged, not the group.)
Let me add to the above what I inadvertently deleted in rewrite: the “extremely personal reasons” include being himself a victim of sexual abuse. And he despises his abuser.
Beside the point. The “wiring” thing in conjunction with AC/DC was a play on words, little more. The point of my post was that no matter the truth or falsity of whether or not gender orientation is a choice, the religious right will use any admission that it is a choice as a means of painting a picture of gays as predators who recruit from “undecided” young straights to make more gays they can have sex with. That would be the point to argue with.
I’ve read a couple writers (Camille Paglia was one, forget the other) that are quite certain that their homosexuality came from their upbringing, and are quite content with it.
I think it’s useful to look at a more cross-cultural perspective. Not that I’m terribly familiar with anthropology, but one thing I know is that sexual behavior varies tremendously from culture to culture, and what’s considered normal does as well. A lot of American Indian cultures had what we would call transgendered individuals, fulfilling particular social roles, but did not have a cultural “slot” for biological males who identified as men and loved other men, or for lesbians who identified as women. Some highland New Guinea cultures practice a form of ritualized homosexuality/pederasty among men during adolescence who then marry women, and this is the norm for them.
Whatever biological component exists for homosexuality, and there probably is one I suspect, it’s very complex, and it interacts with culture in complex ways. It’s probably misleading to view human sexuality in terms of our own hetero/bi/homo distinction when it seems to work just as well in some cultures to conceptualize it completely differently. So I’m not sure how much I believe in strict biological determinism - but I do think that, biologically determined or no, people should have the right to pursue whatever sex and love life they want among consenting adults. I certainly didn’t “choose” to be gay, but if I had, it’s no one else’s damn business.
This argument is one of politics and not biology, really - the “gayness is innate” argument is a useful one during our present political juncture; it’s an argument that perhaps relegates gay people to being social unfortunates who are to be pitied - it’s tough to decide what argument will have the desired impact. It troubles me, though, to decide that we’re unearthing the inherent unshakeable nature of humanity, when so many other humans live in such entirely different ways that seem to be just as viable.