Gay, Not Gay, Straight, Not Straight | Psychology Today

Contents:

• AM I GAY?
• AM I GAY? HOW DO YOU KNOW IF YOU ARE GAY?
• WHY ARE PEOPLE GAY? GAY BY CHOICE OR IS BEG GAY GEIC?
• ‘I AM GAY – BUT I WASN’T BORN THIS WAY’
• HOW TO KNOW IF YOU ARE GAY
• AM I GAY OR NOT QUIZ?
• AM I GAY QUIZ
• HOW DO I KNOW IF I AM GAY? SIGNS YOU ARE GAY
• AM I GAY OR STRAIGHT? MAYBE THIS FUN QUIZ WILL TELL ME
• AM I GAY OR BISEXUAL? QUIZ
• HOW TO TELL IF YOUR GUY FRIEND IS GAY
• KEV MAXEN BE FIRST MALE ACH A US MEN’S PROFSNAL SPORTS LEAGUE TO PUBLICLY E OUT AS GAY
• GAY, NOT GAY, STRAIGHT, NOT STRAIGHT

AM I GAY?

Gay - While this adjective has historilly scribed men who are attracted to other men, the term now is ed to refer to anyone who experienc romantic, emotnal, or physil attractn to people of the same genr.

Some people that have homosexual experienc ntue not to intify as gay while others that have never had a homosexual experience and rather, jt have homosexual feelgs, may ll themselv gay. "Wh time, someone who is gay will realize that not only are they sexually attracted to members of the same sex, but that this attractn is not transnal, or as often scribed 'jt a phase'. It very much appears that same-sex sexual attractn is not a choice but actg on is; so if you fe gay as the mere prence of same-sex attractn, then om everythg we unrstand, beg gay is not a choice.

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.

AM I GAY? HOW DO YOU KNOW IF YOU ARE GAY?

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.

”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.

WHY ARE PEOPLE GAY? GAY BY CHOICE OR IS BEG GAY GEIC?

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. 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.

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

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. 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. 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 KNOW IF YOU ARE 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?

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.

AM I GAY OR NOT QUIZ?

”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.

AM I GAY QUIZ

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. “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? “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?

HOW DO I KNOW IF I AM GAY? SIGNS YOU ARE GAY

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.

AM I GAY OR STRAIGHT? MAYBE THIS FUN QUIZ WILL TELL ME

“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.

AM I GAY OR BISEXUAL? QUIZ

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. When down to , there is no reliable "Am I Gay tt", so the only way to know that you are gay (fn of gay) is to look wh yourself to terme your own thoughts and feelgs towards others of the same sex.

The olr I got, the ls nfint I felt how well I knew myself, and the more I looked outward for anythg that might provi retrospect, maybe I should have known who I was the first time I went lookg for a quiz lled “Am I gay? I didn’t know I uld try somethg new before knowg I wanted and off throughout my 20s I had wished I were gay bee then I would have an explanatn for why men and me didn’t mix romantilly.

HOW TO TELL IF YOUR GUY FRIEND IS GAY

I am a trans guy who intifys as bisexual and I got gay (spe havg a sire for sexual experienc wh women, jt not to them romantilly) like the tt says, don't take really seruly. Mmm i jt got disappoted, i thought i uld be bi but i jt end up nfirmg that i'm gay by this quiz, well i jt believe that i uld be bi bee i have many sexual fantasi about women and enjoy them. Ummm I thk the quiz thks I'm a boy for some ron lled me sir many tim I'm so nfed I got straight and said that I'm all for the girls but I'm not a boy I'm a girl so do that mean I'm gay?

In 1993, a study published the journal Science showed that fai wh two homosexual brothers were very likely to have certa geic markers on a regn of the X chromosome known as Xq28. In 1991, a study published the journal Science seemed to show that the hypothalam, which ntrols the release of sex hormon om the puary gland, gay men differs om the hypothalam straight men. PET and MRI studi performed 2008 have shown that the two halv of the bra are more symmetril homosexual men and heterosexual women than heterosexual men and homosexual women.

KEV MAXEN BE FIRST MALE ACH A US MEN’S PROFSNAL SPORTS LEAGUE TO PUBLICLY E OUT AS GAY

Today, however, we know much more about the bra than we did when homosexualy was nsired a disease that required treatment, and the amount of knowledge that we have about the bra is creasg.

GAY, NOT GAY, STRAIGHT, NOT STRAIGHT

If we fe beg gay as engagg homosexual behavr (the ncept of “gay” as an inty is a Wtern cultural ncept – people who have sex wh both men and women may ll themselv gay, straight or bisexual, pendg on the l of their culture or subculture), then people stop beg gay as soon as they stop engagg this behavr. I believe that people have the right to engage any behavr that they choose, as long as their actns do not harm others, and I believe that gay sex and gay relatnships do not e harm to anyone.