Some Musings About Sexual Orientation and Stuff

I think I'm obsessed with Scrabble games and some aspects of cognitive behavior therapy.

Totally consistent. **** you twice.

Um... snood? As long as you're being introspective here, and all.... have you ever noticed how easily you get sucked in to other people's OT stuff? Are you interested in discussing the topic or letting your testosterone get the better of you? That's another instinctive reaction, btw.

You know, i was trying to discuss this in a normal manner. You're being an asshole, don't try to make out that that's any fault of mine. Poor, poor Snoody--thou shalt not speak the least criticism of him. Obsession is not your only problem.

Talking about the motives of the OP are not off topic. Neither were my remarks on the subject of homosexuality.

This does raise another question. At what point does pda become "yuck"? I find it endearing to see an 80 year old couple walking hand in hand and stopping to kiss each other. I don't have any problem with a gay or hetero couple showing affection and love in public. There is a point where groping does become an issue. I guess I never really thought about it before to know what that point is.

How are you with heterosexual people kissing?
I personally don't care to see any couple slobbering over each other in public. Not in a theater, a food joint, on a street corner or anywhere else where there are people about. A quick kiss, even on the lips is one thing and should stop right there.


I was born a full fledged homosexual. Due to circumstances this was news that didn't infiltrate its way into my brain for several years. (the circumstances being that homosexuality was not ever talked about at home as a possibility) Fortunately, I could look back and see that I'd always been attracted to men, this made the acceptance of myself a little easier.


There are those who really have no idea they are homosexual. Take myself as an example.

I grew up in different communities including Greenwich Village. During those formative years of the 1950s and 1960s there were plenty of homosexuals in the area, some were friends of my grandmother and I met them. It still didn't register with me. I wasn't attracted to these men and the men I was attracted to were in most cases married and had children.
To me, as insane as it may seem, I thought this was the normal thing. I thought all men felt this way; but, they ended up getting married and having children. It never occurred to me that there were men who weren't attracted to other men.

My upbringing, indicated the procedure was to grow up, go to college, get married and have children. Even as I found myself interested in men, and not interested in anything physical with women, I expected I'd go to college, graduate then marry and have 4 children (there were always 4, the palm reader had clearly made a mistake when she said I'd only have 3). I even had names selected for them (there were to be 2 boys and 2 girls).

Nothing had prepared me for that summer when I realized the truth about myself.

So in answer to your question of people going through life, having a family and still not coming out, there are those who may truly not know. If they live a secluded life and haven't met a person of the same sex who gives them that charge, then they might not really know. Even living in a large city it doesn't always register with a person. Society for years has trained people to believe that the proper procedure is to get married to someone of the opposite sex and procreate and live with the person you marry until one of you dies. My mother held that thinking, and indicated that if my father hadn't decided to test knife sharpness on himself and subsequently died, they would have grown older together. In her words, 'marriage is until death'. She acknowledged it wasn't a good marriage, the happy love was long gone.


One experience I saw was the mother of a friend of my sister. The woman had 5 children, years of marriage and then realized she was into women, not men. She had met someone who made her toes curl and her heart beat more rapidly. She was in her 40s at the time. She hadn't been intentionally denying who she was, she just didn't know.

There was a documentary years ago, where a woman commented on her coming out. She was married, had children, even grandchildren and loved her husband, although it wasn't a physical attraction, it never had been, other than he was good looking.

One night after a party at her home, she was clearing things away, taking them into the kitchen when another woman who had been sipping a few too many brewskies, planted a kiss on her lips and hugged her. She said that was when the electrical current made it to the light bulb over her head and she realized she had for years fantasized about women when she was with her husband.

Who knows how many people just haven't discovered their personal truth because they haven't met that someone special yet.

I would like to address those remarks about people who were married for many years, and then came out. As a "senior" member of this forum, I can remember what it was like for gays when I was a young sprout.

Back in the "dark ages", (like the 1950's) many gays were deeply in the closet, and for good reason. In many areas, just being gay might cause you to lose a job, or worse. Many people would not even admit to themselves that they were gay, so they married, and had a family.

After the sexual revolution, people were then able to express themselves more openly. People who were married, but had an inkling that something was wrong, felt more free to express any gay proclivities that they had.

I returned to grad school, as an adult, in the middle seventies. I took a course in human sexuality, given by an exceptional teacher, whom everybody loved.

He brought three men to the class. One knew that he was attracted to people of the same sex, for as long as he could remember. The second came out in his college years. He had been dating girls, but knew that something was awry. The third had been married for many years, realized that he was gay, divorced, and started living a gay lifestyle. The class was one of the most memorable that I have ever taken.

Anyhow, a couple of years later, I learned something that saddened me greatly. The teacher, who was far and away one of the best that I have ever had, was denied tenure, because he was himself gay. And that was in the late seventies!!!

Thank you Sturgis and Phoenix. Great stuff. I'm loving hearing what you guys think about this.

Things have not necessarily gotten better, either. When i was living in Columbus, Ohio, in the 1990s, a gay man was so severely beaten that one of his retinas was detached, and he was blinded in that eye. Then there is notorious case of of Micheal Shepard who was tied to a fence and beaten nearly to death. He wasn't found for 18 hours, and was then in coma, from which he never recovered. He died within a week. The United States has a serious problem.

You're of course correct. Setanta came on, called me obsessed, and now is accusing me of being an unreasonable asshole for protesting. In this specific case, he is someone to be ardently ignored.

Most people are contributing a lot of great ideas here.

Telling you that you are obsessed was not such a horrible thing that it deserved your vicious response. You have a problem, but it ain't my problem.

Takes all kinds.

Speaking personally, I dislike PDA right in front of my face (depending a lot on context I guess, but I usually dislike it).

If we're talking about photos, then my reactions to two men kissing could range from "awwwww" to "ewww" to "hawt."

On Facebook I've "liked" an organization working for gay marriage in Ohio, and they post a near-constant stream of pictures of gay couples. I just went looking for some examples but it was taking too long (they have a LOT of pictures). There was one recent one of two men in their late 60's kissing, one in a military uniform, one wearing a t-shirt that said "I was given a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one." Ooh, found it based on that just via Google:



That was an "aww," partly because of context -- out in public, in a parade, and how things have changed (in a good way).

NYT marriage announcements of men who have been together for decades and can now finally marry pretty much always get an "aww" out of me too.

The "hawt" is pretty much any good-looking guy + another good looking guy.

Lesbians kissing is pretty eh. I mean I get it and everything, but whatever.

See, now that picture didn't get a yuck out of me. Go figgur.

What someone said about mine, and others reactions being mostly visceral makes a lot of sense.

It's sort of involuntary. In the same way that if a male masseuse inadvertently elicits an arousal response in a man with his massage (remember the Seinfeld episode?) it doesn't make the man being massaged homosexual.

That picture gave me a minor league yuck. Maybe it was their age, more than their sexual orientation.

In the late 70's, early 80's, Jack Klugman, who was in his late fifties at the time, played in a show called Quincy. At the end of the introduction to the show, he leans down and kisses a woman who is wearing a bikini, who looked about thirty.

I liked the show, but that image of him kissing that girl grossed me out, big time. It got so bad, when I watched the show, I would turn away before he kissed the girl.

Come to think of it, grandmas who are constantly kissing their baby grandkids gross me out too.

LOL

I remember the Quincy opening.

There was a recent Michael Douglas movie - don't remember the name of it. All during the early, exposition part of the movie, my wife and I kept saying "please, please don't let this be where he has an affair with the girl young enough to be his (great?) granddaughter". As soon as a scene came up when it was obvious they were going to do just that, we both emitted a loud "EWWWW!", and didn't watch another second of it.

Sturgis - That was a fascinating post. Thanks for sharing.

Snood - PDA with couples is not always kissing. The ability to hold hands or more simple gestures are also public displays. The objections I hear about "rubbing it in other people's faces" usually make no distinction. That said, I take a different position (and perhaps it is generational), I simply don't care about PDA at all. I'm quite used to seeing men holding hands or kissing other men, and the same goes for women. That's my neighborhood, and it's nothing I even have a moment's pause over. I understand some people find it distasteful, but that information only effects my own choices on how I display affection for my girlfriend in public. It can turn a group of three in a park into a couple and a third wheel. That's were my consideration on the matter takes me, not if display unto themselves are appropriate or not.

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I, too, prefer lesbians making out over lesbians kissing. Lesbians kissing is as pointless as a swimsuit issue of Playboy. But maybe the other thing is more of a magazine and TV preference of mine.

I think there is a generational component to it. Times are changing, as they always do, and what some find anathema others feel as normal because it's become normal in their lives. That's a good thing! It means we're progressing as a culture beyond our tribal days. Although I do think we're genetically encoded towards survival instincts, we can see today that we don't need to allow only a subset of the species to survive and thrive within the culture. Just as I can train myself not to bulk up to survive the upcoming winter in a cave, we can train ourselves to embrace a more diverse culture. Eventually, hopefully, our genetic programming will catch up to our new cultural norms.

I was wondering, does it mean that girls who kiss each other are classed as homos? I have witnessed many woman kissing who I am sure were straight. I think the euuu factor comes into play when the kiss is pashinate.