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Roderick

Feminism

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Who's to say what straight means in this context?

Er, I'm straight. I have never been sexually or romantically attracted to any man, I've never masturbated to gay porn (although I've tried in moments of boredom and curiosity -- it just doesn't do anything for me). In fact, there are times in my life when I've wished I was bi, to double the chances of finding the "right" person for me. So I feel I can say, with a fair amount of certainty, that I cannot choose to be gay. It is outside of my control.

I could choose to become celebate, however. This is what you're talking about when you mention a bi-sexual person choosing not to act on the impluses towards a given sex. They are NOT choosing to be "straight" or "gay" (they are already bi-sexual), but they can choose to be celebate towards a given sex.

The difference is that sexuality is inherent, whereas behaviour is not. Behaviour does not change what's inherent.

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While I understand uneasiness around this incredibly touchy subject, I'm not sure I find your response much less unsettling. Specifically, the implication that homosexuality is only acceptable in as much as it's biologically inevitable doesn't sit well with me; furthermore, the idea of protecting children from homosexuality very heavily implies that it's an undesirable path. As far as I'm concerned, the origin point of homosexuality has no bearing on its legitimacy. I'm not accusing you of thinking otherwise; just cautioning that your line of argument could lead to what I consider some quite dodgy places.

All this said, I should clarify that I don't claim to know where sexual leaning is determined. Perhaps homosexuality can be "de-programmed", perhaps it can't. Even if it is possible, there's no reason to actually do it.

Besides, I thought the reason the question of nature versus nurture came up was not to determine why gay people are gay, but to determine why some gay men act in a particular way (with regard to promiscuity and the anecdotal blow job line and all that). Even if homosexuality itself is entirely biologically determined, the behaviour of gay men is still subject to cultural conditioning, which may tell them they're expected to be promiscuous.

Anyway, sorry for continuing the tangent.

The things I've mentioned were supposed to make you feel uneasy. That was the point of me bringing them up. By suggesting that someone can have their sexuality changed by force, you're opening the doors to the types of statements I made. For example, Mormon communities sometimes use electroconvulsive therapy to try and "fix" gay teenagers.

And no, I don't agree that "cultural conditioning" has lead to stereotypical promisicuous gay behaviour, as it's seen all over the world, as I already said.

I'm fully aware of culture trying to turn me into something I'm not (culture says a man who sleeps with many women is something to aspire to). I feel that pressure, but I don't succumb to it, and neither do any of my friends. Culture also says that men should be "tough" and "macho". Again, nobody I know falls into that trap.

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The things I've mentioned were supposed to make you feel uneasy. That was the point of me bringing them up. By suggesting that someone can have their sexuality changed by force, you're opening the doors to the types of statements I made. For example, Mormon communities sometimes use electroconvulsive therapy to try and "fix" gay teenagers.

Surely that has no bearing whatsoever on the truth or falsehood of the claim: just because unpleasant people could capitalize on a truth, it doesn't make it any less true (not that I'm confident that this particular claim is true). It seems as though you're trying to scare people off even considering a potential objective fact because of a hypothetical social reaction to it.

Homosexuality is acceptable. Full stop. Talking as though its legitimacy depends on its unavoidability suggests that it's something bad that we just have to put up with, rather than something of neutral moral value. Dismissing things because of how people might react seems very dishonest.

Of course, it's pretty apparent that you are genuinely convinced that sexual orientation is biologically determined. I just think you should argue that from the evidence, rather than trying to frighten people into feigning agreement.

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Surely that has no bearing whatsoever on the truth or falsehood of the claim: just because unpleasant people could capitalize on a truth, it doesn't make it any less true (not that I'm confident that this particular claim is true). It seems as though you're trying to scare people off even considering a potential objective fact because of a hypothetical social reaction to it.

Homosexuality is acceptable. Full stop. Talking as though its legitimacy depends on its unavoidability suggests that it's something bad that we just have to put up with, rather than something of neutral moral value. Dismissing things because of how people might react seems very dishonest.

Of course, it's pretty apparent that you are genuinely convinced that sexual orientation is biologically determined. I just think you should argue that from the evidence, rather than trying to frighten people into feigning agreement.

Apart from the end, where you got pretty agressive, I agree with you and accept your points. Note: I wasn't trying to "frighten" people into agreeing with me, I was trying to make them aware of the implications of what they were arguing, and how it toes the line with some very offensive lines of thought. My hope was to try and provoke deeper thought into what's being posted.

You ask me to argue with science, and I've done that several times. If anyone wants to prove me wrong, I suggest THEY post some up-to-date links from reputable sources. We all could learn something in the process. At the moment it's just wooly arguments based on opinions. Since so many people don't believe in it, how about some scientific research which conclusively shows that there's no gay gene? Or at least throws its existence into serious doubt.

Also: Undoubtedly we have gay and bi-sexual members here. What do you think of this whole argument? Have we missed the mark?

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Also: Undoubtedly we have gay and bi-sexual members here. What do you think of this whole argument? Have we missed the mark?

Well, for what it's worth, I thought I was being plenty obvious there in spite of the cruft of plausible deniability. :shifty:

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Ha! Sorry, I didn't get that. So you identify with bi-sexuality? (Sorry, I don't mean to be pushy - by all means ignore me if this is getting too personal.)

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Not really! Interpreting your question with the stress on identify—as if I am expected to relate to a Platonic ideal of sorts—I don't know how anyone can. I find myself in some sort of muddy middle ground without a name. For me to identify on that level I feel like there needs to be some sort of culture for me to embrace and I don't think there is. Also, that kind of question seems engineered for a No Real Scotsman style argument/threshold-seeking that is somewhat antagonistic to messy middle grounds where culture and nurture and whatever intersect.

Edited for clarity.

Edited by MrHoatzin

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I didn't mean to engineer any sort of antagonistic question, it just seemed like a natural follow-on.

I was recently listening to an interview with Neil Patrick Harris and, even though he's married to a guy, he found it difficult to identify his sexuality. I guess for some people that sexuality is a messy and confusing thing. I guess I'm lucky in that respect.

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I hope you're not saying that those of us arguing that men=promiscuous and women=choosy is not a biological imperative are just as bad as the Daily Mail.

I'm pretty sure no one here is really saying that being gay is a choice. It's probably just a matter of phrasing, I think we're talking about the performance of sexuality. Sexuality is not chosen; that is, whether you like men, women, both, none, or whatever. What IS a matter of choice is the performance thereof. One can choose to perform their sexual preference by being demure, or obscene, or use gloryholes, or have one-night-stands with strangers. This has nothing to do with your biological preference for a gender; these behaviors are inextricably, inevitably influenced by your social context as well as your natural libido. This is what we are talking about. The behavior of both men and women, be they gay or straight, has a heck of a lot to do with how they are brought up and what the world around them tells them about what sex should be. Electroshock "therapy" that seeks to un-gay people just traumatizes them away from the performance of their preferences in a Pavlovian way. It is not at all healthy and it does not do away with the gay, it just Clockwork Oranges it all up.

Here's two things you said that I'd like to go back to:

Another random thought: I think everyone knows what parts of them feel pressure from society, and which parts of them are "really" them, no?

I hope it's obvious that I'm actually suggesting that such people are already shunned by society, and so aren't likely to feel as pressurized by a society that has rejected them.

No, in most cases we cannot in fact separate the "real" self, whatever that is, from the self influenced by society. Even if you belong to a counterculture, you are still very much influenced by that aspect of it, which is still society. Can you please address everything I've said about the influence of your parents, peers and religion being far more pervasive than that? Gay people aren't outside society just because they have it tough. They are still part of it, they still need jobs, and to interact with straight people, and to not get beaten up in the street for holding hands. They can't just go "suck it, straights!" and do whatever they feel like (what I said about San Francisco was a joke, btw, about a place in the world where homosexuality is the dominant behavior.) Women can't just go "fuck you, construction workers!" and do whatever they feel like, either. Ideally, we all SHOULD be able to as long as no one gets hurt, but this is not the case at all. And this has nothing to do with biology.

You can use your gay friend's stories to say that this particular small subset of gay males in his experience behaves a certain way. You can use your limited sample size of women who tell you their sexual history or reservations to determine that these particular women behave in a certain way. What you cannot do is say "based on my experience, and on this completely non-biological, fully sociological study, men are biologically this way and women are biologically this way." Especially when the experience of other people contradicts yours. It is simply not universal evidence, and you are focusing, again, on the performance of sexuality rather than sexuality itself. One very much cannot take a theory about the behavior of cavemen, which is a perfectly unobservable thing (unlike quantifiable structural differences in a species's changing physical characteristics), and say that because it would be better for evolution if they behaved a certain way then they must have done so and it must be in our nature. BDSM has no evolutionary purpose. Foot fetishes have no evolutionary purpose. Homosexuality has no evolutionary purpose (unless that study you linked to that was referenced in the Huffington Post is right), even, and there it all is. It's also ignoring the fact that we are still an evolving species, and that the selective pressures we face now are really really different from what Homo erectus had going on. We are not selecting for the same things anymore and haven't been for thousands of years.

I already linked a bunch of scientific studies for you and in fact this all began with me posting a scientific study, but you keep invalidating my points by bringing it all back to cavemen. Who are dead. Very very dead. I descend from Aztecs and Spaniards, man, and while I structurally look like them, I sure don't behave like them.

Also you ignored my bit about colonialism and major religions and how they're all pretty sex-negative and :(

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The Daily Mail thing was more a comment on their piss-poor journalism, so anything they report should be taken with a pinch of salt.

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Foot fetishes have no evolutionary purpose.

Not necessarily!

That's uh... that's pretty much my contribution right now. It is also mostly non-serious as that is a Cracked article and I haven't chased down the sources myself to see if they're even reliable.

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Apart from the end, where you got pretty agressive, I agree with you and accept your points.

You're right; I'm sorry.

Note: I wasn't trying to "frighten" people into agreeing with me, I was trying to make them aware of the implications of what they were arguing, and how it toes the line with some very offensive lines of thought. My hope was to try and provoke deeper thought into what's being posted.

I guess my point is that I don't like the idea of things being offensive by association. As I see it, the idea of re-programming gay people is offensive because it suggests that homosexuality is wrong, not that it suggests re-programming is possible in the first place. I think that's the real target. After all, if it were found that sexuality re-programming were possible, would we all just give up and go home? That seems a far more risky position to take.

Pragmatically speaking, however, this article (I know, Wikipedia, I'm sorry) mentions a study that found that people who ascribed sexual orientation to a biological cause had significantly more positive views of homosexuality. I find this very sad, as it doesn't seem like true acceptance to me.

You ask me to argue with science, and I've done that several times. If anyone wants to prove me wrong, I suggest THEY post some up-to-date links from reputable sources. We all could learn something in the process. At the moment it's just wooly arguments based on opinions.

Other than that one post, you have indeed been referring largely to scientific sources, and I should have acknowledged this. My only excuse is that I was posting in a hurry, but that's a shitty one. Sorry again. But that's what made this sudden change in direction seem so weird to me. In my eyes it harmed your argument. I obviously wasn't reading it as intended.

Since so many people don't believe in it, how about some scientific research which conclusively shows that there's no gay gene? Or at least throws its existence into serious doubt.

I'm no biologist, but you're asking to prove a negative, and that seems like a rather unfair request. As far as I'm aware, the human genome is a hugely complex thing the vast majority of which is not understood. Is it possible to prove that a gene doesn't exist without a much clearer understanding of the genome?

Sorry again for the direction my previous post took. I mean no harm by it, and hope we can continue this discussion in a civil manner.

Also: Undoubtedly we have gay and bi-sexual members here. What do you think of this whole argument? Have we missed the mark?

I'd certainly like to know if I've been treading on any toes at all.

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The Daily Mail thing was more a comment on their piss-poor journalism, so anything they report should be taken with a pinch of salt.

I know, I was talking to TP2K. I was expressing my hope that his posting a piece by something as disreputable as the Daily Mail was not a "this is what you sound like" kind of thing.

Not necessarily!

That's uh... that's pretty much my contribution right now. It is also mostly non-serious as that is a Cracked article and I haven't chased down the sources myself to see if they're even reliable.

This is interesting, buuuuut I have some pretty big objections in terms of actual observability with a lot of these... like the whole thing about boobs being attractive because they're a front-butt. What. No. I've heard that before and I've heard it refuted but augh I don't want to do scholarly searches anymore you guys

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I know, I was talking to TP2K. I was expressing my hope that his posting a piece by something as disreputable as the Daily Mail was not a "this is what you sound like" kind of thing.

Bloody hell. I can't win! Even when I take the time out to try and find something which argues the other side, to try and show more impartiality, I get accused of doing it in such a way that was mocking. No, rest assured, I was not deliberately picking the Daily Mail in order to childishly thumb my nose at people in this thread.

You'll note that I referred to the STUDIES in the article, which I hoped would imply anyone could trace back and investigate further.

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Yeah you should never read The Daily Mail. Ever. They distort facts, lie, get hysterical. They hate women too, so will regularly have articles like "women are more promiscuous than men" or another one I saw recently that was something like "NEW STUDY shows that ATTRACTIVE women stay at home and have babies, only UGLY women focus on careers!" They also reckon everything both causes and cures cancer.

A classic example of the way The Daily Mail distorts facts is an article I read about a boy with gender identity disorder. His parents allowed him to dress as a girl and behave as a girl because he had been so upset at his gender that he had tried, several times, to cut off his own penis. The Daily Mail distorted this in a way that made it appear that the parents had pushed him into becoming a girl, that he'd had a surgical operation to change his gender, and then denied the existence not only of Gender Identity Disorder, but also, bizarrely, of ADHD. They berated the parents for allowing the child to become a target of bullying when the only bullying coming his way was from a fucking huge international newspaper who had written a vile hate-filled essay about him, his family, and his disorder.

So basically I'm not even going to bother reading that article because whether it's for or against anything anyone has argued, it's total bullshit either way.

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Last word on the mail, promise. They also seem to have a fairly frightening propensity to print pics of very young girls in bikinis. Then have the temerity to campaign about sexualising young girls. Cnuts.

Anyway, sorry for sidelining the main topic.

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I'm a bit late on this, but as the topic is extremely free-wheeling it should be okay:

I'd just like to stand up and be counted as someone who has one night stands and NSA sex (by which I assume we mean fuck-buddies), motivated not by insecurity or social pressure but by the fact that it's enjoyable, and knows plenty of women who do too. If it's done in an honest, healthy and safe (as far as is reasonable) way, it can be an amazing, positive and wholesome experience, and I count some of my one night stands among my fondest memories.

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To bring it back a little, interesting tweet from @bengoldacre:

Medicine isn't male dominated' date=' quite the opposite. Some say this is why its status is falling, like teaching did as it became female #bbctw[/quote']

With him wanting to make the point that society is sexist. Terrible to think that that is why society respects an entire profession less. That is extremely damning.

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I read somewhere that in Soviet Russia as universities were coeded in the initial liberal wave, women went into medicine in disproportionate numbers to men. After a couple of generations, medicine did become a primarily female domain—degrading its value in society. Eventually tractor drivers' (generally a male domain) trumped doctor's salaries. Arbiters of value and worth in societies tend to be those in charge, so dudes.

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stand up and be counted as someone who has one night stands and NSA sex

(SO MANY MONOCLES.)

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I'm a bit late on this, but as the topic is extremely free-wheeling it should be okay:

I'd just like to stand up and be counted as someone who has one night stands and NSA sex (by which I assume we mean fuck-buddies), motivated not by insecurity or social pressure but by the fact that it's enjoyable, and knows plenty of women who do too. If it's done in an honest, healthy and safe (as far as is reasonable) way, it can be an amazing, positive and wholesome experience, and I count some of my one night stands among my fondest memories.

Sure, but just so you know, the focus was more on NSA sex with strangers. "Fuck buddies", and people you know beforehand, don't really factor into what we were discussing.

Also, what you've written is remarkably... present tense?

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