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[slammerkinbabe]

Salon has an interesting article on the ex-gay movement. (Yeah, you need to watch a few seconds of an ad to see the article, but it's worth it if you're at all interested in the subject, really.) It treats it both in depth and more fairly than most coverage that I've seen has done. I think it's flawed, but for all that, it's pretty well done

Comments

[lietya]

I've never understood this black-and-white approach to what's a massively nebulous issue. *some* people don't have a choice; some do. *some* people exist on a "continuum" of sexuality such that they can decide to focus on one end of it or the other; some don't. (which is to say, I do believe there are people who are 100% born straight or gay and cannot ever contemplate edging even a tiny bit off of that farthest point of the spectrum. They're probably not as common as society makes it look by penalizing gray-area choices, but I do think they exist.)

me, asked personally, I'd say anyone who can "choose" is ultimately bisexual, albeit probably leaning hard to one side or the other. but I still wouldn't go so far as to question another person who told me otherwise about themselves....

"It comes down to a fundamental issue of letting people process their own experiences, identities, and choices, and it's as valid for sexuality as it is for sexual assault issues and a plethora of other issues besides."

I really, really, really like this attitude, and I'm memorizing that.

[slammerkinbabe]

To be fair WRT (AHAHAHAHA) the shitpile conversation I reference above, I said at the time that I thought virtually everyone was bisexual to some degree. And, honestly, I do believe that if we lived in a different culture, one where bisexuality was the expected norm, almost everyone *would* be bi to some degree. Now, what degree are we talking about here? Some people may be like .00000001% bi. I think the whole question of sexual orientation is pretty confusing anyway because I think there's more crossover between what our society considers "nonsexual" attration and what we consider "sexual" attraction than we like to admit. We like to draw this hard-and-fast line between platonic and sexual attraction, and I really don't think that line needs to be as hard and fast as we make it. Which is not to say that if we were all completely uninhibited we'd be comfortable fucking all of our friends... Maybe I think platonic and sexual attraction also exist on a continuum, rather than being completely separate things. Anyway, I think my original point is that when I'm not even comfortable with how we define "sexuality", I'm not comfortable making any broad proclamations about the general human experience of sexual orientation.

Good Lord, but none of that made any sense. I'm sorry.

[lietya]

Most of it did make perfect sense, actually. I think the thing to bear in mind is that the "everybody is bi" phrasing is likely to bring to mind a particular subset of person who emphatically believes that, and said subset-person is a jerk. :) So you have to be very very careful to explain thoroughly if you're going to say it, and even then, some knee-jerk readers will misunderstand.

I'm personally comfortable with saying that someone who is ".00000001% bi" is, effectively, not. The tiniest of tendencies may be there, but as it's unlikely that they'll ever behave or even consciously think in a way inconsistent with someone who is Not Bisexual, they may as well be considered not to be. bwahahahaha, call it the descriptivist viewpoint as applied to sexuality!

And I absolutely agree with you about the arbitrary dichotomy between what is and is not sexual/romantic. (I clearly identify myself as having had three "lovers," by which I mean "persons with whom I was in love." I've only slept with one of 'em. Doesn't invalidate the others, to me, so I have long thought that *sexual* behavior is a pretty slim criterion on which to hang a gigantic Dividing Line.)

[slammerkinbabe]

Really? Wow, I guess I've never encountered that particular subset. I was first exposed to the theory when I was in college and I had a professor teaching a class called "On Love", who stated from the lectern that she believed everyone was bisexual, and she wished more people agreed with her because then she would get more dates. :) I really liked said prof and she had a good theoretical grounding for what she was saying, so I guess I never realized that most people who agree with her are in an obnoxious subset!

[lietya]

Ah-ha! Now I see how you stepped into that land-mine. :)

Yes, there's a subset (which almost certainly does not include your professor, and *definitely* does not include you) of bisexuals whose response to being [or perceiving themselves as, I'm not living their life so I only know what they say] marginalized by both sides is to run about shrieking that being bisexual is More Highly Evolved and Superior and Everyone Really Is Bisexual but won't admit it unlike Supremely Self-Aware Me Over Here.... and so on. And anyone who's met one of *those* is going to twitch when you say "everybody is bi."

(Plus, in practice, unless you hedge about with a zillion disclaimers - which, knowing you, you DO - "everybody is bi" translates into "and those of you who think you aren't are WRONG, ha-ha!")

[slammerkinbabe]

Also ACK. The thing I was going to say before I got distracted on musing about sexual vs. nonsexual attraction was that in practice, yeah, a lot of people are 100% homosexual or 100% heterosexual. I'm not comfortable saying they'd necessarily be so in a society where bisexuality, as opposed to heterosexuality-and-if-you-can't-get-that-at-least-give-me-a-comfortable-dichotomy-to-hang-my-hat-on, was the norm. But I am not exactly a preeminent social scientist WRT (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA I WILL NEVER STOP WRTing) this issue either.

[slammerkinbabe]

And "in practice" doesn't mean "in practice they have sex only with women or only with men" - I mean that in reality they only experience sexual attraction to one sex or the other. Anyway. ::toddles off::

[lietya]

WRT! WRT! ....ahem. moving on.

Yeah. Explained like that, I totally see what you're getting at; I can also, unfortunately, see how that'd be shitpile-worthy, as some people who are quite invested in believing they're a Kinsey 6 or 1 are going to throw a giant fit at the presumption that they might [in an alternate ideal universe that could never exist and/or a completely and utterly different society] be [perhaps the most teensily bit] interested in a member of the "wrong" sex [at least to the degree of once perhaps admiring a butt of a wrong-sex person].

[slammerkinbabe]

Yeah, it's a good time. :) But what are you gonna do? ::dramatically, throwing hand to forehead:: I CANNOT BE INTELLECTUALLY DISHONEST!

[fanboy_of_zeus]

I know exactly one person who I know for a fact is at one end or the other of the straight/bi/gay continuum. The vast majority of my friends are bi. I've also wondered where the frequently-quoted statistic that around 10% of the population is gay comes from - there's no way that's an honest number; there are too many people who are in denial, in the closet, or quite possibly just never considered *what* they are for anyone to be able to count who fits under which label (and that's even apart from my second quibble, that there are no labels that really work).

[slammerkinbabe]

I think that may be an old statistic that doesn't reflect the younger generation, which is increasingly accepting of homosexuality and is therefore less likely to shut down the temptation to experiment. Which helps out my theory that as bisexuality becomes more accepted, more people will be bisexual. :)

[fanboy_of_zeus]

My opinion on it is, what the statistic shows is the percentage of people who would admit to being gay - which says nothing about who they're attracted to and who they *could* be attracted to if they'd let themselves.

The younger generation is definitely more accepting and less label-centric, though. As I said above, most of my friends are bi - enough that I consider it to be the norm. Actually, among most of my friends, there's as much weight given to preferring blondes over brunettes as there is to preferring girls over guys or vice versa...

[slammerkinbabe]

Sometimes I have wondered why race, gender, and virtually every other external physical feature that differentiates one group of people from another has historically been given so much weight and been cause for so much prejudice and bloodshed, when hair color and eye color have never been a big deal, apart from a few silly and politically irrelevant conclusions about "blondes have more fun". Why has no one ever decided that brunettes are morally and socially inferior to blondes, for example?

That's nothing to do with anything. I think you're right on in your first paragraph.

[fanboy_of_zeus]

I hate to bring Hitler into it, but I'm bringing Hitler into it - there *was* someone who thought blondes were morally superior. And don't even get me started on "dumb blonde" jokes. It's not a major part of our collective set of social definitions and stereotypes, but it's there.

[slammerkinbabe]

Well, yeah, but even Hitler was focused on the superiority of a race; I never heard him advocating killing dark-haired Germans. I mean, I know the blond-haired blue-eyed Aryan was his ideal, but the physical characteristics were secondary to the racial identity. And I know dumb blonde jokes are offensive, but I guess what I was wondering was more why historically we haven't seen a lot of cross-cultural prejudice and hatred on the basis of hair color or eye color or whatever. I guess it's maybe because (in most cultures, unless they're really isolated and genetically homogeneous) blondes can have brown-haired kids and vice versa, and so it's hard to conceive of someone with different hair color as completely alien, whereas race can be defined that way more easily. As for gender, well, heaven help us.

[fanboy_of_zeus]

Yeah - generally, hair color follows from skin color - if you've got a certain skin tone, then there are a range of hair colors you might have.

I don't know enough about WWII history to be sure, but I had thought there were overtones that blonds were best - that, yeah, he was going after those who were obviously very different first, but it wouldn't necessarily stop there.