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[Ruta Bagas]

I think whatever your sexuality, desiring Graham Norton is an extremely clear sign of serious psychological issues.

I used to find my sexuality somewhat baffling, because although I can see the appeal of the male form and have known many guys with personalities I'd go for, I have never found myself attracted to a man even if I rationally think I should be. I don't like being that aware of my social conditioning, so it worried me for a while.

Sadly for this story, I just wrote it off as not something that was likely to affect me enough to worry about. It might indicate that something in my head could be radder, but I don't really see any more reason that I should be concerned by it than I by the abnormal size of my first toes.

[Nabubrush]

If you got beat by your mother whenever you popped wood and you associate that with having an erection, chances are you're gonna have serious issues finding women attractive and will be gay by default.

I don't think the logic here works. I think if you were beat by your mother every time you had an erection, you would probably turn out pretty fucked up, but the only way you are going to turn out gay is if you start out gay. You may have some kind of weird sexual issue with older women, but child abuse doesn't turn people gay (or make them straight if they aren't already).

This is all my experience talking. I could go on theory for why all of this is, but I think my experience and the experience of those I know speaks for itself.

I appreciate the disclaimer, and I will say that my mileage varies a great deal.

[littlefallsmets]

This is really interesting, though, what you bring up, Nabu...

How do we reconcile the basically-accepted-truth that sexuality is inborn and the basically-accepted-truth that sexuality is a gradual range from completely (or effectively-completely) gay to completely (or effectively-completely) straight and everywhere in-between?

If we accept both of these things, we've got some sticky things to figure out in the gray area between them, you know?

Though the general sway of someone's sexuality somewhere in that range is pretty undisputably set in the womb... aren't we still swayed within our own range by later environmental influences?

Couldn't someone be "mostly gay" or "mostly straight" but be driven to the extreme of their range by a family or cultural influence? Couldn't someone who is pretty much down the line bisexual be pushed into almost solely exploring one side or the other, for reasons that... aren't about prejudice or fear but just their own preferences from their own experience?

Not to get too personal... but my significant lady is, in terms of preference, in terms of who she notices and what she has fantasy about... if anything slightly leaning toward the lesbian side of bi.

But with me, with this particular male, in this particular situation, she claims to be completely content and has for... seven years now. Even though she only dated girls a little bit and never got past "second base" with another lady... and she went to the gayest public college in America, SUNY-Purchase, where if anything the expectation was to be gay...

She's mostly dated boys, myself included. No one would've disowned her, she wouldn't have lost any jobs or friends... in fact, she lost some friends at college for getting long-term with a guy... but for her own internal reasons, despite being very much bi in terms of libido, she's generally been interpersonally more comfortable dating guys.

One of my best friends from high school, he is the exact opposite... pretty close to down the line bi, but most of his significant relationships have been with other men.

I don't think my girlfriend is lying to me and... I don't think my friend Adam is lying to me, either.

There's gray area between sexuality and actual sexual expression, I guess I'm saying, and there's an interplay there between how you were born and how you were influenced along the way to who you are now.

I just wouldn't wanna be reductive about it, to either direction.

[ack-47]

I don't think the logic here works. I think if you were beat by your mother every time you had an erection, you would probably turn out pretty fucked up, but the only way you are going to turn out gay is if you start out gay. You may have some kind of weird sexual issue with older women, but child abuse doesn't turn people gay (or make them straight if they aren't already).

Well, not in the sense you mean when you say 'gay'. 'Gay by default', I should probably have said, isn't necessarily 'gay' in the sense of you're attracted to the same sex - but in the sense that the opposite sex is absolutely repellent to you for whatever reason. 'Straight by default' would be the opposite, and there's probably a lot more of those than the other way around.

Yeah, sexuality is pretty complex. I've always been on board the Freudian assertion that people are basically bisexual, but I could be wrong. It's probably perfectly possible to be Rigidly Straight(tm) without any kind of trauma back there, but it's still basically artificial - or at least as artificial as being rigidly and exclusively enthusiastic for Ancient Greek-style boy-love would be.

And yeah, I'm thinking attraction to Graham Norton is what happens when you don't got anyone to sexualize by default. There isn't 'gay' or 'straight' when it comes to sex with Graham Norton - only 'jesus Christ why are you doing that'.

[theinevitable]

my psych professor was a gay man who was married to a lady. he did not see this as a problem. You see, he explained, he loved his wife. He did not particularly care which set of parts she had.

When they got divorced, though, he fucked dudes apparently.

also: his theories about sexuality development were really weird.

also: it is weird to me that he was my current psych professor's mentor when he was in school.

[littlefallsmets]

Interestingly, my girlfriend once had a psych professor who refered to transsexuals as "the ultimate gender conformists" because... instead of living their lives however they want in all the ways masculine, feminine, neither and both as those traits and situations come along, they go through years of drugs and dangerous surgeries to be... as much like one binary extreme as they have felt to be the other as medically possible.

Suffice it to say, his theories weren't appreciated at SUNY-Purchase.

Gender and sexuality is, in some ways, THE most interesting field in the study of people because... it is based on a binary that is completely in no way a binary but also... completely a binary.

As much range as there is between "man" and "woman" and "gay" and "straight" and as completely fucked up as our perceptions of what they all mean are...

We're still stuck with needing a sperm from a human teste and an egg from a human ovary to make a new human.

The battle to reconcile (or not reconcile) that conflicting set of truths is fuck*ng FASCINATING.

[theinevitable]

yeah. I mean... I kind of agree? It seems to me that I am not a very manly guy in any way, but I do not find this in conflict with the fact that I am a dude. I can understand transexuals, at least, but some of the other ones just seem... I don't know. I can understand thinking that you should have been born a man instead of a woman, or vice-versa, but being all "traditional gender boundaries do not define me! stop forcing me into a false gender binary!" is just a little too bullshit for me. Our "Pride Alliance" group on campus is officially called "GLBTQQIA Alliance" or something and it's like... gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgender-queer-questioning-intersex-ally alliance.
I mean... why. Why are these necessary.

[AugustWest]

my psych professor was a gay man who was married to a lady. he did not see this as a problem. You see, he explained, he loved his wife. He did not particularly care which set of parts she had.

Sex is only a small part of a sucessful marriage.  Love and sex are two entirely different things.

[Nabubrush]

Sex is only a small part of a sucessful marriage.  Love and sex are two entirely different things.

Mr. West has it.

[littlefallsmets]

True. But...

a.) Most of the people I've known with strong relationships that lasted started with physical chemistry that slowly evolved into love, as opposed to starting with some other kind of affection that shoehorned itself into passion.

and

b.) Generally, a sexless marriage eventually becomes a... marriage where one or both parties start having sex with someone outside of the marriage. And, while if both people know and agree to that, it can work... most of the time, one party or the other changes their mind or was lying about being cool with it and... it stops being a marriage. And in any event, whether a marriage is still a marriage if people are sleeping outside of that marriage is... debateable to say the least.

Sex is only a part of a relationship. Not the biggest part, usually. But an essential part even if a small one.

[theinevitable]

yeah. also, I mean, they had kids, so... I assume it worked out for them?
This wasn't one of those depressing "I didn't know I was gay" ones either-- he told her when they were dating that he was mostly a gay man, but that he was really into her regardless. She was OK with this, which is impressive considering the era (early-mid 60's).

[Nabubrush]

True. But...

a.) Most of the people I've known with strong relationships that lasted started with physical chemistry that slowly evolved into love, as opposed to starting with some other kind of affection that shoehorned itself into passion.

and

b.) Generally, a sexless marriage eventually becomes a... marriage where one or both parties start having sex with someone outside of the marriage. And, while if both people know and agree to that, it can work... most of the time, one party or the other changes their mind or was lying about being cool with it and... it stops being a marriage. And in any event, whether a marriage is still a marriage if people are sleeping outside of that marriage is... debateable to say the least.

Sex is only a part of a relationship. Not the biggest part, usually. But an essential part even if a small one.

I think you have a tendency to overstate things without actually having much information to back up your positions. How do you know this about marriages? I mean, do you have citations to back up that most sexless marriages end up with one or both partners going outside the marriage for sexual pleasure? And I'd like to hear your debate about a marriage not being a marriage if a member is finding sexual pleasure outside the marriage. What if one partner is unable to consummate relations?

[Ben-San]

Regarding nature vs. nurture in re: sexuality:

The expression of genotype as phenotype is the result of interactions between hereditary and environmental factors.

101 stuff here.

[littlefallsmets]

The "Most of the people I've known..." should have been applied to both (a.) and (b.)... I thought it was implied but I'm trying to be less parenthetic around here so as to be less wordy.

I am only speaking from the people I have known in my life, as a person who has known a lot of people and lived in a few different cultural settings and is fairly young.

As for the rest:

My personal definition of a marriage allows for sexual pleasure outside the marriage if it is honestly agreed to by both parties and is reaffirmed as agreed to on a fairly frequent basis, yes.

But I'm a pretty liberal guy. A whole lot of people would differ.

Most Western interpretations of monotheism, as are prevalent in North America and Europe and generally the English speaking world, deal with marriage as a two-person sexual exclusivity.

Even most of the Christian and Jewish... and also most of the Hindu, Buddhist, etc traditions as they are extant in the Americas... even those traditions that embrace same-sex marriage embrace it the exclusive union of two partners.

And what is marriage if it is not a religious covenant and/or a legal agreement? A legal agreement that is often broken in court on the grounds of... sexual infidelity.

If we're not talking about the prevaling religious parameters of marriage and we're not talking about the prevaling legal parameters of marriage... we're left with our individual and personal definitions of marriage.

And yours and mine, Nabu, are not the vast majority opinion of marriage.

And... because of that... because the culturally engrained image of marriage is for so very many an image that includes a sexuality and a sexual exclusivity, most of the people I'VE KNOWN who've tried to take a marriage out of those bounds, one party or the other gets worked up about the prevaling definition of marriage and... no more marriage.

There are islands of personal definition that stand strong, no question.

But most people I've known will eventually give into their preconceived notions about a thing if the going gets tough. It is a very difficult to fight human reflex. Very few of us can be the Muadib, unmoving with our hand in the pain box, if you follow.

Most of the romantic relationships I've known where one member is unable or unwilling to have sex, either the unable/unwilling partner learned to allow the other to get sex outside of the marriage or the partnership eventually dissolved.

The only exceptions I've known have been in the cases of the elderly where, y'know, both of their libidos were faded to the point where sexuality was biologically less of an issue more or less equally.

I ain't married. I might never get married, there are times when I don't know if I believe in it, there are times when my girlfriend knows that she doesn't believe in it. It is very similar to our positions on the idea of a higher power in those respects.

But I've known a lot of people in a range of lifestyles and these are the things I've seen.

I still say, though, that I can't think of a case where two people in a long-term relationship equivalent to a marriage or a marriage where one or both of them still had a libido and... the situation of trying to find sex outside of the marriage didn't end with one of them eventually falling back on old morals and deciding its "wrong" or the other falling in love with the lover outside the marriage or some other collapse of the agreement that such an arraignment is good.

This is probably a cultural artifact and not a biological one but it seems to be a strong cultural artifact.

[Nabubrush]

Fair enough, sir. Your posts have been most edifying.