I just never said anything even to suggest that I think people are born straight or gay or bi. I never addressed the issue of the relationship between genetics and sexual orientation and what you are saying is just dumb.
I don't know of any persuasive scientific literature that links genetics and sexual preference, certainly not in any causal way.
Understand your sexuality however you want. I began this discussion by suggesting how you might understand MALE sexuality. You may be many things, but since you're not male, I thought I might add a note from our side.
BTW, I think your point that men SHOULD be more comfortable seeing themselves as objects of desire is perfectly valid. I was just explaining that there is a bit of a cognitive disconnect between most men and that idea.
boddi
On 11/17/05, Rotating Bitch <info at pulpculture.org> wrote:
> At 11:44 AM 11/17/2005, BklynMagus wrote:
> >Dear List:
> >
> >boddi writes:
> >
> > > I tie them to DNA. Every single cell in my body is male and
> >every cell in your body is female and there is no way to
> >alter that. compared to the genetic difference between men
> >and women, all men are genetically identical and all women
> >are genetically identical.
> >
> >First a personal word to boddi:
> >
> >If you look back in the archives you will see that LBO is allergic
> >to arguments about genetic definitions of sexuality, gender, etc.
> >The path has been argued before (and for the moment I cannot
> >quite remember who that foolish LBOster was), but has become
> >grown over from disuse.
>
>
>
> 1. If anything, some of us have expressed a dislike for uninformed claims
> about biology, genetics, and "just so stories (as Carrol says), etc.
>
> 2. The argument you and I had was not about whether genetics had anything
> to do with sexuality, but with whether pursuing that tack was politically
> useful. Firstly, it doesn't describe my experience or any bi person I know,
> and it doesn't necessarily describe the experience or self-understandings
> of lesbians/gays. Not all of us think or feel that we're _born_
> (genetically) bi or gay/lesbian. I quoted Vera Whisman's work to that
> effect back then.
>
> Secondly, I just think it's a political dead end. It's asking people to
> accept us because we're born that way. I know you don't want that and that
> you think that it's important to study these things so that it can be used
> as one weapon in the struggle.
>
> I happen to think it's a useless pursuit because we should be accepted
> because we are, not because we "can't help it." Same thing with BD/SM. It's
> acceptable because people do it, not because we find some biological basis
> for it. That's the more radical approach, on my view.
>
> Still, I'm happy just to take a middle path somewhere, where you allow me
> (and others like me) to have my understandings of our sexuality without
> being made to feel as if we're denying something (and thus holding the
> movement back or something) and I say, "great, some people feel that it's
> genetic/biological for them. And so it is. It's just not for me."
>
> Like I said before, it just never makes sense to me. I had lots of sex with
> women before I ever had sex with men. There's nothing about sex with one or
> the other that makes me feel more natural or right -- the language that's
> often used in these discussions.
>
> What's curious, though, is that, as I recall, the people who are mostly on
> your side in this (in terms of rejecting the heterosexism of thelist, of
> rejecting its sometimes antisex attitudes, etc.) are also people who you're
> categorizing has having an allergy? What's up with that? Yoshie and I would
> take exception to some of your arguments about about genetics, perhspas,
> but the last thing we are is antisex???
>
> "You know how it is -- come for the animal porn,
> stay for the cultural analysis."
>
> Bitch | Lab
> http://blog.pulpculture.org
>
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>