lederhosen (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lederhosen) wrote2006-10-12 11:26 pm
lederhosen) wrote2006-10-12 11:26 pm
Entry tags:
Choice, orientation, etc etc
I chose to ignore the 'post this if you believe in gay rights, ignore it if you don't' meme because I'm not much on feel-good back-patting, even when it isn't accompanied by blackmail or trying to represent a whole cluster of issues as a single Boolean variable.
(Frankly, if you've been reading this journal for any length of time, you probably already have a fair idea where I stand on many of those issues. And if you don't, you're very welcome to ask, and I'll probably tell you. If you want to know what the people around you think on an issue like this and you're waiting for a meme to tell you, you're a loony.)
But![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
silverblue has made some good comments on related issues, and I'm always up for blathering on about stuff ;-)
An awful lot of trees have been killed and squids de-inked* over the question of whether homosexuality is (a) a choice or (b) something involuntary (hereditary, childhood experiences, whatever). It seems to me that most of this discussion is a colossal waste of time, for two main reasons.
*Or whatever it is ink comes from now. Probably some sort of robo-squid.
1. The answer is "yes, and yes".
I'm actually rather mystified at how much difficulty people have with this; to me, it seems pretty self-evident that both those things are partly true. Consider:
On one end of the spectrum, there are a great many people who are unhappy because they're homosexual. Rey tells the story of a friend of hers who came out to his father at age sixteen and was told "You know where the shotgun is"; he passed on that suggestion, but homosexuality is one of the biggest causes of teenage suicide in Australian and, by my understanding, elsewhere in the world. Why would somebody choose to be homosexual if it's going to make them miserable?
On the other end of it, sexuality is one of the most complicated aspects of human behaviour, and our higher thought processes are closely involved in it. We know that people have sex for all sorts of reasons, some good, some bad; how could individual choice (sometimes shaped by social expectations) not come into it from time to time?
And of course, there's no reason why these two have to be mutually exclusive. I can choose whether to go to the kitchen and eat something or not, but if I starve myself for long enough I'll get hungry, for biological reasons that come down to genes I inherited from my parents. Eventually that hunger will get very persuasive indeed, and influence my behaviour; the idea that everything in life is completely free choice or completely involuntary with no in-between just doesn't survive contact with reality. I suspect most people lie somewhere between the ends of that spectrum, with voluntary and involuntary bits in different proportions. But I don't fuss too much about the details, because...
2. It's not even the right question.
There are all sorts of reasons why both pro- and anti-gay groups insist on a polar answer to this question. If homosexuality is genetic, you can argue that people shouldn't be punished for their sexuality any more than for any other congenital condition. OTOH, if it's a choice, then homosexuals are voluntarily rebelling against God/the family/the nation's demographic needs/whatever, and punishing that behaviour isn't discriminatory. And if it's the result of childhood experiences, you get to feel sorry for gays and deny them rights at the same time, because you don't want to normalise child abuse!
But as convenient as it might seem at the time, I don't believe insisting on one of those polar answers is appropriate. Partly because it's incorrect (see #1 above) and so neglects a large chunk of the population. Partly because it's an unreliable tactic at best - if your defence of gay rights hinges on the idea that homosexuality is an inborn trait and not a voluntary choice, what do you have left when somebody offers you a medical 'cure' for the hereditary component of orientation?
And mostly because there are far better grounds for defending gay rights, which come down to "as long as I'm not harming anybody else, what business of yours is it how I live my life?" (Not that 'harm' is a simple thing to assess, but it's what the argument ought to hinge on and so the best place to start from.)
That, incidentally, is why I'm a little reluctant to define myself as 'straight'. I've never particularly wanted to sleep with a guy, either in general or anybody specific, and I'm not particularly expecting that to change. But I don't see much point in defining myself by those negative facts either. There are some negatives that really are important and worth saying - "I will not lie to you, I will not betray you" - but those are about things that are wrong. Since I don't see the idea of sleeping with a guy as wrong, why would I bother adding it to my self-definition? To me, the fact that I have certain rights (or believe I ought to) is a more important issue than which of those rights I happen to exercise.
(Frankly, if you've been reading this journal for any length of time, you probably already have a fair idea where I stand on many of those issues. And if you don't, you're very welcome to ask, and I'll probably tell you. If you want to know what the people around you think on an issue like this and you're waiting for a meme to tell you, you're a loony.)
But
silverblue has made some good comments on related issues, and I'm always up for blathering on about stuff ;-) An awful lot of trees have been killed and squids de-inked* over the question of whether homosexuality is (a) a choice or (b) something involuntary (hereditary, childhood experiences, whatever). It seems to me that most of this discussion is a colossal waste of time, for two main reasons.
*Or whatever it is ink comes from now. Probably some sort of robo-squid.
1. The answer is "yes, and yes".
I'm actually rather mystified at how much difficulty people have with this; to me, it seems pretty self-evident that both those things are partly true. Consider:
On one end of the spectrum, there are a great many people who are unhappy because they're homosexual. Rey tells the story of a friend of hers who came out to his father at age sixteen and was told "You know where the shotgun is"; he passed on that suggestion, but homosexuality is one of the biggest causes of teenage suicide in Australian and, by my understanding, elsewhere in the world. Why would somebody choose to be homosexual if it's going to make them miserable?
On the other end of it, sexuality is one of the most complicated aspects of human behaviour, and our higher thought processes are closely involved in it. We know that people have sex for all sorts of reasons, some good, some bad; how could individual choice (sometimes shaped by social expectations) not come into it from time to time?
And of course, there's no reason why these two have to be mutually exclusive. I can choose whether to go to the kitchen and eat something or not, but if I starve myself for long enough I'll get hungry, for biological reasons that come down to genes I inherited from my parents. Eventually that hunger will get very persuasive indeed, and influence my behaviour; the idea that everything in life is completely free choice or completely involuntary with no in-between just doesn't survive contact with reality. I suspect most people lie somewhere between the ends of that spectrum, with voluntary and involuntary bits in different proportions. But I don't fuss too much about the details, because...
2. It's not even the right question.
There are all sorts of reasons why both pro- and anti-gay groups insist on a polar answer to this question. If homosexuality is genetic, you can argue that people shouldn't be punished for their sexuality any more than for any other congenital condition. OTOH, if it's a choice, then homosexuals are voluntarily rebelling against God/the family/the nation's demographic needs/whatever, and punishing that behaviour isn't discriminatory. And if it's the result of childhood experiences, you get to feel sorry for gays and deny them rights at the same time, because you don't want to normalise child abuse!
But as convenient as it might seem at the time, I don't believe insisting on one of those polar answers is appropriate. Partly because it's incorrect (see #1 above) and so neglects a large chunk of the population. Partly because it's an unreliable tactic at best - if your defence of gay rights hinges on the idea that homosexuality is an inborn trait and not a voluntary choice, what do you have left when somebody offers you a medical 'cure' for the hereditary component of orientation?
And mostly because there are far better grounds for defending gay rights, which come down to "as long as I'm not harming anybody else, what business of yours is it how I live my life?" (Not that 'harm' is a simple thing to assess, but it's what the argument ought to hinge on and so the best place to start from.)
That, incidentally, is why I'm a little reluctant to define myself as 'straight'. I've never particularly wanted to sleep with a guy, either in general or anybody specific, and I'm not particularly expecting that to change. But I don't see much point in defining myself by those negative facts either. There are some negatives that really are important and worth saying - "I will not lie to you, I will not betray you" - but those are about things that are wrong. Since I don't see the idea of sleeping with a guy as wrong, why would I bother adding it to my self-definition? To me, the fact that I have certain rights (or believe I ought to) is a more important issue than which of those rights I happen to exercise.