Sexual orientation refers to feelings and “Self-concept.”
People may or may not express it in behaviour.
So I’ll ask again; how can you objectively define ANYONE’S sexual orientation? Isn’t the whole concept purely subjective?
To put it in an example, how can anyone tell you’re gay? Your behaviour may not be expressive of your real orientation. I can only rely on you saying you’re gay, and maybe you’re lying or deluded. (This is just an example.) Enough people force themselves to believe they’re straight to meet perceived societal norms - it could happen in reverse, right? What’s Anne Heche?
How can you objectively distinguish behaviour motivated by “Sexual orientation” and identical behaviour that isn’t?
Why limit “sexual orientation” to a two-dimensional continuum between gay and straight? Why does your definition of my sexual orientation have to be limited to my relative attractions to men and women, and not to other facets of sexuality?
I’m frankly skeptical of the APA’s definition in this regard, which is self-contradictory anyway (read the first sentence and try to jive it with the rest of the definition) and still leaves “Sexual orientation” without any sort of evidence you can look to to actually tell what it is.
Why are you so concerned about objectively defining someone’s sexual orientation? What’s the problem with someone’s own self-identification?
Why are you having a hard time separating sexual orientation from sexual behavior? They’re two different animals.
Sure it could happen in reverse, but based on the way society is today, it’s doubtful there are very many, and the number of homosexuals who feel under pressure to be heterosexual outnumber those in a vice versa situation.
Can’t, except by the person performing the behavior. What’s your point?
Um, if you’ll notice, the APA talks about the bisexual continuum that lies in between the two.
I still don’t understand why this makes a difference, but I’m inclined to defer to the APA’s 35 years of research and study in the field of sexuality and all its aspects. YMMV, of course. I also don’t see how their statement is self-contradictory.
I’m not; hey, YOU’RE the Gay Guy who started three threads based on questions about “gay” people.
My point is simply this; the entire “Gays who choose to be gay” thread andygirl started, and the followup tales of GUGs, is based on the premise that “sexual orientation” and sexual behaviour are easily categorized and distinguished, so we can say that “Smith isn’t naturally straight, he chose to be” or “Brown’s only a lesbian because it’s fashionable.”
Those argument presuppose that sexual orientation is a specific, definable variable defined for each individual and is independent of behaviour, “sexual identity,” or any one of a number of things. I don’t buy it; I think it’s a vastly more complex question.
Remember that the OP was “Can people change their sexual orientation?” Your point seems to be (correct me if I’m wrong) that they can’t, because behaviour and orientation are completely separate. I’m just questioning that - I don’t know if they are or not, to be honest.
Claining a clear distinction exists between orientation and behaviour strikes me as being a singularly unprofitable exercise and opens up logical doors to further discrimination and bigotry, but that’s another thread. Let’s just say I am not looking forward to the day when people say “We’re not firing you because you’re gay, Steve. We’re firing you because you have sex with men.”
Okay, let’s say they are. Now show me how you know. It’s an honest question. Don’t just tell me the APA says so; they’ve been wrong before, as has everyone, and they disagree with themselves on many matters, as a proper group of scientists are supposed to.
Um, if you’ll notice, that isn’t what I said; the definition of “sexual orientation” the APA is apparently using is a two-dimensional continuum between hetero- and homosexuality. Being bisexual still puts you on that scale. Putting it visually, the APA is saying here that your “sexual orientation” lies somewhere on or between two poles:
Everyone, by the prevailing definition, is somewhere on this scale. Well, why? This strikes me as being an extremely subjective, arbitrary call to limit the definition to a balance between two variables; humans have a myriad of other sexual predispositions, too. Why not include them? You can’t easily separate gender attraction from other factors.
It’s a nitpick, but
“Sexual Orientation is an enduring emotional, romantic, sexual or affectional attraction to another person.”
is the leading sentence and does not fit anything that follows it. The rest of the definition asserts that sexual orientation is the level of predisposition towards being attracted to a particular gender. This sentence doesn’t define “orientation” in the sense we’re using the word. It’s probably just poorly written, but I would kind of hope the APA could do better than this.
At any given time, (including hypothetical times, as discussed above), everything that is inherent in me would be interpreted by me. I assume that if I had worked out a sexual identity different from the one I actually did–one that had me sexually involved with males and not with females–I would still feel the sexual feelings I feel now in the company of relatively anonymous women (i.e., casual sexual attraction, especially based on visual appearance).
I’m sure I would know those feelings were sexual and were, in fact, feelings I had in common with the vast majority of hetero guys for whom they are a large part of the raisón d’etre for considering themselves heterosexual. But I would not necessarily interpret them the same way, emotionally and intellectually. I don’t think I would find it contradictory to acknowledge such feelings and yet to think of myself as gay, or (more likely) as bisexual-but-functionally-gay. I might be walking around contemptuously dismissing that particular batch of feelings as “reproductive drive itch” while flirting with interesting guys I thought I could fall in love with or something.
I know this much from experience, since casual visual attraction to relatively anonymous women is not very integrated into my sexuality NOW, either. I’m not exactly contemptuous of it, since I do, in a general sense, want to have sex with women, and it is women for whom I have those feelings; but it isn’t necessarily THOSE specific women, and feeling those feelings doesn’t tend to translate over into anything developing between me and them; that process occurs in other settings and according to different dynamics, where casual visual attraction is mainly irrelevant.
Self-identified. I don’t believe I ever put a checklist in the OP for people to fill out to let them know if they’re qualified to post.
Then there is confusion on your part. It would be more accurate (and anyone can correct me if I’m wrong) that the response to the OP is not, “Smith chose to be straight” or “Brown’s only lesbian because it’s fashionable,” but rather, “Smith is behaving in an outwardly heterosexual fashion” or “Brown is behaving in an ourwardly homosexual fashion.” Their innate sexual orientations are only known to them, and they, in turn, can choose to acknowledge or deny their orientation. For all we know, Smith is 100% homosexual and feels pressured to “be straight;” or, perhaps, he’s somewhat bisexual and is choosing only to act on his heterosexual impulses; or, he actually is straight but, for some reason, may tell us he’s bisexual or homosexual. Same goes for Brown. I don’t think anywhere in this thread has anyone said, “Straight people who are fashionably gay have actually changed their orientation.”
It is quite a complex question, but I think the differentiation between feelings and action is fairly self-evident.
Well, I’m going off of personal experience, others’ observations and experiences, and every leading psychological and psychiatric organization. Kinda hard to refute all of that.
I’d say. But, again, we’re talking from a purely psychological point of view - socially and societally it might be better to address such a topic from an entirely different point of view.
Hey, people get fired for being perceived as gay when they haven’t had sex with men. Besides, as we’ve been saying in this thread, it is highly unlikely that a heterosexual would have sex with a man, so your scenario is kinda moot.
It isn’t just the APA - check any major psychological organization under “sexuality” and you’ll see the differentiations. Again, we’re talking about psychological terms here.
What other “sexual predispositions” are you talking about? Attraction to animals? Small children? Rutabegas? These issues are related, but, as orientation and behavior, seperate.
I still don’t see the contradiction. Want to see what Merriam-Webster has to say?
Does this help? I know I’m still missing whatever point it is you’re trying to make.
[hijack]Boy, I don’t. As a matter of fact, I think that’s one of the great lies of our time; “I’m doing X, but really, I think Y.” If you want to know what a person’s true feelings are, just look at where they expend their effort. If that doesn’t jive with their “Feelings,” you probably don’t know what their feelings really are. That’s a general statement and not necessarily limited to sexual orientation, but it’s my long and uniform experience that when someone says they think/value/feel/want one thing and do another, they were either lying or deluded.
Some may violently disagree, but time and again I have been confonted with people saying they value one thing while their actions contradict what they say. In every case, without exception, they were either lying or fooling themselves.[/hijack]
Well, perhaps it entails a different thread sometime.
If you thought the discussion was semantic, I’ll happily back away.
Just to finish this off, the sentence as quoted states that sexual orientation is an attraction to a person. In other words, this literally mean that my current sexual orientation is Sharronsexual, because I am attracted in that manner to Sharron. The remained of the definition (which is what I think everyone agrees it should be) states that sexual orientation defined attraction to a gender, not a person. It’s just bad English, that’s all. Sorry, it was a nitpick.
How about your parents tell you they won’t pay for college if it turns out you’re gay? How about you spend the first twenty years of your life being told that all homosexuals are evil, and even the nicest ones either need to marry women anyway or become priests in order to avoid eternal damnation and hellfire? That, I think, is the equivalent to breaking your hand.
RickJay
Currently the most accurate method of assessing someone’s sexual orientation is asking them. There’s no hidden mark somewhere. In the case of the closted or confused, of course, even that is not effective. I’m not sure of the need for an objective viewpoint. It’s like trying to prove that someone likes vanilla ice cream and hates chocolate. You can sorta check out their behavior as support, but asking them is really the best way, especially when there’s a worldwide “vanilla is evil” campaign.
Yes, I think that’s part of it. The “Reverend” Phelps ( http://www.godhatesfags.com ) is totally obsessed with gay people’s sex lives. If it’s so horrible, I find his rather prurient interest kinda odd.
Part of the thinking is that since women are supposed to be fending off men’s sexual advances, when you remove the woman you’ve just got tons of happy fornicating men, which somehow is a problem for the more uptight people, rather like the way all those fogies got uptight about a little oral lovin’ in the White House. Envy of some sort probably plays into it…
I read about a study that claimed to prove that homophobic people are quite often turned on by gay pornography. You’ll be happy to know this was an objective study involving penile engorgement to gauge reactions. It makes sense - people most disgusted with gay people tend to like to talk about the disgusting things we do endlessly. Probably because they’re getting off on it in some way. A truly secure heterosexual isn’t all that worried about gay people, because it doesn’t affect him or her.
That totally trivializes homosexuality. It is not who I have sex with alone that makes me gay. I have a boyfriend, we share a life, we hold hands while walking, we have dinner together in restaurants, amd yes, we have sex, too. Can you imagine the following: “Dear Susie and John - I received your wedding invitation, but why all this hoopla just because you’re going to have sex with each other? A church ceremony, dinner, and tax breaks simply because you’re going to have sex? I prefer not to know what you do in your bedroom.”
Polycarp - to critique your post (since I don’t think anyone quite has) it’s totally correct, absolutely clear, and totally answers the original post. I think the people still asking questions must have scrolled past it or something. Wherever you went to enlightening school, I have a kid named Rook I’d like to enroll - do you take vouchers?
But this presupposes that there is a built-in “orientation” that your behavior is either in line with or is against. The problem is that a number of people have claimed to have changed their desires- in effect, they have changed their “sexual orientation.” Since all we have to go on is their word, then either we accept that sexual orientation can be changed, or we make the non-falsifiable claim that it can’t.
It seems to me that part of the problem is a disconnect between the Christian Right and the people who claim it isn’t a choice. The Christian Right only has a problem with behavior. If they could keep everyone from showing external signs of gay sexuality, they would (presumably) be happy. The only relevance of sexual orientation to that position is that they recognize that some people have a hard time getting over their “addiction” to same-sex intercourse, so the fundies offer pseudo-psychotherapy to help homosexuals act straight.
The problem is that if you say that sure, external behavior can be changed, but sexual orientation cannot, then you’re basically admitting that by the definition promoted by the Christian Right, gays can be “converted” into straights. This position becomes even more problematic when one claims that a marked change in behavior is an indication that someone “discovered” their true orientation. If someone’s desires and behavior both change, then sexual orientation effectively becomes a sort of invisible and ultimately irrelevant surd, left over when everything that matters has been eliminated. It appears to me that sexual orientation is often unchangeable only to the extent that it has been shorn of any characteristics that could be changed.
Lastly, let me point out one flaw in the 1-D gay-bi-straight spectrum. A number of straight people have same-sex sexual fantasies which they have no intention of acting upon. One could claim that this means that they are really bi, and are simply not acting upon their same-sex attraction, but to do so once again makes sexual orientation a fragile surd, whose effects are so weak that societal expectations can make a person insist, even to themselves, that they are bi. Such people appear to be serious in stating that they have no intention of having gay sex, and seem perfectly happy forgoing gay sex, and might even find the idea of real gay sex to be kind of gross- but nonetheless, they find it sexy to fantasise about members of the same sex.
>>A number of straight people have same-sex sexual fantasies which they have no intention of acting upon. One could claim that this means that they are really bi, and are simply not acting upon their same-sex attraction, but to do so once again makes sexual orientation a fragile surd, whose effects are so weak that societal expectations can make a person insist, even to themselves, that they are bi. Such people appear to be serious in stating that they have no intention of having gay sex, and seem perfectly happy forgoing gay sex, and might even find the idea of real gay sex to be kind of gross- but nonetheless, they find it sexy to fantasise about members of the same sex. <<
true enough, Ben. But rape/forced sex fantasies are fairly common, also, at least among women. (I don’t know if the same holds for men.) So one’s fantasies are not necessarily a good indicator of orientation. Although clearly, as several posters have pointed out, same sex sex has some fascination for breeders, particularly the rabid homophobes.
DavisMcDavis, your wedding invitation analogy is funny & right on! My orientation is just one part of who I am, what I do, and how I relate to other people.
I spent seven years as a volunteer rape crisis counselor at at Denver General Hospital. During & for a while after the whole Amendment 2 Thing here, we had a dramatic rise in gay men admitted who had been attacked & sodomized by “straight” boys who were attempting to “teach fags a lesson.” Make of this what you will. Rape is rape is disgusting, violent & wrong, but groups of men picking up men in bars and raping them to teach them a lesson is way up on my disgusting-o-meter. That particular trend seemed to fade after a year or so. At least, we weren’t seeing them at DGH.
I knew a lesbian couple where the one was straight all her life, then met and fell in love with this woman.
Since she loved her, the sex came naturally. Did she consciously change from straight to homosexual? No, but it happened naturally.
Olny because you have changed the definition of “orientation” in order to put fantasies out of bounds. Fantasies are a playing out of sexual desires. Since sexual orientation is defined by desires, then it’s defined, in part, by fantasies. Ergo, the simple gay-bi-straight continuum isn’t complex enough to describe the reality of sexual orientation, even if there really is a definable entity that we can refer to as “orientation.”
Rosie, the idea of a thread discussing sexual orientation and the idea that “vanilla is evil” did tickle my sense of irony a bit too, but, in a rare display of tact, I decided not to pick up on it. However, since you did…
