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United States News Title: Being a faggot is a choice 1. Just because an argument is politically strategic, does not make it true: A couple of years ago, the Human Rights Campaign, arguably the country’s most powerful lesbian and gay organization, responded to politician Herman Cain’s assertion that being gay is a choice. They asked their members to “Tell Herman Cain to get with the times! Being gay is not a choice!” They reasoned that Cain’s remarks were “dangerous.” Why? “Because implying that homosexuality is a choice gives unwarranted credence to roundly disproven practices such as ‘conversion’ or ‘reparative’ therapy. The risks associated with attempts to consciously change one’s sexual orientation include depression, anxiety and self-destructive behavior.” Image The problem with such statements is that they infuse biological accounts with an obligatory and nearly coercive force, suggesting that anyone who describes homosexual desire as a choice or social construction is playing into the hands of the enemy. In 2012, the extent to which gay biology had become a moral and political imperative came into full view when actress Cynthia Nixon, after commenting to a New York Times Magazine reporter that she “chose” to pursue a lesbian relationship after many years as a content heterosexual, was met with outrage by lesbian and gay activists. As one horrified gay male writer proclaimed, “[Nixon] just fell into a right-wing trap, willingly. …Every religious right hatemonger is now going to quote this woman every single time they want to deny us our civil rights.” Under considerable pressure from lesbian and gay advocacy groups, Nixon recanted her statement a few weeks later, stating instead that she must have been born with bisexual potential. Yes, it’s true that straight people are more tolerant when they believe that lesbian and gay people have no choice in the matter. If homosexual desire is hardwired, then we cannot change it; we must live with this condition, and it would be unfair to judge us for that which we cannot change. By implication, if we could choose, of course we would choose to be heterosexual. Any sane person would choose heterosexuality (not so. see here). And when homophobic people come to the opposite conclusion—that homosexual desire is something we can choose—then they want to help us make the right choice, the heterosexual choice. And they are willing to offer this help in the form of violent shock therapy and other “conversion” techniques. In light of all this, I can absolutely understand why it feels much safer to believe that we are born this way, and then to circulate this idea like our lives depend on it (because, for some people, this truly is a matter of life and death). Indeed, most progressive straight people and most gay and bi people–including Lady Gaga herself–hold the conviction that our sexual orientation is innate. They have taken their lead from the mainstream gay and lesbian movement, which has powerfully advocated for this view. But the fact that the “born this way” hypothesis has resulted in greater political returns for gay and lesbian people doesn’t have anything to do with whether it is true. Maybe, as gay people, we want to get together and pretend it is true because it is politically strategic. That would be interesting. But still, it wouldn’t make the idea true. The science is wrong: People like to cite “the overwhelming scientific evidence” that sexual orientation is biological in nature. But show me a study that claims to have proven this, and I will show you a flawed research design. Let’s take one example: In 2000, a team of researchers at UC Berkeley conducted a study in which they found that lesbians were more likely than heterosexual women to have a “masculine” hand structure. Presumably, most men have a longer ring finger than index finger, whereas most women have the opposite (or they have index and ring fingers of the same length). Lesbians, according to this study, are more likely than straight women to have what we might call “male-pattern hands.” The researchers concluded that this finding supports their theory that lesbianism might be caused by a “fetal androgyn wash” in the womb—that is, when female fetuses are exposed to greater levels of a masculinizing hormone, it shows up later in the form of female masculinity: male-pattern hands and… attraction to women. But this study makes the same error that countless others have made: it does not properly distinguish between gender (whether one is masculine or feminine) and sexual orientation (heterosexuality or homosexuality). Simply put, the fact that a woman is “masculine” (itself a social construction) or has been introduced to greater levels of a male hormone need not have anything to do with whether she is attracted to women. We would only assume this if we had already accepted the heteronormative premise that masculine people (or men) are naturally attracted to femaleness and that normal (i.e., feminine) women are naturally attracted to men. Herein lies the bias. Many “masculine” women who are heterosexual (have you been to the rural South?) would like us to know that their gender does not line up with their sexual desire in any predictable way. And many very feminine lesbians would like us to know this too. The bottom line is that ideas about sexual desire are so bound up with misconceptions about gender and with the presumption that heterosexuality is nature’s default, that science has yet to approach this subject in an objective way. For a comprehensive examination of the flaws in the most widely cited research on sexual orientation, see Rebecca Jordan-Young’s brilliant book Brain Storm: The Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences (Harvard University Press, 2011). 3. The science is wrong: An even greater problem with the science of sexual orientation is that it seeks to find the genetic causes of gayness, as if we all agree about what gayness is. To say that “being gay” is genetic is to engage in science that hinges on a very historically recent and specifically European-American understanding of what being gay means. In Ancient Greece, sex between elite men and adolescent boys was a common and normative cultural practice. According to historians Michel Foucault and Jonathan Ned Katz, these relationships were considered the most praise-worthy, substantive and Godly forms of love (whereas sex between a man and a woman was, for all intents and purposes, sex between a man and his slave). If men having frequent and sincere sex with one another is what we mean by “gay,” then do we really believe that something so fundamentally different was happening in the Ancient Athenian gene pool? Did some evolutionary occurrence enable Plato’s ancestors to get rid of all of those heterosexual genes? And what about native cultures in which all boys engage in homosexual rites of passage? Do we imagine that we could identify some genetic evidence of propensity to ingest sperm as part of a cultural initiation into manhood? What about all of the cultures around the globe in which male homosexual sex does not signal gayness except for under certain specific circumstances (e.g., you are only gay if you are the receptive sexual partner, or if you are feminine)? And while I am on this subject, what about the fact the United States is precisely one of those cultures? When young college women lick each other’s boobs at frat parties, or when young college men stick their fingers in each other’s butts while being hazed by their frat brothers, we don’t call this gay—we call this “girls gone wild” or “hazing.” My point here is that a lot of people engage in homosexual behavior, but somehow we talk about the genetic origins of homosexuality as if we are clear about who is gay and who is not, and as if it’s also clear that “gay genes” are possessed only by people who are culturally and politically gay (you know, the people who are seriously gay). This is a bit arbitrary, don’t you think? Just 150 years ago, scientists went searching for the physiological evidence that women were hysterical. Hysteria, by Victorian medical definition, meant that a woman’s uterus had become dislodged from its proper location and was floating around her body causing all sorts of trouble—like feminism, and other matters of grave concern. And guess what, they found the evidence, and they published books and articles to prove it. They also looked for and found the evidence that all people of African and Asian ancestry were intellectually and morally inferior to people of European Ancestry. Many books were published dedicated to establishing these obviously absurd and violent beliefs as legitimate and indisputable scientific facts. Similarly, the science of sexual orientation has a long and disturbing history. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, it was believed that homosexuals had beady eyes, particularly angular facial structures, and “bad blood.” Today, we apparently have gender variant fingers and gay brains. Is it possible that people who identify themselves as “gay” in the United States (again, keep in mind that “gay” is a culturally and historically specific concept), share some common physiology? Perhaps. But even if this is so, do we really know why? Indeed, we may find (as Simon LeVay did) that men who identify as gay share a certain trait—a larger VIP SCN nucleus of the hypothalamus, for instance. But how do we know that this “enlargement” is a symptom or cause of their homosexuality, and not, say, a symptom or cause of their general propensity for bravery, creativity, or rebellion? In a homophobic culture, you need some bravery (and other awesome traits) to be queer. Perhaps these personality traits are what are actually being observed under the microscope. And, of course, there is the time-eternal question: why aren’t scientists looking for the genetic causes of heterosexuality? Or masturbation? Or interest in oral sex? The reason is that none of these sex acts currently violate social norms, at least not strongly enough to be perceived as sexual aberrations. But this was not always true. In the 19th century, scientists were interested in the biological origins of the “masturbation perversion.” They were interested because they believed it was pathological, and because they wanted to know whether it could be repaired. At the end of the day, what we can count on is that the science of sexual orientation will produce data that simply mirror the most crass and sexist gender binarisms circulating in the popular imagination. This research will report that women are innately more sexually fluid than men, capable of being turned-on by almost anything and everything (hmmm…. other than in Lisa Diamond’s research, where have I seen that idea before? Ah yes, heterosexual pornography.) It will report that men are sexually rigid, their desires impermeable. It will tell us that straight men simply cannot be aroused by men and that gay men are virtually hardwired to be repulsed by the thought of sex with women. Regardless of what else we might say about the soundness of these studies, what is evident to me is that they have been used to authorize many a straight man’s homophobia, and many a gay man’s misogyny. 4. Just because you have had homosexual or heterosexual feelings for as long as you can remember, does not mean you were born a homosexual or heterosexual. There are many things I have felt or done for as long as I can remember. I have always liked to argue. I have always loved drawing feet and shoes. I have always craved cheddar cheese. I have always felt a strong connection with happy, trashy pop music. These have been aspects of myself for as long as I can remember, and each represents a very strong impulse in me. But was I born with a desire to eat cheddar cheese or make drawings of feet? Are these desires that can be identified somewhere in my body, like on one of my genes? It would be hard to make these claims, because I could have been born and raised in China, let’s say, where cheddar cheese is basically non-existent and would not have been part of my life. And while I may have been born with some general artistic potential, surely our genetic material is not so specific as to determine that I would love to draw platform shoes. The point here is that what we desire in childhood is far more complex and multifaceted than the biological sciences can account for, and this goes for our sexual desires as well. Some basic raw material is in place (like a general potential for creativity), but the details—well, those are ours to discover. 5. Secretly, you already know that people’s sexual desires are shaped by their social and cultural context. Lots of adults worry that if we allow little boys to wear princess dresses and paint their nails with polish, they might later be more inclined to be gay. Even some liberal parents (including gay and lesbian parents) worry that if they introduce their child to “too much” in the way of queer material, this could be a way of “pushing” homosexuality on them. Similarly, many people worry that if young women are introduced to feminism in college, and if they become too angry or independent, they may just decide to be lesbians. But if we all really believed that sexual orientation was congenital—or present at birth—then no one would ever worry that social influences could have an effect on our sexual orientation. But I think that in reality, we all know that sexual desire is deeply subject to social, cultural, and historical forces. We know that if the world today were a different place, a place where homosexuality was culturally normative (like, say, Ancient Greece), we would see far more people embracing their homosexual desires. And if this were the case, it would have nothing to do with genetics. The concept of “sexual orientation” is itself less than 150 years old, and almost equally recent is the notion that people should partner based on romantic attraction. Most of what feels so natural and unchangeable about our desires—including the bodies and personalities we are attracted to—is conditioned by our respective cultures. The majority of straight American men, for instance, will tell you that they have a strong, visceral aversion to women with bushy armpit hair. But this aversion, no matter how deep it may now run in men’s psyches and no matter how nonnegotiable it may feel, is hardly genetic. Up until the last century, the entire world’s female population had armpit hair, and somehow, heterosexual sex survived. People like to use the failure of “gay conversion” therapies as evidence that homosexuality is innate. First of all, these conversions do not always fail; if you make someone feel disgusted enough by their desires, you can change their desires. Call it a tragedy of repression, or call it a religious awakening—regardless, the point is that we can and do change. For instance, in high school and early in college, my sexual desires were deeply bound up with sexism. I wanted to be a hot girl, and I wanted powerful men to desire me. I was as authentically heterosexual as any woman I knew. But later, several years into my exploration of feminist politics, what I once found desirable (heterosexuality and sexism) became utterly unappealing. I became critical of homophobia and sexism in ways that allowed these forces far less power to determine the shape of my desires. If this had not happened, no doubt I’d be married to a man. And if he wasn’t a complete asshole, I’d probably be happy enough. But instead, I was drawn to queerness for various political and emotional reasons, and from my vantage point today, I believe it to be one of the best desires I ever cultivated. [Does this mean that your daughter may decide to be a lesbian if she takes some women’s studies courses? Yes. Whatcha gonna do now?!] Perhaps most importantly, the fact that we might cultivate or “choose” something doesn’t mean that it is a trivial, temporary, or less a vital part of who we are. For instance, is religion a choice? Certainly it is if we define “choice” as anything that isn’t an immutable part of our physiology. But many religious people would feel profoundly misunderstood and offended if I suggested that their religious beliefs were a phase, an experiment, or a less significant part of who they are then, say, their hair color. Choices are complex. Choices run deep. And yes, choices are both constrained and fluid–just like our bodies. Post script: Ultimately, the terms set forward in the public debate about this subject–biology versus “choice”–are quite limited, mainly because “choice” is not the most useful term for describing all of the possibilities that sit apart from biology. Several social, cultural, and structural factors can shape our embodied desires and erotic possibilities. The fact that these factors are not physiological in origin does not mean that they aren’t coercive or subjectifying, resulting in a real or perceived condition of fixity or “no choice.” We know that social factors also become embodied over time. And yet, I remain somewhat committed to the concept of “choice”–or something like it–to describe the possibility of a critical and reflexive relationship to our sexual desires. Personally, the idea that I don’t have control over who or what I desire is a big turn-off to me, so I am constantly pushing back on what feel like the limits of my own desires. For instance, I went through a period of pushing myself to date femmes because I had some good reasons for being suspicious about why I had ruled them out from my dating pool. When it felt like I could never be nonmonogamous, I made it a goal to at least try. Then when I realized I only really felt attracted to alcoholic rebels, I nipped that in the bud too. Just when I thought I’d never think hairy men were hot, I allowed myself to face my attraction to Javier Bardem. When my tastes and proclivities start to feel like they are solidifying, I get suspicious and disappointed. So, in the interests of full disclosure, I am writing from the perspective of someone who finds sexual fixity pretty uninteresting, and who believes that there are really good feminist and queer reasons to take regular, critical inventory of the parts of our sexuality that we believe we cannot or will not change. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 49.
#2. To: no gnu taxes, misterwhite (#0)
There has always been a problem with this argument. If a homosexual can choose to be straight, then the obverse must also be true: heterosexuals can also choose a sodomy lifestyle and stick with it for a lifetime. This is, after all, what is expected if homosexuals do choose to live straight lives. So you think you could just as easily choose to be a homosexual as a heterosexual? When exactly did you choose to be a heterosexual instead of choosing to be a homo? This argument only works with people who already believe it. Not so different from the arguments the libs make to defend Teh Gays. They're all fundamentally bad arguments.
Yes they could. That is their choice. What's your point? So you think you could just as easily choose to be a homosexual as a heterosexual? When exactly did you choose to be a heterosexual instead of choosing to be a homo? People have sex with animals. People have sex in all weird kinds of ways. First, I chose to be heterosexual by nature. I chose to be a normal person because I know the difference between right and perversion. Basic anatomy doesn't suggest faggot sex is normal.
Ok. But why do you CARE? Really. What difference does it make to you what people do with their pee-pees? This is the part I just don't get: all of the ANGER at the people do deviant things. Who cares? WHY do they care? I don't care. It's not interesting. There are people who love chopped liver and onions. I don't. Ick. It doesn't make me angry at the people who do. Why does it MATTER?
You're misstating what's going on. They're not only doing deviant things; they want to normalize these deviant things. They want their behavior to be legal and acceptable. Now in a society consisting of responsible adults only, this might be possible. As you say, who cares? But in a society also containing impressionable children, giving the green light to irresponsible and dangerous behavior sends the wrong message.
They do, yes. And that's politics. The reason they are so militant is because the laws were brutally repressive in the day when gays were not open about it. Private sex got convictions and felony prison sentences. When people are brutalized, they react if they can. If their reaction causes an easy rollback of the oppressive policy, that can be the end of it. And that's what happens in other countries regarding many things. But in America, the rules are the result of a relentless and endless low- level political civil war in which policy changes are treated as a zero-sum game. Sodomy was not decriminalized because "who cares?" the way that it was in many other places. Here, it became the object of a political crusade between factions. The two sides fought it out, and the side with the greater political power triumphed. Both sides are filled with hate towards the other, and when people hate other people, they don't simply win - after the victory they rub the noses of the defeated in their defeat. That's the American way. The gays fought an absolutely brutal political battle. Unable to win directly, they won through the courts, and once the courts, the way the abortionists did. Once the law was changed by the courts, the attitudes of the people shifted - Americans are legalists - what is LEGAL is MORAL in the American mind, and if one takes the stand that that which is legal is nevertheless IMMORAL, one encounters strong political forces designed to beat back that view. Trouble is, we Americans learned how to politically fight for "rights" in the context of the brutal repression and ultimate liberation of slaves and segregated blacks. Neither side gave any quarter, and the battle was one through blunt instruments (warfare) and brute political (and armed) force (National Guard called out to drive governors out of doorways and escort minority students into schools whose leaders did not want desegregation, but who were forced to do it at the physical gunpoint. That is the way politics are played in America: with force. When sodomy was illegal, some states made a point of BRUTALLY enforcing the law. The Supreme Court BRUTALLY stripped the rights from the states, and the gay activists BRUTALLY went straight into the most conservative states to make DAMNED sure that those big-bellied sherriffs were forced to submit, to stand aside, so that they would SEE and FEEL their defeat at the hands of superior power. That's how Americans play with each other, and talk to each other. Look at the degree of vile nastiness that various posters here unleash on each other. Americans justify all of that brutality in their own minds through appeals to their respective gods, who are all absolutists. So yes, the gays have driven - successfully - to normalize homosexual behavior, just as the blacks and their allies drove -successfully - to normalize racial equality and to break the power of the segregationists. If Americans were not so utterly intolerant and brutal in their exercise of power over one another, things not need be as bad as they are, but it is the American way of politics. For my part, I nevertheless refuse to acknowledge that the forced adherence to laws about who can (consentingly) touch whom, and how. I think that the whole American system ITSELF stinks to high heaven, and that the roots of all of the brutality ultimately go back to the black/white racial issue. Americans are cussed, on all sides, and so everything has to be a zero-sum game. I don't accept that logic. I don't care who screws whom, or how. I do understand the DEGREE of aggressiveness of the gays in asserting their rights, now that it is a war - they are angry at past oppression. I also understand the reason for the past oppression: aggressive Christian fanaticism. I am not a Christian fanatic. I don't like the Taliban, be they Christian or Muslim. So I don't get the hellbent nature of the desire to punish private behavior. But what I get, or don't get, isn't really relevant. I don't hate the gays. Nor do I particularly love the gays. If people want to identify themselves by the way they procure their orgasms, I think it's all rather sleazy and gets into things I don't want to know. But it's in everybody's face, and like every other American I am forced, against my will, to have a specific opinion on the matter. My opinion is that of the Supreme Court: Homosexual activity is a constitutional right, and whoever decides to try to beat down that right is an enemy of freedom who has to be broken. Therefore, just like blacks, homosexuals have the right to be served in the stream of commerce, and nobody has the right to either exclude blacks from his store, or refuse to provide goods and services to homosexuals - up to the point where the court has recently - correctly - drawn the line. When it comes to artistic expression, people cannot be forced to express themselves in favor of something they oppose. In a similar vein, churches cannot be forced to marry gays or accept them as clergy. It's sort of like the Civil War. It would have been so much better if "Christians" had acted like it and not insisted on slavery, and not, then, insisted on dominating slaves and fighting over it. But they did, so we all have to live with the aftermath. I see the fanatics screaming "faggot" and I still wonder WHY DO YOU CARE? And I see the gays pressing their current political advantage but being rightly blocked by the Supreme Court at the place they should be blocked. So as far as I can see the gays have gotten their "rights", and that's that. And I'm still not interested what they do with their pee-pees. Not likely to change my mind about any of these things. I don't like the Taliban of any cause.
And our rights? Do you care about them? Or do homosexual rights trump everyone else's rights and that's that? If a majority of parents don't want their 8-year-olds exposed to the homosexual lifestyle at school, what about their rights?
8 year old children shouldn't be exposed to any sort of sex by anyone. They are children.
#51. To: sneakypete (#49)
We seem to be in violent agreement on this subject.
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