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Queer by Choice

  
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
13:36 / 17.08.02
Yahoo Group
Queer by Choice

Don't want to say too much yet, I'd rather throw this out for Barbeloids opinions. Has the idea of sexuality being chosen been generally suppressed by the queer community so it doesn't hamper them fighting phobics? IS sexuality a choice?
 
 
Tryphena Absent
14:03 / 17.08.02
I took a look at this website and read a little bit about Gayle Madwin (the founder) and parts of what she/he said actually reminded me of my own experiences. I think that if you're gay you can't really repress yourself to the extent where you pretend to be straight and vice versa. If you're bi it's something else entirely because saying you're one thing over the other isn't repressing yourself... you are that thing, you're also something else.

Gayle Madwin is bisexual and probably did choose to be bisexual, we could all spent our whole lives lying and pretending women weren't the least bit attractive but I chose not to. Having said that it would have been easy for me to pretend but I would have become a very different person in the process. That's where the choice in a situation like this exists, do I push what I am aside or be as I am.
 
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
15:28 / 17.08.02
Yeah, I was going to bring in the bisexuality thing later. I've had a quick look round and not seen any mention of it yet.

And a quote from elsewhere;
"That's an easy one...If you choose, you have responsibility. When you're helpless with 'born that way,' you don't have to be responsible. It's all sloughed off...You can just be helpless, helpless, helpless, helpless...Very sad."
That's from Frank Aqueno, who identifies as Queer by Choice for about thirty years now.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
15:57 / 17.08.02
Well I suppose it's good to be able to lay responsibility on a person for what they are but there's a difference between actually choosing your sexuality and identifying as choosing it and I suppose that's where my real interest lies. I should like to know that Frank Aqueno actually chose and that he didn't simply morally feel that he should have chosen.

I've never actually sat down with any of my gay friends and asked them if they made a conscious decision to just be gay or if they would say they chose to be gay or if they simply always were gay. Thinking about it suddenly it becomes ridiculous that I've never asked anyone.
 
 
gravitybitch
16:11 / 17.08.02
It only took six minutes for me to become seriously annoyed with that site....

I'm not denying that some people can choose their attractions. However, the site seems to really over-simplify things... Especially the "gay gene" stuff.

I work in biomedical research with autoimmune diseases, in which there is a genetic predisposition to disease that requires exposure to something in the environment for the disease to manifest. This has become my model for a lot of things, along with the understanding that very few things are controlled by only one gene.

I'm tending towards a model in which physical gender, gender expression, and sexual "preference" each have some number of genes contributing to a person's predisposition, which may or may not be expressed depending on the culture around the person. (I lumped physical gender, gender expression, and choice of partner together in this model because there is a strong trend for heterosexuality and having your gender expression match your body all to occur together.)

Physical gender and gender expression seem to be pretty strongly linked, but it's not as strong as the link between brown eyes and brown hair (yes, folks, there are no natural blondes with brown eyes, won't happen until people start doing genetic modification on humans). Partner "preference" (gotta find a different term for this) isn't as strongly linked to gender/expression, which is why there's so many more queer folk than transfolk. A couple of genes for partner "preference" would cover the Kinsey scale nicely - picture a deck of cards, pull out five or so numbered cards at random. Red cards mean you like girls, black cards mean you like boys. Pick a face card to represent social influence - its influence is equivalent to (arbitrarily) three number cards. It can be "out-voted" by a sufficient number of the other color cards...

Basically, I've always been a bi girl; I grew up with crushes on girls and guys but only acted on the crushes on guys because there was an obvious way to do this. Having crushes on girls didn't quite make sense until I read Rubyfruit Jungle; I'd never denied the crushes but didn't quite know what to do with/about them until I was exposed to that environmental/cultural factor...
 
 
gravitybitch
16:38 / 17.08.02
The problem with big posts is that you miss so much while writing...

I kind of skipped over the question of "choice" but this also seems to be over-simplified. Is anybody up on the most recent theories on sexual imprinting and the origins of "fetish" behavior? Or has all this been debunked in favor of something else?
In my experience (and in the experience of the folks I've talked to about this) we desire what we desire, and the only choice we have is whether or not we act on that desire. Whether or not we act (or if we have to desperately fight against acting) on that desire is probably a combination of personality, availability of the object of desire, and how far off "normal" we perceive that desire to be. (Being queer in Utah in the '50s was considerably less "normal" than being queer in New York now...)

"Choosing" not to desire seems to involve a shutting down of some aspects of the person/personality, usually unsucessfully. Witness the number of unhappy/unsuccessful "ex-gays" ....
 
 
pointless and uncalled for
17:04 / 17.08.02
In a way I think that sexuality can be a matter of choice. I'm still trying to find a good way to explain this but I'm having trouble and hoping largely that someone else here will be able to do it. I don't think that this is the only way though.

But does that really matter?

I don't think that it matters how a person arrives at their sexuality as long as they are being honest with themselves and happy with the result of any choices that they do make. In addition to this I don't think that it really falls to anyone else to seek justification of a persons sexuality because if we do then there is the risk of differentiating between two the two groups. Frankly I see that as a big nasty bucket of crap that will serve no one any good. All we can ask, if we even have that right, is that a person justifies themself to themself with honesty and consideration.

As for fighting bigots and phobics I think that the argument for freedom of choice is equally as strong as the argument of being born that way.
 
 
Ganesh
18:32 / 17.08.02
The mode and degree to which one expresses one's sexuality clearly involves some choice; I'm less convinced about the underlying sexuality itself.

The whole 'gay gene' debate has become hopelessly polarised and, as Iszabelle points out, oversimplified. Genetics and environment interact in a variety of complex ways, many of which remain poorly-understood at best. There's been research carried out which suggests that prenatal hormonal influences play some part in subsequent male (self-identification of) homosexuality and male-to-female transsexuality - and that's just one example. Problem is, every new development tends to be seized by this or that right or left-wing group and held up as 'proof' of their own agenda.

Personally, I suspect that there is a semi-'hardwired' element to sexuality - largely because the vast majority of (both religiously and 'scientifically' motivated) attempts at 'de-gaying' prove hugely unsuccessful. It's possible to deny, suppress and sublimate aspects of one's sexuality - and those who truly tend toward bisexuality may find themselves with more options/flexibility in this regard - but the few studies that follow up 'de-gayed' individuals after even one year typically find them to be miserably celibate or guiltily 'lapsing'.

There have been few - if any - attempts to 'de-straighten' heterosexual people - possibly because there are fewer social and legal benefits and more difficulties in identifying as gay - so it's quite possible that 'choosing' to alter one's sexuality in that direction might be easier. Having initially professed first heterosexuality then bisexuality myself, I'd be suspicious that previously straight-identifying individuals who 'chose to become gay' had been, like myself, suppressing a greater or lesser degree of homosexuality that had always been there.

Of course, the political implications of insisting one 'chooses' and is therefore fully 'responsible for' one's alternative sexuality - and I'm thinking particularly of transsexuality here - would be pretty wide-ranging...
 
 
w1rebaby
18:49 / 17.08.02
I would agree that sexuality is partially hardwired, but I think the degree to which it's possible to change that hardwiring varies. I think it's possible that some people can re-program themselves to have different sexual responses, in the same way that you can change what appear to be other very deep behavioural patterns by reinforcement et al. From straight to gay, or gay to straight.

But only some people. It requires a level of fluidity of personality that I don't think everyone possesses. That's certainly not a criticism of people who can't change their own desires - in a way you could see it as an advantage to have that sort of personality integrity. And how do you know to what degree you can change yourself?

I'm suspicious of any implication that "it's learnt" or "it's a matter of choice" because (a) in some cases it clearly isn't and (b) it just gives ammunition to the "de-gayers".

It also detracts from the real issue, as potus points out, which is that it doesn't really matter whether it's nature or nurture - there's no reason to try to "fix" it at all.
 
 
Ganesh
19:06 / 17.08.02
Yeah - I guess I see the tiny minority of individuals possessed of that degree of sexual flexibility as (for want of a better label) 'true' bisexuals...
 
 
Shortfatdyke
19:23 / 17.08.02
"A radical mailing list for proud queer people who CHOOSE to be queer and/or who feel the "We can't help it, we were born that way" response to homophobia and transphobia is cowardly and inaccurate...."We don't WANT to help it!" 'Cause hey, we DON'T, ya know? Being queer is one of the coolest things that anyone can experience."

Um, somewhat missing the point to fulfill their own agenda here, methinks. I chose to come out, I'm happy and glad that I did and I'm happy and glad that I'm queer - given the choice, I wouldn't be straight. But I do think I was born this way and luckily eventually found the environment/right circumstances to be able to express my true sexuality. It seems to me the statement above confuses the queer apologists that have had me tearing my hair out in the past - "We're just the same as [heterosexuals], we want jobs and partners, we're normal, just like you" - with those who believe sexuality is genetic but are still proud of what they are. It's a long way from being helpless and accusations of cowardice are incredibly insulting to a lot of people who, quite frankly, put their safety on the line every time they come out to someone or are visibly queer.
 
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
19:38 / 17.08.02
Well, as might be guessed, I'm on that mailing list, semi-lurking until I've got a handle on the place there. I sort of feel half and half on the issue, probably fitting being a bi-boy. As some critics of their viewpoint have said, 'queer by choice' choose to be queer, where are the people who are 'straight by choice'? I certainly know what I'm attracted to, but I can't imagine how I'd make myself feel attracted to someone that falls outside my 'type'. Grrr, Hulk's brain hurts...
 
 
w1rebaby
20:11 / 17.08.02
Yeah - I guess I see the tiny minority of individuals possessed of that degree of sexual flexibility as (for want of a better label) 'true' bisexuals...

I'm theorising that people who can convince themselves to change their own sexuality are more than just bisexual - they're capable of convincing themselves to change other basic behaviours as well. Of course, they could be bisexual with just a preference that changes as time goes by.
 
 
Ganesh
23:42 / 17.08.02
I don't know that you can safely generalise from 'flexible in sexual behaviours' to 'flexible in all behaviours'. In my experience, the two don't necessarily overlap.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
00:16 / 18.08.02
If anything it's probably discounting people to say that because who truly wants to be identified as that flighty? Most people are flexible in their sexual behaviour, every person you fall for isn't exactly the same, if you take someone who's bisexual as a person who is blind to gender then it becomes something quite different. Generally individuals react to situations in similar ways and simply change as they get older but all of their behaviour doesn't necessarily veer in the way that their sexual tastes do. Hey, some days I eat galaxy, some days I eat dairy milk.

I've spent the day thinking about this, I don't believe that our sexuality is necessarily pre-determined, most people spend quite a bit of time thinking about it. Most of my straight friends have mulled over it, most of my gay friends spent a little time identifying as straight and some believed themselves to be so. I spent most of my adolescence feeling extremely confused by the whole thing and couldn't work out where I was. So pre-determined doesn't feel like the right word however neither do I believe there to be a conscious choice involved because that's certainly too clinical for the process I went through - in my case it was more the process of deciding who I was than what I was - so maybe for those of us who are bisexual it is more about what is acceptable to ourselves... whether we can allow ourselves to be that way.
 
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
10:56 / 21.08.02
A conversation has just started on the mailing list about what 'Queer by Choice' actually means, I'll keep an eye on it but so far one of the regs has replied that some people have interpreted that as no more than 'choosing to accept one's sexuality' while others take it as literally waking up one day and deciding to be gay. I'm keeping an eye on this as it seems to suggest from that point of view of bisexuals who are denying their bisexual nature in favour of being gay or straight.
 
 
Loomis
14:13 / 21.08.02
From the website:

We might envision the erotic potential we're born with as a shapeless mass of water, and say that as we experience different things throughout our lives, we and the society around us collaboratively build dams and channels to direct the erotic water in our minds toward certain types of people, toward the opposite sex (maybe because our parents and the media told us we should be attracted to them), or toward the same sex (maybe because we can relate better to them as a result of our shared gender role conditioning), or towards some non-gender-based characteristic like creativity, et cetera, for any number of reasons. The reasons we're attracted to who we are must be different for all of us.

Now, at the particular moment that you meet someone you're attracted to, you may not have much choice about being attracted to them because in that one moment you probably don't have time to instantaneously reconstruct all the dams and channels that took many years to build. But if your reasons for having built the dams and channels in the way that you did become outdated, then over a period of time you might consciously or unconsciously rebuild them in a different style.

I find this quite interesting, especially if we look at it from the point of view that we all have a place on the sliding scale of bisexuality. So we might say that even if you're 97.3% at one end, you are capable of 2.7% attraction, or at least, the ability to be turned on by, the sex to which you normally are not. And we might say that most people who identify strongly as straight or gay are 80-99.9% on the scale and "true bisexuals" as Ganesh says, are in the middle band of 40-60%, perhaps leaning on occasion more to one or the other.

I'm just being hypothetical here, so bear with me. Now I don't know that I'd say you could go all the way from 90% straight to 10% straight (or 10% gay to 90% gay). And I don't know where to begin on the subject of "receiving sexual pleasure from" versus "having a relationship with". But perhaps if we unlearned socially sedimented behaviours, we could teach (or allow) ourselves to receive pleasure in new ways, and slide towards that middle band, and reveal that we all have the capability of being "true bisexuals."

For a purely sexual example, there are plenty of people who would happily receive a handjob from the opposite sex regardless of their looks or personality, being satisfied simply that the person fits the gender of who they allow themselves to enjoy sex with. But they wouldn't allow themselves to receive a handjob from a member of the same sex. For seemingly no other reason than social conditioning. If they allowed this one act, and over time, allowed themselves to enjoy more intimate (we'll just say physical for the time being) pleasures, then at some point surely they would have moved closer to the middle of the bisexual scale than they were previously?

I'm just thinking out loud here, but perhaps we might theorize that in an ideal world where it's one big love fest and we have no inhibitions about where we get our pleasure from and not the slightest reason to be concerned about labels, that we could all be a lot closer to the middle than we might be now?
 
 
Ganesh
15:21 / 21.08.02
Possibly. When I talked about 'true bisexuals' I was certainly thinking of the central 10-20% of the notional continuum. I've always gauged my own place on that continuum through the time-honoured method of assessing who I look at in the street - y'know, really look at, turn around and have another gawp, possibly loiter around for another glimpse. Pretty much all male with me, maybe one woman out of 40 or 50 men - and that's usually because I either like what she's wearing or momentarily mistake her for a man.

And yet... I remember the day after the first time I slept with a man: I felt peculiarly charged, aware that I was looking at men around me in a different, more sexualised way, which hadn't been the case before.

Perhaps, as a sort of tangential version of what Loomis is saying, we filter our perception of people at least partly according to some inner sense of what possibilities are or are not open to us. Perhaps, once I became aware that I could relate to men sexually, I allowed myself to notice them more. Perhaps if I hadn't been socially conditioned, while growing up, to believe it was unacceptable to find men attractive, I'd have allowed my senses freer rein in the first place.

I'm genuinely unsure what to make of Loomis's theory. It seems counterintuitive: I've certainly tried sex with women in the past, with no real 'spark', but in an absence of any social conditioning whatsoever, perhaps this wouldn't be the case? Maybe I really am more of a 'potential bisexual' than I think I am. Maybe everyone is.

Hmmm.
 
 
gridley
21:07 / 21.08.02
This is pretty fascinating stuff. I've always been about 85% straight, 15% gay by Ganesh's theory, and nearly the same percentages in terms of people kissed. Amongst my set of friends in college and the urban bookstore scene I worked at for years, it was mostly considered that everyone was bisexual to some degree, and that while you could choose to explore or repress your lesser inclinations, there wasn't really much to do about it or fret about it.

I don't mean to attack the theory of the gay gene, but am curious how such a thing might come about in terms of evolution. Assuming (maybe incorrectly) that every variation in DNA has some potential boon to the species (whether or not it pans out to have any major effect). Would this gene have come about as a way of preventing overpopulation during times of food scarcity, like (and I'm not making any deeper comparison than the surface) the lemmings leaping to their doom when their food becomes scarce?

I must admit I have a hard time wrapping my mind around it. I usually think of most of my personality being environmentally-developed, based mostly in observing the differences in me and my two brothers who have the same DNA but have developed radically different personalities based on the peoples we've associated with.

I've also always feared that one day science will one day have chemically diagnosed (or worse still pathologized) ever aspect of what we call personality.

I also don't think I like pre-determinism as a general philsophy.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
01:26 / 22.08.02
After reading the latest on this thread I decided to do a little experiment... it was very time consuming but I have nothing better to do at the moment, except read, there you go.

-Argghhh, my cat just deleted my post, here I go again.

I went on to yahoo and searched for gay and lesbian tests. At no.1 I'd have to rate Channel 4's gay-o-meter: apparently I'm 43% gay! I thought this one was most accurate but whether this was coincidence or not I'll never know. Perhaps someone else should have a go and let me know whether it seems right or not.

I did a few tests with options for bisexuality but scored lesbian everytime, inaccurate in a sweet kind of way, one test that I had to score myself told me I was a lesbian even though I kept knocking points off for wanting men too!

I wonder about the social conditions behind sexuality. I was brought up by a self-proclaimed radical feminist, does that mean that I had more chance of being bisexual than my brother did, who could say? The percentage notion I kind of like, I was talking about it with some friends today, they were agreeing and placing themselves on the scale.

Sexuality, in my case, redefines itself every day. I often wake up in the morning and find that when I've left the house my percentages have veered from the day before. I may be one number generally but some days I'm much more inclined towards one sex than the other. Today I was about 64% gay I think whereas yesterday it was more like 20%. This is why they say that bisexuals are confused... which, of course is wrong.
 
 
Disco is My Class War
07:05 / 23.08.02
There are some funny weirdass subtexts here, which I find interesting. Firstly, I do know a sizeable body of people who are lesbians by choice. Political choice, mostly, because their idea is that all heterosexual/penetrative sex is rape.

But I kinda like the 'Queer By Choice' thing. I am certainly not comfortable with ascribing genetic or 'biological' reasons for my being anything (queer/trans), and for good reason: if biological determinism is not being used by right-wing fundies to advocate genetic 'normalisation', it's being used by stinking assimilationists to tell us that we're 'excused' by virtue of being born this way. Or that it isn't our fault. Or that we are really just like straight people but for this one small difference. All of which does a violence in assuming that there is a sameness or similarity in queer people which can contstitute an 'us'.

Then again, I don't think that figuring out the reasons that you like having a particular kind of sex or being a certain way are really that important. And I shall now retire to my fifty-fourth reading of The History of Sexuality, Volume One.
 
 
Shortfatdyke
07:31 / 23.08.02
I don't know anyone who would say they were lesbian by choice, but I have heard of it in the radical feminist community. I do know lesbians who won't do fisting or any kind of penetrative fucking, even with other women, for the reasons Mister Disco quotes.

The whole 'nature or nurture?' arguement can go on forever, as far as I'm concerned - I don't think I ever want to see a definate answer, because our enemies will use it against us. What annoys and offends me about the QBC site is the 'if you're not like us, you're wrong/a coward' attitude. If some want to identify as 'queer by choice' then great, go for it - just give others respect for their own beliefs and identity.

If it turns out I was born queer, then the fight and the frightening leap into the unknown that I had to take to come out - after 27 years of feeling horribly wrong as a pretend heterosexual and being deeply unhappy - is actually rather tragic, because I certainly wasn't hiding - rather, I had the truth hidden from me. Which of course counters my arguement for not knowing the answer to the nature/nuture question - how different would my life have been if I'd been told at an early age that I was a lesbian?
 
 
Ganesh
09:50 / 23.08.02
I've been thinking more about this. It seems that certain groups and/or subcultures would have particularly vested interests for or against the notion that one 'chose' one's sexuality.

Church of England ministers, for example, are officially 'allowed' to have homosexual desires (%like they weren't before%) as long as they don't actually act on them. This is a rather sadly literal illustration of my suspicion that it's the degree of expression of one's sexuality which is 'chosen', rather than the sexuality itself. I could identify as straight, sustain a (comfortable, probably, rather than passionate) relationship with a woman; I'd be attracted to men, naturally, but would never act on it. Would this make me 'heterosexual by choice'?

If it's argued that actual sexual attraction itself is under conscious control, then this has implications for certain aspects of society. Within the UK's state-funded NHS, for example, there would be little justification for dispensing hormonal or surgical treatment to transsexuals - hell, if they're that unhappy, they can just choose not to be transsexual, can't they? - and the whole process would likely be handled by the private sector only.

There would be no real grounds to modify the law to account for minority sexual groups. Why should homosexuals enjoy equal legal rights? If they want the benefits marriage brings, can't they just choose to be heterosexual?

Other, more 'pathological' sexualities would assume total responsibility for their actions. Paedophiles? Well, they chose to be that way, didn't they? String 'em up!

I'm obviously being fairly flip here. It just seems to me that assuming individuals had complete conscious control over their fundamental sexuality itself (which I still don't believe) would necessitate fairly wide-ranging changes...
 
 
Tamayyurt
16:57 / 23.08.02
It's fucking impossible to find good *free* bi porn online!

(Sorry, don't mean to be a troll... you can get rid of this post if you like.)
 
 
Jack Sprat
15:05 / 24.08.02
I am bisexual and queer by choice.

I cannot tell you how many years I've sat in meetings of lesbian groups and patiently (or not patiently) insisted that although I hadn't had a guy for 10 years, I was still bi. It didn't get really noisy except when I sweetly asked my interrogators the last time they'd had sex with a boy -- which was always more recently and more often I had -- and I then informed them, oh, I see, you are REALLY bi. Furniture generally began to fly thru the air after that.

I cannot tell you how many friends transitioning from male to female but retaining their preference for females find out in a hurry about all the interesting and bizarre implications of "orientation." For one thing, if they stay with their wives they become legally married lesbians. Isn't that entertaining?

I've also had friends who kept their queer orientation when they changed gender identification. That is, MTFs whose attraction to men grew as their bodies and lives changed; or former butch dykes who found that they began to prefer gay men as they transitioned to male.

Me, I'm definitely lesbian by choice. I consciously prefer women. There's a difference in visceral attraction -- women with cute bellies can make me act like I have Tourette's -- but I'm functional with male, female, and transitional humans.

I know a lot of bi activists who (at least privately) claim "Everybody is bisexual." Bullpucky. If it were true, then all orientation would be "by choice." But I don't think it's any more true than that your first same-sex experience makes you a dyke, and if you're not brave and proud enough to admit it then you're just a weaselly liar.

The thing is, why should it matter whether and to what degree it is by choice?

Having lived through some excesses of queer activism, I've got some ideas about that.

It has been deemed politically safer to claim that being queer is inborn because it places homosexuality alongside conditions such as congenital blindness. As in, I need braille books because I'm blind, not because I choose to shut my eyes. If I weren't blind, I could just open my eyes. Besides, what blind person would not choose to be sighted if that were possible, rather than beg for braille books?

This kind of thinking promotes the disease model of sexuality, which I'm not terribly fond of. For one thing, my sexuality is a source of great joy, not a handicap. (I assume that monosexuals feel the same way.)

Queer activists are very nervous about embracing sexuality as a choice because they recognize the opposition's legitimate fear of the slippery slope. If queers-by-choice are granted the same rights and access as het monosexuals, then what's to stop polyamorists from demanding legal marriage to as many partners as they want? What's to stop perverts from demanding the right to legally own each other? If you ever want to see some really swift back-pedaling, bring up polyamory at a presentation about gay marriage!

I don't think anybody has determined that there really is a gay gene. If I remember correctly, the big splashy study some 10 years ago, where queer cadaver hypothalami were discovered to be different from het cadaver hypothalami was based on SIX dead gay MEN only. Is that good science?

More to the point, why does it matter?

I am bisexual. Always have been, always will be, always insisted on identifying as such. I also was married to a woman for seven years who had full-blown AIDS. Every day, we dealt with the legal and other difficulties of being a same-sex couple in the health care system, and trying to plan for a time when she couldn't speak for herself, and eventually what would happen after she died. As a bisexual, I CHOSE to be with a woman. Were my/our needs for access to hospital visitation, health care decision-making, and inheritance different than a Gold Star Lesbian who had never touched a penis other than, say, to change a nephew's diaper? Should they be? Why?
 
 
XXII:X:II = XXX
16:22 / 24.08.02
It's fucking impossible to find good *free* bi porn online!

Well, easy enough if you're looking for FEMALE bisexuals, but I think you'd find Atlantis before much male bisexual porn. Not that I have any complaint with the former, but, y'know, c'mon. You can find sex with a horse and a doberman before you can find a couple guys & a girl who aren't simply using her as a go-between. Silly, really.

Sorry to all who were having a serious discussion; that just resonated with me.

Jack, I think the insistence that "everyone is bisexual" is more a political one than anything: heteros are skeeved by bis because it forces them to consider their options, and many gays resent bis because they're perceived as fence-sitters who either are tourists who have no intention of making a commitment to "the lifestyle" and all the baggage inherent, or as cowards who are actually full-on homo but haven't admitted it to themselves. Forwarding the idea that everyone has the potential to be bi is, I think, a shot in the arm the movement needs, since much of the gay community has become as rigid in their perceptions of options as is much of the straight population. Of course most people, having settled on an option they're comfortable with, are not going to "switch teams" quite so casually, but even if the genetic disposition theory is true, people ultimately have to take responsibility for their own choices, even those which they don't exercise (much less "exorcise").
 
 
Tryphena Absent
19:36 / 24.08.02
Actually I'd disagree with you here, I don't think everyone needs to feel they have the option to be bisexual at all. The problem, in my opinion, is that there is no bi community - if you're bisexual you either get lumped in with the straight people or the gay people. There aren't any bi clubs, there's no bi anything. People who are bisexual are greedy or confused, they couldn't possibly know their own minds, it's so much easier to be one or the other. Growing up as a bisexual was horribly confusing and I always had to be one thing or the other and in actual fact I'm neither. Some people are like me, some people are not, why the hell haven't I got a community to lean on, why are there no bi resources in the UK and why do I have the option of phoning up the LGB and always talking to someone who doesn't get it?
 
 
Ganesh
23:31 / 24.08.02
Just a wild stab in the dark here, but perhaps a higher percentage of the population would be willing to explore the 'life's rich tapestry' wondrousness of alternative sexuality if the law of the land were to extend equivalent legal, financial and social niceties to those who don't settle in heterosexual relationships? What, as they say, is my motivation?
 
 
Strange Machine Vs The Virus with Shoes
23:56 / 24.08.02
I think that more people would be willing to experiment if gay/puff wasn't such a stigma in school. I don't think that homosexual experience has ever been dealt with at this level. Some parents may be able to accept homosexual leanings at the 16-18 year level, but i doubt they would acknowledge it at younger ages because it raises "sexuality" at a much younger level. Heterosexuality is not seen as sexual at a young age, whereas homosexuality is.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
01:13 / 25.08.02
Well if you talk to someone younger than sixteen about homosexuality it's deemed as promoting it anyway... how anyone actually realises they're gay or bi is beyond me it's so taboo.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
07:30 / 14.12.04
All right, it is Julie Bindel, but despite that...
If we wanted to be straight, we would be. She really does love those sweeping characatures to prove her point don't she?
 
 
Chiropteran
12:07 / 14.12.04
[rotty aside]
yes, folks, there are no natural blondes with brown eyes, won't happen until people start doing genetic modification on humans

Simply not true. My wife is blonde with brown eyes. I've known her since she was a kid, and she's been blonde right along (i.e. natural). Rare, surely, but not impossible.

[/rotty aside]

~L
 
 
diz
19:33 / 14.12.04
There would be no real grounds to modify the law to account for minority sexual groups. Why should homosexuals enjoy equal legal rights? If they want the benefits marriage brings, can't they just choose to be heterosexual?

this, frankly, is the problem.

many conservatives are happy enough now to trot out all sorts of statistics about how unhealthy the "gay lifestyle" is, and would be happy to trot them out even more vocally if they could win the argument that all queer folk are queer by choice, as evidence that while people might choose to be queer, they should not, for their own good if for no other reason. because they "should" not, it becomes a moral imperative to help them choose not to, by refusing to cater to their "unhealthy" impulses with legal recognition, health benefits, etc. we certainly should encourage "reparative therapy" and other psychological treatments, like we encourage 12-step programs for people with drug and alcohol problems. we would have to make sure that schoolkids have "proper" information on the health hazards of choosing to be queer. gay and lesbian bars should get closed down as public health hazards, and we might want to mandate rehab for the people inside.

we could even set up special institutions to help people work through their court-appointed rehab programs, like special hospitals or maybe even isolated camps where they would be far away from the temptations of the city, and people with more serious problems and "repeat offenders" could be offered more intensive therapeutic programs.

hey, they could even be funded through the faith-based charities initiative! wouldn't it be the essence of a charitable Christian nation to provide help for people recovering from unhealthy behavior problems?

especially, since, you know, most of them got that way because they were molested by other fag... err, by other victims of behavioral problems which led them to make similarly unhealthy choices.
 
 
Liger Null
03:38 / 15.12.04
If they want the benefits marriage brings, can't they just choose to be heterosexual?

Isn't marriage a lifetime commitment based on love? I guess if the person that you are in love with and with whom you want to spend your life just happens to be the same gender, you're just shit out of luck.
 
 
Liger Null
11:26 / 15.12.04
I just want to clarify the above post. It was a sincere answer to an ironic question.
 
  
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