Re: Homosexuality: male & female
Yousuf Khan (ykhan@achilles.net)
Thu, 12 Sep 1996 04:42:52 GMT
On 10 Sep 1996 12:34:14 -0500, eighner@io.com (Lars Eighner) wrote:
>It is, however, to be noted that for some reason it has recently
>become popular to say that only those who are exclusively homosexual
>their whole lives are homosexual, while those who have one, two,
>a dozen homosexual experiences -- some who may be exclusively homosexual
>for many years -- are now counted as heterosexual. This is amusing,
>for within living memory exactly the opposite was the case, and anyone
>know to have had even one homosexual experience was regarded as
>homosexual.
Well neither term is right. The proper term is of course _bisexual_. If you
have the capacity to be attracted by both sexes, then you are bisexual.
This does not mean that you will be equally attracted by both sexes, some
may be more attracted by the same sex, while others may be more attracted
by the opposite sex; but it doesn't matter, the fact that attraction can
exist is all that matters.
And it has come to my attention that "bisexuality" might be a too
generalized term. You can have bisexuality in all kinds of forms, from
mostly homosexual to mostly heterosexual. Again it comes down to the fact
that human sexuality is such a potentiometer rather than an on-off switch.
>It is still very common in a number of cultures that it is the
>person's position in the sex act, rather than the biological sex
>of the partner that determines whether the act is considered
>"homosexual." Some people in our own culture will say that
>same-sex mutual masturbation is not homosexual, because in their
>view a sexual act requires that a penis penetrate an orifice. It
>follows from that sort of thinking that lesbians never have sex at all,
>and indeed, the legal histories of some European coutries seem to
>reflect this theory.
One of the wierdest stories I've heard about justifying bisexuality is
based on this positional argument. If a man enters another man, then the
man doing the entry (the aggressor in other words) is still considered a
completely straight guy, but the guy who was being entered is considered a
pansy. The justification here is that the aggressor "is just being a man"
by letting his penis enter any old hole, but the man that allowed that
penis to enter him is a pansy for letting anything enter him. This is the
justification used by some Pakistani and Indian men from working class
backgrounds.
These are all ways to avoid being labled homosexual or bisexual. They are
excuses in other words.
>Yet it remains true that there undoubtly are some cultures in
>which homosexuality is culturally unknown, and these are indeed
>mysterious cases.
Part of the problem is that our own understanding of homosexual acts are
full of our own cultural stereotypes. If we were to tell many of these same
cultures about some of our heterosexual actions, they would be just as
shocked and mystified. Oral sex, anal, various fetishes, etc. may be
completely unknown in some cultures. In the same way, the way we percieve
homosexuality is a little tainted by the extreme cases. For example, we
assume that all homosexual men want to do anal intercourse, but that is not
necessarily the case.
Yousuf Khan
--
Yousuf J. Khan
ykhan@achilles.net
Ottawa, Ont, Canada
Nation's capital
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