Discussion about this post

User's avatar
XxYwise's avatar

"And they are bisexual whether they act upon their attractions or not. A gay man who goes through the motions of heterosexuality and represses his true feelings is still gay despite not consummating his desire..."

If "the motions of heterosexuality" include having sex with women, then we're talking about a bi man, not a gay man.

It's one thing to say that a man only having straight sex might nevertheless be bisexual. To ALSO say that a man having straight sex might nevertheless be homosexual *as opposed to bi* feels undercooked. If I had sex with a dead body even once, most would agree that'd suffice to identify me as a necrophiliac.

This suggests another question worth asking: are we *only* seeing "formerly straight" folks now identifying as bi, or are gays and lesbians also conceding that 100% pure sex orientation is the exception and not the rule? Identifying as straight can feel political, akin to identifying as Aryan. The pressure to prefer "bisexual" to "heterosexual" is not, I suspect, matched by pressure to prefer "bi" to "homosexual." This would be a matter of social *pressure*, not *contagion*.

Expand full comment
Timothy Wood's avatar

I'll admit I'm sympathetic to the contagion argument at some level because my personal kink is explanations that are really fucking boring and have broad applicability. There's been a long-standing historical trend of finding out that things we thought were special are actually very ordinary, especially when that special thing has to do with us as a species.

I wasn't born speaking English. I was born with a brain that was predisposed to learning spoken language (compare the difficulty involved in teaching children written language). But the English words themselves aren't things that originated in my head. They are an infectious bit of information with a lot of good hosts available, and much like a virus they often mutate within hosts and spread new variants. This view, largely popularized in The Selfish Gene, applies to nearly everything social. I didn't invent French toast; I learned it from my mother. I adapted it, because you should definitely be adding a touch of honey and a pinch of salt to your eggs. That contagious idea has mutated and infected my daughter, who now knows my recipe.

So my main response to the theory of the social contagion of LBGT identification is "So what? So is everything else!" You can find ancient cultures that didn't even have words for sexual orientation. Was Alexander the Great gay? He was maybe in love with another man, but no. "Gay" didn't exist. In as much as being queer is a social contagion, so is a traditional marriage where the mom stays home and does the laundry while dad goes to make pocket watches or something. You didn't invent that; you learned it. It's like people who say "chemicals" as if it's automatically bad. Water is a chemical. With too little or too much of it I die. It's like people who say "natural" as if it's automatically good. Skin cancer is natural. The Sun gives it to you because you went outside too much.

So I mostly view it as a non-argument that says very little, applies to almost everything, and breaks down the moment you look back in time or across cultures.

Expand full comment
11 more comments...

No posts