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20/20 -- tl;dr
17 years ago
General
They've been doing a rather excellent job at critically analyzing this country's issues with both age of consent and homosexual children. Of course, being a mainstream news media source, they're generally too broad or too narrow in some of the questions they ask or the answers they receive. They have a link to a page on their article called: "Is There a 'Gay Gene'?" to a researcher's website devoted to answering questions about their children's homosexuality, and what to do. Of course, the lady's web form is broken, so after writing her a nice little essay about my thoughts on sexuality, it of course was all for naught.
So, rather than wasting it to the ages, I felt I might as well bore the lot of you with it...
Enjoy!
Hello! My name is [omitted]. I was looking over the 20/20 website through their in-depth coverage of age of consent and child sexuality, and I felt rather compelled to email you with some input. I'd love to hear from you in return if you have the time.
Gay vs. Straight. I think that the issue is widely considered in much too simplistic a fashion. Even Dr. Alfred Kinsey's approach to homosexuality (from what I know of it) was too simplistic. As I'm sure you're aware, he made a 1-6 chart. It was a linear approach where before genetic study came about, it must have seemed very logical and rational. But with all of the recent findings, and the completion of the genetic map, simply seems too simplistic to contemplate in a world where so many genetic combinations exist.
I had a friend who was a boy, felt like he was a girl, but was attracted to other girls. "A lesbian trapped in a man's body." I've also seen examples of the opposite: A boy who feels like a girl but is attracted to boys. "A woman trapped in a man's body." A girl who is attracted to boys but feels that she is a boy: "A gay man trapped in a woman's body". The list just keeps going on. Therefore, not only is there an over-simplistic way in which we consider homosexuality, but people tend to forget that there is both masculine and feminine traits pre-programmed into us. And, if what Kinsey was saying is true, logically, these traits must ALSO have a 1-6 scale of degree. As a result, a person's sexuality, just as any other human or mammalian trait, would essentially become an infinite plethora of scales, like a massive mixing board you see at a recording studio but hundreds of times larger and more complex. What's more is that these, like the sliders on a mixer board, would (to one degree or another) be able to be slid up or down. I believe this concept is what Freud tried to convey by coining to the term "polymorphous perverse."
All attributes of sex preference would have to be considered under these same standards: Age, sex, gender, race, physique, etc. Age would be no exception in the very least. There's the age at which you adopt physical sexual traits; the age at which you begin ejaculating or menstruating; the age where you find others attractive; the age where you consider yourself ready for sexual contact to one degree or another. All of these, using the same slider scale, would be different in every individual. Next, every slider might affect another slider. For example, the preconditioning for one slider—let's say, the time at which one begins to develop breasts and start menstruating—is primarily affected by another slider—the amount of fat intake the body receives and gives signals to begin sexual traits (as they are now finding out).
Besides the over-simplistic fashion in which people consider sexual orientation, there is yet another error that strikes me as odd. The word "trapped" when used in a context to describe someone who acts in a fashion other than the accepted social norm signals to me that whoever is saying it is /assuming/ that a male should act one way and a female should act another way. Taken on a larger scale, this would also apply to practically any other trait which the person may or may not have any control over. Instead of lamenting over the fact that someone's child may be different than all the other children, perhaps society as a whole needs to have a sea change in the way it treats people different than themselves. I understand that we're a species that likes patterns. When something is different in the pattern, it drives us nuts. When a male acts "prissy", they automatically claim that he's gay, when he could in fact be very straight but merely have feminine characteristics. When a woman finds her 14 year old student "hot as hell" and ends up a having sexual relationship, they label her as a sex offender. All of these situations may or may not have negative or positive consequences. However, would it not be more wise and prudent for a society to realize that even an "offender" of a crime might also in a way be a "victim"?
The negative psychological effects of suppressing one's own natural urges have been documented throughout the ages. Even Shakespeare, when his character Romeo exclaims: "Not mad, but bound more than a mad-man is; Shut up in prison, kept without my food, Whipp'd and tormented and--" is describing his negative effects of suppression of the male eros and libido. Whatever sexual desire might be "out of style" at one point in time in society, it does absolutely no good to punish the "perpetrator", the "pervert", or the "offender". Medical castration for offenders or the death penalty (as is being used in some states nor for "repeat offenders") is useless and only drags us back to the dark ages of inquisitions and witch hunts.
If our society's most racist bigots are to claim biological, moral, and cultural superiority, even they would need to recognize their own shortcomings of education and wisdom in order for their claims to be made true. The same should then go as a lesson to the rest of us. Who are we to proclaim that we are morally superior than the flaming queer or the dirty old man on a park bench? Do we hate what we fear so badly that we in turn create objects of fear within ourselves? Let's hope we gain the wisdom to see our folly and pull ourselves out of the traps we've set.
So, rather than wasting it to the ages, I felt I might as well bore the lot of you with it...
Enjoy!
Hello! My name is [omitted]. I was looking over the 20/20 website through their in-depth coverage of age of consent and child sexuality, and I felt rather compelled to email you with some input. I'd love to hear from you in return if you have the time.
Gay vs. Straight. I think that the issue is widely considered in much too simplistic a fashion. Even Dr. Alfred Kinsey's approach to homosexuality (from what I know of it) was too simplistic. As I'm sure you're aware, he made a 1-6 chart. It was a linear approach where before genetic study came about, it must have seemed very logical and rational. But with all of the recent findings, and the completion of the genetic map, simply seems too simplistic to contemplate in a world where so many genetic combinations exist.
I had a friend who was a boy, felt like he was a girl, but was attracted to other girls. "A lesbian trapped in a man's body." I've also seen examples of the opposite: A boy who feels like a girl but is attracted to boys. "A woman trapped in a man's body." A girl who is attracted to boys but feels that she is a boy: "A gay man trapped in a woman's body". The list just keeps going on. Therefore, not only is there an over-simplistic way in which we consider homosexuality, but people tend to forget that there is both masculine and feminine traits pre-programmed into us. And, if what Kinsey was saying is true, logically, these traits must ALSO have a 1-6 scale of degree. As a result, a person's sexuality, just as any other human or mammalian trait, would essentially become an infinite plethora of scales, like a massive mixing board you see at a recording studio but hundreds of times larger and more complex. What's more is that these, like the sliders on a mixer board, would (to one degree or another) be able to be slid up or down. I believe this concept is what Freud tried to convey by coining to the term "polymorphous perverse."
All attributes of sex preference would have to be considered under these same standards: Age, sex, gender, race, physique, etc. Age would be no exception in the very least. There's the age at which you adopt physical sexual traits; the age at which you begin ejaculating or menstruating; the age where you find others attractive; the age where you consider yourself ready for sexual contact to one degree or another. All of these, using the same slider scale, would be different in every individual. Next, every slider might affect another slider. For example, the preconditioning for one slider—let's say, the time at which one begins to develop breasts and start menstruating—is primarily affected by another slider—the amount of fat intake the body receives and gives signals to begin sexual traits (as they are now finding out).
Besides the over-simplistic fashion in which people consider sexual orientation, there is yet another error that strikes me as odd. The word "trapped" when used in a context to describe someone who acts in a fashion other than the accepted social norm signals to me that whoever is saying it is /assuming/ that a male should act one way and a female should act another way. Taken on a larger scale, this would also apply to practically any other trait which the person may or may not have any control over. Instead of lamenting over the fact that someone's child may be different than all the other children, perhaps society as a whole needs to have a sea change in the way it treats people different than themselves. I understand that we're a species that likes patterns. When something is different in the pattern, it drives us nuts. When a male acts "prissy", they automatically claim that he's gay, when he could in fact be very straight but merely have feminine characteristics. When a woman finds her 14 year old student "hot as hell" and ends up a having sexual relationship, they label her as a sex offender. All of these situations may or may not have negative or positive consequences. However, would it not be more wise and prudent for a society to realize that even an "offender" of a crime might also in a way be a "victim"?
The negative psychological effects of suppressing one's own natural urges have been documented throughout the ages. Even Shakespeare, when his character Romeo exclaims: "Not mad, but bound more than a mad-man is; Shut up in prison, kept without my food, Whipp'd and tormented and--" is describing his negative effects of suppression of the male eros and libido. Whatever sexual desire might be "out of style" at one point in time in society, it does absolutely no good to punish the "perpetrator", the "pervert", or the "offender". Medical castration for offenders or the death penalty (as is being used in some states nor for "repeat offenders") is useless and only drags us back to the dark ages of inquisitions and witch hunts.
If our society's most racist bigots are to claim biological, moral, and cultural superiority, even they would need to recognize their own shortcomings of education and wisdom in order for their claims to be made true. The same should then go as a lesson to the rest of us. Who are we to proclaim that we are morally superior than the flaming queer or the dirty old man on a park bench? Do we hate what we fear so badly that we in turn create objects of fear within ourselves? Let's hope we gain the wisdom to see our folly and pull ourselves out of the traps we've set.
