RU (RealUn) has approached this topic citing Silenus’ (Satyr) views on sexual diversity, especially homosexuality.
That’s a notoriously dangerous road to take, not because Silenus is stupid (he is not), but because his opinions on the topic at hand are clearly biased. He refers to homosexuality as “disgusting”. From there you can deduce what he will have to say about it. He will not research homosexuality in nature in order to find out it the practice is really natural. His intention, from the get-going, is to discredit it, and to associate it with his general notion of Western décadence.
RU takes a similar approach, and associates the “rise” of homo-, bi- and transsexuality with a phantom in his head he calls “Leftism”. One doesn’t need to talk with RU for a long time to deduce that “the Left” is what he associates with all the evil in the world. “The Left” are those people who are leading America to its downfall. “The Left” are those dirty-minded guys who justify everything, from political corruption to pedophilia. There’s no criterion, no differentiation. By simply belonging to “the Left” you’re part of the problem RU has decided to solve in life. He even calls ME a Leftist when I have clearly proclaimed I’m a free man (homo liber), a free thinker. I have no party, no political leaning. My intention with this topic is not so much “defend” sexual diversity, but to understand and to posit that it’s an incredibly complex thing, not something so simple and clear cut as an extremist mind would like to believe.
Yet, calling RU extremist may be a reach. He’s clearly opposed to Christian fundamentalism. He must have felt, in his skin, the dangers of such fundamentalism. So, what seems to happen is that he doesn’t understand that when he acts like a bigot in relation to human sexuality, he’s essentially shaking hands with Christian fundamentalists. He’s playing their game. He may do that unintentionally, as a result of having grown surrounded by Bible belt warriors, or whatever other reason. What matters is that he doesn’t actually THINK about the problem at discussion here- the incredible complexity of human sexuality. He simplifies a complex issue, turning decades and decades of research into a leftist conspiracy to corrupt the Western world. This is what I call reductionist, extremist, thinking.
I’ll give RU the benefit of the doubt and, once again, assume he has simply never stopped to think about some things honestly and deeply. “Homosexuals are promiscuous and degenerate”- isn’t that more than reasonable common sense? Why think about homosexuals at all when I can simply pigenhole an scapegoat them? So many people [males] have done that in the past! That is passable manly attitude!!
Why did I start this topic with quotes from Freud? Not only because I deeply admire the Austrian lion. Mostly, because he was a shining example of a man trying to actually UNDERSTAND the human mind and to penetrate [sic] into its darkest recesses. He was unafraid to be controversial, unafraid to look further, simply because that was a role of a SCIENTIST- to enquire, to learn, to investigate, even at the cost of offending the prudishness of the average man.
And what did Freud learn in his many years of research through the human mind? I already said it above- the “normal” is a fiction, every single human being is unique, the “normal” is social convention. This finding, coming from an experienced man in his field, should not simply be taken for granted. I realize how it applies to the reality I observe around me, and in myself. People are not “normal”, most specially in regards to sexuality. How one guy feels pleasure is something others can’t understand. How I myself feel pleasure is something I can’t hope to explain to others.
The “normal” is a social convention that seeks to regulate people’s behavior, to control, pigeonhole and stigmatize them. During a long time, notions of what is “normal” in any given society were never questioned. So much that anyone who dared to challenge the norm was labelled evil [a witch, a mental case, etc]. And these same societal restrictions, stipulating what a person should do 24/7, from the cradle to the grave was what caused so much psychological trauma, so many social problems. By investigating the causes of neurosis and psychosis, Freud identified repression as a fundamental factor. People who were unable to follow their inner instincts, their innermost inclinations, felt sick, became neurotic or psychotic, and were cured only when they learned to accept themselves as they really were. They were a problem to society before they fully learned to accept what they were.
Needless to say, one of the most repressed things in relation to sexuality was the homosexual drive. It had been attested since the dawn of civilizations. The Bible wouldn’t mention it if it did not occur at the time. The Greeks, the Romans, have attested it. Did they engage in the same type of homosexual activity that today gays do? It’s doubtful. Everything was veiled. Socrates himself referred to the beauty of young males enthusiastically. We know he was married, but how can we be sure about how he related to those ephebes? We can’t, so we can leave Greeks, Romans, Hebrews, out of this and simply accept that homosexuality, in one way or another, has been “here” since men have been “here”.
What did the Wikipedia article mentioned by Carleas say? Some very interesting information, but, especially, this:
Anal insertion
Anal insertion with the penis (both in heterosexual and male homosexual dyads, i.e. pairs of animals) has been observed among some primate species. Male homosexual anal insertion has been recorded in Old World primate species, including gorillas, orangutans, and some members of the Macaca genus (namely, stumptail, rhesus, and Japanese macaques). It has also been recorded in at least two New World primate species, the squirrel monkey and the spider monkey. Morris (1970) also described one heterosexual orangutan dyad for whom all penetration was performed anally. However, the practice might have been a consequence of homosexual rearing, as the male orangutan in this dyad had had extensive same–sex experience. Anal insertion has also been observed among bonobo, with the observation described as ‘anal intromission’.
A case of male homosexual anal insertion with the finger has also been reported among orangutans, and Bruce Bagemihl mentions it as one of the homosexual practices recorded at least once among male chimpanzees.
Since “anal insertion” [=sodomy] is what RU uses as an evidence that human homosexuality is unnatural, this information is quite interesting. It even allows me to do some theorizing of my own. Since the human animal is a primate, an evolution of the primate, it’s quite telling that primates would be the animals to display some type of rudimentary [sic] type of sodomy. The human being, being more complex, more curious, more, say, open to the possibilities of pleasure his body affords, then may have developed early these homosexual tendencies, but also learned early on to repress them, since the anal sex per se would never generate children. Our behavior may be an evolution of primate behavior in this specific regard too.
The fact that a person might find even the idea of homosexual behavior, ie, sodomy, disgusting is telling, because it reveals a prejudice deeply ingrained in the human mind, since the dawn of times. The rejection of gays based solely on that lacks any real substance, though. First, heterosexual people also “engage” in, well, “anal activity”. Second, sodomy doesn’t alter anything significantly in the body of the “sodomite”. A homosexual guy can have as many anal relations as he wants, he still “functions” in society, and, most importantly, he can still be a father.
That’s a very common argument against homosexuality- by favoring sodomy, gays are a “threat” to the continuity of the species. A poor argument that ignores the basic fact that a gay man is still a male, and can have dozens of children even if he never touches a woman in his life.
We can only deduce that, for the countless centuries in which homosexuality was severely repressed, the guilty of this sin did not stop practicing what they didn’t preach. They only hid it well. So that their social behavior was completely… you guessed it, NORMAL. Acceptable. For millenia then gay men have been “normal” members of their societies, inconspicuous, undetectable as gay unless they were much affeminate, of course.
What does that entail?
What I already said in the OP: the sexual variations do not severely affect how people are, act, or behave, in such a way that their external behavior can be as “normal” as that of straight people. Well, isn’t one specific characteristic of a disease that the diseased can’t hide it well? That [s]he can’t “function” well thanks to his/her disease? It’s very clear then why it’s a general consensus nowadays that homosexual behavior is, if not “normal”, at least perfectly NATURAL.
And what is natural?
What happens. What occurs. Whatever happens naturally.
How does a man discover he’s sexually attracted to his male friend instead of his female cousins? It’s an intimate discover, it’s a personal discovery, but, sure as hell, IT DOESN’T DEPEND ON WHERE THIS MAN LIVES. It can literally happen ANYWHERE.
When RU implies “Leftism” is responsible for LGBTQ culture, he means the Western leftists endorse this kind of [in his view] perversion, encouraging then all kinds of perverts to proudly display their abnormality for all to see. He implies there would be no gays without “Leftism”, ignoring that his Right wing buddies hide among themselves as many gays, if not more, than his Left wing enemies. They are only either closeted or remain in silent. It’s not like they aren’t there.
So, in conclusion [phew!], it would be a much healthier attitude if all people simply accepted diversity not as Leftist agenda, but as a reflection of human reality. Many can’t, many won’t. There’s nothing to do about that, except to bravely expose the results of rational thinking about the subject at hand. The extremist sees a winner in the mirror, but we can expose he’s really a loser through the sheer might of reason.
