I was listening to Sociology of Sexuality by The Teaching Company when this excerpt struck me as very true. I have never really understood what “being gay” really meant. Now that a professor agrees with my view of sexuality, I think it’s the modern west who got it all wrong.
So if a woman were to use a strapon on a guy, she’d be considered a man? You’d think the suffragettes would have caught onto that a lot sooner.
It means whatever people want it to mean. It’s just another form of labelling.
For men, it means your weenie gets hard thinking about or engaging in sex with men, but generally not with women. It doesn’t matter whether you are the penetrator or the penetratee, and the Greeks got it wrong. There were homosexuals then, as there are now.
However, engaging in sex with someone of the same gender doesn’t make you homosexual. It’s a matter of whether you are predominantly or exclusively attracted to the same sex that makes you gay (or a homosexual). It’s quite possible that we all exist on some sort of sliding scale, and that for some of us (even many of us or most of us) the scale of same sex attraction is so close to 0 that it might as well be 0.
I think there’s a difference between being attracted to people of the same sex (or any of the spectrum of other possibilities) and choosing – yes, choosing – to seek relationships with people of the same sex (or any of the spectrum of other possibilities). Obviously there’s a connection between ones attraction and the choice one makes, but the two aren’t the same thing.
(This doesn’t make a huge difference on my political views in the end, even if people who disagree with my reasoning might reach the same conclusion by a different route.)
So someone who repressed their attractions to people of the same sex and never chooses to pursue a relationship with one is not gay? Is that what you’re saying? 
So OP, you don’t think it’s meaningful if a guy likes to screw only women, or only men, or only kids, or some combination of all the above? No need to differentiate? It only matters if the guy takes something up the butt or in the mouth?
Your cite’s prof left out or forgot bi-sexuals and pan-sexuals.
I think the OP has a valid point. We tend to divide sexual orientation based on who you’re attracted to. But other cultures have divided it more on the basis of whether you were initiating the sex or having the sex done to you. This better reflected the hierarchical nature of these societies.
“Not gay” is probably an oversimplification, but I don’t think it’s two-dimensional exactly anyway.
If a man marries a woman at a reasonably typical age for getting married, and they stay married until he dies of old age, and in all that time, and before, he never makes a serious attempt to have sex with a man, the question of what his “real” sexual orientation is in the deepest depths of his soul is kind of academic. I think it’s misleading to say “that man is gay” regardless of what makes his dick hard. Though it’s also (albeit less) misleading to say “that man is straight” if it’s dudes that make his dick hard.
And I should perhaps clarify that there should be no social stigma – or legal disadvantages – for someone who pursues a lifestyle in accordance with attraction, and people should absolutely be enabled to and encouraged to do so, whatever that attraction may be (within the realms of adult humans and inanimate objects, at least).
Did you try looking it up in the dictionary?
I don’t think that professor does agree with your view, or at least the excerpt you quoted does not indicate that this professor doesn’t understand what “being gay” means or that the modern West “got it all wrong”. The quote just says that the way most modern Western people think about human sexuality isn’t the same way people used to think about human sexuality. That’s hardly surprising. Modern Westerners hold a lot of beliefs that very few cultures have held before. In other times and places it would have been considered ridiculous to suggest that women should be able to own property, and insane to claim that diseases are caused by organisms that are too small to see. That doesn’t mean we’re wrong on these points, though.
We’re not necessarily right about everything either; in fact I’m certain that some beliefs that are common today will someday be considered pretty stupid. With regard to sexuality, we already know that human sexuality is far more complicated than “straight” or “gay”. I don’t just mean “Oh, and also bisexuals”, there are many other facets to sexuality – what specific acts one enjoys, how often, etc. Future scientific advances and changes in social attitudes could result in people a century or two from now having very different opinions about what counts as a “sexual orientation”.
It’s anyone’s guess what these future opinions will be, but it’s possible to imagine many different ways we could label sexuality. One fairly obvious alternative system would be to classify people as “androsexual” (sexually attracted to men) or “gynosexual” (sexually attracted to women). But in a very different culture from ours this sort of thing might be considered as trivial as whether you prefer blondes or brunettes, with the socially important distinction being monogamous or polygamous, Dom or sub, sex once a week or sex every day, etc.
I’m surprised this is the first time you’ve heard that. It’s not a remotely controversial idea. Almost any queer theorist would agree that the concept of homosexuality, as a personal/political identity, is a relatively recent invention. That’s not to say that homosexuality didn’t exist prior to the 19th century - through out history, there have been men who preferred to fuck other men, and women who preferred to fuck other women. It just wasn’t considered hugely important, so long you managed to cook up a few kids along the way to continue the family line.
I am curious, however, as to why you think this is a superior model for human sexuality. The Greeks, in particular, were hideously misogynistic, and that misogyny isn’t really separable from their sexual politics in general. To the Greeks, the definitive characteristic of a woman is, “A place to put my dick.” A man to allowing himself to be penetrated was the equivalent of allowing himself to be treated like a woman - which the Greeks saw as the ultimate degradation. The central sexual divide in Greek culture wasn’t really “penetrator/penetratee,” is was “rapist/rape victim.” It was, in almost every respect, an abhorrent and highly dysfunctional approach to sex, and I’m agog that anyone would think of it as a desirable state of affairs.
Yeah…it sort of does.
Look, it’s pretty simple. If you enjoy sexual acts with the same sex, you’re gay. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
Guy sucking other guy’s dick? Both gay.
Dude fucking another dude in the ass? Both gay.
Gillian Michaels from The Biggest Loser straps on a dildo and fucks a dude in the ass? Not gay.
No, but it’s a good start!
My only question to the OP an his professor: Why? Why is the Western definition of sexual orientation wrong, just because it contradicts the thinking of other times and other places. There are many other concepts that are unique to the West . . . such as our evolving thoughts about marriage equality. And it makes a lot more sense to define ourselves by whom we’re attracted to and who we make love to, rather than whether our lovemaking is convex or concave or neither or both.
And this is why anal sex is often referred to as “greek” or “going to Greece”.
This is exactly what I don’t understand. When both the penetrater and the penetrated are described by same term (gay), I think this term is useless. I’ve never seen something like that. Yes, recently I have seen lads in my country who like being penetrated and we would call them something equivalent to “gay”. But I’ve never seen anyone who exclusively likes to penetrate men and if such people exist, I think they should be called something that reflects their masculinity.
See, I used to think this way too but it’s not as black and white as that. “Situational homosexuality” occurs in prison and these men are not gay. They are using the closest thing they can find to a woman for their release. That usually comes in the form of the weak, small, isolated, and/or timid prisoners. Once released from prison, if ever, they never resume such activities.
And this ties in with the OP because it’s masculine/feminine role-playing that’s at work here, not a gay/straight one. As long as the man is shoving his dick into the other guy’s ass, he’s the man and the other guy’s the woman.
The explanation I remember being given back in the 80’s was that “homosexual” was a clinical term and “gay” was a political term. As I understood it a homosexual is one who is attracted to members of the same sex; a gay person is one who acknowledges that attraction and chooses to live openly as one who is attracted to members of the same sex.
Over time I think the terms have become synonyms for most people but yes Ambivalid, according to what the above explanation says a person could have a sexual orientation considered homosexual, but if they are closeted they would not be considered gay. These days I don’t think that is so much the case.
The problem with defining people by their preference for being the receptive partner or the penetrative partner, is that these roles are generally not fixed. In most gay couples, both people take turns in the different roles, particularly when it comes to oral sex. Roles can be a bit more rigid when it comes to anal sex, with some people preferring to always be the “bottom” and others always the “top,” but it’s just as common for partners to switch around.
Okay, here’s the thing. Wanting to fuck other men, or be fucked by other men, is not a reflection on a person’s masculinity in anyway. There are a lot of men who meet any standard of masculinity you care to name, except they’re only interested in fucking other men. If you want, I can find you a 6’2" decorated combat veteran who absolutely loves feeling a dick in his ass, and has zero interest in seeing a woman naked. Hell, around here, I can find you an entire dance club of guys like that.
If a guy goes to church every Sunday, and always says he’s a Christian, but deep inside he thinks it’s all a bunch of bullshit, is he really a Christian, or an atheist?