Ricky is still not here!
Y'know, Ares, I have been thinking about just that point for a while. That's *really* where I am -- if it *is* a choice, which mostly I
don't think it is, then what
really good reasons can you come up with for me to not exercise that choice? Let's say it is a choice -- then it actually ain't anyone else's business.
But most people it seems to me are a few yards away from that point, and I find that I'm generally discussing these things with people who feel like it's important whether or not orientation or preference is a "choice", and there are some pretty good arguments to have in that vicinity, so it seems like that's where a lot of the discussion happens. But personally I'm glad you brought it up.
Verge: Regardless of how arguments about to what extent we can "prove" one thing or another might come out, I think there's a great deal to be said for the power of "counting" things, and then looking for relationships between measurements. That's something that our friend S. Freud didn't really do at all in his psychoanalytic work. So whenever he uses words like "most" and "predominantly," I'm thinkin', "you know, you really never did any of the work that makes your use of those words, like "most" and "predominantly," mean anything!
Now, partly I'm sure, that's because he was writing at the end of the 19th century, and the "power of counting" thing in terms of human behavior didn't really start to show it's strength until the middle of the 20th century or so
(except of course, in the exchange of currencies...).
OK, that's said. In terms of Freud and the importance of the first few years of life... yeah, i'm familiar with that line of his thinking, and generally I think there's a lot to it -- certainly, it's possible to severely mess average people up during that period. Too little or too much mom I think certainly plays a role. But just like Freud has generated a mountain of work (honest and otherwise) regarding the importance of those first five years, there is at least one whole other mountain of work that has been generated that backs up that idea that a lot of our differences between each other, including that "I would rather shag with people who have the other set of gnads"/"I would rather shag with people who have gnads like mine" difference, is actually fairly well set by soon after we are out of the womb, if not before.
I think your belief that guys are "really all homo" is pretty interesting. Freud, as you probably know, suggested that all humans are essentially bisexual. The more I watch, the more I think there is something to this. Freud spent a fair amount of print talking about how people then "normally" became "heterosexual" (and honestly, I think it's all very speculative on his part) or less "normally" became homosexual, but I don't know as he ever really spent much energy trying to explain why it would be that the majority of folks would
be bisexual in the first place. I mean, wouldn't it make more sense if we were all straightforwardly breeders, with no ambiguity around the edges?
But, so clearly, WE ARE NOT!
What is up with THAT?
and actually, Freud just didn't have to tools to begin to think about that. He wasn't at the right place in time.
In terms of your point about the... need to really wrestle as an individual with the origin of my sexual preference? utility of that process? Need to take responsibility for your actions?
I'm all about the need to take responsibility for one's actions. The sort of choices that interest me most are the ones have to do with that. I honestly don't think that whether one's willy wants Wanda or Wilbur is one of those kinds of "choices."
And like I said earlier: for most of us, I don't think there's much "choice" to that attraction. It's all choices about what I am going to do with my attractions after I discover what they are.
There are a ton of guys on this board (and gals too I think) who have struggled with the question of "choice" and "attraction," because they (and here I could definitely say "WE") were... hounded? ...with the idea that there was a choice to be made, which
could be made, and which reflected on moral fiber, ethical responsibility, and general fitness/worthiness for life. Sometimes, after years, a lot of us reached the conclusion that: "There is nothing I can do to make this change," and, "I can't really find any explanation as to why this happened, involving the course of my life, that stands up to scrutiny." A lot of us knew from very very young that we were "different", took some level of abuse for that, yet were still unable to change.
I count a lot of those folks!
...and, since some of us have the experience of having paid a great deal out of the opportunities of our lives to reach that point -- still, always having the experience that I EXPERIENCE NO CHOICE about this -- confronting people who seem to be saying, "You know, it's my analysis that you haven't really thought this all the way through," leaves some of us/them feeling kind of chilly!
...there's so much room for misunderstanding.
This thread will soon be buried under the layers of threads yet to come in which people bring up exactly this set of questions again. My contribution in terms of keyboard work is really an exercise in self-development.
Verge: Welcome to JUB!
(P.S. Mods: Did I stay on topic for a thread titled "'I was born this way'-Whatever" where the OP has apparently abandoned the thread? ;-)
I thought I knew what I was doing, but I didn't.
