I have seen gay and lesbian defined as same-gender attraction, in many places recently. Gender is defined as a cultural norm that varies by place and time. I agree, but when you present gay and lesbian that way, it sounds like they vary by place and time also, as if I have nothing in common with a gay man from China, for example. I understand why the phrase same-sex is avoided but I don't think it's right to define lesbian/gay like this. Otherwise it sounds like there is nothing more enduring to it than our societal habits. Does this make sense to anyone? To be clear, I find men and trans men attractive so I understand why it's not right to only use the words same-sex attraction. But still I find it offensive when people define gay and lesbian, homosexuality, as same-gender attraction because it makes it sound like we wouldn't be gay in a different era, as gender roles would have been somewhat different... Is it just me? I am gay I just literally don't understand why people define it in so many ways... Please be kind I am just looking for answers.
There are so many terms that have been used as substitutes for gay. Some because they can't handle the word "gay" and some because of a perceived separation between sexual attraction and romantic attraction. Some men say they have sexual attraction to men but not anything more than sex. So, they use a term like MSM (Men who have sex with men) while emphatically saying they are not gay. Using these terms to avoid words like gay, lesbian, homosexual, queer, etc. are simply extensions of shame and denial in my opinion.
This makes sense! Being gay exists... regardless of how we define it. Still, I feel many people have been reinventing it, because the most well known definition is too concise. Personally I really really really do not enjoy how, they are just making the definition more and more vague......
How else should it be defined? (simply introducing my discussion, not trying to single you or anyone else out here). There are problems with both same/opposite sex attraction and same/opposite gender attraction. For one thing both imply that there are only two sexes and genders and neither sex nor gender are binary. Language is something that changes and develops as time goes on (I have seen a lot of that in just my lifetime). In the case of discussions of orientation part of the changes are that people are trying to be more inclusive and thus the switch from specifying attraction from being based on sex to gender. This is the acknowledgement that sex and gender are two different things. The development of the multitude of different labels is an attempt to include these new views. It can lead to confusion though. As far as the different genders being seen differently in different cultures I think that it is very true that the behaviors and presentations do widely vary (high heels were originally for men and a lot of other such things). However, in most cultures there are some commonalities. In your example of having nothing in common with a gay man in China. Sure the language, dress and maybe some presentation are different but I doubt that if you really went there that you would not recognize what they see as male and female as that radically different from what you see as male and female. Even in the cultures that have more than two genders (such as the Indonesian Buginese ethnic group) there are the two which correspond to the western idea of male and female. I am unsure if I can link to a wordpress site but here is a list of their five genders, note that two correspond to male and female. (I have saved the link to the article if a moderator wants to include the link here) The point I am trying to make here (possibly in a clumsy way) is that while talking about attraction being towards various genders may not be perfect it is at least closer than the old way of saying it is about sex. Hopefully in the future there will be even better ways of being inclusive.
This is interesting! I think it makes sense from this perspective. Honestly I would be open to new terms I just don't understand some of it. I will say it makes sense though considering that gay/lesbian/homosexual/etc are binary terms... when gender clearly is not
