gay - bi - lesbian (part 2...)

[Anny]

so... i just want to add something that fits to my other topic... (part 1...)
at the moment i'm really confused what to think about my sexuality (you probably know this feeling...) there was a time when i thought i was lesbian but now i think i'm "just" bi... who knows... at the time when i thought i was lesbian, i thought a lot and that was the result:

you probably know that lesbians are "more men" than hetero sexual women (that's very strange because there are some lesbians i think whitch are lesbian because they don't like men at all and now it comes out that they are men themselfs...) if one is lesbian (like i thought i was...) one has a hetero sexual man "in the head" (what means that one likes women) and if one is gay, one has a hetero sexual woman "in the head" (what means that on likes men) if one is a hetero sexual woman, one has a hetero sexual woman "in the head" what means that one likes men (logical...) and by the hetero sexual men it's the other way round... now comes the interesting thing: homosexuals are hetero sexual by nature! (if the person and the "little (wo)man in his/her head" were together...) and hetero sexuals are homosexuals... (you see: nature is very crazy!) and that is the reason, why all people are bisexual by narure! (i'm so smart... )

but there are still some questions left! a time ago we learned about sigmund freud in school (maybe you've heard about him, he was a german psychollogist and he said that one of our main "instinks" is to have sex...) there for i got to the end that love is only the result, the motive is that the human race doesn't die... sad, but true... and now i also think, that everybody know that but nobody wants it to be true! so everybody talks about love and such to make him/herself belive that we are more than animals with a sex-instinkt... i wish i was so... we talked a lot about that theme and the ending was that (almost) everythng that we do has sexual backgrounds... even playing an instrument, as simple as that! now that i accept this "fact" (well, call it like that...) i have to ask myself: is homosexuality really natural?? don't missunderstand me! i'm the last one to have prejudices at this topic!! (i'm almost one myself... that's why i have to ask so many questions to myself... (that's pretty hard sometimes!)) what i want to say is: if the reason for having sex is that the human race doesn't die out, how can it be, that two women fall in love with each other (=want to have sex with each other...) when they can't have children? biological it's possible (but that's what we call an accedent, isn't it?) so there must be something else...

what do you think about that? please tell me your poinion! it would help me a lot!!

ps: thanks for you endurance

[*blond*]

well uh.. i read that whole thing and im rather confused (sorry) ill read it again another day and try to get my head around it, lol. but yeh, i can relate with the whole lesbian/bi thing. i mean lately ive been questioning myself coz ive realised that ive always liked my ex-boyfriend, wether as a friend or more i am not consistently sure. i mean some nights i can lay there and go 'yeh i like this guy' and osme nights i think 'how the fuck could i have thought i like this guy!?' it's all very confusing so im not sure what im classing myself as. im just going with the flow, if i fall in love with a woman, so be it, with a man, so be it (but im not attracted to guys apart from that ONE guy, so yeh, dont think it'll happen..) but yes, i think that there's only very few people who are straight straight, and gay gay. like i class myself as gay/lesbian but im only 97% sure. everyone has their own 'percentage' or like with the "kinsey scale" 1 is straight straight, and 6 is gay gay, and everyone fits in between there somewhere.

my head hurts from thinking so.. cya later!

[kant1781]

Hi Anny, I don’t know if it helps, but here are some ideas on what you wrote:

What worries you is the idea that behind love and everything there may be just pure nature: The reason for falling in love is wanting to have sex, the reason for wanting to have sex is the survival of the human species. If that were true, homosexuality would be just an error in our natural hardware. That seems to be not so much the position of Freud, but of the Vatican, by the way. I’m not sure if this is what Freud wanted to say. But whether he said it or not, I think it’s wrong.

It may help to think of how many things humans do that seem to be very dangerous to the survival of the species: For example, we don’t kill our grandparents or let them die when they have grown too old to be of any use, quite to the contrary. We don’t kill or let die babies that are born prematurely and are too weak to live by themselves. We don’t kill or let die those that are so ill that they will never contribute to the reproduction of the species. How much stronger would we be without these weaklings! They’re just errors of nature! All this is useless, even harmful to the survival of the fittest! That’s why these things don’t happen in nature. So, seen from nature’s point of view, it’s bad to do them. But I think we all agree that it’s good to do them, and that it would be terribly wrong not to do them. A society that would be perfectly organized as far as the reproduction of the species is concerned would be a nightmare (read Aldous Huxley’s „Brave New World“ on that point ). So, what is right or wrong, good or bad for humans to do is a completely different question than what is useful or harmful for their biological survival.

Now, just the same goes for love. Of course, biologically speaking, the whole point of love is having sex and of having sex is reproduction. But if you look around, there are too many things connected with love that can hardly be explained by the drive for reproduction, not only homosexuality. For example, why do people fall in love who are much too old to have children? Or why doesn’t their love die together with their ability to have children? Why do people love each other even after they found out that they can’t have children at all? Why do they keep on loving each other even after years of separation in which they can’t have sex? And so on. All these things are errors, seen from a natural point of view. So either we have to say that the sex instinct is pretty badly developed by nature, because it lets us do all these useless and even dangerous things (that would mean quite a lot of errors in nature!), or we should rather say, as in the case of caring about the weak, that there must be other forces driving us than natural forces.

So, what is the answer to the question, „Is homosexuality natural"?“. It depends:
If you mean whether it is something that happens naturally, the answer is „yes, of course“. There are human beings, they are all natural creatures, and some of them are homosexuals. These don’t seem to be less natural than anybody else.
If you mean whether it is something that seems to be useful from the point of view of the reproduction of the human species, the answer is, „no, not obviously“. But then, millions of other things that human beings do aren’t useful to that goal either, quite to the contrary, and some of the best things humans do are among them.
So, finally, if you mean what surely is the really important question – is homosexuality something whose worth can be judged on the basis of its natural usefulness – the answer is, „no, absolutely not“. Nothing can. If we want to know whether something is right or wrong, good or bad for us, there are other things to consider – like, does it make people happy or unhappy? Does it make them free or unfree? Does it make our society more just or unjust? Does it make our way of life richer or poorer? These things have nothing to do with biological survival. They don’t concern life as such, but a good life. A human life. There’s more to leading a human life than survival – call it culture, call it reason, call it a soul, it doesn’t matter. That’s how I see it.

PS: And don’t let anyone from Austria catch you saying that Freud was German!

[Narcissus]

Kant has more or less covered every little facet of the original post, in my honest opinion, and kudos to you Kant as it was a pleasure to read.

I'm going to offer my very simple, condensed opinion on the overall matter. Remember, my condensed versions are still long:



Love is. That's all there is to it. The problem with society today is that you have to label everything in order for people to be able to draw suitable conclusions from information. The question for many of us in that position is 'which am I? Straight, Gay or Bi?' But it's not as clean-cut as that.

A prime example here is *B*, who's already quoted her changing mindset of her opinions on her ex-boyfriend. The need to label ourselves is, in my opinion, causing the main bulk of the confusion. So we have a problem, so it seems. 97% sure of being a lesbian. But she has feelings for one guy, so that must make her bi, right? No. It's never that simple.

Even I have toyed with these labels of society. Am I gay? Am I Bi?.... The conclusion that I eventually came to was "I am me" It's that simple. I don't really give a toss how people label me, just as long as I know who I am and what my preferences are. People can't confine themselves to the strict set of rules that come with each of these labels. For example I walked past a guy the other day and thought "oh...my...god..." (Yes, he was that nice) I saw the same guy the other day and didn't feel a thing. Preferences can change just as moods can. I just wasn't in the mood for guys at that particular time. Same happens when I see a nice looking girl. It's just who I am, and I can accept that. It doesn't really matter what other people think, does it?

So, Anny, take it day-by-day, there's no pressure to think that you're either Homosexual or Bisexual. You are You, and it may take a while for things to become more clear to you. The big picture will become clearer in time, you'll discover what you like, and what you don't. Just don't try to force yourself to think that you're in column A or column B.

[Anny]

thank you very much for your loooong answer! well it's not really a sulution for my problem but it's good to see that there are people who think the same way sometimes (that is to you nikki ) can you tell me more about your experiences? like to hear something from you what's on your mind! tell me everything!

[kant1781]

kudos to you Kant

Thank you, Master Will
I want to say in return that I also completely agree with your remarks on labelling and self-labelling, which are probably more an answer to what Anny was actually caring about. You hit the nail on the head.

Just a further thought: The interesting problem is that the labelling game is so extremely difficult to avoid. (Well, I find it is.) Because, I think, we not only want to be ourselves, we also want to be together –we need to say, „Yeah, I’m one of them! I belong there! They’re my folks!“ („They“ may be anything – a circle of friends, a family, a class, a culture, a gender.) Seems that we somehow depend on that. (I believe that this is because we somehow know that who we are crucially depends on the people who brought us up and shaped us – so, I want to be „me“, but there wouldn’t be a „me“ without „them“.) But there we are, differentiating between „us“ and „them“, and – bang! –we are back in the game, whether we like it or not, labelling us and others – which we know we shouldn’t. Is there a way out of this problem?

[Narcissus]

Well, when we look at the bigger picture, no we can't. But ignoring other people and focusing on self-labelling: it's a definite option

[kant1781]

Agreed, Will.

You should like the following - maybe you know it already - an excerpt from the diary of the Swiss poet Max Frisch (in my own very poor translation from the original German) just about the problem of labels (or, as he says, images):

"It is remarkable that, of all human beings, there is no one about whom we could say less concerning how he is than the one we love. We just love him. Just that is what love consists in, the wonderful thing about it, that it keeps us in the balance of living things, in the readiness to follow a human being in all his possible developments. (...) Love frees him from any image. That’s the excitement, the adventure, the thrill: that we are never through with the persons we love, because we love them – as long as we love them. (...) Our opinion that we know the other is the end of love, every time. „You are not“, says the one who suffered disappointment, „who I have taken you to be.“ And what have they taken each other to be? A secret, which man is after all, an exciting riddle that we grew tired to tolerate. So one makes oneself an image. That’s the loss of love, the treason. Thou shalt not make to thyself an idol, so it is said about God. That should also be understood in this sense: God, meaning that which is alive, that which cannot be grasped in any human being. It is a sin that we, as it is committed against us, commit again incessantly – except when we love.“