Quote:
Originally Posted by The_Jazz
rahl, for the record, I came the conclusion that the OP is deeply closeted and trying to explain away his feelings. Homosexuality is pretty stigmatized in Indian culture.
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That's a typical gay thing to say, you know!!
---------- Post added at 10:44 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:28 AM ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by roachboy
i don't have much time at the moment, but it seems to me that at one level the thread is jammed up around a kind of equation between what is socially constructed (this is not precise...it's more complicated not like an erector set) and what's "real" or "exists" as if there are things that somehow just "are" that are "real" and other things that social formations name for themselves which aren't. i have no idea what these things that simply "are" would look like. and i doubt that you or anyone else could refer to those things, given that the medium that allows you to communicate is a primary medium for the social construction/positing that you're getting at.
from this viewpoint, any classification, any system of classification is not "real" because any system of classification leans on a previous history (or plural) of systems of classification/ways of thinking about classification, etc. and it's also pretty obvious that in binary thinking x implies not-x, presupposes it, is defined with reference to it.
so yeah.
recognition of constructedness, or historical contingency *can be* a way for people socialized into a particular social form to relativize what shapes their perceptions (again, this is too fast and it sounds loopier than i want it to) but relativizing these frames doesn't mean that the frames somehow cease to function.
so it's not like one fine morning anyone wakes up and thinks:
my god the way i think feel and everything else follows from the historical situation in which i live
and then gets to step outside that situation in the way that you can take off a hat and be out from under that hat.
so i'm a bit confused by the conceptual underpinning of all this.
that's what i think keeps tangling up the points that nm seems to want to make about sexual orientation and/or gender.
as for hetero/homo sexualities being functions of binary thinking...that's really close to tautological in its self-evidence, ain't it?
does it follow then that hetero/homo sexualities don't exist? not outside the peculiar assumption that pits "the constructed" over against some (imaginary) always-already there....
gotta go.
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Wow ... I wish you could put it more simplistically. Too many "hi-fi" (technical?) and basically I don't know what you're talking about.
I guess what you want to say is that if I am claiming sexual orientation to be socially constructed, then all human identities are, to some extent socially constructed. And that the fact remains that there are people who prefer men over women or vice versa, and whether or not we divide the society on those lines, this division will always be there.
My answer: Sexual orientation is not only socially constructed. It's constructed in an invalid way. It doesn't have solid cultural, historical or biological grounds. It's intention is not valid. Its application is not valid. It's results are not valid (it shows most males as exclusively heterosexual, a few as homosexual and even rarer as bisexual -- which is natural human male sexuality turned upside down!!) -- and results are the ultimate test of the validity of any human concept.
The concept of sexual orientation suits only a particular class of males who like men, who are different from other men, not on account of their sexuality for men, but on account of their gender orientation. I have done immense work with whom the gays call 'straight' males, and its a fact that 'straights' do not have a problem understanding this, Its only the gays, being too seeped in the 'gay ideology' that they don't want to see anything else. Unless gays take off their tainted glasses they won't see the world for what it actually is.
Wrong assumptions: The very assumptions that the concept of sexual orientation is based on is wrong. Its based on the invalid assumption that "most men are primarily attracted to women." and only a small percentage of men ever have a sexuality for men. Another wrong assumption is that the default sexuality of men is towards women, and sexuality for men happens as an anomaly.
It's also based on the wrong assumption that males who like men do so because they have a female soul/ biology inside them. In fact, it is this and this assumption alone that makes plausible the making of a separate category for homosexuality. In fact, the entire concept of homosexuality was constructed keeping in mind an invalid representative group -- of intermediate sexes, of females inside male bodies, who indulged in lustful sexual behavior with men, treating their anuses like vaginas.
Any concept that is built upon these 'third genders' that seeks to apply to 'men who like men' is going to be faulty from the start.
---------- Post added at 10:55 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:44 AM ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by rahl
NM, now your going to argue about what the definition or latin word for "homo/hetero" means? You beleive that you know the true definition and all 6+billion of us ignorant fools have had it wrong all this time?
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Well, you're kind of right, except that its not only just me. I am backed by the entire world population (except your claimed 6 billion -- which is a wrong figure, considering, a huge percentage of men in the West do not believe in 'sexual orientation' but they are powerless in front of a strong culture. Only the gay identified, including the closeted ones, are ever so intent on the 'sexual orientation' stuff) ... and I'm also backed by the entire world history ... and your modern science has turned the rules of science upside down in order to forcibly 'prove' 'sexual orientation' to be real, but it has not found anything else than the fact that the gay identified males are "females inside male bodies." So, even your modern science is 'indirectly' with me.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rahl
I am a straight male, have been all my life. I have many "manly" qualities to me, and I also have a few "effeminate" qualities. Almost every single male I know has both. I can only guess that if you ever tried talking to an actual homosexual about YOUR definition of what it means to be gay, he would likely kick your ass for being so insulting to him.
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Fine, fine!!
... you can keep your sexual orientation thing. Gosh, I've never seen a straight guy take my attack on sexual orientation so personally and getting so worked up about it.
Note: The concept of sexual orientation has been invented by the queer, and it serves only the queer (its nothing but a mask for his effeminate gender orientation). For the regular, straight gendered male, its nothing but a burden, a pressure, something that was enforced upon him, yet he has to abide by it. They will quietly follow it because they have no choice. But they will never fight for it!!
Also, I'm talking about larger, macro issues here. That a few 'gay' identified males maybe masculine or many consider themselves to be masculine is besides the point. I may consider myself to be a parrot, and I maybe allowed to live in my delusion, but when we talk about larger issues, we have to confront the reality.
All males have some masculine and some feminine qualities in them. We're talking about the masculine or feminine gender that is so strong that the male experiences it as an identity. It's when the feminine in a male becomes so strong that it does not fit in the masculine male space, is when the male starts to seek another identity from straight gendered, regular, 'normal', males, whatever his sexuality may be.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rahl
Totally false 
The rest of your post is just WAY too long to pick apart, but totally false will pretty much sum up it's entirety as well. |
The main parts of my post very strongly show with real life examples that 'gay' means effeminate, not 'man's desire for men' and that 'straight' means manly, and not 'man's desire for women.' The examples are easily verifiable.
So, if you're just going to reject it summarily, without first disproving my examples or giving counter examples, then you're just not being honest.[COLOR="DarkSlateGray"]
---------- Post added at 11:33 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:55 AM ----------
No one naturally experiences sexual preferences as an identity. sexual preferences are just sexual preferences. They don't make you any different than the other man.
When you like a man or a woman, you don't think, "I'm a homosexual man getting attracted towards a homosexual man." You may think of yourself as a 'girl in love with men, even when you're a male (and that is what being 'gay' is all about!). If 'sexual orientation' was real, homosexual males should have been attracted only to 'homosexual' identified males. There should not have been any cross sexual attraction between straight and gay males.
All over the world, being a man is so strongly about relating with other men, and men go to such a great extent to be "like the rest of the men." That is the basis of the peer-pressure amongst men. Men will smoke only because "men do it." They will race cars, only because "men do it." The community feeling is pretty strong amongst men, and men would sacrifice so much of themselves to sustain the community. It's foolish to assume, that under such strong feelings to be "one of the guys" -- a man who's one of the men would ever want to have another identity from men just because he likes them, ... especially an identity, that breaks him apart from the other guys in such drastic ways, that too, in an environment which is so hostile and so misrepresentative of such desires.
The fact that he likes them would make him want to be a part of them even more, unless he likes effeminate males.
It's also no surprise, that while the straight space is so hostile to effeminate males who like men, it quietly gives space and acceptance, even protection to the 'straight-gendered' male that acknowledges his preferences for men, keeping in mind the 'guy-codes,' of course.
Let's face it. The males who claim to want to have a 'separate' identity and space from the 'men' may claim they're doing it because they like men. But the fact is that they're doing it because, they don't feel they're one of the men. And this is why, even queer males who like women are part of the LGBT, not of the straight space. They are doing it because of their gender orientation, not because of their sexual orientation. If there sexual identity is involved at all, its a 'feminine male sexuality for men" not "male sexuality for men." The real difference is 'masculine'-'feminine' not whether you like men or women.
And this is why most men would rather disown their sexuality for men, rather than be considered 'different' and be set apart from the rest of the men. The effeminates on the other hand celebrate the 'different' category and take up 'desire for men' as an identity, in a society which so clearly considers such desire as a mark of an inner hermaphrodic soul.