Monday 23 October 2000

Pic of the day: Screenshot from The Sims. Yes, Sims can fall in love with someone their own sex - with a little help. For what it's worth. I just discovered today that some kind soul had linked to my site from a page debating the possibility of making gay Sims. I guess I should feel flattered, or something. :)

"Shades of gay"

Who can resist a pun like that? Not me - I'm a sucker for verbal punnishment! :)

No, I haven't had any gays blocking the sun lately - or ever, for that matter. For some reason, I see quite a few gays and lesbians on the Internet fora, but I never meet any in the flesh. Or if I do, they hide it well. I hope this has nothing to do with the fact that I am a Christian - after all, what could I do to them? Give them hammer and nails and ask them to crucify me?

***

The other week, I overread a comment about how gays did not choose to be gay. I think this is usually correct. However, I think many straight people chose to be straight.

Words mean things, but words do not represent things truly. Not all things have an on/off switch. There are not just black and white, but shades of gray, and colors too. And human sexuality is one of the most shady and colorful things out there. While most of us are very much hetero and very little homo, there are some who are almost equally mixed, and some who just don't get the standard roles at all. Those who just can't get themselves to enjoy carnal relations with the opposite sex, but very much want their own sex, will probably feel gay. They may or may not act it, depending on the consequences.

In our society, boys and girls live largely separated during much of childhood. They may see one another in class, but they don't play together and don't hang out together, and they certainly don't shower together. It should come as no surprise then: When puberty suddenly hits a boy, there is a chance that he will have dreams or even daydreams of a sexual nature concerning someone of his own sex. Does that mean he is gay? No, but he may be able to learn.

Usually boys discover the benefits of girls (which I am not going to list here). So those strange puberty attractions are forgotten or at least not mentioned anymore. In an earlier generation, psychologists even believed that homosexuality was a natural lower step towards normal mature sexuality, and that gays were blocked in their development by some traume or complex. Various treatment were used to cure them of their affliction. Today, gays seem to like their sexuality and don't want to be changed, so the question is no longer very relevant.

But some feel the need to do something extra to distance themselves from those lurid pulls of adolescence. So they become "homophobes" - people who fear or hate homosexuality. (The original meaning of the word is almost completely lost - if we were to interpret it like similar words, they would fear their own kind. That would ironically be all too true.) Experiments including measures of small-scale sexual reaction show that homophobes fall in between gays and straights. When exposed to homosexual stimuli, they display the uncontrolled preparations for a sexual response, but not the follow-up to a full scale reaction. They have indeed chosen.

***

When I was a kid, people married and had children. A few did not have children, and a few did not marry at all. Those who did not marry had a good reason for it: There were not enough of the opposite sex where they lived, or they were spinsters taking care of their elderly parents or some such. There was also rumors that some men wanted to remain bachelors, to just have fun with all the girls and not pick only one. But as they grew older, the young girls lost interest. The lucky ones found a leftover spinster and got safely married rather than dying old, cold and alone.

Around the time I reached puberty, I learned that there existed homosexuals. In France.

Hot on the trail of the sexual revolution, marriages started to dissolve, and many couples started to just live together without marrying. Shortly thereafter, the gays and lesbians demanded equal rites. They eventually got a rite to file jointly for taxes and diverse such, but it was called "partnership", not "marriage". Still, we all know what it means. We sure don't go around calling each other "pardner" in these parts.

Once the gays and the lesbians had come out of the closets, there came the bisexuals too. One might think that they got the best of both worlds, but the opposite is probably true: Many gays shun them as traitors, straights think "eeeww", and homophobes think they should make up their mind. And now lately we've got yet another group, mostly women, who call themselves "bi-curious". I'd call them "normal" - I think this is the default condition for most humans. But that does not mean they need to stay that way, curious forever.

We've even got a special word for those who we used to say were "sleeping around". They are now polyamorous, meaning that they love several people at the same time.

Sometimes these days I feel that I am more suspect for not dating anyone at all, neither men nor women. I don't even have a dog, though I am sure if I had one people would be thinking things. As it is, I'm sure most think I harbor some deep dark secret (apart from picking my nose when nobody is looking). Perhaps I would be more readily accepted if I found my own "shade". Let's call me ... poly-curious!
(Not that it matters anymore, I guess.)