Polar bears in particular!
and
I just learned something about polar bears at
Urban Dictionary
I need to get out more.
...yipes that first one is just weird!
In my circle it has always been the older furry bear (definition #5)
Oh that (1) feels gooood ... never knew thats what it was called tho
I had no idea it had an official name.
It's making me reconsider Klondike Bars.
I saw a documentary on HBO, it was about gender but dealt with sexuality in general.
Among the claims in the show were that variation is the norm, exclusive homosexuality is a human construct and that homophobic men have strong gay tendencies.
They showed two groups of heterosexual men gay porn, one group open-minded toward gays, the second, men who expressed homophobic fears. They measured response by gauging erections. The first group generally did not become aroused.
Among the second group, arousal was common but when asked if they were aroused each and every one of them reported that they were not.
This study confirms what I have known for a long time that homophobes, by and large, are closet homosexuals.
The program also pointed out that to classify humans as homo or hetero is absurd. Homo, hetero and Bi is better. Hetero, homo, bi, transgendered, intersexed is better yet but still woefully lacking. Why? Because, in reality, each individual is his or her OWN classification as each individual is unique in his or her sexuality.
It is one thing to consider biology but when you add all the social, cultural, moral, religious considerations into the mix, it makes human sexuality so complex that it is almost impossible to draw any conclusions about ANYTHING. Add to that the fact that people do not tell the truth about their inclinations and it is beyond impossible.
Roxxxanne, I agree. Unfortunately our need to make managable classifications often results in falsifications of reality. All our classifications assume identities, i.e., all homos and all heteros are alike and, therefore form REAL classifications. In nature there are no identities. We make classifications for the ease they introduce into our lives, but we must remember their limitations in order to avoid gross errors.
JLNobody wrote:Roxxxanne, I agree. Unfortunately our need to make managable classifications often results in falsifications of reality. All our classifications assume identities, i.e., all homos and all heteros are alike and, therefore form REAL classifications. In nature there are no identities. We make classifications for the ease they introduce into our lives, but we must remember their limitations in order to avoid gross errors.
I would submit to you that our classifications don't assume identities, but rather at their origins they assume certain attributes or actions. People then take those classifications and begin generalizing them and then applying them in place of individual identities.
That is the crime. Classifications are not inherently bad, wrong or even immoral. It's what a society does with classifications that casts them in a negative light.
Questioner, by "identities" I referred to things begin identical in all respects. We know that even pennies are different in some way; they are only FORMALLY identical.
But you are correct in noting that classifications are not inherently bad. Indeed, I believe they are essential to our very survival. All ideas and logic depend on the assumption of the existence of "kinds of things" (concrete and abstract). We know there are no "things" in nature, only processes (becomings instead of beings), but our logic and language could not function without the useful fictions provided by classifications of things. Class-ification means, of course, creating CLASSES of things. I can point,wordlessly, to a concrete cactus, but when I refer to cacti as a phenomenon, I am referring to an abstraction, a CLASS of "things" in my head.
Classifications are fine if they classify something that can be accurately classified. That excludes human sexuality.
I was reading an article in a woman's magazine at the salon last night. It told the story of a women who, after thirty years of relationships with men, fell in love with a woman. The first relationship fell apart, after two others, she found another woman to settle to down with but she doesn't label herself as gay or even bi. She feels like she is what she is, whatever that might be.
The article stated that women's sexuality is much more maleable than men and that the terms "hetero and homosexuality" did not even exist before the 19th century.
Interesting observation. Women are permitted to kiss in our society; men are not. It could be that there are more pressures on men to be "heterosexual", even conspicuously so. As such women are freer to at least investigate their "homosexual" potentialities.
Dangerous Comparison
Many people deem homosexuality as unnatural and wrong. I say that homosexuality is no more wrong than being a catholic priest. In both cases the involved people fail to meet one of the basic goals of life, they fail to reproduce. Since the beginning of time the goals of almost every being have been to find food, find water, and reproduce.
If being homosexual is "wrong" then so is every individual who ever gave up sex in the name of religion.
Oh come on, Aquitunk, you can't for a moment believe that "just being morally conservative" is a basis for homophobia. PHOBIA is a a word that means FEAR, like AGORAPHOBIA: the fear of going
out of your house, and all the other phobias. They are fears of things when there is really absolutely nothing to be afraid of, and you are trying to essentially tell me that ALL morally conservative persons are basically
NEUROTIC???? How very peculiar. I would be a bit less likely to shoot off at the mouth when you are in reality, opening your own fly. Permitting all comers to see exactly what & how YOU feel about this issue. How many
gay people have ever accosted you and tried to force you into a sexual
encounter you do not wish to engage in? I imagine never. Yet how many
"normal, hetero men have to "rape" women to get whatever it is their
perverted (BUT NORMAL) little minds desire." Actually, rape among gay communities isn't really ever an issue. So any genuine FEAR or PHOBIA that DOES exist rides in on the tide of heterosexuality, doesn't it?
I think that Homosexuality is the worlds natural process of population control.
babsatamelia wrote:Oh come on, Aquitunk, you can't for a moment believe that "just being morally conservative" is a basis for homophobia. PHOBIA is a a word that means FEAR, like AGORAPHOBIA: the fear of going
out of your house, and all the other phobias. They are fears of things when there is really absolutely nothing to be afraid of, and you are trying to essentially tell me that ALL morally conservative persons are basically
NEUROTIC???? How very peculiar. I would be a bit less likely to shoot off at the mouth when you are in reality, opening your own fly. Permitting all comers to see exactly what & how YOU feel about this issue. How many
gay people have ever accosted you and tried to force you into a sexual
encounter you do not wish to engage in? I imagine never. Yet how many
"normal, hetero men have to "rape" women to get whatever it is their
perverted (BUT NORMAL) little minds desire." Actually, rape among gay communities isn't really ever an issue. So any genuine FEAR or PHOBIA that DOES exist rides in on the tide of heterosexuality, doesn't it?
Your mistake is that you think that anyone who finds homosexuality disgusting is therefore a homophobic. I find cigarettes disgusting, does that mean that I'm afraid of smokers???
John
Your point about the cigarettes made something else clear in my mind --- cigarettes don't bother me but I really find grossly obese people disgusting.
I think this call of "homophobia" that comes up each time you express a feeling of revulsion for homosexual practices is just a lame response with no basis in fact.
And before anyone comes up with "smokerphobia" or "fattyphobia" NO I don't have those EITHER!!!
And oh, the lady who says "rape is unknown in homosexual communities" is blissfully unaware of the terrible conditions in prisons, for instance........
babsatamelia wrote:Oh come on, Aquitunk, you can't for a moment believe that "just being morally conservative" is a basis for homophobia. PHOBIA is a a word that means FEAR, like AGORAPHOBIA: the fear of going
I've been away from this tread for a while and am just catching up.
I think babsatamelia either misunderstood my point or I made it poorly. My point was (or was intended to be) that not all or perhaps even most people who object to homosexuality are denying there own sexuality and homosexual tendencies. Some people just do not like behavior which is out of the cultural norm. This tendency to paint people who object to homosexuality has closet homosexuals is a misuse of phycology and a disservice to homosexuals.
Whether Homosexuality is natural or unnatural( whatever that may mean) is really not important. The fact is that homosexuality exists and has, as far as I am aware, been noted to have flourished in ancient times.
The question that must be confronted, as far as I am concerned, is whether or not our society should not only accept homosexual behavior as normal but should also agree with homosexual activists that such behavior is indeed a viable and preferable life style.
The sexual behavior of homosexuals who are not overt and are behind closed doors is their business and, as far as I am aware, not criminal behavior.
However, since Homosexuality has been shown, through many peer-approved and reputable scientific studies to be partially genetically based, specifically, to have a heritability of about 50% and to be based on environmental causes about half the time, it can be viewed by parents and guardians as a danger.
If, as has occurred in many venues, public schools and other public areas are given to the dissemination of the idea that homosexuality is not only to be tolerated but approved, any child who may have leanings through genetic factors may indeed by tipped toward homosexuality through the addition of environmental factors.
A child who may be genetically threatened by allergic reactions, does not and should not, venture into allergenic enviroments.
Oh, come on, Deadcat, the only reason a child may be "in danger" of homosexuality is that that lifestyle is rendered difficult by the attitudes of our homophobic culture. I know gays (both male and female) who--apart from the difficulties presented them by their social identities in society--live rich lives. Some of them are even happily "married." We just have to lighten up. Homosexuality is a problem for homophobes, not for gays.
By the way, the analogy in your last paragraph is very faulty. I see no connection between peanut butter and homosexuality.
