Nobody is ‘born that way,’ gay historians say

[ingemann]

Sexuality is not just the desire to ... stroke one's genitals, it's a method to build and sustain relationships, to continue your genetic line etc etc...

Animals don't really "build and sustain relationships", though.

Anyway, the point is not to say that the desire to have sex with a person of the same sex is a construct of modern society. The point is that this was not understood as, in any way, something comparable to modern homosexuality (ie a general and universal preference for the same sex). Maybe I didn't do a good job at explaining it, but I had a gender class (taught by a gay professor, no less) which did a good job at it, and I can include some bibliographic reference.

philosophical progressivism

Quick question: Is this the whole "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice" thing?

Yup. This quote is one of the best summaries of my thought I've ever heard.

Antonio V, it's not that we don't get what this guy are saying, it's just that we think it's arrogant, meaningless and stupid. Yes I get the idea that modern gay identity are a relative new social construct, but I happen to think that being gay are much more basic than that, it's about people both being sexual attracted to their own sex and falling in love with people of their own sex, and that's not new. Just because people in the past didn't take part in Pride Parades or other stereotypical modern aspects of the gay lifestyle or behaved in stereotypical gay manner, didn't make them less gay. 

[traininthedistance]

Tony? Really?

The TERMS homosexuality/heterosexuality/bisexuality/asexuality are constructs - because they're terms society has created over a long period of time to describe biology.

Sexuality is not just the desire to ... stroke one's genitals, it's a method to build and sustain relationships, to continue your genetic line etc etc...

But a) the use or non-use of terms, and the implications they carry, absolutely do have a tangible effect on people (note my "civil unions" example upthread), and b) it's beyond silly to deny that society and culture has an impact on what people find sexually desirable, and how sexuality is practiced.  

Nobody is arguing that biology plays no role- that's a strawman.  But to say that society and culture plays no role?  Just take a look at the relative prevalence of pubic hair in pornos of the 1970s and today, and tell me with a straight face that sexuality and gender isn't at least a little bit socially constructed.  You can't.

Note: this is not to pick on you specifically, but is more to push back generally against the people who are basically denying that anything besides biology matters.

[bedstuy]

Tony? Really?

The TERMS homosexuality/heterosexuality/bisexuality/asexuality are constructs - because they're terms society has created over a long period of time to describe biology.

Sexuality is not just the desire to ... stroke one's genitals, it's a method to build and sustain relationships, to continue your genetic line etc etc...

But a) the use or non-use of terms, and the implications they carry, absolutely do have a tangible effect on people (note my "civil unions" example upthread), and b) it's beyond silly to deny that society and culture has an impact on what people find sexually desirable, and how sexuality is practiced.  

Nobody is arguing that biology plays no role- that's a strawman.  But to say that society and culture plays no role?  Just take a look at the relative prevalence of pubic hair in pornos of the 1970s and today, and tell me with a straight face that sexuality and gender isn't at least a little bit socially constructed.  You can't.

Note: this is not to pick on you specifically, but is more to push back generally against the people who are basically denying that anything besides biology matters.

Has anyone denied that society affects sexuality?  Has anyone denied that words and categories are human inventions?  No.

But, it's ridiculous to compare sexual orientation and pube length preference.  I'm sure some society  could theoretically turn pube length into a huge moral issue and taboo where people were burnt at the stake for their pube length.  However, there is something far, far more eternal and biological about sexual orientation.  You can't tell me that if only my society had taught me that having sex with women was more fun and exciting, I would be heterosexual.  Human sexuality is clearly a realm of behavior governed by very deep, evolutionary impulses that society puts its spin on, but doesn't determine.

[afleitch]

Tony? Really?

The TERMS homosexuality/heterosexuality/bisexuality/asexuality are constructs - because they're terms society has created over a long period of time to describe biology.

Sexuality is not just the desire to ... stroke one's genitals, it's a method to build and sustain relationships, to continue your genetic line etc etc...

But a) the use or non-use of terms, and the implications they carry, absolutely do have a tangible effect on people (note my "civil unions" example upthread), and b) it's beyond silly to deny that society and culture has an impact on what people find sexually desirable, and how sexuality is practiced.  

Nobody is arguing that biology plays no role- that's a strawman.  But to say that society and culture plays no role?  Just take a look at the relative prevalence of pubic hair in pornos of the 1970s and today, and tell me with a straight face that sexuality and gender isn't at least a little bit socially constructed.  You can't.

Note: this is not to pick on you specifically, but is more to push back generally against the people who are basically denying that anything besides biology matters.

Has anyone denied that society affects sexuality?  Has anyone denied that words and categories are human inventions?  No.

But, it's ridiculous to compare sexual orientation and pube length preference.  I'm sure some society  could theoretically turn pube length into a huge moral issue and taboo where people were burnt at the stake for their pube length.  However, there is something far, far more eternal and biological about sexual orientation.  You can't tell me that if only my society had taught me that having sex with women was more fun and exciting, I would be heterosexual.  Human sexuality is clearly a realm of behavior governed by very deep, evolutionary impulses that society puts its spin on, but doesn't determine.

You won't convince them. They have read Foucault. They are 'sage'

Sexual preference; choosing desirable characteristics in a mate is not the same as sexual orientation or sexual drive. You and I know this. It's not f-cking rocket science but constructionists go insane with it. As I said before if you say to someone who is heterosexual your sexual attraction to thefemale is a nothing more than a social construct because you happen to prefer afemale with 36DD breasts or a female with wooden cleft in her pallet and access to 36 goats you will be met, rightfully with ill concealed laughter.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Sexuality is not just the desire to ... stroke one's genitals, it's a method to build and sustain relationships, to continue your genetic line etc etc...

Animals don't really "build and sustain relationships", though.

Anyway, the point is not to say that the desire to have sex with a person of the same sex is a construct of modern society. The point is that this was not understood as, in any way, something comparable to modern homosexuality (ie a general and universal preference for the same sex). Maybe I didn't do a good job at explaining it, but I had a gender class (taught by a gay professor, no less) which did a good job at it, and I can include some bibliographic reference.

philosophical progressivism

Quick question: Is this the whole "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice" thing?

Yup. This quote is one of the best summaries of my thought I've ever heard.

Antonio V, it's not that we don't get what this guy are saying, it's just that we think it's arrogant, meaningless and stupid. Yes I get the idea that modern gay identity are a relative new social construct, but I happen to think that being gay are much more basic than that, it's about people both being sexual attracted to their own sex and falling in love with people of their own sex, and that's not new. Just because people in the past didn't take part in Pride Parades or other stereotypical modern aspects of the gay lifestyle or behaved in stereotypical gay manner, didn't make them less gay. 

No, you definitely don't seem to get what I'm saying.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Also, I find it a sad reflection on the ideological state of our society, that in order to be considered rightful and deserving of respect, a type of identity has to be grounded in nature. Why is considering something to be a social construct equivalent to dismissing their worth? Most of the good things humanity has have been given to us by society, rather than by nature.

[Velasco]

Also, I find it a sad reflection on the ideological state of our society, that in order to be considered rightful and deserving of respect, a type of identity has to be grounded in nature.

I suspect you are totally right here.

[bedstuy]

Also, I find it a sad reflection on the ideological state of our society, that in order to be considered rightful and deserving of respect, a type of identity has to be grounded in nature. Why is considering something to be a social construct equivalent to dismissing their worth? Most of the good things humanity has have been given to us by society, rather than by nature.

The obvious problem with pretending that we're just ethereal consciousnesses floating jars divorced from our evolutionary heritage, from our bodies, from a real sense of being human animals, is that it's completely wrong.  If you make decisions based on ideas that are wrong, you make bad decisions.

[afleitch]

No, you definitely don't seem to get what I'm saying.

We do. We counter it, and you say it again. We counter it again (I spent some time on that) and you just repeat it and say we 'don't understand' you. That's usually an indicator that the person regurgitating the idea doesn't actually know about it

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

philosophical progressivism

Quick question: Is this the whole "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice" thing?

Yup. This quote is one of the best summaries of my thought I've ever heard.

What is "justice"?

It certainly has been the case that society has grown more complex and nuanced as it encompasses a larger number of people.  That growth has been both contemporaneous due to improvements in communication and transportation as well just plain larger population and temporal due to improvements in record keeping.

But unless one argues that a more complex and nuanced society inevitably facilitates justice I fail to see any evidence that society has become more just (or less just). Rather what I see is a temporal bias that creates the illusion of a more just society because the groups we favor today are favored today more than at any other time in recorded history. But that's simply because those are the groups we favor today.  Groups that in the past were thought to be getting just favor then may or may not be favored today. Further, I see no reason to think that the groups we think today are being justly favored will necessarily retain that favor in the future.

[Antonio the Sixth]

No, you definitely don't seem to get what I'm saying.

We do. We counter it, and you say it again. We counter it again (I spent some time on that) and you just repeat it and say we 'don't understand' you. That's usually an indicator that the person regurgitating the idea doesn't actually know about it

You replied to my post and I counter-replied, at which point you abandoned the conversation. If you're not interested in having a substantial discussion that's fine, but you're not exactly in a position to comment on the quality of my argumentation.

[afleitch]

No, you definitely don't seem to get what I'm saying.

We do. We counter it, and you say it again. We counter it again (I spent some time on that) and you just repeat it and say we 'don't understand' you. That's usually an indicator that the person regurgitating the idea doesn't actually know about it

You replied to my post and I counter-replied, at which point you abandoned the conversation. If you're not interested in having a substantial discussion that's fine, but you're not exactly in a position to comment on the quality of my argumentation.

I meant this;

Doesn't the idea that we are using sexual preference as a primary means of categorizing people strike you as potentially problematic?

It is, but why wouldn’t we? Society is shaped by those who hold authority. Many people held authority by virtue of having a penis. There will always be identification and demarcation along gender and sexual lines precisely a society based on serving the needs of heteronormative power model (and I make no apology for going all ‘feminist’ here) is the hegemony. The reason why sexuality is an issue for those who have a minority sexuality is because same sex acts were opposed by the hegemony. It didn’t matter whether you just liked casual same sex encounters or wanted to be able to be publically seen and safe with a romantic sexual partner for life. Everything on that spectrum was oppressed. If homosexual behaviour was not specifically excluded (or excluded by omission) in civil, social and religious structures and statutes then there wouldn’t be an LGBT identity as you know it today, because it wouldn’t be defined as a characteristic. There would never have been a black identity either because skin colour like sexual attraction would never be identified as a discernable characteristic. It’s not as if society divides along hair colour, though there are issues of ‘preference’ involved even in that. And of course this demarcation with proscribed gender roles and correct and incorrect sexual behaviour is perpetuated within certain understandings of religious revelation as being mandated by god and this can further perpetuate this.

------

I’ll expand upon my thoughts on the whole article as I have time.

First of it’s a terrible article. It shouldn’t merit much more discussion that that, except that terrible articles deserve it.

On the subject matter itself, a major problem with that is if you say to someone that heterosexuality is a construct, therefore deconstructing everything from marriage to an erection, you’ll be casually dismissed in various academic and scientific circles (as well as the local pub) because it doesn’t fit in with someone’s sexual-social experience. But if you say that homosexuality is a construct there are enough ‘bourgeois’ (to use that term) who have an issue with homosexuality that stems from religious, social, cultural and power structures to take note. Therefore the constructionists are essentially ‘useful idiots’ and the very playthings of the structures they so vehemently oppose. You can see that in the article posted where constructed heterosexuality is touched upon but immediately glossed over because after all, the article is about the gays. Why people are straight and do straight things like marry and have children or associated with that; cheat, divorce and abandon their children is of no real concern to anyone.  Perhaps it should be, but it’s not. You can’t engage people on that premise. However if you make the issue about the gays, then you can demonstrate your philosophical prowess to an audience that doesn’t give two sh-ts about Marxist theory because a predominantly straight audience really want to know why people don’t think and act like they do.

This article is providing a snapshot of those who would consider themselves to be in the ‘constructionist’ camp; i.e the concept of sexual orientation was invented in the 19th Century mainly through medical discourse which constructed the heterosexual/homosexual dichotomy for bourgeois purposes (because everything, apparently, is a class struggle) This means that prior to this point homosexuality was characterised not by sense of identity but by sexual acts which were perceived as structures of power (with an active and passive role) This view is ideologically and in many ways politically grounded. You need to have your Marxist hat on. Despite the fact that most people don’t wear that hat, hasn’t deterred many constructionists within queer theory who in full Frankfurt School mode neglect to communicate that the primary focus is not necessarily to discover an accurate historical model but to foster a new social construct reflective of their political leanings. To them, the homosexual can’t simply ‘accept’ his or her groundings as a gay/LGBT because that is part of the heterosexual/homosexual dichotomy that is symptomatic of bourgeois capitalism. Instead they should, in effect be politicised into someone who questions all the concepts in the basket of the bourgeois, such as gender and heterosexuality and class therefore meaning that all these things (even men and women themselves) disappear as a class and are no longer subjects of oppression. If you de-stable heterosexuality then you eradicate homophobia (or so was the thinking) But once you start deconstructing something, therefore proving that it’s a construct, you start doing it with everything. It made no difference to them throwing both heterosexuality under a bus as throwing homosexuality under a bus. Even when LGBT academics do this (who, in the case of many mentioned in the article tend to be removed from what matters ‘now’) and crawl up from underneath the wheels, they still realise (not that they assumed anything other than that) that they are sexually attracted to whom they are attracted to and therefore the whole experiment hasn’t really validated anything. Whatever the other sciences are up to at this time doesn’t concern them because academic bubbles are precisely that.

However constructionists also make a mistake in assuming that the ‘now’ is more entrenched and is therefore more relevant than the ‘then.’ What is considered ‘gay’ now might not be what is considered so in a hundred years’ time, or a new term is used that describes the social grouping or self-identification of those with non-heteronormative sexuality. Or they might simply do different things in an environment that is more open or more closed towards them. Therefore what is currently the ‘now’ will for the future be the ‘then’ and because what they did ‘then’ is not what they do ‘now’ so the ‘then’ is dismissed. The experiences of those in the past are dismissed and the new ‘now’ are told that their experiences are constructed. Which as you can see is deeply problematic.

In contrast to this you have ‘essentialists’ (which would be my own view) where both knowledge and practice are not constructed but are ‘discovered’ (for which you can at times read inherent) but subject to repression and then rediscovery through both history and experience. It emphasises continuity and the dichotomy of liberation/suppression to what was already there.

And of course as expected, such discourse on both sides ends up hideously Western.

You can't keep presenting a constructionist argument as a 'truth' particularly if you are placing a social science in strict opposition to the biological science. I know you read your argument somewhere and you like it, but simply saying those who are giving specific reasons to oppose it as 'not understanding' and throwing your hands up is extremely grating.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Except I didn't say those who "are giving specific reasons to oppose it" weren't understanding. I only gave this argument after my own views were grossly mispresented.

I never claimed that same-sex attraction is a creation of modern society. Nor did I say that those who feel this attraction do so because they've been conditioned by society. Note that I opened my first post with "homosexuality and heterosexuality" are social construct. The latter was just as foreign to past societies as the former. The issue is with the way we create our social categories and how we define personal identity. For a long time, sexual attraction didn't play a part into it.

Also yes, you raise good points in your effortpost and I actually agree with it. As I believe I said at the very beginning, it doesn't really matter in the end whether sexual attraction is constructed or not, and I acknowledge that the best course in the way toward equality is to embrace these existing categories and work within them. Still, this doesn't in any way undermine the constructionist argument.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

If I were up to it, I would try to defend the constructionist thesis but I'm lazy. So I would just say one, if we were holding an essentialist position* we would have to explain the reasons for which the historical and anthropological actually seems to contradict this. Of course an ethnography or historical report can never be scientific in the way, say, a population-quantitative analysis can be (Is that bad?) but it's also clear that historians and anthropologists are not creating things out of thin air. Well, except the most demented of Foucault admirers.

(* - As I mentioned earlier, a lot of the claims for the innatist position are based on twin studies. But even the highest twin studies afaik record that in cases of identical twins if one is gay there is only a 52% chance that the other one is. Given that identical twins are supposed to be identical genetically, if homosexuality was purely genetic than that number should be 100%. This suggests that biology of it is more complex than most are willing to admit. There's also a problem of trying to explain how homosexuality could exist under standard evolutionary theory which suggests that such a trait - that isn't passed on to offspring - could exist. There's a lot of "It stands for reason" going on here on both sides. And reason, like common sense, is the collection of prejudices we all get by the age of 18)



Angela and Maria Eagle, identical twins and English politicians - both are Labour MPs for constituencies in Merseyside, both are keen chess players... yet one is a lesbian and the other is straight

Ftr, my position on this is "who cares, really?" But I will admit that I find the notion of sexual identity highly dubious.

[afleitch]

Note that I opened my first post with "homosexuality and heterosexuality" are social construct. The latter was just as foreign to past societies as the former.

They are biological terms (somewhat outdated at that) They have nothing to do with sociology, that is the issue. As orientations (even if just describing two extremes of a more fluid spectrum) they can never be considered 'social constructs' because, as you admit, sexual attraction to a set notion of gender/s is essentially preset (even if you don't want to call it biologically determined) How that is expressed (or suppressed) in society is constructed yes. You can argue that me in my cosy marriage or my friend in his cosy marriage with wife and kids is a construct, but the attraction that led to that social arrangement is not. Transplant me back five hundred years then yes I'd marry a woman and yes I'd ensure I had children for my own financial security. It doesn't mean that my inherent attraction to men is a moot point. That's broadly why I'm an essentialist.

[traininthedistance]

You won't convince them. They have read Foucault. They are 'sage'

Sexual preference; choosing desirable characteristics in a mate is not the same as sexual orientation or sexual drive. You and I know this. It's not f-cking rocket science but constructionists go insane with it. As I said before if you say to someone who is heterosexual your sexual attraction to thefemale is a nothing more than a social construct because you happen to prefer afemale with 36DD breasts or a female with wooden cleft in her pallet and access to 36 goats you will be met, rightfully with ill concealed laughter.

My position has a lot less to do with Foucault than you imagine, and a lot more to do with the practical goal of maximizing rights and freedoms, than you imagine. 

The fact that we have a "gay" identity now, and we didn't hundreds of years ago, is intimately connected with, and in fact a prerequisite to, the rights you enjoy and the ability you have to express your sexuality freely and naturally.

And, yes, the idea of "heterosexuality" as a distinct category is constructed as well.  If people are trying to argue that one is but the other isn't, well then that would be gibberish, and offensive gibberish at that.  Luckily nobody is doing such a thing, not here at least.

[bedstuy]

You won't convince them. They have read Foucault. They are 'sage'

Sexual preference; choosing desirable characteristics in a mate is not the same as sexual orientation or sexual drive. You and I know this. It's not f-cking rocket science but constructionists go insane with it. As I said before if you say to someone who is heterosexual your sexual attraction to thefemale is a nothing more than a social construct because you happen to prefer afemale with 36DD breasts or a female with wooden cleft in her pallet and access to 36 goats you will be met, rightfully with ill concealed laughter.

My position has a lot less to do with Foucault than you imagine, and a lot more to do with the practical goal of maximizing rights and freedoms, than you imagine. 

The fact that we have a "gay" identity now, and we didn't hundreds of years ago, is intimately connected with, and in fact a prerequisite to, the rights you enjoy and the ability you have to express your sexuality freely and naturally.

And, yes, the idea of "heterosexuality" as a distinct category is constructed as well.  If people are trying to argue that one is but the other isn't, well then that would be gibberish, and offensive gibberish at that.  Luckily nobody is doing such a thing, not here at least.

That's not the issue.  "Heterosexuality" is a term that categorizes a set of sexual desires which occur in human beings because of their genetic and hormonal makeup.  Maybe the better word for what we mean is "heterosexual desire" or lust.  The same goes for homosexuality.  The desire for sex and intimacy is an innate impulse in humans due to their biology.  How people act on their desire, what words we use to describe it, the particulars of what is attractive in a man or woman, sure, that's influenced by society a great deal.  But, where someone sits on the spectrum of heterosexual/homosexual is not very influenced at all by society.  Do you disagree?

It has previously been suggested that humans are not by nature sexually attracted to other human beings.  Basically, that human nature is to be a masturbating loner, but society has taught us that having sex is desirable activity.  That is ridiculous.  I find that idea fundamentally dehumanizing because it is opposed to the basic nature of the species I belong to.

Just an added line of argument:

Would anyone say, "nobody is born with autism?"  After all, autistic people used to just be called dumb or cretinous or idiotic.  So, autism is a social construct and nobody is born with autism.

[traininthedistance]

You won't convince them. They have read Foucault. They are 'sage'

Sexual preference; choosing desirable characteristics in a mate is not the same as sexual orientation or sexual drive. You and I know this. It's not f-cking rocket science but constructionists go insane with it. As I said before if you say to someone who is heterosexual your sexual attraction to thefemale is a nothing more than a social construct because you happen to prefer afemale with 36DD breasts or a female with wooden cleft in her pallet and access to 36 goats you will be met, rightfully with ill concealed laughter.

My position has a lot less to do with Foucault than you imagine, and a lot more to do with the practical goal of maximizing rights and freedoms, than you imagine. 

The fact that we have a "gay" identity now, and we didn't hundreds of years ago, is intimately connected with, and in fact a prerequisite to, the rights you enjoy and the ability you have to express your sexuality freely and naturally.

And, yes, the idea of "heterosexuality" as a distinct category is constructed as well.  If people are trying to argue that one is but the other isn't, well then that would be gibberish, and offensive gibberish at that.  Luckily nobody is doing such a thing, not here at least.

That's not the issue.  "Heterosexuality" is a term that categorizes a set of sexual desires which occur in human beings because of their genetic and hormonal makeup.  Maybe the better word for what we mean is "heterosexual desire" or lust.  The same goes for homosexuality.  The desire for sex and intimacy is an innate impulse in humans due to their biology.  How people act on their desire, what words we use to describe it, the particulars of what is attractive in a man or woman, sure, that's influenced by society a great deal.  But, where someone sits on the spectrum of heterosexual/homosexual is not very influenced at all by society.  Do you disagree?

It has previously been suggested that humans are not by nature sexually attracted to other human beings.  Basically, that human nature is to be a masturbating loner, but society has taught us that having sex is desirable activity.  That is ridiculous.  I find that idea fundamentally dehumanizing because it is opposed to the basic nature of the species I belong to.

Just an added line of argument:

Would anyone say, "nobody is born with autism?"  After all, autistic people used to just be called dumb or cretinous or idiotic.  So, autism is a social construct and nobody is born with autism.

It sounds like we've been talking past each other somewhat.  You're arguing that sexual desire is more or less innate; I'm saying that how that desire is expressed (and, crucially, how it is able to be expressed) is influenced by society and culture and the various self-identifications that people have available to them.  I don't think these two arguments are necessarily contradictory; in fact it's much more likely that they're both correct.  FWIW I agree wholeheartedly with Progressive Realist's perspective upthread, and I'd say that nearly everyone who accept that social construction is a thing that happens would also take that more nuanced tack as well.

So, yeah, I don't disagree.

As for autism... that's kind of a really complicated question, because there's this whole idea now of the "spectrum" that includes a lot of people who have some social difficulties but can function in life mostly okay in addition to the hardcore non-verbal folks who are more profoundly disabled.  I don't really feel qualified to analyze that particular phenomenon, but if someone were to say that Asperger's diagnoses were primarily a social construct, I wouldn't dismiss that out of hand- and I also wouldn't assume that meant they were any less tangible or "real" than any other diagnosis, either.  But I really don't know.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

You won't convince them. They have read Foucault. They are 'sage'

Sexual preference; choosing desirable characteristics in a mate is not the same as sexual orientation or sexual drive. You and I know this. It's not f-cking rocket science but constructionists go insane with it. As I said before if you say to someone who is heterosexual your sexual attraction to thefemale is a nothing more than a social construct because you happen to prefer afemale with 36DD breasts or a female with wooden cleft in her pallet and access to 36 goats you will be met, rightfully with ill concealed laughter.

My position has a lot less to do with Foucault than you imagine, and a lot more to do with the practical goal of maximizing rights and freedoms, than you imagine. 

The fact that we have a "gay" identity now, and we didn't hundreds of years ago, is intimately connected with, and in fact a prerequisite to, the rights you enjoy and the ability you have to express your sexuality freely and naturally.

And, yes, the idea of "heterosexuality" as a distinct category is constructed as well.  If people are trying to argue that one is but the other isn't, well then that would be gibberish, and offensive gibberish at that.  Luckily nobody is doing such a thing, not here at least.

That's not the issue.  "Heterosexuality" is a term that categorizes a set of sexual desires which occur in human beings because of their genetic and hormonal makeup.  Maybe the better word for what we mean is "heterosexual desire" or lust.  The same goes for homosexuality.  The desire for sex and intimacy is an innate impulse in humans due to their biology.  How people act on their desire, what words we use to describe it, the particulars of what is attractive in a man or woman, sure, that's influenced by society a great deal.  But, where someone sits on the spectrum of heterosexual/homosexual is not very influenced at all by society.  Do you disagree?

It has previously been suggested that humans are not by nature sexually attracted to other human beings.  Basically, that human nature is to be a masturbating loner, but society has taught us that having sex is desirable activity.  That is ridiculous.  I find that idea fundamentally dehumanizing because it is opposed to the basic nature of the species I belong to.

Just an added line of argument:

Would anyone say, "nobody is born with autism?"  After all, autistic people used to just be called dumb or cretinous or idiotic.  So, autism is a social construct and nobody is born with autism.

Bad argument as there is no definitive definition of autism is. Indeed, defining Autism is exceptionally controversial and changes in diagnosis may have led to a massive increase in diagnosis with now 1 in 68 males in the US diagnosed with some form of it.

Mental health diagnosis are notoriously unreliable so it's a bad idea to base arguments on innateness on them. Which isn't to say there aren't kids around with have traits which equate very strongly to what we call autism.

[Sol]

If I were up to it, I would try to defend the constructionist thesis but I'm lazy. So I would just say one, if we were holding an essentialist position* we would have to explain the reasons for which the historical and anthropological actually seems to contradict this. Of course an ethnography or historical report can never be scientific in the way, say, a population-quantitative analysis can be (Is that bad?) but it's also clear that historians and anthropologists are not creating things out of thin air. Well, except the most demented of Foucault admirers.

(* - As I mentioned earlier, a lot of the claims for the innatist position are based on twin studies. But even the highest twin studies afaik record that in cases of identical twins if one is gay there is only a 52% chance that the other one is. Given that identical twins are supposed to be identical genetically, if homosexuality was purely genetic than that number should be 100%. This suggests that biology of it is more complex than most are willing to admit. There's also a problem of trying to explain how homosexuality could exist under standard evolutionary theory which suggests that such a trait - that isn't passed on to offspring - could exist. There's a lot of "It stands for reason" going on here on both sides. And reason, like common sense, is the collection of prejudices we all get by the age of 18)



Angela and Maria Eagle, identical twins and English politicians - both are Labour MPs for constituencies in Merseyside, both are keen chess players... yet one is a lesbian and the other is straight

Ftr, my position on this is "who cares, really?" But I will admit that I find the notion of sexual identity highly dubious.

You're right on the money here. From the limited stuff I've read, it seems like the cause of Homosexuality is as much pre-natal as it is genetic.

[bedstuy]

You won't convince them. They have read Foucault. They are 'sage'

Sexual preference; choosing desirable characteristics in a mate is not the same as sexual orientation or sexual drive. You and I know this. It's not f-cking rocket science but constructionists go insane with it. As I said before if you say to someone who is heterosexual your sexual attraction to thefemale is a nothing more than a social construct because you happen to prefer afemale with 36DD breasts or a female with wooden cleft in her pallet and access to 36 goats you will be met, rightfully with ill concealed laughter.

My position has a lot less to do with Foucault than you imagine, and a lot more to do with the practical goal of maximizing rights and freedoms, than you imagine. 

The fact that we have a "gay" identity now, and we didn't hundreds of years ago, is intimately connected with, and in fact a prerequisite to, the rights you enjoy and the ability you have to express your sexuality freely and naturally.

And, yes, the idea of "heterosexuality" as a distinct category is constructed as well.  If people are trying to argue that one is but the other isn't, well then that would be gibberish, and offensive gibberish at that.  Luckily nobody is doing such a thing, not here at least.

That's not the issue.  "Heterosexuality" is a term that categorizes a set of sexual desires which occur in human beings because of their genetic and hormonal makeup.  Maybe the better word for what we mean is "heterosexual desire" or lust.  The same goes for homosexuality.  The desire for sex and intimacy is an innate impulse in humans due to their biology.  How people act on their desire, what words we use to describe it, the particulars of what is attractive in a man or woman, sure, that's influenced by society a great deal.  But, where someone sits on the spectrum of heterosexual/homosexual is not very influenced at all by society.  Do you disagree?

It has previously been suggested that humans are not by nature sexually attracted to other human beings.  Basically, that human nature is to be a masturbating loner, but society has taught us that having sex is desirable activity.  That is ridiculous.  I find that idea fundamentally dehumanizing because it is opposed to the basic nature of the species I belong to.

Just an added line of argument:

Would anyone say, "nobody is born with autism?"  After all, autistic people used to just be called dumb or cretinous or idiotic.  So, autism is a social construct and nobody is born with autism.

It sounds like we've been talking past each other somewhat.  You're arguing that sexual desire is more or less innate; I'm saying that how that desire is expressed (and, crucially, how it is able to be expressed) is influenced by society and culture and the various self-identifications that people have available to them.  I don't think these two arguments are necessarily contradictory; in fact it's much more likely that they're both correct.  FWIW I agree wholeheartedly with Progressive Realist's perspective upthread, and I'd say that nearly everyone who accept that social construction is a thing that happens would also take that more nuanced tack as well.

So, yeah, I don't disagree.

As for autism... that's kind of a really complicated question, because there's this whole idea now of the "spectrum" that includes a lot of people who have some social difficulties but can function in life mostly okay in addition to the hardcore non-verbal folks who are more profoundly disabled.  I don't really feel qualified to analyze that particular phenomenon, but if someone were to say that Asperger's diagnoses were primarily a social construct, I wouldn't dismiss that out of hand- and I also wouldn't assume that meant they were any less tangible or "real" than any other diagnosis, either.  But I really don't know.

I don't know about the nuances of autism or asperger's, but that's not all that relevant to my point.

If someone can't talk and is severely disabled, they have something wrong with them, no?  They were born with some type of disability or problem.  There is a biological reason, albeit a complicated one.  It would be wrong to say, that severely disabled person was not born that way, they've just developed that way because of how society categorizes or understands development disability.  There's something different about that severely autistic person in a way that there isn't something different about a person who is shy because they grew up an only child in a small town or something.

That difference (nature vs. nurture) matters, .  If you ignore that difference, you can do things like pray-the-gay away therapy and families emotionally destroying their gay kids.  You allow gay kids to despair over why they can't just be heterosexual.  We aren't just talking about words here.  When you use words that don't describe reality accurately or you think that your vocabulary or social framework can overcome human nature, you just end up with awful results.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

Tony? Really?

The TERMS homosexuality/heterosexuality/bisexuality/asexuality are constructs - because they're terms society has created over a long period of time to describe biology.

Sexuality is not just the desire to ... stroke one's genitals, it's a method to build and sustain relationships, to continue your genetic line etc etc...

But a) the use or non-use of terms, and the implications they carry, absolutely do have a tangible effect on people (note my "civil unions" example upthread), and b) it's beyond silly to deny that society and culture has an impact on what people find sexually desirable, and how sexuality is practiced.  

Nobody is arguing that biology plays no role- that's a strawman.  But to say that society and culture plays no role?  Just take a look at the relative prevalence of pubic hair in pornos of the 1970s and today, and tell me with a straight face that sexuality and gender isn't at least a little bit socially constructed.  You can't.

Note: this is not to pick on you specifically, but is more to push back generally against the people who are basically denying that anything besides biology matters.

Respectfully... how the hell did you get to there from what I wrote?

My view is very clear... the biology is the most important innate element here. Without the biological drive and attraction to someone of the same gender,  the social construct doesn't have anything to hang off. The framing of that biological attraction into categories is a construct, which is what I wrote before. Same-sex attraction exists in our species, as it does in many others... of course we can look to Ancient Greece or Rome where the sexuality spectrum was decidedly blurred and say human sexuality seems more codified now. But again, that's not about the biology, that's about the social framing for that sexual expression. Even then, open expressions of outright homosexuality were not exactly welcomed in Greece or Rome - we're actually in a society where one can (generally) fully express one's innate biological sexuality - therefore there's not as much need to blur or quantify non-straight sexual activities as anything other than what it is.

So of course society has an impact, but that does not change the innate biology that drives the desire to be or act in a certain way. So if you're in a society where homosexual activity is frowned upon (or punished), then it is likely you will not act on it. That doesn't change your actual sexuality, it just changes how you are PERCEIVED in your society.

Tony, you're actually wrong, sexual bonding has been recognised in a number of species apart from our own, a number of bird species, crocodiles, pigs, hyenas and closer to home, chimps.

I've also done gender classes and they do a terrible disservice to the study of gender and sexuality because there is some kind of inherent mental block to acknowledging that people are different... different doesn't mean better or worse, weaker or strong, important or not important, but different.

I find this idea that sexuality is purely about getting something hard and then sticking it into something - getting off and leaving... is actually a little disturbing.

[traininthedistance]

Respectfully... how the hell did you get to there from what I wrote?

Um... it wasn't just what you wrote, and I thought I made that quite clear?  People are having a damn hard time actually listening to what other people are saying in this thread, that's for sure.  (Note: I do not exclude myself from that assessment.)

I find this idea that sexuality is purely about getting something hard and then sticking it into something - getting off and leaving... is actually a little disturbing.

I'm not entirely sure what exactly this is supposed to be directed to; I assume it's at Antonio but I'm pretty sure that's a misunderstanding of his position at best.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

Respectfully... how the hell did you get to there from what I wrote?

Um... it wasn't just what you wrote, and I thought I made that quite clear?  People are having a damn hard time actually listening to what other people are saying in this thread, that's for sure.  (Note: I do not exclude myself from that assessment.)

I find this idea that sexuality is purely about getting something hard and then sticking it into something - getting off and leaving... is actually a little disturbing.

I'm not entirely sure what exactly this is supposed to be directed to; I assume it's at Antonio but I'm pretty sure that's a misunderstanding of his position at best.

I think I'm understanding what others are saying.

If I've misinterpreted what you were saying I apologise. This strikes me as two people driving down a divided road... you don't understand why the other isn't on your side of the road...

[Hamster]

Left-wing humanities PhDs don't believe that biology influences society.  They have a large stake in that idea because they want to study society and language, instead of biology because they don't know how to study biology.  They have a bunch of dog-eared copies of Foucault books, not microscopes.  So, no surprise that they want to say sexuality is completely a social construction.  Obviously, that's garbage. 

Let's also clarify what we mean by gay.  There's sexually attracted to the same sex and there's identifying as gay.  Even today, many people are married to opposite sex partners and identify as straight, but are attracted to the same sex and have sex with people of the same sex.  Is that straight?  When people talk about other cultures not having the concept of gay people, that's about semantics.  Older cultures just treated gay people differently by forcing them into straight relationships or clergy/civil service or killing them.     

I recommend this article on the pitfalls of genetic determinance.