[quote name='thrustbucket']What would it take for a man to shave his head into a pink mowhawk and prance around the street in a goth dress? Who would want to do that (I saw at wal mart a few weeks ago)?
Why would a girl want to get 13 piercings on her body, 4 of which are on her face? Why would anyone want to stick out like that and look like a freak (I went to school with a few of these girls)?
Where are all the role models that are making young people want to behave and appear in shocking manners? There are far more "normal" role models in most peoples lives and on TV, so where does this need come to be so different?
I'm not equating homosexuals to anything here. I'm simply showing that the argument of "why would anyone choose to be gay" is usually a pretty poor one, in the attempt to prove it can't be helped. I'm not even saying it can be helped, or it isn't something your born with, just that that is a poor argument for it.
Things like victim mentalities and attention starvation will lead people to do any number of very odd harmless (or sometimes harmful) things. Not to mention a myriad of psychological disorders that can be expressed outwardly in anti-social, attention grabbing, "abnormal" expressions.[/quote]
Well firstly I'd say that all those things you stated aren't necessarily done to get attention. In many cases that may be so, but a lot of the time people change their appearances that drastically to 1) signify their difference from others and 2) signify their sameness to some other group. Some people may have no particular reason and others may simply do it for attention, but most of the time it's for a need for individuality/uniqueness or to show that they belong to some group of people who look like that. Generally they're not attention starved nor have any mental disorders.
Secondly, gay people for the most part aren't looking for attention either. Otherwise so many of them wouldn't stay in the closet and not tell anybody they're gay. So obviously they're not "being" gay for attention or because they have some gay role model. Barring some mental disorder, I don't think there's any reason for someone to be gay (ie, act in all the necessary and/or stereotypical ways that gay people are portrayed) unless they're actually attracted to their same sex.
And thirdly (and finally, I guess), I want to make a distinction between physical acts and physical/emotional attraction. I'm not one to say that being gay or straight is 100% biologically determined. I don't believe that there are many (if any) complicated behaviors that aren't partially social and partially biological, in whatever proportions. That being said, I think it would also be an error to say that if something is in any part socially constructed that it's automatically malleable or changeable and/or that it should be to suit a majority.
Anyway, my point being, GuilewasNK and probably others have given the example that maybe some people have "tried it and liked it" and therefore became gay. I want to make the distinction between physical acts and attraction. If I
a dude in the ass, does that make me gay? If I
ed like a hundred dudes exclusively for a year would that mean I was gay? What if I only
ed dudes for the rest of my life, would that mean I was gay? If lilboo
ed a hundred chicks, would he now be straight? What if he
ed chicks for the rest of his life? I mean, even if we both liked it? I imagine it really doesn't feel all that different to
a chick in the ass versus a dude, right? Is one gay and one straight? If I
ed a hole in a tree would that automatically make me a dendrophiliac? Obviously there's more to it than that and boiling it down to who you physically have sex with at any point in time is an insult to both homosexuality and heterosexuality.
There seems to me to be a level of sexual attraction that you can't fake, you can't
will to be different. It may partially be a result of some social conditioning, although it may not be something as obvious as a boy sees some gay dudes and now he's attracted to dudes. Social norms shape the specifics to a very large extent - the type of women/men that heterosexuals or homosexuals are attracted to, for instance - but I'm not sure if the
base of it is social and/or changeable. It may be something that is developed in the womb due to biology or something that is developed early on socially, but it seems to me that it does not require a gay role model or exposure to anything "gay" in society, nor does it seem to be something the develops late in life or is alterable later on. It's something that happens to people, beyond their own control, and isn't easily changed if it's able to be changed at all. It also isn't dichotimous, obviously, but there is more of a spectrum of sexual attraction, but that's not my point so I won't make this post any longer.
B
