Re: Homosexuality: male & female
Yousuf Khan (ykhan@achilles.net)
Sun, 22 Sep 1996 15:04:21 GMT
On Thu, 19 Sep 1996 00:45:45 GMT, griffin@txdirect.net (Mike/Damon or Peni
R. Griffin) wrote:
>>They are bisexual, because it takes a certain amount of interest in the
>>other sex to father children, but people who are fully homosexual cannot
>>even manage that.
> What makes you think that? A man sufficiently motivated by a desire
>to conform to society's expectations of him may be able to squeeze his
>eyes shut and fantasize long enough to complete sexual union often
>enough to father children.
Well, that's certainly simple enough, isn't it? Tell me, how is he going to
woo a woman that he has absolutely no interest in? And even if he manages
that, how is he going to live with her, show her affection, being basically
revulsed by her? Fully homosexual men find nothing attractive about a
woman, and often in a group amongst themselves they will comment on how
they can't understand what heterosexual men see in them; a sort of reverse
homophobia, i.e. heterophobia.
I realize with you being bisexual, you do not fully comprehend the concept
of being completely locked out of attraction simply because of one's sex,
but it exists; you probably see a little bit to like in everyone. But trust
me, when you are completely heterosexual or homosexual, the beauty of one
sex or the other completely escapes your attention, and worse it can
revulse too. The feelings of mild inattention or strong revulsion isn't
just a societal concept foisted upon us, it actually exists in our soul,
and we feel it all of the time.
>Plenty of men who define themselves *now*
>as fully homosexual have children. I have known people of both sexes
>who have experimented with sexual activity outside their preferences,
>out of societal pressure, out of curiosity, or even out of boredom,
>without making any lifestyle change or altering their
>self-definitions.
Whether it is a long-term activity or a short-term experiment, the act
qualifies you as bisexual for two reasons. (1) The act was physically
committed and it cannot be taken back, no matter how much one ignores it
for the rest of their life; (2) the act required at least a certain level
of desire (even if it is just because of curiosity, or even it is a desire
to satisfy societal pressures).
For example, if you are curious about sadomasochism, and you want to
experiment, then you can experiment. After experimentation you don't like
it, and you never do it again, You have experimented with it, but it
required that you have at least a certain level of fascination with the
subject, otherwise you wouldn't have even bothered. So it doesn't qualify
you as a full-time SM fellow, but you can say that you've experimented with
SM.
It's the same thing with heterosexuals experimenting with homosexuality and
homosexuals experimenting with heterosexuality: they have experimented in
bisexuality. Nobody ever said bisexuality had to be a full-time occupation,
with someone dividing their time equally between both sexes. Even if it is
99.7% vs. 0.3%, it's still bisexual. Maybe we can come up with terms like
"equally bisexual" or "fully bisexual" or "bisexual -curious" or whatever:
whatever adjectives are required to fully qualify it.
>Christopher Isherwood describes such an experiment
>in *Christopher and His Kind.* He concluded that, okay, if he worked
>at it, he could act straight, but couldn't find a compelling reason
>to; calling Isherwood "bisexual" on the basis of this experiment would
>give a completely false impression of his life.
Mostly homosexual? Bisexuality-experimenting homosexual? Over-90%
homosexual? What would you like to call him that doesn't play up the
bisexual part?
>And what about the
>author of *Reading from the Heart,* a memoir of a life spent reading
>romance novels? She spent the first fifty years of her life reading
>romance novels, identifying herself as a heterosexual, marrying
>(twice) and never particularly enjoying sex, and eventually, after
>discovering lesbian romances in her late middle age after her second
>divorce, decides at that point that she's a lesbian -- without, so far
>as I can tell, taking any steps to find a woman with whom to enter an
>erotic relationship.
She's a Pisces, isn't she? :-)
>I am not saying here that there is no biological cause for attraction
>to one's own or the other gender. That would be silly. I think every
>emotion is firmly rooted in biology (not that my thinking that proves
>anything). I'm saying that assuming the existence of three standard
>expressions of human sexuality, and conducting studies trying to
>determine the causes of those states, when people have such a hard
>time agreeing on what constitutes each state, is starting at the wrong
>end.
That's true, three states are not enough to describe it, esp. not
bisexuality. I've met enough bisexuals to know that none of them are
attracted by the same qualities. Some are so far towards one side of the
spectrum that they don't even consider themselves bisexual.
>The question is not: What makes a homosexual? or even Is
>homosexuality a real condition? but Are there standard cross-cultural
>states of sexual expression firmly rooted in human biology, and if so
>what are they?
I think once we start mapping the functions of the human brain in some
greater detail, then we'll start seeing the day-to-day workings of
attraction. Once we start mapping the functions of the DNA, then we'll
start seeing the seeds of attraction.
Yousuf Khan
--
Yousuf J. Khan
ykhan@achilles.net
Ottawa, Ont, Canada
Nation's capital
|