Sexuality

Homosexuality / Sexuality — 1 Comment
24
Mar 10

The curious case of the hypersexual homosexual

Bullshit! Ya right! Liar,! funny, “so gay”, “inner beauty, alright”

That’s the typical reaction I get if I show people this quote.

Q:how did you first realize you were straight?
A:around the time I started recognizing my sexuality, I realized that I felt a deep emotional connection with the opposite sex. I discovered that I had a deep attraction towards their inner beauty.

Now, consider these:

…from what iv heard abt gays is that they are purely attracted towards men sex­u­ally and that seems to be the decid­ing fac­tor in them being gay

This comment comes from a well meaning friend with religion-based objections to homosexuality, and is a milder form of a widespread false about homosexuals, made clearer by these quotes:

“they can hardly have a spiritual life with a whole lot of craving in their head”

“you mean gay but otherwise asexual?”

Both the people quoted ultimately believe that homosexuals are characterized PURELY or mainly by sexual attraction, which is not, in essence, different from believing that they are hyper-sexual.

If the opening comment is fake, or unrealistic, does that make an average heterosexual purely interested in sex all the time? Or if it is “gay” does that not mean that you think “gay” means “emotional/soft-brained”

Is it not only fair, that the same standards that are used to evaluate and characterize heterosexuality be applied to homosexuality? Have you ever paused to think that?

If I realized I was heterosexual when i started noticing breasts, how is it hyper-sexual of my friend M to be attracted to cute (male) butts?

In case the comparison was not obvious, let me put it in a sentence. Heterosexuals are identified by sexual attraction, so are homosexuals. Therefore to infer from that alone that they are interested only in sex is logically inconsistent. Given that homosexuality is not a sexual aberration or disease.

I am going to be lenient here and say that perhaps many heterosexuals and conservatives have this false belief because it is never put in perspective, so this should clears all doubts.

Who am I fooling, there is one, deeper, reason why this belief is so wide spread. And that is that homosexuality is unnatural, and unless one is willing to admit that there exists such an underlying religious belief, no amount of explaining is going to help. Nevertheless, being a great believer in education, I asked some of my homosexual friends how important emotion was to their sexuality, here are some quotes.

Me: What do you expect in a partner?

He: ideal is a myth. but if there exists one with these… characters.. id give it a shot. kind, generous,animal lover, vegetarian, long faced, long —-, etc etc. lol.

if you’d take into consideration the straight man. .. he sees his friends get married to women, come to work, go home, have sex, make babies etc. such an example doesnt exist in homosexuals. rather it does exist, it is not brought to the fore. so we are labeled as unnatural and sex driven.

Me: Envision your perfect partner, how important is the sex appeal?

He: yes, sex appeal is important… but not “the” deciding factor.

follow http://twitter.com/hiyer if you want more detail!

and a good friend, in response to the comments on my earlier post

I want someone who’ll love me. I still dream of love, marriage and kids [twin girls :-) ]. I dream of a day when my parents will accept me and realize that I still am the same person. I dream of a small house with a little garden and a labrador named Phoebe. The only difference is that we’ll get ‘His and His’ towels for Christmas.

If you still have a small voice in your head saying, “but they are more interested in sex than us” I hope you have realized what the problem is; you have made up your minds and will not be confused by facts. Face it, you think “gays” are an aberration, and accept it openly, no shame in that, people are entitled to their opinion. Do yourself a favor, do not assail me with clams of being objective and scientific, and then hold on to your delusions.

In case you are wondering what this natural unnatural debate is, head here to see what I have written earlier. [link]

thanks to image by Jan Tonne

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Gender / India / Science / Sexuality — 7 Comments
10
Feb 10

Are Rapists Victims?

There seem to be a serious confusion in the minds of our leaders and the common man alike about who is responsible for rape, the victim or the rapist. Things are so confusing that some even wonder if the poor rapist isn’t a victim of the crime of “incitement”.

“You can’t blame the locals; they have never seen such women. Foreign tourists must maintain a certain degree of modesty in their clothing. Walking on the beaches half-naked is bound to titillate the senses,”

This is a quote in response to the rape of a 6 year old Russian girl from no less than the deputy director of tourism of Goa, Pamela Mascarhenas.
So, should Ms Pamela release the rapist, who was apprehended the same day the quote was made, because after all he was titillated into the crime by an immodestly dressed six year old!

Unfortunately this is not an isolated sentiment of an ill-informed politician, a brief look at comments and discussions on eve-teasing would tell you that a majority still hold that more “obscenely” dressed dressed women get eve teased more, and that the onus is on women to avoid eve teasing. Why go on-line, even the deep philosophical discussions every Indian has at the tea shop echo the sentiments that women are somehow responsible for what happens to them, if not always, most of the time.

The reason why such an asinine logic has become so pervasive evades me, and if you dont think it is asinine, take a look at the root arguments:

if X does something “wrong” then Y is justified in doing anything wrong to X

(could be Hindi movies, bec the few Hindi movies I have seen have angry young men avenging the death/rape of their mothers/sisters by extreme violence. )

By this standard, if Ms. Pamela’s dog barks too much in the night, it is perfectly alright for her neighbor to poison it.

It is important that we separate the two actions from each other, and therefore the crime from the victim. Sure, a nocturnal canine opera is awful, but just because your sleep has been wronged and she is and idiot, you cannot poison her dog. You can picket, go on a hunger strike, or even talk things over with the owner, as impotent as these sound, but that’s the way, not murder.

If we all start killing irritating dogs, none of us would have any.

There is of course a bigger and more ignorant assumption underlying such statements. And that is that the human male, particularly in India is somehow a slave to his primal urges, never really having evolved his frontal cortex enough to be able to decide right from wrong. And so, like we would tip-toe around a sleeping giant, lest we wake him up, we should mollycoddle the male lest he be titillated and incited into doing something “unfortunate” and uncontrollable.

For those of you who didn’t catch the sarcasm of the previous paragraph, let me spell it out. Human beings, Indians, Pakistanis French or Greek, have the ability to resist their sexual urges, particularly in socially unacceptable situations.  If we did not, this world would have been one big orgy.

Why  a molester or a rapist commit the crime is a subject much studied and there is good evidence to show that it has nothing to do with the amount of flesh shown. Sexual assault of almost all kinds is related more to issues like power and control than sexual desire or urges. There is also a certain amount of risk-seeking or thrill seeking behavior involved. The rapist/molester gets his thrill by overpowering women and displaying his dominance. Almost all molesters started with less severe and easily overlooked forms of sexual assault and progress to more severe forms.

Dont belive me, read this paper [link]

The wonderful initiative by blank noise has made it very clear, not that we need evidence, that molesters don’t care about what you do or do not wear, people have been raped, whistled at, touched and pinched wearing burkas as well as saris. This adds to the clear evidence that victims of sexual crimes have absolutely no culpability.

This blatant criminal-victim-exchange not only increases the trauma to those affected, but it also makes the power hungry predator more confident of terrorizing women and getting away with it.

This post is a bit too late in joining the petition that blank noise has sent to the deputy director of tourism, but the fight doesnt end with a petition or a hundred, minds need to be enlightened, societies need to be changed, its a war out there, not a lover’s spat.

Having said that, I hope to write about the flip-side also, not about this particular case though, but about what the difference between personal responsibility and culpability is.

Homosexuality / Science / Sexuality — 34 Comments
31
Aug 09

Unnatural Affections?

Straight To hell

The unknown and the different have always evoked strong reactions from people. Perhaps there is an evolutionary imperative in being wary of all that is alien. Of all the “strange” socio-cultural phenomenons to create waves in the past 30-40 years, nothing matches the gay rights movement in its perseverance and success. Yet, inspite of all the success of the movement across the world, there is perhaps no group so hated and misunderstood. Part of the reason is that in most cultures sex is taboo, and talking about “unnatural”sex is further taboo. Lies mis-conceptions and false information passed on from mouth to mouth end in a grossly misrepresented image or reality.This series will look at the most common  objections and misunderstandings about homosexuality.

That homosexuality is “unnatural” and against the “order of nature” is perhaps the most commonly used argument, heard the loudest and so pervasive as to be even in our constitution till this year.
What is Natural?

Any discussion about the unnatural must begin with understanding what natural is. Explanations and definitions abound and for this discussion I choose to define natural as that which adheres to natural laws.Natural laws are laws that govern what we observe in nature; eg. gravity, electromagnetism etc. but as far as we know, there is no universal law of sexuality and even if there was one, the very fact that homoxesulaity defied the law would mean it was not really a law. It’s not that I have chosen a definition to suit my views, taking any other definition, save those that have a religious origin, there is no scientific reason to call homosexuality unnatural.
Take for example the belief that only human beings have homosexual behaviour, and therefore it is a deviation from the natural norms. Contrary to this belief, there are hundreds of species of animals that exhibit homosexual behaviour. Following is a quote from a popular magazine. The science of the article is accurate, if a bit dramatic.

Giraffes have all-male orgies. So do bottlenose dolphins, killer whales, gray whales, and West Indian manatees. Japanese macaques, on the other hand, are ardent lesbians; the females enthusiastically mount each other. Bonobos, one of our closest primate relatives, are similar, except that their lesbian sexual encounters occur every two hours. Male bonobos engage in “penis fencing,” which leads, surprisingly enough, to ejaculation. They also give each other genital massages.

Click here for the original Article

The Moralistic Argument

However, often statements about the unnaturalness of homosexuality stem from religious or moralistic beliefs. Of the world’s dominant religions, all monotheistic religions have clear cut objections to homosexuality and one can find a wide range of personal beliefs about it, from believing homosexuals to be “lost souls” to “perverts going to hell”.

Most religions believe that there is a clear and fixed natural order, a guideline of how nature and people are supposed to behave. The problem with this outlook is that this presumes that religions know all there is to know about nature and its working. But if religions indeed are right about such an order why do their moralistic and natural standards change with time? Natural and unnatural vary across religions and sometimes even across sects within religions, it is unnatural for a man to be clean shaven if he is Amish and unnatural for him to sport a beard if he is a Quaker. Oral sex was deemed unnatural by all Christian sects till just a hundred years ago, yet now many an evangelical preacher is heard supporting it from posh progressive pulpits. So the natural-unnatural divide as proposed by religions is like writing in sand, with no sound and timeless principles behind them about the natural world and therefore cannot be accepted as a valid one.

Reproduction or Evolution Argument

There are many pseudo-scientific arguments hovering around the theory of evolution, usually propounded by religious groups to lend credibility to their moralistic arguments. The typical argument is that sex was evolved for reproduction and since homosexuality does not lead to reproduction, it is unnatural/wrong/evil. To begin with, it is quiet a big assumption to say that the only purpose of sex is reproduction, and if it were true, any sexual behavior that does not directly or indirectly lead to conception should also be deemed unnatural.

Such reductionist thinking does not keep in mind that the evolutionalry scientists themselves are at times not sure about the evolutionary significance of many human traits. One such example is the female orgasm, if the only purpose of sex is reproduction, then (sorry ladies) the female orgasm is rather useless. In fact for a long time it was not even accepted as normal for a woman to have an orgasm.

In conclusion, there is no good scieintific reason to think homosexuality is an abnormal deviation, or unnatural form of sexual preference. Hopefully with advances in science we will know better about the physiology, psychology and genetics involved.

The next part of this series will talk about the medical aspects of homosexuality, adressing questions like “Arent all gay people HIV positive?” And isnt homosexuality a disease?