The Topic of Homosexuality, Gender Identity, and So forth

[Loud Angry Dead]

First off, I'm sure that this tends to be a charged topic and I don't want to step on toes here. However, some things have been bothering me regarding certain view points that don't add up or simply cause me to question the subject. It came up in an another thread but it's something that a good number of people tend to say.

But you're essentially comparing something people are born with, being gay

@Darcs

That brings up something I've always had a bit of conflict with and that is the supposition that one is born gay. That would posit that gayness is genetic rather than a choice or even a lifestyle formed from psychological factors. That they literally are forced into a state of being gay just like I don't have any say in being genetically Asian.

So does that mean there is a genetic sequence that determines your sexuality? That, in fact, it is an alterable condition given sufficient understanding of the genes and a method by which one could change it? How much is attributable to personal experience, environment, and psychological factors if it can be attributed to anything but genetics?

I keep hearing "They're just born that way" and that "they can't help who they're attracted to". I can't help but feel like that's a cop out; a way to avoid thinking too hard about what would cause a divergence from the breeding instinct that helps us choose our mates. I mean our brains are hard-wired with preconceptions that are sub-conscious. Years of evolution and instincts born of breeding to survive have to account for something don't they?

There are many known cases of homosexuality in almost all animals. Animals actually tend towards bisexuality from what I'm understanding rather than being exclusively homosexual which is considered a rarity. The various results are flawed though because they fail to make the distinction between bisexual and strictly homosexual relations. Of course, there isn't a whole lot of proof (that I know of) that other animals are capable of the levels of emotional and intellectual commitment to a relationship that we humans tend to espouse, but it's not even a case of the animals being monogamous or not. Those animals which only temporarily pair up like sheep are just as likely as the ones who mate for life like penguins.

The science behind it all is kind of sketchy to be honest. It's a loaded subject and those who research it are scrutinized heavily by both sides of the debate on homosexuality. It's kind of to the point where the results are hard to trust because they either miss something, are afraid to voice their thoughts, or are biased in one way or another.

I'd like to hear your thoughts on it. No hate language or crude jokes please. Though I doubt any of you would engage in such crass behavior I just want to make sure that there are no misconceptions about the intent of this thread. Given the recent judgment handed out by the US Supreme court, I felt a need to expand my understanding of what is popular belief regarding homosexuality and why.

[ActRaiserTheReturned]

I don't think we understand what the nature of arguments and debates are anymore these days.

[Loud Angry Dead]

Honestly, arguments and debates are rather healthy outlets and meant to encourage thought and consideration. However, considering that political correctness tends to stifle communication of certain ideas, the art of debating has mostly degenerated into trolling. It's a shame really.

[Vilageidiotx]

It's complicated. I've always suspected that sexuality would be more fluid if we weren't culturally inclined to worry about it so much, but I have no evidence aside from historical anecdotes. I also think that genes are augmenting complicated childhood experiences that lead to sexual development, and that seems to be rather well accepted so i'll go with it.

But the point is that people who are not fluid, who are fairly solidly homosexual, have those attractions so deep in their psyche that you can't change them. Psycho-sexual development happens early. You can't change pedophiles for the same reason, and that one would be a change that everybody could get behind if it were possible.

Calling it a lifestyle is slightly misleading, since we think of lifestyles as vague life preferences, and sexuality is much more at the core of who were are as a personality than, say, economic class. Sure, a person who is attracted to men could chose to rough it out and act straight, and that had definitely happened plenty of times in the past, but the question that is being decided is this: Why? Because other people are fuckwads? We matured as a society and saw that the real problem was people opposing homosexuality, and that the only leg that group had to stand on was superstition.

[mdk]

My problems with the whole 'born with it' argument:

1. It establishes a permanent victim-status for a whole lot of people. Like a disability almost. 'He can't help it if he likes wieners!' 'Her legs don't work and she shows up to school anyway!' 'She likes guys, and THAT'S NOT HER FAULT!!' It's useful for shaming bullies, which is worth doing I guess, but once you get out of high school all you're doing is arguing that you're powerless and you need to be protected. The opposite of a strong position.

2. It can't be accurate for everybody -- there's gotta be at least one dude out there who struck out with the ladies so much that he tried being gay, and figured 'this is working I guess.' That guy, in my mind, deserves just as much respect as everyone else, but he wasn't 'born with it,' so he's not REALLY gay! He just made a choice!

3. It promotes this idea that conditions from birth can't be opposed -- BUT EVERYTHING ELSE TOTALLY CAN! Genetics are off-limits, but you should hate people who choose to grow up in a christian house, or people who choose to inherit lots of money from their parents, or people who choose to be Muslim. Screw that. Nevermind for a moment that your 'nature' is bigger than your genetics (there are so many other factors that your genes are almost negligible) -- take a guy who woke up one day at age 45 and decided he was Buddhist from now on. I'd rather hate the person who never chose anything in their life -- who did literally nothing but exist in the most comfortable way possible. When did genetic lotteries become more admirable than meaningful decisions? If someone chooses to be gay, they're a lot braver than the person who just started that way.

4. It's fatalistic. That kid has X gene, therefore he's gonna grow up to be a gay plumber and everyone will hate him and the psychological scars from that one thing in school will prevent him from succeeding and now he's basically a lost cause and isn't that sad? Screw that. Screw ALL of that. You can do anything you want to do, including porking other men when you've got the straight gene. It's like people have forgotten how to drive a car -- we got in and the wheels were pointing left, so I guess we're going left in circles today, right? NO! Take the wheel and drive.

5. In this specific case, does it make sense? I mean..... we're talking about a gene that would prevent reproduction, up until the late 90s. how many billions of years of evolution does it theoretically take for that to select itself right out of the pool? If that's truly the only factor, then gay people only exist because for literally billions of years, social pressures have bullied them into screwing the opposite sex. I don't buy that.

Probably some other stuff that I'm forgetting.

[ArenaSnow]

I don't think we're at a state of technology to answer such a question. Particularly to answer it with "it's genetics" when we don't have a full understanding of genetics yet.

[Rae Zer]

I personally don't think genetics have anything to do with being gay. I wouldn't say that my genetics made me pansexual as much as I would say my Father's genetics made him straight. If Homosexuality was a gene, I don't think I would exist at all. It would be a gene which, in the eyes of natural selection, is completely useless. A man and a woman can have a child but a man and a man can't unless it is adopted. For natural selection, the idea of keeping a gene like homosexuality simply would have been worthless. My belief is that nature gave us the instinct to keep our bloodline going. What nature didn't account for was something that it had never seen before, Choice.

Humans are, as far as we have researched, the first animal on Earth that has seemingly given itself a Choice on who we want to be with. Every other animal on Earth acts on instinct but Humans have something they don't have. If we face a path leading down a dark road and one leading down a bright road, we have the choice to go down whichever road we want. A normal creature would go down the bright path, it does seem like the safest path by instinct. I chose to be a pansexual, which wasn't as easy as many people think. I could have easily determined I'm gay or straight but I chose to be a pansexual. But choosing your preference isn't something to be easily done. Some say it requires experimentation to truly figure out, others say you were raised to be that way. Me, I say that you have to figure out for yourself. For me, I spent hours wondering if I was truly straight.

By all standards of psychology I would be considered straight so I was. But, I knew that I didn't solely love women. Hell, I had know for a long time that I had feelings for a rather handsome boy in one of my classes when I began high school. Like a fool, I hid this and convinced myself that I am straight but, when I chose to be a pansexual this year, I accepted that I liked males as much as I liked females. But I felt that, if I can like females as much as males then would it really be as big of a gap to jump to the conclusion that I would be fine with dating a transsexual? I found that the answer was no. Did genetics force me to chose pansexual rather than anything else? Did society pressure me into it? No is my answer. I had chosen to be pansexual because I knew that I couldn't care less about what one's gender is so long as I knew I loved the person. Genetics had nothing to do with my decision and society, while it may effect others, had no effect on me. Society didn't tell me I had to be pansexual, I did.

The idea that genetics made someone gay or their parents raised them to be gay is a scapegoat from a time when being gay wasn't acceptable and, like mdk says, it is a very weak argument when you are an adult. We live in a time that is growing far more out of its comfort zone. A hundred or so years ago, our society didn't accept or even recognize homosexuality as something that could be normal. In fact, if I remember correctly here, homosexuality use to be believed a mental disease which you would be sent to a hospital to correct. The last generation and our current generation(the one I am a part of) has been forcing change upon our norms. In future generations, I'd venture to say that homosexuality is far more normal and acceptable than it is now. Will it be more easily found than heterosexuality? Probably not but another generation may face a change where heterosexuality and homosexuality have been replaced for bisexuality where a man or woman can love both genders and it would be completely normal. But, that is only if society learns to accept every sexuality without limitations. At least marriage equality is now a thing in the US which means we are probably on the right path.

[ASTA]

If a person's genetic profile can dictate their bone density, their general cognitive ability, their maximum height, their resistance to a selection of distinct pathogens, the composition of their ear wax, their intrinsic personality, their eye color, their hair color, and their skin color, then I don't see why a person's sexuality couldn't possibly be attributed to a measurable integer of alleles as well.

Everything that makes you you is locked tightly within your DNA. Your life experiences and the way you were reared have little to do with how you turn out.

For this reason, it is wholly illogical for anyone to consciously inflict harm, either by proxy or directly, upon gays. There is nothing that they or anyone else can do to alter their "condition". They're born into it; they'll die with it. Straight camps don't work. They, along with anti-gay legislation, should be condemned, dismantled, and ultimately outlawed.

However, the same consideration must be [cautiously] extended towards homophobes. This will undoubtedly slight the liberal sensibilities of a number of RPG's more progressive denizens, but when put into an evolutionary context, gays and lesbians aren't very conducive to the continued longevity of a tribe (or most animal species for that matter). They aren't likely to engage in sexual intercourse with the converse sex, so it's comparatively improbable that they'll engender a salubrious progeny to help replace those tribal members that have lost their lives to disease, warfare, or natural causes. The collectives that disfavored homosexuality were probably more successful in their procreative endeavors, and therefore helped to solidify homophobia as an inherent facet of the human condition.

Or maybe people are wary of gays because they go against the status quo. Maybe it's both. Who knows.

Humans never could handle different.

[Vordak]

5. In this specific case, does it make sense? I mean..... we're talking about a gene that would prevent reproduction, up until the late 90s. how many billions of years of evolution does it theoretically take for that to select itself right out of the pool? If that's truly the only factor, then gay people only exist because for literally billions of years, social pressures have bullied them into screwing the opposite sex. I don't buy that.

@mdk

If Homosexuality was a gene, I don't think I would exist at all. It would be a gene which, in the eyes of natural selection, is completely useless. A man and a woman can have a child but a man and a man can't unless it is adopted. For natural selection, the idea of keeping a gene like homosexuality simply would have been worthless.

@Rae Zer

If we assume that genetics have something to do with homosexuality, i say we must get rid of the notion of there being genes that make you attracted to the opposite or to the same sex. Rather, in my opinion, it would be much more likely for there to be genes causing attraction to women, which are prevalent in men, and genes that cause an attraction to men, which are prevalent in women.

In other words, rather than having "if you are X, then you are attracted to Y" genes, which would be attraction to the opposite sex, it is simply "you are attracted to Y", or "you are attracted to X", regardless of the host's gender. Then it all makes sense, as the genes causing homosexuality will be in abundance within the opposite sex.

[mdk]

Everything that makes you you is locked tightly within your DNA. Your life experiences and the way you were reared have little to do with how you turn out.

@ASTA

I disagree heartily with that. I mean we taught monkeys to communicate via sign language -- that's not locked in their DNA, that's something we taught and they learned.

Though I guess the more obvious example is, genetics say I should have two legs, but here I am with one, because of 'life experiences.' If that can affect my body then why not my mind, too? What we experience has everything to do with who we become. We're not done being made the instant we're born -- we're growing until the day we die.

[ActRaiserTheReturned]

You can be gay and just not care about it, be celibate and only experience minimal emotional deprecation.

[Loud Angry Dead]

I'm seeing pretty balanced opinions for and against the idea of genetics being the cause of homosexuality. The idea of choice is also kind of strained in my point of view as well. There have been some interesting experiments of late that seem to indicate that we do in fact make snap judgments in our subconscious. That our brains essentially already make a choice before we even consciously realize that we have. If the data points to that particular theory then maybe we don't have a choice in the matter? It still doesn't determine whether our actions are dictated by genetics or psychological development but it seems to throw a wrench in the idea of choice.

Seriously, I think the more we learn, the more we realize how little we do know. Too many questions. Mah braaaaaain.

[Protagonist]

I would suspect that homosexuality is not quite a choice, though I doubt it's genetic.

I would say a problem with how the argument works is that we start the argument with "is it immoral to be homosexual". It's never immoral to be, it's immoral to do. As others have said above, even if homosexuality isn't a choice, it's not like you're predetermined to act on your impulses. Therefore, that argument doesn't necessarily hold water.

As for my opinions on homosexuality, I think it works like this: Men and women are yang and yin, meant to balance each other. In a heterosexual romantic relationship, one balances the other spiritually. In a homosexual relationship, you have two yangs or two yins, which makes both people more spiritually unbalanced. Thus, homosexual romance can be considered a sort of anti-romance.

Likewise, there is no such thing as a "Same-Sex Marriage", whether a couple has a license or not. The state cannot make two plus two equal five, even if it demands that teachers grade those answers correct. Having said that, I also don't think you should have to ask the state's permission before seeking a marriage, so therefore, I am ok with Same-Sex "Marriage" being legal.

[Vilageidiotx]

Isn't Genetic =/= Is a choice. Compulsions are compulsions. A person might develop depression despite not being genetically disposed to do so, but that doesn't mean that they can stand up and smile it away.

As for my opinions on homosexuality, I think it works like this: Men and women are yang and yin, meant to balance each other. In a heterosexual romantic relationship, one balances the other spiritually. In a homosexual relationship, you have two yangs or two yins, which makes both people more spiritually unbalanced. Thus, homosexual romance can be considered a sort of anti-romance.

@Protagonist

Balance each other out how? Surely the possession of different genitals does not endow their relationship with mystical powers. If anything, it just endows them with biologically practical sex.

[Loud Angry Dead]

endows them

@Vilageidiotx

Giggity...
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Sorry. I'll be serious now.

Interesting points though. Forgot that possibility. Compulsions eh?

[ActRaiserTheReturned]

How about homosexuality just being a state of being? Saying your born with it doesn't matter anymore. It's legal everywhere.
Sexuality is a state of being, why not take it as it is? Say, okay, if I don't want to be gay, and you overcame it, who knows how, then you're what you want to be, okay? Human beings do mysterious things. In Tibet there are Monks who can do miraculous things, take things like two by fours with no pain of damage, live in a monastery, hollowed out in the places so cold that you could freeze to death in a terribly short duration of time, with far more clothing than the Monks wear. They can GENERATE a heat barrier from their body in unknown ways.

There are many people who do seemingly super human things. When I say "many", I mean there might be hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, maybe more, but when dealing with percentages.

[Darcs]

That brings up something I've always had a bit of conflict with and that is the supposition that one is born gay. That would posit that gayness is genetic rather than a choice or even a lifestyle formed from psychological factors. That they literally are forced into a state of being gay just like I don't have any say in being genetically Asian.

So does that mean there is a genetic sequence that determines your sexuality?

@Loud Angry Dead

No, sexuality is how one manifests their feelings of arousal and erotic desires. These are pretty much

Sexual orientation, independent of biological sex, gender identity, and sexual identity. Is, ultimately fluid, and ultimately the result of a combination of nature and nurture; there are probably gay genes that everyone's got different variations of, but how they manifest is based on your hormones, your environment and ultimately the person you become and what you like.

That, in fact, it is an alterable condition given sufficient understanding of the genes and a method by which one could change it? How much is attributable to personal experience, environment, and psychological factors if it can be attributed to anything but genetics?

I keep hearing "They're just born that way" and that "they can't help who they're attracted to". I can't help but feel like that's a cop out; a way to avoid thinking too hard about what would cause a divergence from the breeding instinct that helps us choose our mates. I mean our brains are hard-wired with preconceptions that are sub-conscious.

@Loud Angry Dead

It is alterable-- it's fluid, it may change and vary as you change physically and intellectually. Maybe it won't though. It isn't conscious, it just relates to your state of being.

Of course, fluidity varies for different people and really so much is attributable to nurture as well as nature that, sure certain environmental stimuli + genetic tweaking might = X orientation. It isn't that no one is thinking about it-- it's that trying to change someone's sexual orientation for the sake of science is literally evil.

Years of evolution and instincts born of breeding to survive have to account for something don't they?

@Loud Angry Dead

Not really. Breeding for the sake of breeding is dumb.

---

1. It establishes a permanent victim-status for a whole lot of people. Like a disability almost. 'He can't help it if he likes wieners!' 'Her legs don't work and she shows up to school anyway!' 'She likes guys, and THAT'S NOT HER FAULT!!' It's useful for shaming bullies, which is worth doing I guess, but once you get out of high school all you're doing is arguing that you're powerless and you need to be protected. The opposite of a strong position.

@mdk

This implies that homosexuality is some kind of disfigurement. It isn't, like at all. She isn't some victim, she just likes pussy and can't really consciously change it. I guess she could try dick, but if she doesn't like it why would she ever do it ever? I think saying

"I'm genderfluid and I like men and women and you will never ever ever be able to change that" is a much stronger position than "I guess I could be persuaded to choose one or the other, since it's something I consciously choose to be."

2. It can't be accurate for everybody -- there's gotta be at least one dude out there who struck out with the ladies so much that he tried being gay, and figured 'this is working I guess.' That guy, in my mind, deserves just as much respect as everyone else, but he wasn't 'born with it,' so he's not REALLY gay! He just made a choice!

@mdk

If his first reaction after being rejected by women isn't to go hire a prostitute but instead to go fuck a guy he's very clearly gay.

3. It promotes this idea that conditions from birth can't be opposed -- BUT EVERYTHING ELSE TOTALLY CAN! Genetics are off-limits, but you should hate people who choose to grow up in a christian house, or people who choose to inherit lots of money from their parents, or people who choose to be Muslim. Screw that. Nevermind for a moment that your 'nature' is bigger than your genetics (there are so many other factors that your genes are almost negligible) -- take a guy who woke up one day at age 45 and decided he was Buddhist from now on. I'd rather hate the person who never chose anything in their life -- who did literally nothing but exist in the most comfortable way possible. When did genetic lotteries become more admirable than meaningful decisions? If someone chooses to be gay, they're a lot braver than the person who just started that way.

@mdk

mdk you do know sexual attraction isn't really a conscious thing right?

Like a guy can choose to fuck a guy but if he isn't attracted to him then why would he do it and I'm sorry but that doesn't really make him all that brave to me

-- BUT EVERYTHING ELSE TOTALLY CAN!

@mdk

Wait are you trying to tell me I could have chosen to be white and never have to deal with this stupid racism condition what the fuck I didn't get that option on my select screen

4. It's fatalistic. That kid has X gene, therefore he's gonna grow up to be a gay plumber and everyone will hate him and the psychological scars from that one thing in school will prevent him from succeeding and now he's basically a lost cause and isn't that sad? Screw that. Screw ALL of that. You can do anything you want to do, including porking other men when you've got the straight gene. It's like people have forgotten how to drive a car -- we got in and the wheels were pointing left, so I guess we're going left in circles today, right? NO! Take the wheel and drive.

@mdk

It's not fatalistic-- it's just that you don't really have conscious control over it, that doesn't mean it's predetermined at all, fam.

5. In this specific case, does it make sense? I mean..... we're talking about a gene that would prevent reproduction, up until the late 90s. how many billions of years of evolution does it theoretically take for that to select itself right out of the pool? If that's truly the only factor, then gay people only exist because for literally billions of years, social pressures have bullied them into screwing the opposite sex. I don't buy that.

@mdk

like what

---

Everything that makes you you is locked tightly within your DNA. Your life experiences and the way you were reared have little to do with how you turn out.

@ASTA

You and I agree on not being dicks to people based on sexuality, but I disagree with you on this like Bakunin and Marx on states. You are also your memories, your experiences, your culture, the things you learn, the things you don't learn-- you are just as much your DNA as you are the world and existence shaping your subjective perspective and being.

---

As for my opinions on homosexuality, I think it works like this: Men and women are yang and yin, meant to balance each other. In a heterosexual romantic relationship, one balances the other spiritually.

@Protagonist

kek

In a homosexual relationship, you have two yangs or two yins, which makes both people more spiritually unbalanced. Thus, homosexual romance can be considered a sort of anti-romance.

@Protagonist

okay I don't want to be rude but I feel like you don't actually understand the taijitu in relation to Chinese Dualism. It's all about opposites balancing, and men and women aren't opposites, they just have different reproductive parts. I feel a more accurate yin-yang relationship relationship would be like... a saint and a murderer or something, and it really wouldn't matter their genders.

Likewise, there is no such thing as a "Same-Sex Marriage"

@Protagonist

5-4 says there is such a thing

[mdk]

(mdk 1)

This implies that homosexuality is some kind of disfigurement. It isn't, like at all.

@Darcs

That's why that irks me. The whole thing is used like "You wouldn't make fun of a blind girl for being born blind, so why are you teasing gay guys? They were born that way." If so, fine, whatever, I don't care, but the argument is putting people in that same category and I hate that.

(mdk2)

If his first reaction after being rejected by women isn't to go hire a prostitute but instead to go fuck a guy he's very clearly gay.

Or third, or fourth, or whatever. My point is it doesn't matter. What somebody chooses to do with their cock is no more or less admirable than what you feel like you were born to do with your cock.

(mdk3)

mdk you do know sexual attraction isn't really a conscious thing right?

Like a guy can choose to fuck a guy but if he isn't attracted to him then why would he do it and I'm sorry but that doesn't really make him all that brave to me

Well it'd be brave in a certain social environment. Idunno, maybe Borris makes really good spaghetti sauce, and you could have it every night if you just get up in there? The broader point being, there's nothing special about doing what you feel like doing. NOTHING wrong with it, either, IMO. But the way this gets used..... well, full disclosure, I'm a Christian on the internet who frequents Reddit, so I get exposed to a very particular sort of argument all the time. And the argument is, it's okay to be gay, because you were born that way. But it's not okay to be Christian, because you just picked that. That's the mentality I'm trying to attack in this point.

(mdk3 cont.)

Wait are you trying to tell me I could have chosen to be white and never have to deal with this stupid racism condition what the fuck I didn't get that option on my select screen

Nope! And I'm also telling you that being black doesn't make you special, any more than being white makes me special. Conditions from birth are not admirable traits, they're just traits. If you were that guy born with no arms or legs, guess what? You're just a human. But if you were the guy born with no arms or legs who wins collegiate wrestling belts and skydives, that's another story -- because of who he made himself, not because of his genetics.

(mdk4)

It's not fatalistic-- it's just that you don't really have conscious control over it, that doesn't mean it's predetermined at all, fam.

Yeah we're agreed on that. I'm mocking the people genetics fatalistically.... I guess the same crowd that likes to -- well. I shouldn't say, or I'll start a whole other debate up. But the point is, these people exist and they're clueless dicks.

(mdk5)

like what

Like "We'll burn you at the stake unless you stick it in a woman immediately." Granted -- that friggin' happened. But I don't for a second believe that gay people only exist in the world today because a certain gene was forcibly preserved under threat of death by the Catholic Church. Though, that would be priceless if true.

[Vilageidiotx]

Social pressure does seem like a poor argument for passing down a gay gene. It's more likely that such a gene would be profligated by economics. Throughout most of human history, there were practical reasons to marry, at least for the average person. For many, having children meant having somebody to take care of you when you grew old, a wife meant a dowry and a respectable place in your community, and for women a husband meant not falling into destitution.

[Keyguyperson]

A lot of the arguments saying that you can't be born Gay seem to invoke the "It's useless for evolution so it can't exist" argument. So I'm just gonna make this little post here:

We have an appendix, and some people have sickle cell disease. One of those is unnecessary now, but it's still there. The other one is a potentially fatal condition, and it still exists. I do t have a degree or anything, but I'm pretty sure that evolution isn't everything that serves no purpose being eliminated.

Besides, mutations exist. They're, you know, the reason we aren't amoebas.