Sexuality - Choice or Hardwired?

Sexuality - What is “normal”?

Unfortunately the topic of sexuality is so controversial I can barely think of another that people taking surveys would be more likely to bend the truth about. Making “normal” or “average” almost impossible to gauge.

My personal belief is that sexuality is a fluid concept, and that though most people identify themselves as completely heterosexual, or completely homosexual for that matter, the truth is more likely to be that they fall somewhere on the spectrum other than completely heterosexual – or completely homosexual.

This does not necessarily make them bi-sexual. And most likely doesn’t come anywhere near Pan-sexuality (some guy told me he was this once and I had to look it up). As far as I can fathom, one can be bisexual and have a general preference for one sex. Pan Sexuals claim not to see gender at all and thus also dig transgendered types.

So why am I carrying on about all this stuff…well…. To make my point which is;

Sexuality is all about how you Identify yourself.

Unfortunately there are people like me that don’t believe that you should identify yourself at all.
You see, I believe that it’s possible for me to fall in love with and be attracted to a person of either sex. Does that make me Bisexual?...Well only if we have to stick a label on it peeps!

What about a person’s experiences? Is that the thing that defines their sexuality? In that case is the preference they have shown for in terms of sexual partners or in terms of love affairs? In this case stacking up my stats gives me a 98 percent chance of batting for team hetro. :P

Born this way?
I do think that people are born with a propensity to be attracted to either a member or the same sex OR the other one (somewhere on the aforementioned spectrum). And I do think that a WHOLE LOT of people have a feeling, in a society that is geared towards heterosexual relationships that something “aint right” from a very very early age.

My Uncle I think is a good example of this. He died of HIV Aids before I could ask him in more detail about what it had been like grown up in the 1950’s “not quite fitting in”. He kept his sexuality from his parents and brother and sister until the last moment, until the HIV tuned to Aids. He could never have a relationship in the daylight. And when he died my beautiful, gorgeous loving Catholic Grandmother, who meant to do the right thing, told everyone that her son had died of Cancer. She told the family that it was just something he “tried” and “look what happened”! We knew better. But that story, in its entirety and my feelings on that whole matter, are a story for another time….stay tuned.

My Uncle was born that way. He never had a girlfriend. He found himself attracted towards the same sex, as far as we can fathom, from the beginning.

In THIS way I believe that sexuality is there from birth and not a choice one makes, as if choosing between the 1.25ml “Full Strength” Coke and the “Zero”

Are there “things” that can happen in a person’s life that make them swing more in one direction than the other?

Sure, I think so….but it’s hard to know.

I have known quite a few women who identify as Gay, who have been sexually abused by men at a young age, sometimes repeatedly. Did this experience turn them off men so much so that they looked towards women instead – I think there’s a feasible argument to be made here, but for a minority of people.

Then again, I also know at least 2 gay men who were sexually abused by men as teenagers. Did the fact that they were exposed to sexual concepts that may not have otherwise crossed their radar make them more likely to consider these things, where they may not have before? Maybe. But in all I think that this is a considerably less convincing argument than the former.

Where the “Choosing” comes in
So, we’ve gone full circle now and ended up where we began…sorta.

The choosing comes into the equation because unless you’re living in some sort of sectarian sect, or other repressive situation YOU get to choose your own Identity.

Let’s not be the ones who repress.