When Did You Choose to be Straight

I do like how people are thinking about the question and it seems to shake up their assumptions, but I also think the question is a terrible one. I hate how it has come to define the discourse of queer identity in the United States. I think the "it's a bit of both" is about the most correct answer, even though it's also flawed.

[quote]The immemorial, seemingly ritualized debates on nature versus nurture take place against a very unstable background of tacit assumptions and fantasies about both nature and nurture.

[...]

To the degree--and it is significantly large--that the gay essentialist/constructivist debate takes its form and premises from, and insistently refers to, a whole history of other nature/nurture or nature/culture debates, it partakes of a tradition of viewing culture as malleable relative to nature: that is, culture, unlike nature, is assumed to be the thing that can be changed; the thing in which "humanity" has, furthermore, a right or even an obligation to intervene. This has certainly been the grounding of, for instance, the feminist formulation of the sex/gender system described above, whose implication is that the more fully gender inequality can be shown to inhere in human culture rather than in biological nature, the mroe amenable it must be to alteration and reform. I remember the buoyant enthusiasm with which feminist scholars used to greet the finding that one or anothe rbrutal form of oppression was not biological but "only" cultural!...

The number of persons or institutions by whom the existence of gay people--never mind the existence of more gay people--is treated as a precious desideratum [something wanted], a needed condition of life, is small, even compared to those who may wish for the dignified treatment of any gay people who happen already to exist. Advice on how to make sure your kids turn out gay, not to mention your students, your parishioners, your therapy clients, or your military subordninates is less ubiquitous than you might think. By contrast, the scope of institutions whose programmatic undertaking is to prevent the development of gay people is unimaginably large...So for gay and gay-loving people, even though the space of cultural malleability is the only conceivable theatre for our effective politics, every step of this constructivist nature/culture argument holds danger: it is so difficult to intervene in the seemingly natural trajectory that begins by identifying a place of cultural malleability; continues by inventing an ethical or therapeutic mandate for cultural manipulation; and ends in the overarching, hygenic Western fantasy of a world without any more homosexuals in it.

-- Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, The Epistemology of the Closet (1990)[/quote]  

Sedgwick is certainly on a par with Derrida in terms of readability.  Yes I know, I'm down to humouring myself.  As problematic as the question is, the obvious hetero reply, aside from other possible responses depending on who is being asked, would likely state that it never was matter of choice, it just is what it always was.  Be that as it may in that event, the lack of confusion, or the absolute certainty as it were, was constantly being validated through reinforced societal influences and preferences as to what constitutes the ideal.  It's like asking the average Albertan when it was that they became a conservative voter.  If the answer doesn't simply imply that they always were one, it'll likely say it occurred when they were old enough to begin experimenting at the polls, but that they always knew well beforehand there was only one option, which negated choice.....you effin moron with your silly questions.  Anyway, something like that.  Some people who had never thought about it in that way might take an 'ah ha' moment from the question, if it were turned around for them at that precise moment.

I don't get it. Is Sedgwick saying that by attempting our own cultural manipulation we legitimise the cultural manipulation undertaken by our opponents? Just saying that it's difficult to do is no argument against it. What is the difficulty exactly?

I disagree that nurture plays any part myself, though it would obviously play a large role in how you express your sexuality (or don't, as the case may be). The sexuality itself, however, is hardwired, even if the sexuality in question is one that is unusually fluid, even that disposition would be a genetic one, akin to eye colour. Most people, it seems clear to me, have little control over who or even what turns them on.

Catchfire wrote:

I do like how people are thinking about the question and it seems to shake up their assumptions, but I also think the question is a terrible one. I hate how it has come to define the discourse of queer identity in the United States. I think the "it's a bit of both" is about the most correct answer, even though it's also flawed.

I hear what you are saying, and I agree. 

On the other hand, I think the question works because it IS simple, and also a direct reversal of the question that is asked by so many unaware straights. 

Of course the truth is that not only is orientation not a choice, it is also not an either/or switch. The original question is an absurd one; this satire is equally absurd, mock-ignorant, and insulting to illustrate that point. 

Once the door is kicked down, there is an opportunity for those who get it to gain a better understanding of what is really going on.

Hmm. Well, that does make a fair bit of sense. I suppose nurture vs. nature is strictly speaking, a false dichotomy caused by our "Self vs. World" western dualism. Really there's no reason to distinguish the experience of your body's biological processes from the experience of the physical environment around you. Or put another way, your body is also part of the environment. And so are the genes inside it, and the sexual urges that are presumably designed into them.

We can avoid closed categories, I suppose, and say that we are the sum of our sexual experiences, both biological and environmental, and any other kinds that seem appropriate to you (spiritual?), so that I would not be a heterosexual man, but merely a man with a lifetime of heterosexual experiences. Experiences of uncontrollable deep attraction to the opposite sex. Still, I feel those experiences are almost entirely the result of genetic programming, which twisted and complicated in myriad ways, but always varied on the simple theme of having an involuntary sexual reaction to females just by virtue of them being female. I'm sure that in my case, the genetic influences on the sexual experiences of my life far outweigh any other influences. I strongly suspect that this is also true of the majority of people, but admittedly I have no way of proving it.

Catchfire wrote:

Take it back or I'll call you a liberal.

ETA: Slumberjack, you're a liberal.

Oh come on.  Some of us have to try and scrape through with little more than high school English you know.  I used to vote Liberal provincially btw, in exchange for free beer.  Roger Grimes days were happy days.

Well, I think the argument of "Yes being gay is a choice" and "No, being gay is not a choice" is not helpful and is itself homophobic and stooping to the level of the homphobes.

The "choice" argument is only valid if one accepts that being LGBTQ is a bad thing.

But I wanted to express my support of the video and what is revealed through asking questions rather than lecture people which I, ahem, have a habit of doing. I'm expanding my teaching methods here.

We never talk about choosing heterosexuality, that's what makes the video effective.

As for the trademarked homophobes, their arguments are logically unsound. They range from the "choice" and "recruit" genre to the fake- passages-from-the-bible genre to the non-scientific "there is no homosexuality in nature" argument. Yawn.

I say we don't frame our discussion with them in mind. 

Also, just because I think human sexuality and sexual expression is learned (mostly) and constructed (mostly) doesn't mean I'm right.

And those "unlearning gay" camps are very problematic, oppressive and nasty. My position on sexuality cannot be compared with them.

CMOT Dibbler wrote:

"Children, babies are taught both gender and sexual orientation from very early on. By parents and by the world. Yes, babies. Children are encouraged to think in binary gendered ways, and to be heterosexual. Society encourages heterosexuality over and over and over. This cannot be dismissed. My argument, and it's a simple one, is that if gender were so "natural" why does our society bombard boys with "boy toys" and girls with "girl toys" and the colour pink all the live-long day? And why does our society severely punish all who transgress gender boundaries?" But in saying things like that, are we not buying in to the homophobic arguements of baptist firebreathers, who believe that their children can be taught homosexual behavior by gay elementary school teachers. Isn't it also they case that parents try to teach heterosexuality to their gay children ultimatly fail?

Binary sexuality isn't an accurate reflection of reality.  It makes sexuality simple, safe, but ultimately inaccurate.

@ Rebecca

I agree with you, but then, I see it in a non-binary way. I have met enough gay people who told me (one or two with a bit of contempt) that bisexuality is a myth. So it isn't just a dominant culture thing. 

"Binary sexuality isn't an accurate reflection of reality. It makes sexuality simple, safe, but ultimately inaccurate."

I don't believe in the binary, I was simply arguing that the biological aspect of sexual orientation is much stronger then the social aspect. There are gay and bi sexual people who want to get rid of there same sex attraction but can't.

But May is right, the way we discuss sexual orientation and choice, you'd think the activities in question were akin to drug addiction or serial homicide. It's awful.

I think peoples sexuality exist on a continuum more than as a duality. I chose to be straight when I was in my late twenties and I realized that I was not all that excited about the sex I was having with the guy in bed with me.  After many years as a promiscuous adolescent and youth who would sleep with either gender I finally decided I liked sex with women way more than men. 

Good article CF (the Modboss) I liked this quote since I have chosen to give up both religion and men.

Quote:

Perhaps most importantly, the fact that we might cultivate or “choose” something doesn’t mean that it is a trivial, temporary, or less a vital part of who we are.  For instance, is religion a choice?  Certainly it is if we define “choice” as anything that isn’t an immutable part of our physiology.  But many religious people would feel profoundly misunderstood and offended if I suggested that their religious beliefs were a phase, an experiment, or a less significant part of who they are then, say, their hair color.  Choices are complex. Choices run deep.  And yes, choices are both constrained and fluid–just like our bodies.

[Tangent warning. Though this does include sexuality.]

Maysie wrote:

Also, just because I think human sexuality and sexual expression is learned (mostly) and constructed (mostly) doesn't mean I'm right.

I'm a social constructivist by education and intellectual background.

But then there is finding myself mid-stream in 3 generations that severely put that to question. Sure, its an anecdote of one case. But....

With me and my daughter you can say its because she grew up shaped by me and my relationships. [Mind you, even there, is the gender difference, and that she has a mother who did at least as much shaping.] But me and my birth father- he didn't raise me. While I am close to my [in the flesh] father. I didnt know my birth father until we were 19 and 38. But guess who I am just like?