| VeggieLover |
10-12-2010 11:25 PM |
This topic has been very big in my life lately, partly because of the recent attention the media has given it, and partly because I'm trying to get a Gay Straight Alliance club going at my school with a gay friend of mine. I've done a fair amount of research on the subject, but my first hand experience is fairly limited because my community has very limited diversity.
ANYway, the idea that one may choose sexuality seems to run against commonsense. There are enumerable instances where, due to prejudice or bullying, what have you, the quality of life of a gay individual would have been vastly improved had they somehow managed to 'become straight.' You can read all sorts of testimony describing an individual's struggle to accept his or her homosexuality, sometimes to the extent of denying it for an entire lifetime (at the high cost of lifelong unhappiness), but I have never yet read a testimony in which an individual realized that they had homosexual tendencies and proceeded to successfully condition themselves to like the "correct" gender. It just doesn't happen.
However, I do tend to agree with jeveuxleson. For instance, I know with relative certainty that I am heterosexual. But there are occasions where I become sexually aroused by the presence of another woman (whom I find to be attractive). Is this a homosexual tendency? I think not. The feeling arises not out of a capacity for loving the other woman in a deep or romantic way, rather, it arises from a very animalistic place of lust. I know several girls who claim to be bi when (i suspect) they are simply acting out of a lust which males (decent ones being somewhat scarce in my town) are not sufficient to satisfy. Just a theory.
The real question is this: Is sexuality such a defining feature that it is necessary to divide "true" homosexuals from the curiously-lusty experimenters? Need we define ourselves with such black and white terms, or is it possible that we could coexist regardless of any benign sexual tendency?
Personally, I think there's a happy medium to be reached. So much of social encounters are based on sexual drive that not to acknowledge differences in preference is to create some very awkward situations. This awkwardness could in time cease to register as awkward, but that would take significant social revolution. Labeling in some form is necessary to communicate in the courtship dance we call "society." (and yes, i am generally referring to the world of singles, which is the only world i know well.) However, sexual attraction is NOT the basis for the majority of relationships, and therefore sexuality need not be a defining factor in any friendly encounter. I think once people stop freaking out about homosexuality as a concept (OMG, you mean people aren't clones of each other?), that happy medium will establish itself.
Sorry for just hopping into the conversation, i was in a ranting mood (and I haven't been on MB in FOREVER). Kudos to you if you actually read all of that.
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