Sikachu said:
Valksy said:
Sikachu said:
There's no such thing as 'your own truth'
Now as for agreeing that my not being gay and yet feeling qualified to make comments, fuck you very much - that's the sort of divisive bullshit that drives homophobia. You and I really aren't different at all, we just happen to prefer fucking different kinds of people.
My own truth in terms of my story, my experiences, my journey through this thing called life. It makes me fucking furious when people dismiss out of hand, with statements like "its a choice", the things that I know because I walk the walk as well as talk the talk. That is the truth I am referring to.
I would not dream of going up to...for example...a blind guy and tell him that I know all about being blind. That I know MORE about being blind than he does. That he should give one tiny rat's ass about my opinions on blindness because I know better because I read it in a book or on a fucking website. That would demonstrate to him that I was an arrogant twat. I can try to understand, while maintaining a degree of humility. I can walk around in a blindfold for a while. But I am not blind and I accept that I do not know better.
Oh, and there is a bit more to being GLBTQ than fucking. That you reduce it to that one statement is suggestive to me that you don't know half as much as you think you do.
You're not GLBTQ, not least because G, L, and B are mutually exclusive categories. The grouping of those things doesn't even really make sense - transgender (for example) really isn't the same kind of issue. It does make sense if you think about it from a persecution point of view, but if we're going to do that consistently we're going to need a lot more letters. There really isn't a lot more to sexuality than the question 'what turns you on'. Everything else is just different people clubbing together in different ways because of their experiences in life (by this I mean for example the Gay Pride movement, or the crazy abstinence movement that some straight people have - there's nothing inherent to the sexualities about either of those things, it's about how society has treated a group of individuals).
I was under the impression we were talking about sexuality and whether or not it's a choice, not about the hardships faced by certain minority groups or your personal experiences as you've travelled through life. If you were a leading scientists on the causes and cures for blindness, you could definitely be said to know more about it than a random lay blind person off the street, and while it may piss a random blind person off, that really doesn't diminish the truth of the statement.
You're welcome to be furious, I really don't care, but I would challenge someone who claims to know facts without providing me with evidence either way - what if some gay guy turns up on this forum and tells you that he unequivocally chose to be attracted to, and turned on by, men? This is the reason that data and not anecdotes establish facts.
If you read through my comments, I'm really not dismissing anyone's opinion's as 'wrong', merely stating that the claim that sexuality is inherent is a long fucking way from proven.
GLBTQ is an umbrella phrase. Occasionally we, as a group, get tangled up in labels, especially in our desire to include everyone. For example some lesbians don't like being called "gay", some do. I didn't claim to be all of them. The T for Trans is there because many Trans people cross the lines with the rest of us in an effort to come to terms with or even recognise their identity. Many stay because our community is often (not always, but often) safer, more welcoming, more inclusive. But hey, there you go again, thinking that you know better.
The "blind man" statement was an analogy. An expression of how someone in a specifically labelled position has greater insight/knowledge than someone who is not and how it would be arrogant in the extreme to front them up and claim that someone outside a labelled group knows more than just theory. It isn't necessarily a reference to hardship, although many GLBTQ people experience hardship of one sort of another than is unique to their sexuality.
Celibate GLBTQ people are still GLBTQ. Underage GLBTQ people are still GLBTQ (our phrase, also LGBTQ or LGBT, and I will use it). Single GLBTQ people are still GLBTQ. You reduced it to a sex act, we have been talking about a "coming out process" given that the first person every one of us ever comes out to is ourselves. The sex comes later.
Yet again. What evidence? What evidence would you accept? What evidence are we seeking? What evidence should we seek? It is less likely that there is a single "gay gene" and more likely that it is an interaction of more than one gene. Or an in utero event that we cannot easily measure, identify, quantify, without endangering a foetus or conducting an experiment. To what degree is the act of seeking a scientific explanation even an alarming step on the road to eugenics? (Given that the human race is not currently beyond saying - SituationX has occurred in the womb, abort and try again). Human curiosity might want to seek an answer, is it wise? Why is the statements of a number of GLBTQ people in this thread NOT evidence? People who have studied human sexuality in the past did so by ASKING questions. Was Kinsey perfect? Good grief, no. Of course not, no. But there has never been anything like it since because we are currently still caught up in the "sex is icky/sinful/wrong mindset". Ask the question. Listen to the answer.
I suppose a gay guy could show up and say that. But in 18 years of being in the community I have never encountered a GLBTQ person who would (personally encountered, spoken to face to face). There is an argument that anyone capable of being with both men and women and making a conscious choice one way or the other is bisexual, that does not mean that their capacity to feel attraction/bond/attraction to their gender is not innate. Physiologically I could sleep with a man - tab A goes in slot B - but I find the notion repugnant (sex with men, not men themselves). Emotionally, intellectually it would not work for me. I am not bisexual, I could not choose that.
