Why I Am Not Gay (Aaron Swartz's Raw Thought)

Contents:

• CAN SOMEONE BE HOMOSEXUAL AND NOT GAY?
• ‘I AM GAY – BUT I WASN’T BORN THIS WAY’
• AM I GAY?
• AM I GAY OR NOT QUIZ?
• HOW TO KNOW IF YOU ARE GAY
• I LIKE GUYS BUT I DON’T WANT TO BE GAY. HOW DO I STOP BEG GAY?
• AM I GAY? HOW DO YOU KNOW IF YOU ARE GAY?
• PEOPLE THK I'M GAY... BUT I'M NOT
• HOW DO I KNOW IF I AM GAY? SIGNS YOU ARE GAY
• SYNONYMS FOR NOT GAY
• HOW DO I KNOW I’M NOT REALLY GAY/STRAIGHT?
• WHY I AM NOT GAY
• “AM I GAY OR NOT?” TAKE THIS QUIZ TO FD OUT
• HOW TO ACCEPT THAT YOU ARE GAY
• IS YOUR MAN GAY, STRAIGHT, OR BISEXUAL?

CAN SOMEONE BE HOMOSEXUAL AND NOT GAY?

Jt for funI'm spic that I may be gayI've never had a csh on anyone, and am unsure where I lie on the spectm of sexualyWhat would your ial partner be if you two are gog to spend a week on an island? Havg sex wh the person I love mostCuddlg wh the person I love mostJt beg next to the person I love mostHangg out wh iends / beg aloneHow would you feel if your bt iend me out as gay? So when we therapists are nonted wh male clients, often married on, who e to wh ep nflicts about their sexual attractn to other men, we often fd that they are willg to e the word “homosexual, ” but chew the “gay” label.

Unfortunately, much of our natn’s polics have long exacerbated the problem as well, shamg and vilifyg homosexualy, leadg legns of men stgglg wh sexual inty to ternalize their homophobia. I warned them of the pfalls of keepg their sexual orientatn secret: a life of creased prsn, pursug a secret life the gay unrground wh the danger of beg ught, how attemptg to supprs urg n often e them to bee even more obssed wh them.

They may need, om time to time, to seek further therapy, but wh the right therapist, one who has thoroughly unrstood the dangers of such practic of “reparative therapy” which the therapist seeks to change the client’s sexual inty om gay to straight. Bee the labels “homosexual” or “gay” rry such a stigma, some of the men seek help for their “sex addictn” and see their homosexualy as an actg out of same-sex urg.

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

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.

AM I 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. “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.

AM I GAY OR NOT QUIZ?

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.

HOW TO KNOW IF YOU ARE GAY

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.

I LIKE GUYS BUT I DON’T WANT TO BE GAY. HOW DO I STOP BEG 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).

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

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 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. 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.

PEOPLE THK I'M GAY... BUT I'M NOT

“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?

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!

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

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. 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. 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.

SYNONYMS FOR NOT 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'. 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.

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

” Some people’s doubts are further plited by havg such experienc as hearg other people talkg or lookg their directn and thkg that the people mt be analyzg their behavr or appearance and talkg about them – discsg how they mt be gay (or straight). I have sometim wonred if those who experience the most distrs om such thoughts as the do so bee they were raised wh more strongly homophobic or anti-gay attus to beg wh, or if is simply bee one’s sexualy n be such a basic doubt. Lookg at attractive men or women, or pictur of them, or readg sexually oriented lerature or pornography (hetero- or homosexual), to see if they are sexually excg.

The flip si of this is when they look at thgs havg to do wh sex of an oppose orientatn and then feel aroed some way, which they then nclu to mean that they liked , which means that they are gay (or straight). Makg a seri of three-mute tap that based on the wrgs gradually suggt more and more that you are gay, and listeng to them several tim a day changg them when they no longer bother you). And men-who-had-sex-wh-men cid that they were an out-group — they were gay — and they served rights dog so, they transformed an actn (havg relatnships wh someone of the same genr) to an inty (“beg gay”).

And straight men had to be on nstant guard agast beg attracted to other men — if they were, meant that ep down, they were actually new gay inty was projected back through history — famo historil figur were “outed” as gay, bee they’d once taken lovers of their own genr. 2) Homophobia - you have a really garbled tale here, which pretty clearly om seeg current tellectualizg, and not where me om (“In dog so, they transformed an actn (havg relatnships wh someone of the same genr) to an inty …” - you have this very much reversed terms of history. Some people really are gay or straight — or to take away the inty, which you are rrect to mimize, some people are exclively sexually and emotnally attracted to people of the same sex, and some only like the oppose.

WHY I AM NOT GAY

However, until all sis see that gay, lbian, straight, bi, anythg is the same as beg “lor bld” when to race, g to grips wh your inty was and remas a path to personal growth for certa people that nnot be abolished lt we leave some of our brethren behd to drown the ep end wh no support. I am a 28 year old, puter programmg, mic theatre lovg, cranium playg, gay male who is an all around awome guy that is so proud of how I had to stggle and how those stggled before to make OK for me to say that.

It is the curse of gay men / promiscuo anyone — the relative difficulty stcturg the long term monogamo relatnship that seems to duce the most happs the most people. Not bee I’m particularly effemate, but bee of all the crap that’s tied up “beg a man:” not talkg about your feelgs, beg troverted, misogyny (even for gay men), and so forth. I thk the biggt “advancement” queer/gay stuff the last twenty years is the unrstandg that you n’t really talk about “genr” whout talkg about sexualy stuff and vice versa.

“AM I GAY OR NOT?” TAKE THIS QUIZ TO FD OUT

My real gripe wh “gay” and “bi, ” is that spls hairs, and means that people who do the homo thg 40% of the time get shunted to another tegory om the people who do the homo thg 80% of the time, when really such thgs are largely irrelevant. Bis jt affectg how I actually physilly have sex and the chunk of the populatn that would be my potential partners, personally I thk I thk differently than a heterosexual person ( the same way that men thk they thk differently om women, except I thk I thk differently om both straight men and straight women) and bee I’m gay when I have sex I don’t don’t have babi which means I would have to nsir adoptn or surrogacy or to not have a kid at all.

HOW TO ACCEPT THAT YOU ARE GAY

I’m engaged to my boyiend of 5+ years and bee we’re gay a lot of aspects of our engagement/weddg will be different (bis the fact that we have to al wh legal issu at the moment).

IS YOUR MAN GAY, STRAIGHT, OR BISEXUAL?

Perhaps someone like you shouldn’t choose to have gay or bi or anythg as an inty bee don’t fe as much of who you are as a person and how you spend the day-to-day moments of your life (bis when you’re hookg up wh someone), jt like someone wouldn’t intify themselv as a Jewish person if they don’t believe the relign and don’t practice all s ruals/etc. But an orthodox Jew who om strong Jewish blood who liv a muny wh other orthodox Jews and only buys thgs wh their muny se as more than jt a label (although I thk they n still break ee om that relign but beg gay isn’t somethg I n “break ee” om). My last post scribed a populatn of mal who nsir themselv heterosexual, do not label themselv gay or bisexual, chew volvement wh the LGBT muny, are often married or romantilly volved wh an oppose-sex partner, and who engage sex wh mal or exprs the sire to do so.

Due large part to the popularizatn of the topic the btsellg 2005 book On the Down Low: A Journey to the Liv of 'Straight' Black Men Who Sleep wh Men, [i] Lato and Ain-Amerin men are the primary subjects rearch wh non-gay intified MSM. One of the earlit studi, "The Bisexual and Non-Gay Attached Rearch Project" om the early 1990s, found that participants engagg same-sex sexual behavr but not intifyg as gay or bisexual scribed themselv as “kky, ” “normal, ” or “jt a guy.