| |
|
I think Bitchiekittie and Ganesh have both raised interesting questions here. As such, I feel this should stay in the Head Shop. However, this does mean that posts to this thread should contain something of interest to the reader of the thread, some evidence of having read the thread and an interest in engaging with the thread. As of now, if you don't manage that, I'm afraid your post may be moved for deletion, at which point the matter will be resolved by vote. The alternative might be to move this thread to the Conversation and start another one here on, say, how sexual orientation affects when and how sexual self-image develops. Anyone with an opinion on this, I suggest that to avoid clogging the thread you PM me or another Head Shop moderator.
For example, Bitchiekittie says:
and I think the bigger question here is, if you're older and just beginning to explore (internally and/or with others) same-sex relationships, what do you do?
Speaking strictly from my own viewpoint and in regards to somewhat experienced folks...we start exploring our sexual/relationship type feelings at a young age and gain confidence and experience as we get older. by the time we're in our 20s, most of us have a fair grasp of what we want and like, as well as our boundaries, expectations, abilities, and luck with such things. many of us know how to behave in intimate situations, how to read other's actions and react accordingly.
so what happens when you find you're at that age, but just starting to question these things? where do you even start?
Which is indeed an interesting question - to be gay, it seems, is not the default setting of the culture. Therefore if you *are* gay, you do not get the same wide range of cultural products, easily available and in fact pretty much impossible to avoid, telling you how your sexual and romantic response systems shoudl function. As a result of which, you don't necessarily have the same range of sources telling you how to behave. But is that necessarily a bad thing? I'd suggest that actually most of our mediated ideas of heterosexual relationships or heterosexual sex have limited bearing on our actual relationships (there's a thread on porn which touches on the idea of pornography as signification rather than representation, will look for it later).
The parallel question is probably about when one "naturally" develops a sense of oneself as a sexually interacting being. Sypha Nadon is 23 and clueless about sex, and it does not in this case necessarily matter whether the sex in question is gay or straight - a 23-year-old can find representations and descriptions of both, although one set of representations and descriptions is hardwired into the culture and the other is not. It raises the question of whether there is a right time for sexual development - kairosexuality, if you like. If there is, what are the consequences for somebody of any sexuality who misses it? And how would one go about missing it? Is it an internal or external event? |
|
|
). Noone I've been with has been particularly intimidated by mine either, even being somewhat on the larger size in comparason, so its really never, er, come up.