(07-05-2014, 01:37 PM)Samantha Rogers Wrote: Kim, I can understand that way of thinking, but I tend to disagree, generally speaking, of course.
I know that is a commonly echoed theme in some quarters, particularly among those who are gay themselves.
But I still disagree, and here is why.
It is human nature to try to categorize people into neat and tidy categories that meet commonly understood stereotypes. It makes life much simpler. However, people do not always cooperate. Tee hee.
It is especially attractive to categorize if that allows someone (not referring to anyone) reinforces ones own insecurity about identity. There is perceived safety in numbers. And I hear it all the time. In the same way, as I know you know from the other board, debate continues in the TG world as to whether all CDs are really in some form actually the same as TS.
It seems to me that it is far more likely that, just as there is no real binary in gender, that there is also no real binary in sexuality. Sure, some people are clearly and firmly at one pole, either totally straight or totally gay, but the main body of people are, I think, probably somewhere else, and merely adopt rigid positions through social conditioning. I hesitate to say somwhere in between, or in the middle, because that, too, is an oversimplification. The worlds of gender and sexuality are, for me, like brilliant, many faceted diamonds. People, far from being rigidly placed in polar positions, tend to defy simple binary classifications, and, rather, are more like different facets of those two diamonds, and no two are exactly the same. Trying to place them into neat little boxes, while convenient, does little to promote real understanding nor is it, for me at least, conducive to the overall spiritual welfare of those individuals or to anyone.
That said, there are, of course, people who fail to understand this and spend their time trying to force themselves to conform to one of society's categories, often driving themselves crazy in the process.
Of course, that is just my opinion...
I will shut up now...lol
Sammie, I am at least 95% in agreement with your post. One or two things more, in the context of this thread. I am fully convinced that sexual orientation is another spectrum on which each of us is located somewhere, but it may be difficult to gain a proper appreciation of where we stand on that spectrum, not least because of the propensity we have of classifying people, starting from the moment of birth (or before with ultrasound imaging!) when we are assigned a sex and gender based on apparent physical factors, and once so assigned are expected to conform in behavior to our assigned sex, i.e. to fit in the male or female box defined by the culture and environment in which we find ourselves. If either or both of our sexual or gender orientations is variant from that assigned, we have problems. although we may not realize the reasons for those problems. In my case my efforts to overcome these problems persuaded me that I must be homosexual. As I very gradually appreciated that I was unwilling and unable to establish emotional bonds, at least with non-effeminate males, and was sent running by any attempt to do so by other males, I realized where my true sexual orientation lay towards females, even if frustratingly I was unable to pursue relationships with them unless I could perceive myself as the pursued. I also came to believe that a great many of the gay men I had encountered were also desperately averse to developing any continuing relationship with the other men they encountered, leaving me to wonder whether it was only some developmental problem preventing them from pursuing heterosexual relationships rather than indulging in the extreme promiscuity (the numbers game) that later did so much to kick start the AIDS epidemic. Fortunately my own exposure to that world was limited by severe guilt reactions and gradual realization by the mid-70s that my orientation was essentially heterosexual. So behaviorally I may have seemed to switch orientation, although gradually and nothing to do with growing breasts.
When I emigrated to Canada 40 years ago, the firm that recruited me actually hired two of us. While I must have seemed a loner without apparent relationships until I surprised everyone by acquiring a ready made family, the other recruit was fairly openly gay, and settled into a live-in relationship with his rather effeminate boy friend, until he in turn surprised everybody by seemingly quite suddenly marrying a female criminal lawyer specializing in cases involving LGBT people. The marriage has been enduring, they have had and raised two children, and to external appearances it is successful. So there is another apparent switch, although with no connection that I know of to breasts.