19 Jul '10 04:53>2 edits
To Sh76:
You’ve been taking a lot of heat on here. I just wanted to respond to some of the claims you seem to have made from a purely personal perspective:
I have yet to feel uncomfortable about someone, or being with them, just because they are homosexual. (Does that make me “innately” aberrant?)
I grew up being bigoted about gays—until I discovered that someone for whom I had both affection and respect was gay. My bigotry was apparently nothing innate, just acquiescence to social conditioning—and I abandoned it. A lot of the discomfort that straights feel in the company of gays (or even discussing the matter), may stem simply from conditioning in a community that holds homosexuality to be “innately” aberrant/unnatural. And the (conscious or subconscious) desire to be a “proper member” of that community/society/culture.
By the same token, a lot of the “awkwardness” (I believe that was your word) felt by homosexuals may simply be in reaction to living in a social/cultural matrix that belittles (at the very least) their homosexuality as aberrant and unnatural. Thus, such awkwardness is not about their sexuality per se at all. I personally have not met a homosexual person who expressed any regret over their sexuality (which is not to say that there aren’t any), but many who have expressed regret over the prejudice that affects their social (and sometimes familial) status.
—Anyone who does not fit into the area of central tendency that is often taken to define a given social/cultural matrix may well feel awkward, or be made to feel awkward, if that is their inherited matrix.
As in any other cases of prejudice, the proper approach (in my view) is to “cure” the social prejudice, not those against whom it is directed. They need no cure, in my view. (If any individual homosexual person wants to avail himself/herself of such a “cure”, that is, of course, up to her/him; I will not play the presumptive heterosexual there either.)
You’ve been taking a lot of heat on here. I just wanted to respond to some of the claims you seem to have made from a purely personal perspective:
I have yet to feel uncomfortable about someone, or being with them, just because they are homosexual. (Does that make me “innately” aberrant?)
I grew up being bigoted about gays—until I discovered that someone for whom I had both affection and respect was gay. My bigotry was apparently nothing innate, just acquiescence to social conditioning—and I abandoned it. A lot of the discomfort that straights feel in the company of gays (or even discussing the matter), may stem simply from conditioning in a community that holds homosexuality to be “innately” aberrant/unnatural. And the (conscious or subconscious) desire to be a “proper member” of that community/society/culture.
By the same token, a lot of the “awkwardness” (I believe that was your word) felt by homosexuals may simply be in reaction to living in a social/cultural matrix that belittles (at the very least) their homosexuality as aberrant and unnatural. Thus, such awkwardness is not about their sexuality per se at all. I personally have not met a homosexual person who expressed any regret over their sexuality (which is not to say that there aren’t any), but many who have expressed regret over the prejudice that affects their social (and sometimes familial) status.
—Anyone who does not fit into the area of central tendency that is often taken to define a given social/cultural matrix may well feel awkward, or be made to feel awkward, if that is their inherited matrix.
As in any other cases of prejudice, the proper approach (in my view) is to “cure” the social prejudice, not those against whom it is directed. They need no cure, in my view. (If any individual homosexual person wants to avail himself/herself of such a “cure”, that is, of course, up to her/him; I will not play the presumptive heterosexual there either.)