A pneer of LGBTQ studi dar to suggt that gayns is a way of beg that gay men mt learn om one another to bee who they are. The geni of gay culture ris some of s most spised stereotyp -- atheticism, snobbery, melodrama, glamour, ritur of women, and obssn wh mothers -- and the social meang of style.
Contents:
- ‘I AM GAY – BUT I WASN’T BORN THIS WAY’
- HOW TO KNOW IF YOU ARE GAY
- ARE WE BORN GAY?
- WHY ARE PEOPLE GAY? GAY BY CHOICE OR IS BEG GAY GEIC?
- AM I GAY?
- WHEN DID YOU KNOW YOU WERE GAY?
- HOW I BEME GAY (AND LEARNED TO ENJOY )
- HOW TO COME OUT AS GAY OR LBIAN
- HOW TO BE GAY
‘I AM GAY – BUT I WASN’T BORN THIS WAY’
Why are people gay? Are they gay by choice or is beg gay geic? Are they born gay? Learn about the and reasons for beg gay. * how did you become gay *
How Olr Brothers Influence HomosexualyHomosexualy might be partly driven by a mother’s immune rponse to her male fet—which creas wh each son she has.Le MacGregor / RtersHere’s what we know: Homosexualy is normal. Between 2 and 11 percent of human adults report experiencg some homosexual feelgs, though the figure vari wily pendg on the survey.Homosexualy exists across cultur and even throughout the animal kgdom, as the thors of a mammoth new review paper on homosexualy wre. Female Japane maqu will even pete tersexually wh mal for exclive accs to female sexual partners.Here’s what we don’t know: What, specifilly, someone to bee gay, straight, or somethg between.
HOW TO KNOW IF YOU ARE GAY
Are you qutng your sexualy? Fd out if you’re gay, straight, bisexual, or asexual. Learn what the terms mean and if they apply to you. * how did you become gay *
Part of the explanatn is geic, but bee most intil tws of gay people are straight, heredy don’t expla everythg.The “why” qutn is important bee “there is a strong rrelatn between beliefs about the origs of sexual orientatn and tolerance of non-heterosexualy,” acrdg to the report thors, who are om seven universi spanng the globe. (When Atlantic ntributor Chandler Burr proposed his 1996 book, A Separate Creatn, that people are born gay, Southern Baptists lled to boytt Disney films and parks prott agast the publisher, Disney subsidiary Hypern.) It shouldn’t matter whether people “choose” to be gay, but polilly, do—at least for now.One of the most nsistent environmental explanatns for homosexualy is lled the “aternal birth orr effect.” Essentially, the more olr brothers a man has, the more likely he is to be gay. (Meanwhile, other studi have found the relatnship to be weak or nonexistent.) As psychologist Rch Sav-Williams wr an acpanyg mentary, the oute for any given baby boy might pend on the timg of the immune rponse and the fet’s sceptibily to the antibodi.Average prevalence 2013 (Sav-Williams and Vrangalova)Acrdg to the report, Blanchard now plans to tt mothers of gay and straight men for the prence of the antibodi.
ARE WE BORN GAY?
Simple, really: the gay fairy dropped by one morng my hyper-mascule nursery, loted at scenic Travis Air Force Base, California - male role mols galore! - sprkled the crib of the fant ... * how did you become gay *
But gaps will rema, such as why some firstborn sons are gay, why some intil tws of gay sons are straight, and why women are gay, to name jt a few.The review-paper thors do le out one explanatn for homosexualy, however: That tolerance for gay people enurag more people to bee gay.“Homosexual orientatn do not crease equency wh social tolerance, although s exprsn ( behavr and open intifitn) may do so,” they wre.That reasong—that a tolerant society somehow enurag homosexualy to flourish—has been ed to support anti-gay legislatn Uganda, Rsia, and elsewhere.
WHY ARE PEOPLE GAY? GAY BY CHOICE OR IS BEG GAY GEIC?
* how did you become gay *
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. ” 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.
AM I GAY?
”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. 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. “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.
WHEN DID YOU KNOW YOU WERE GAY?
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.
HOW I BEME GAY (AND LEARNED TO ENJOY )
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 TO COME OUT AS GAY OR LBIAN
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.
HOW TO BE GAY
” 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? 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. ” 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.