I mean, I suppose you COULD but most people simply see a person they're attracted to and (if they're reasonably self confident) will approach them. People don't usually say "I like blonds therefore I will never date brunettes" they say "I usually date blonds." My point being that bisexuality is much closer to that level of choice, that is, you can pretty much be attracted to anyone but you can't just switch off your feelings to the other sex if you're attracted to both.
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Are transgendered folk obligated to disclose that information to potential mates?
- Thread starter kinggroin
- Start date
- Status
I mean, I suppose you COULD but most people simply see a person they're attracted to and (if they're reasonably self confident) will approach them. People don't usually say "I like blonds therefore I will never date brunettes" they say "I usually date blonds." My point being that bisexuality is much closer to that level of choice, that is, you can pretty much be attracted to anyone but you can't just switch off your feelings to the other sex if you're attracted to both.
All of this is great, but it's still not "scientific facts" proving that people are born gay. I'm not even arguing one way or the other here, all I'm saying is that there is no point in attacking posters for posting the plain facts of the matter.
It's a fair point. I was mostly speaking in hypothetical, as I suspect the number of people who would be able to make that choice would be very low, and wouldn't expect them to actually make that choice to begin with.
I don't know about "scientific facts" (Why the quotes? Does the term mean something particular to you?), but all of the evidence for causes of homosexuality point to prenatal environment and genetics, and there happens to be more firm genetic evidence for male homosexuality than female.
Of course there's no point to any of this if you aren't going to explain what you do think causes it, though I imagine you won't.
I think it is scientific consensus (NARTH excluded) that people are born gay. There is simply no compelling evidence to suggest otherwise. Sexuality is fluid of course, but within a spectrum.
That's fine, and I don't want you to think I'm upset with you or somethig, but I want you to think about it. What would the "choice" you're talking about look like in practice? I mean, some devout gay Christians choose to be celibate for example, which means they don't have sex with men but they're still gay. I mean, if you're just saying that people will make a choice not to leave the person they're currently dating because they're attracted to another person who they are NOT dating then of course.
QuickSilverD
Member
Would it be fair to say that the consensus to the answer of the question of this thread is "yes"?
Kind of, the consensus I got was 'Yes, cause trans women are icky and I would want to avoid it, I respect you though! Like how I might respect someone with terminal cancer'
Captain Sparrow
Banned
http://home60515.com/3.html
It's this kind of stuff that makes me agree with not legalizing gay marriage. I'm not a crazy bible-thumping Christian stuck on the sanctity of mmarriage, but I do not believe young children should be subject into environments like this. The more society gives, the more the homosexual community wants to spread. When do we draw the line?
QuickSilverD
Member
Yeah that is more or less what I got, reading most of this thread.
I want to ask, what is the consensus if there is any in the transgender comunity about this very subject? I know you said that everyone you dated already knew, but judging by your responces I guess you believe the trans folks are not in any obligation to tell, so if you yourself were in the dating scene, how would you handle it?
If there is one thing I hate is lumping tg in with homosexuality they have very similiar points but I hate to say it we aren't that crowd nor do stats show such things about this. Way to post a study bolstering your point but leaving a good main bit out is that abuse doesn't take place with gay couple it takes place with straight couples.
Cpt. Sparrow, I have to assume that is Santorum-like trolling, you are sourcing from an anti-gay propaganda website.
I don't think there is a binding universal consensus. Many people believe in disclosure early, like me, but others don't really see it as something that is necessary to tell about themselves particularly early.
I only have one hard and fast rule and that's to disclose before sex.
I don't think there is a binding universal consensus. Many people believe in disclosure early, like me, but others don't really see it as something that is necessary to tell about themselves particularly early.
I only have one hard and fast rule and that's to disclose before sex.
Grinchy
Banned
Yeah I've always kind of wondered about that. Some folks try to argue that homosexuals aren't born gay, but I've always wondered if any of us are born with any sexuality whatsoever. It's pretty fascinating to think about, really. No matter what, I believe a person's sexuality comes naturally.
Captain Sparrow
Banned
My post shows how influence at a young age affects so much. Would you suppose that having two fathers would make a son more, less, or equal likely to become homosexual? And why?
Also, would you like me to post an article about drug use and homosexuals? Again, I don't intend to come in here as a gay basher, you just can't argue the statistics that prove many of them are very troubled.
I'm not sure a study quoted by "H.O.M.E. Heterosexuals Organized for a Moral Environment" should be treated as particularly credible. I agree with Lexi that Captain Sparrow is PROBABLY (and by that I mean hopefully) trolling.
Don't worry, I didn't think you were upset with me. I see what you're saying much more clearly now, though. I made an error in extending the word sexuality to also mean one's chosen actions when in relationships, when it should pretty much exclusively be applied to what one feels an attraction to.
Though my question is now what should those chosen actions be called, if there is such a term? That's probably a question for a different topic, however.
I put quotes around it because all I'm doing is going back to that post that Gaborn quoted in the first place over and over again? You know, the only point I've been arguing since the beginning?
That's the reason why my own position on the matter has no relevance. But you want to hear it, because arguing against the sacred dogma that people are born gay must mean that I'm a rabbid bigot, even though it's bad science. My own position on the matter is that I believe there are multiple factors for why people are gay. I'm not saying that it's a combination of different factors (though I'm also saying that), I'm saying that different people are gay for different reasons. Most are surely predisposed (but toward what? Risk seeking? Unorthodox behaviour in general? Is their brain structured in a more feminine way? But is there even a link between your brain being more like that of a female and homosexuality? And if so, is it always the case? I certainly don't believe that you're born with a visual image of yourself sucking a dick imprinted in your psyche), and based on that predisposition (we still don't know toward what) they probably fix their sexual attention toward males during early infancy (during a period where they actually have the faintest idea of what a male is). Some other people probably go through different experiences either during their childhood or later in life that either give them a shock that finally ends with them being attracted to males after a period of confusion, or kickstarts some latent attraction to males they might have had without noticing it. And so on so forth.
I don't think it's the case. I see a consensus that there are genetic and hormonal factors that creates the conditions for people being gay, I don't see a consensus that people have their future sexuality carved in their brains from the minute they're born.
I think it would be obvious but then again since it could lead to dangerous grounds I'd say yes. I don't know much about the transsexual community but I've heard violence seems to be targeted often at them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unlawfully_killed_transgender_people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unlawfully_killed_transgender_people
Captain Sparrow
Banned
If by trolling you mean posting an article that quotes many books from doctors, then yes.
Obviously, this site has an agenda. You aren't going to find facts that don't favor homosexuals on a dog lover's sites. Which studies or books are in question here? Surely you have a more compelling argument than "well it's an anti-gay site"?
It's a somewhat sticky topic because everyone has subtle differences. I think "preference" can be a good word here. Like I said, I'm generally more attracted to people with blond hair (not a hard and fast rule though) therefore I have a "preference" for blond hair. It gets harder with as I mentioned, devout Christians who can't date men because of their faith and so opt for celibacy or even try marrying a woman in the vain hope of a transformation.
QuickSilverD
Member
Would you said that most transgender people agree with that rule?
I don't know. I think most feel that is necessary to tell their partner, the time frame is really an individual thing. I'm speaking of committed, serious relationships here. For casual / one night stands, I don't think disclosure is particularly necessary.
This has absolutely no scientific consensus at all. Far from it, it is explicitly rejected by the major scientific organizations.
I think there is good evidence for it on the other hand. The evidence suggests that is all largely determined in the womb and through genetic predisposition.
Captain Sparrow - Really? I mean... REALLY? You might want to look at where most of those sources (they cite JOE DALLAS there!) are coming from as well. Again though, their positions are not consistent with mainstream psychiatry.
Thinking about it more, it's probably better that it doesn't have a term. Having a term that implied choice would probably lead it to be conflated with sexuality as a whole being a choice. Vaguely analogous to how people confuse the scientific terms "theory" with "hypothesis."
Thank you for indulging me, by the way.
If by trolling you mean posting an article that quotes many books from doctors, then yes.
Obviously, this site has an agenda. You aren't going to find facts that don't favor homosexuals on a dog lover's sites. Which studies or books are in question here? Surely you have a more compelling argument than "well it's an anti-gay site"?
Yes, actually.
There's a well-known history of anti-gay groups misrepresenting and quote-mining legitimate scientific research in order to claim that it says things that it doesn't say; even when anti-gay groups like that happen to source legitimate sources, they are not necessarily representing them accurately. And as has been pointed out, not all of their sources are particularly scholarly. It also happens to be a trope amongst Christian reparative therapy circles that homosexuality is begat by abuse; the point is to conflate pedophilia and homosexuality.
And given that what you (and Simplet, for that matter) are peddling goes against what every major organization with a position statement on issues of homosexuality, from adoption to health to psychology to psychiatry in Western countries around the world, I would put my marbles in the "not scholarly" and "misrepresenting scholarly research" baskets.
No problem at all!
I'd like to see that evidence. Heck I'm heterosexual and I'm pretty sure I could train myself into being attracted to males under the right conditions (EDIT : I'M NOT SAYING I CHOSE TO BECOME HETEROSEXUAL). How do you explain war times/prison homosexuality and so forth?
I seriously have no idea how someone would even begin to search for evidence suggesting that you're already gay coming out of the womb, and you're not just predisposed to it until you become gay a little bit later.
QuickSilverD
Member
Gaborn, Sparrow and Simplet seem to be arguing about matters that do not consent this topic, I would subject someone creates a new thread to discuss the gay choice or no issue, here let me give a little hipotetical so you guys have fun: "What if like some medical doctor finds a "cure" for homosexuality and proves it to work 100% and the conservatives are like, trying to pass a law to have all natal hospitals use the procedure in the name of "eliminating birth defects" "
Fluidity of sexuality and reconstructions of sexuality.
For instance, in prison rape, the man being raped is meant to stand in for a woman and is not viewed as a "man" but as a bitch (or at the very least substitute-woman). The man doing the raping maintains his heterosexuality in his own eyes (and more importantly perhaps for him, in the eyes of other prisoners). So the construct is not "male / female", but "penetrator / penetratee." And the man being raped loses his masculinity, whereas the man raping maintains his. Most prison rape is not done by homosexual men; it is done by heterosexual men, who view themselves as heterosexual, view the man (or men) that they rape as substitutes for women, and if they are released, immediately go back to having sexual relations with women.
This construction is a sort of perverted and more violent version of the way the boundaries between homosexuality and heterosexuality were constructed in large cities in the United States and Europe at the turn of the twentieth-century until around the 1930s, and has deeper historical roots with regards to attitudes about masculinity and sex as conquest metaphors (even using the same root words in the Latin) going back to the Romans.
And I'm quite certain I couldn't make myself become interested in women, and I actually took the time to try. Not all of us are as sexually fluid as you say you might be.
I think you're talking at cross-purposes with him on this particular point, though I'll leave that for him to say for certain.
Ah ah I finally thought of an experiment to determine whether people are born gay or not. Do you guys believe that if a gay child was abducted at birth and raised by space aliens from the planet Schbl, and never allowed to watch himself in a mirror to boot, his first reaction to seeing a naked human male for the first time would be to be sexually aroused? Same thing for a heterosexual child and a human female?
Grinchy
Banned
That should really sum up the thread. I know it's just my opinion, but that's all that should really be expected.
Devolution
Member
What is this crock of shit right here.
Sparrow, it takes some doing to dig up a source that rank. I suppose it's possible you failed to see (or ignored) the countless stingers strewn throughout those pages, the religious fundamentalist allusions, sources, and organizations, the questions begged. One is left without any doubt about the thrust of the assertions: The molested are wounded people. Gays are oft molested. Oft molested molest in turn. Gays don't want you to know these things (don't trust the Gays). It's a hop, skip, and a jump from becoming a shrill fire and brimstone polemic, and doubtlessly made an effort to avoid such to effect the appearance of a serious and impartial treatment of the subject. To say they failed even in that is to engage in a titanic understatement. But if such a farce is sufficient to sway your mind, by all means indulge.
QuickSilverD
Member
Here is another experiment to determine sexuality: imagine that all women die, like right now, do you see yourself having a homosexual relation after 10 years of having no other options available to you?
Yeah, I'm not quite saying that. I think the best evidence shows that the majority of "triggers" for a predisposition to homosexuality occur pre-birth, in terms of genetics, hormone exposue. I have not seen presented compelling evidence that psuedo scientific theories like an overbearing mother or a distant father (as Joseph Nicolosi of NARTH has postulated) are factors in sexual development. Could there be some factor both birth that influences it to one degree or another? Sure. For example, although anyone can be born gay in my view I would imagine that a child raised in a very devout religious house hold is more likely to delay coming out and is more likely to seek to reconcile their faith and orientation in some way.
How about twin studies:
That shows a very strong genetic aspect to sexuality.
Edit: Didn't mean to double post.
I'm going to say yes, but I have a low sex-drive and I might survive on old porn rather than do all the work of turning my sexuality around.
edit : maybe 20 years
Cannot generally be done the way you mean it.
QuickSilverD
Member
I was thinking of Y: the last Man in my example, so I guess no, transwomen wouldn't die
Zomg, you're such a bigot for even implying there's a difference!!
Not so icky then, I guess! LOL
Well I don't think anyone (not me at least) contested that there is a genetic/prenatal environment aspect. But twins with the exact same genetic material in the same placenta, and only 52% of those gay men's twins are gay? That doesn't seem to indicate that they were born gay, what kind of factors could have made the other twin born heterosexual? Their respective position in the placenta?
Story doesn't really say if those are twins separated at birth or not.
Not sure what other factors could have influenced the difference, but remember even in the same womb exposure to hormones at different times may be different, or differently concentrated. the percentages there though and the difference between genetic twins and more distant relations is more than sufficient to say that genetics do most of the work.
I would assume though the adopted brother (genetically unrelated) was separated from the non-adopted brother at birth though.
i_am_ben
running_here_and_there
Charles Xavier will save us!
QuickSilverD
Member
Last time I checked gays could not shoot lasers out of their eyes
Hum if those are not twins separated at birth you're not really controlling for environmental factors then are you? But even then I have to say it's really difficult to derive from those numbers that those twins are born one way or the other, it rather seems to indicate the opposite (with genes and prenatal environment having a strong influence on the way your sexuality develops later).
We'll just have to agree to disagree, you have to admit though that there isn't any scientific proof one way or another, and I still don't see that consensus you were talking about frankly.
But whether you are or you are not doesn't matter. The fact that the gap between genetic twins and fraternal twins is as wide as it is is more than suggestive that genetics are a factor. In fact it is extremely strong support for the position.
To expand a bit on what Gaborn said, if genetics had played no role, one would expect the brother of a gay man to be as likely as a random man in the general population is to be gay. Estimates vary, but let's be conservative and say 2 - 5%. Instead what was found was that the concordance rate increases as genetic similarity increases; monozygotic (one egg) twins had a concordance rate of 52%, whereas dizygotic twins had a concordance rate of 22% (similar to the concordance rate of non-twin siblings). This is strong evidence of genetics playing a role in causing homosexuality, as concordance increases as genetic similarity increases. It also means, however, that genetics is not the only factor, as it is not 100%. There is other evidence to suggest that the pre-natal environment plays a factor in causing homosexuality.
And the issue at stake here is not scientific proof, but evidence. The evidence points towards prenatal environment (e.g. the womb, which as Gaborn said is not identical for both twins) and genetics. While there have been attempts to use post-natal explanations such as sexual experience (positive and abusive) or socialization or various psychoanalytic explanations about domineering mothers / distant fathers, but none of these have evidence supporting them and no one has explained how they are supposed to function.
Once again, yes. Genetics and prenatal environment are most decidedly a factor. Still not convinced about the being born gay thing, and still not convinced there's a scientific consensus around it.
Same response really.
you have yet to provide any evidence for "not born gay" though. Do you have a study in mind suggestive of other factors?
- Status
Similar threads
- Locked