Is Your Man Gay, Straight, or Bisexual? | Psychology Today

Contents:

• ‘I AM GAY – BUT I WASN’T BORN THIS WAY’
• HOW TO KNOW IF YOU ARE GAY
• HOW TO ACCEPT THAT YOU ARE GAY
• NOTHG GAY ABOUT BEG GAY QUOT
• HOW DO I KNOW I’M NOT REALLY GAY/STRAIGHT?
• THE HIDN GAY LIV FALLY BEG UNVERED
• GAY MEN AND AGG: FDG YOUR PURPOSE
• IS YOUR MAN GAY, STRAIGHT, OR BISEXUAL?
• HOW TO GET A MAN (FOR GAY MEN)
• OVERG THE SHAME OF BEG GAY

‘I AM GAY – BUT I WASN’T BORN THIS WAY’

A Gui for Women Concerned About Their Men, but simply put, some men have no sire to be nnected wh gay culture, and scerely nsir themselv to not be gay or bisexual. You so obvly nnot be gay, was her implitn, bee this is good was 2006, a full five years before Lady Gaga would set the Born This Way argument atop s unassailable cultural perch, but even then the popular unrstandg of orientatn was that was somethg you were born wh, somethg you uldn’t change. But what feels most accurate to say is that I’m gay – but I wasn’t born this people may fd their sir changg directn - and n't jt be explaed as experimentatn (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)In 1977, jt over 10% of Amerins thought gayns was somethg you were born wh, acrdg to Gallup.

Throughout the same perd, the number of Amerins who believe homosexualy is “due to someone’s upbrgg/environment” fell om jt unr 60% to ias reached cril mass pop culture, first wh Lady Gaga’s 2011 Born This Way and one year later wh Macklemore’s Same Love, the chos of which has a gay person sgg “I n’t change even if I tried, even if I wanted to. ” Around the same time, the Human Rights Campaign clared unequivolly that “Beg gay is not a choice, ” and to claim that is “giv unwarranted crence to roundly disproven practic such as nversn or reparative therapy.

”People who challenge the Born This Way narrative are often st as homophobic, and their thkg is nsired backwardAs Jane Ward not Not Gay: Sex Between Straight Whe Men, what’s tertg about many of the claims is how transparent their speakers are wh their polil motivatns. “Such statements, ” she wr, “fe blogil acunts wh an obligatory and nearly ercive force, suggtg that anyone who scrib homosexual sire as a choice or social nstctn is playg to the hands of the enemy.

HOW TO KNOW IF YOU ARE GAY

” People who challenge the Born This Way narrative are often st as homophobic, and their thkg is nsired backward – even if they are themselv, for example, Cynthia Nixon of Sex and The Cy fame.

”Gay rights do not have to hge on a geic explanatn for sexualy (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)For Aravosis, and many gay activists like him, the public will only accept and affirm gay people if they thk they were born gay.

Patrick Grzanka, Assistant Profsor of Psychology at Universy of Tennsee, for stance, has shown that some people who believe that homosexualy is nate still hold negative views of gays. In fact, the homophobic and non-homophobic rponnts he studied shared siar levels of belief a Born This Way Samantha Allen not at The Daily Beast, the growg public support for gays and lbians has grown out of proportn wh the rise the number of people who believe homosexualy is fixed at birth; would be unlikely that this small change opn uld expla the spike support for gay marriage, for stance.

HOW TO ACCEPT THAT YOU ARE GAY

“It don’t seem to matter as much whether or not people believe that gay people are born that way as do that they simply know someone who is currently gay, ” Allen spe of the studi, those who ph agast Born This Way narrativ have been heavily cricised by gay activists. Siarly, Ward has received her own hatemail for phg agast the lg LGB narrativ, wh some gays tellg her she’s “worse than Ann Coulter, ” the ntroversial US thor of books like If Democrats Had Any Bras, They’d Be Republins. And when I published my say on choosg to be gay, an irate Amerin lbian activist wrote me that had “jt been nfirmed” to her that my wrg was “directly rponsible for four gay aths Rsia.

NOTHG GAY ABOUT BEG GAY QUOT

There is a unanimo opn that gay “nversn therapy” should be rejectedLet’s first be clear that whatever the origs of our sexual orientatn, there is a unanimo opn that gay “nversn therapy” should be rejected. The efforts are potentially harmful, acrdg to the APA, “bee they prent the view that the sexual orientatn of lbian, gay and bisexual youth is a mental illns of disorr, and they often ame the abily to change one’s sexual orientatn as a personal and moral failure.

HOW DO I KNOW I’M NOT REALLY GAY/STRAIGHT?

The APA, for example, while notg that most people experience ltle to no choice over their orientatns, says this of homosexualy’s origs:“Although much rearch has examed the possible geic, hormonal, velopmental, social and cultural fluenc on sexual orientatn, no fdgs have emerged that perm scientists to nclu that sexual orientatn is termed by any particular factor or factors. ”Siarly, the Amerin Psychiatric Associatn wr a 2013 statement that while the of heterosexualy and homosexualy are currently unknown, they are likely “multifactorial cludg blogil and behavral roots which may vary between different dividuals and may even vary over time. ” Acrdg to LeVay’s rearch, a specific part of the bra, the third terstial nucls of the anterr hypothalam (INAH-3), is smaller homosexual men than is heterosexual as they might, scientists have stggled to inty any particular gen that nsistently predict the directns of our love and sire (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)Read moreYou n spot the problem wh this study a e away: were the gay bras LeVay studied born that way, or did they bee that way?

Another landmark paper on the origs of homosexualy was published 1993 by a geicist named Dean Hamer, who was terted to learn whether homosexualy uld be hered. Begng om his observatn that there are more gay relativ on a mother’s si than a father’s, Hamer turned his attentn to the X chromosome (which is passed on by the mother).

Bis the dividual criqu leveled agast each new study announcg some gay gene disvery, there are major methodologil cricisms to make about the entire enterprise general, as Grzanka pots out: “If we look at the raveno pursu, particularly among Amerin scientists, to fd a gay gene, what we see is that the ncln has already been arrived at.

THE HIDN GAY LIV FALLY BEG UNVERED

”The other problem wh Born This Way science is summed up nicely by Simon Copland: “Scientists are askg whether homosexualy is natural when we n’t even agree exactly what homosexualy is.

” Our sir may exprs themselv many different ways that do not all nform to existg notns of ‘gay’, ‘straight’ or ‘bisexual’ is one of the bt takeaways of Ward’s Not Gay, a peratg analysis of sex between straight whe men. ”Gay or not, our sir are oriented and re-oriented throughout our liv (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)In fact, the straight-intified men Ward studied for her book sometim found themselv suatns that sparked the sire for homosexual sex: aterni, ployments, public rtrooms, etc. Ward thks this qutn is the next ontier of queer I first said I chose to be gay, a queer Amerin journalist challenged me to name the time and date of my choice.

GAY MEN AND AGG: FDG YOUR PURPOSE

I’m claimg that at some pot durg llege, my sexual and romantic sir beme reoriented toward menThkg back to my llege romanc wh women and men, I n beg to unrstand how my own experienc might have helped me to ‘cultivate’ my sire for homosexualy.

I want to be very clear: I’m not claimg I simply began to ‘grow to’ my homosexualy, or that as I beme more fortable wh beg gay, I allowed myself the eedom to exprs what had always been latent wh me.

IS YOUR MAN GAY, STRAIGHT, OR BISEXUAL?

“Limg our unrstandg of any plex human experience is always gog to be worse than allowg to be plited, ” he gay rights activists pared sexualy to relign - a ccial part of our life that we should be ee to practise however we like (Cred: Ignac Lehamann)So what are we to do wh the Born This Way rhetoric?

HOW TO GET A MAN (FOR GAY MEN)

“That’s a very narrow unrstandg of what jtice looks like, ” says about the ncern that homophob will want to ‘enurage’ gay people to be straight if there’s no blogil basis for sexualy? It don’t take too much creativy to image a scenar which homophobic parents, upon beg rmed their fet has ‘the gay gene’, choose what to them may seem the lser of two evils: abortn. ”Acrdg to surveys, ls than half of Generatn Z intify as "100% heterosexual", suggtg more and more people have embraced their sexual fluidy (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)Perhaps is time to look to the begng of the gay rights movement.

“Then there was a shift, and the lears of the movement chose to jump on board wh a ls nuanced argument that people already unrstood: jt like race, people are born wh their homosexualy. More than a third chose a number between one and rponse to the poll, one of my Facebook iends quipped about how natural selectn mt be workg overtime, what wh makg all of gay!

I’m thankful for a new generatn that is pable of imagg sexualy a way that transcends the gay/straight bary, that uldn’t re ls about what happened to their bodi and mds to make them who they are today. If you have had romantic experienc or fantasi volvg people who are the same genr as you, then there is a good chance you are gay or bisexual, but 's okay if you're a ltle nfed. Most people the LGBTQ+ muny know om experience that acceptg your sexualy will lead to your beg a happier, more open this gui, the term gay has been ed to clu all forms of non-heterosexual attractn, whether that be people who are lbian, gay, bisexual, queer, pansexual, or otherwise not straight.

OVERG THE SHAME OF BEG GAY

Beg gay do not necsarily make you any ls mascule or feme, and there is no need or prsure to nform to stereotyp that don't feel right to you - bee you are who you are. The laws the Bible were maly for health purpos - shunng homosexualy is right next to not gettg tattoos, not eatg pork, and not wearg mixed lens, but you n bet your bottom dollar all your neighbors do those thgs. You may regret the acceptance of your orientatn the future, pecially if you're a part of the world where the gay muny is beg prosecuted by a specific culture.

Article SummaryXIf you stggle wh acceptg your attractn to the same sex, know that beg gay is pletely normal and you n be proud of who you are by fdg support and embracg your dividualy. Internalized homophobia -- self-shamg, self-hatred -- leads many gay men, and many queer people general, to recreate their closets long after they're "out" by shunng others, particularly those they nsir "flamboyant. This parable piece by lbian wrer Sarah Prager go through the lp of great gays who changed the world -- om ventor Alan Turg to Tchaikovsky, the poser, to the Renaissance pater and ventor Leonardo da Vci.

Fd a gay elr who's been where you are and r for your well-beg, someone who unrstands you and never pass judgment, someone who lets you make the mistak you need to make. There would be no ternalized self-hatred if no one had ever told you that beg gay is wrong, or that gay sex is disgtg, or that gay men n't feel real love, or that beg transgenr is fake, or that beg nonbary is a mental illns or a ll for attentn.