Do you think we are born gay?

I think I was born gay. When I was little, most of the people at my birth-day parties were girls, I sung girly songs and always wanted a barbie.

 

I think were born gay but it takes someone to trigger it like your first same sex crush etc..at least that was the case with me

 

I was born gay. There is no question

 

I have a question for the people who say it develops over time and not that you're born this way.
Do you think that had your entire life been completly different, raised by a different family on the opposite side of the world that you could possibly had ended up not being gay?

 

I believe people are born without a sexual orientation. I do believe people are born with their own personality and sometimes likes and dislikes that can be influenced by environment and lead to both the gender of attraction and things like body type, hair color, eye color, age, and ethnicity.

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I think it's more than a slight possibility, at least in my case.

 

I'm pretty sure I was born gay, I had a crush on one of my friends since I was 5 years old (in retrospect, of course...and only as much as any small child has a crush on anyone)
I believe that up until puberty or a bit before, realistically, you're asexual, though...but that sexuality is pre-determined and can be observed in latency right from a young age

 

I honestly have no idea, I tend to sway more towards the possibility that both the way I was raised, and something in birth was a factor too.

 

I'm not sure wether I was born gay or not,but I knew I was going to be this way since I was very young.I remember first starting to like boys in the 3rd grade.I was little,so I didn't think about it too much,and I didn't question myself when I thought of boys or when I would look at a boy and find him attractive.I made pretend I like girls since I was like about 11,and told myself that I would keep doing that until I was completely sure of myself and was able to tell my mom.I think that an individual's sexuality is influenced by themselves and themselves only.A person could be born in a homophobic family and still be gay,so I don't think the environment that we are sorrounded by makes that much of an influence.It could,but I don't think so.I simply see it as if you grow up and you like guys,then you like guys,period.And if you like girls,you like girls,period.

 

I didnt choose to be, but i certainly know that i was born gay, though how that displays itself depends on how you were brought up. I didnt totally understand the concept until I was pre-teen, looking back further I can picture a few signs.

 

For me, I can't see any other explanation except that I was born gay. What in my life was different than my brother for example, that would make me 100% gay and him 100% straight once puberty hit?

 

Personally, I don't think we're born gay. But I don't really know, I can only speak for myself - I don't think I was born gay

 

Exactly. I mean don't get me wrong, I'm all for healthy discussions but we're all stuck as whatever flavor of LGBT we are that brings us to this website at the end of the day.

 

I think a person is born that way. I've also read this interesting article on the so called gay gene in female mice:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/...e-can-be-turned-lesbian-by-deleting-gene.html

 

Basically, (in men) sexual attraction is regulated by the testosterone in the hypothalamus. Less testosterone implies a greater chance of becoming homosexual. As the following video proposes, this introduction of testosterone into the hypothalamus happens during the 8th week of conception. I find it rather questionable to suggest that homosexuality is not determined from birth, especially when looking at the statistical data portraying an increased percentage in homosexuality amongst the twin phenomenon.

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saO_RFWWVVA[/YOUTUBE]

Furthermore, studies show how the brain differs between homosexual and heterosexual males, and it is commonly accepted that brain development undergoes great change during the early years of life, even prenatally.

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVwjCppq82c[/YOUTUBE]

Further elaboration:
Though this video's a little on the ridiculous side, it does have some good points.
[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYMjXucTFaM[/YOUTUBE]

I'd also like to elaborate on Riaan's article of lesbian rats. Unfortunately, I was unable to find the original article, but a while back, I had read an article about experiments on male rats where ATD was introduced into the hypothalamus that stopped the absorption of testosterone. They found when treating the rats prenatally and postnatally, the rats would partake in "bisexual behavior."

 

Yes.

But I think how you're raised determines whether or not you come to terms with it. People can live their entire life in denial.

 

8th Week of conception... granted I don't really get that hold side of things, but from a biological point surely you mean gestation, lol.

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For a more scientific take, perhaps:
http://www.newscientist.com/article...tructured-like-those-of-the-opposite-sex.html
And:
http://www.bbcfocusmagazine.com/feature/life/gay-genetics

 

i do believe so sometimes .. everything is 'normal' for me .. till a hot guy comes along and i melt lol .. i used to play with barbies and wear tight pants when i was small .. and i grew up belly dancing and loving flowers and animals .. i never 'wrestled' or was rough with guys and ever since 2nd grade i knew i was into boys

i can be with a girl as long as no cute guys are around (as if a girl would like a feminine hyper active almost anorexic guy lol)

 

I think there's been adequate discussion of the scientific factors involved in sexual orientation, but I have one aside: a year ago, I read a book on the development of molecular biology (the title escapes me), where the author talked about how male fruit flies were bred so that parts of their brain were actually female. These flies engaged in courtship dances with other males (at least, that's how I understood it. I'm not what one would call 'scientifically literate'). Like other posts have mentioned, there seems to be some correlation between homosexuality and prenatal hormones, and I believe hearing that certain parts of a gay man's brain are more like those of a woman.

My theory, woefully uneducated as it is, is that there are different parts of the brain that control sexual orientation and gender identity; when these are masculinzed (for biological females), or feminized (for biological males), you get a homosexual or transgendered person respectively. This would explain why many feminine men or masculine woman are homosexual, but also why many gays are masculine men or feminine women; as well, it would explain why some transgendered people retain their attraction to their transitioned sex, and thus identify as "gay" (i.e. A transwoman has an attraction to other woman and so labels herself lesbian).

This separation of sexuality and gender obviously has some difficulties. What about people who identify as either bisexual or pansexual? Is the "sexuality" part of their brain different from ours? And what about pedophilia and bestiality, or a sexual orientation towards a specific object? It is obviously impossible to separate sexuality from environmental factors, and perhaps my idea creates a binary where there is none.

Onto what really interested me: what does it mean to be "gay"? Is it someone who only has sex with the same sex, or can we only really use the word "gay", "lesbian" and "homosexual" (or even "transgendered", for that matter) to describe those who were exposed to the culture we now identify as gay culture, and identified as such. Again, I really don't know as much as I should about this, but I find it interesting to consider the two questions I asked, but rephrased: are the words homosexual and heterosexual an invention of our time and society, or is their something essential about the nature of sexuality that we can discern through history? (I'm going to be looking at this question through primarily a male point of view, as this is in what I am most informed, partly because I, as a male homosexual, am more interested in male homosexuality, but also because women's lives have been much more sketchily chronicled than those of men, so records of female homosexuality are harder to come by, much less social structures of lesbianism).

On one hand, the evidence of homo-eroticism in past cultures is astounding. The most well known example is classical Greek society, but a contemporary example is the saying of the Pakhtuns, the people who live in Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan - a saying that I actually found off Fox News' website - "Women are for children, boys are for pleasure". Other examples that I am familiar with include homosexual relations in Japanese Buddhist temples, male eunuchs in Classical India and male prostitutes in the Ottoman empire.

One of the more interesting examples is that of Two-Spirited people of many of the North American First Nations. Among certain peoples young males who preferred female activities, or young females who preferred male activities, were often selected to become Two-Spirits. In most tribes, the title held a certain amount of respect, and sex with Two-Spirited people was thought to bring good luck and magical abilities. (Wikipedia)

A certain issue has begun to arise; none of these examples fit the modern conception of a homosexual. Many of the structures I mentioned are pederastic; that is to say that they involved sexual and social relations between a man and a youth. Rarely were homosexual exchanges seen as an egalitarian relationship between two men. In most, their was the man, who was the active partner in the sexual act, and the youth/eunuch/Two-Spirit, who was the passive partner. Even with this established, the two hardly agree: consider the ancient Grecian model, in which the youth was expected to later become a pederast himself, and that of the Two-Spirits, where male-bodied Two-Spirits may have saw themselves as "sisters", and might have viewed sexual behaviour between themselves as incestuous.

The essentialist position, that homosexuals will always consist of a certain part of the population, and that a "gay" identity can be salvaged from the past, seems untenable. The structure of male-male sexuality throughout the ages in nebulous, seeming to differ from one society to the other.

However, we only know the tip of the iceberg; two factors are to blame: 1), that Western history has been largely written by proclaimed heterosexuals, writing in Christian societies hostile to homo-eroticism, and 2) the vast amount of human stories have not been recorded.

The first point is fairly straight forward - our society seems to see things through heterosexist glasses - but on the second, I would like to elaborate. I mentioned earlier that it is difficult to record woman's history, for precisely the same two reasons: history had been written by men in a largely misogynistic culture up until recently - these men had no interest in recording the lives of women - but also, women did not have the opportunity to record their own stories. They were largely denied power throughout Western history, with very few literate females. Of course, the issue is different with homo-eroticism, but I'd like to use this point to stress that it was almost only the history of the ruling classes that has been recorded and circulated pre-1850's (and after then, although it started to change).

It is very possible that male serfs in medieval England had exclusively homosexual relations - we simply do not know. They did not write stories about their lives for us to consume. Homosexual relationships did not produces heirs, so they would not have been celebrated the same way that heterosexual ones were. This idea of orientation probably came with affluence of the growing middle class and the idea of romantic love. A Russian peasant probably didn't go through a period of coming out to herself - she didn't really have the opportunity nor the conception of lesbianism. If she did have sex with women, she likely wouldn't have been foolish enough to consider running of with one, as economic matters tied her to her land.

These seems almost ridiculous: "We don't have enough evidence about the lower-classes in this time period; ergo they must have had egalitarian same-sex relationships." Of course, arguing from the gaps is always doomed to fail. However, I did read an essay about homosexuality in modern India, where the author often found heterosexual men who fooled around - hardly a surprise - but also of men who did engage in egalitarian homsexual relationships, living together. I am not foolish enough to think that India has escaped the export of Western culture and ideas, and so the modern "gay" ideal, but all of these men thought that they were utterly alone, and the idea that there were others like them surprised them. (I forget the name of this article, but I'm going to the library tomorrow to search for it, and if anyone is interested, I could post the title in a later post.) The attitudes of these men suggest that homosexuality like this could have plausibly remained almost invisible for so long.

I am not well educated enough to make a final decision on the subject, but I think both the essentialist and constructionist points are worth considering. It's obvious that pure essentialism cannot be true, as same sex sexuality expresses itself in incredibly diverse ways across cultures, but constructionism has it's flaws as well. Maybe there are different ways of expressing the same desire for a man, and maybe some of the examples I gave are better understood as transgendered today.

To tie this off, I was a pretty feminine kid. I had a lot of little girl friends. I preferred drawing or reading to playing with blocks (although I didn't like dolls), I hated fighting, I used to draw on my face with lipstick when I was really little (I think that was more because the lipstick felt nice and cold on my skin), I was terribly afraid of movies (I had to be taken out of such horrifying movies as "A Bug's Life" and "Cinderella") and while my brother's wrestling name was "The Rock", I was "The Butterfly". I vividly remember being turned on when this villain abducted the lady and thinking I the villain was abducting me. (the first time I really wondered about getting a boner and thought it was quite painful and annoying.) I do think, however, that trying to "sniff out the gay", is biased in that if you're looking for evidence that you were gay, you will find it. Also, the villain and the lady in my infantile arousal memory were both cartoon cats, yet I don't identify the moment as a step towards by eventual desire to consummate my love for cartoon cats, because, as far as I know, I have no desire for cartoon cats. If I did, the memory might have been interpreted a different way. We are the best people for fooling ourselves.

 

the John Barrowman one is VERY good i seen it several times. most people will know i ADORE him and its a very comprehensive show