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Is sexual orientation determined at birth?

Is sexual orientation determined at birth?

  • Yes

    Votes: 14 50.0%

  • no

    Votes: 14 50.0%
  • Total voters
    28
Laika

Laika

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
Voted "no". My opinion is that its something that changes over the course of a lifetime. Its not however a choice as sex is too deep in the psyche to change by will power.
 
Politesse

Politesse

Amor Vincit Omnia
Sexual orientation comes in part from biology, in part from society; certainly, humans are born with an instinct for forming close friendships, and for coupling. How those two potentials get combined, and with whom, proceeds from a complex interplay of cultural assumptions, societal expectation, and a person's psychology.
 
Aštra’el

Aštra’el

Aštara, Blade of Aštoreth
PopeADope said:
You don't think people are born gay?
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What some refer to as "sexual orientation" is not something one is born with, and not one single choice a person makes either. It is something that is affected by thoughts, choices, and experiences, as well as the cultures and people around us.
 
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Spiderman

Spiderman

Veteran Member
If you are gay, I would appreciate it if you let me know whether or not you feel you were born that way. Thanks!
 
L

lostwanderingsoul

Well-Known Member
Some people who are born male do not want to be male so they act like females. Some people who are born Mexican do not want to be Mexican so they act French. Some people who are born 5 feet 6 inches tall want to be taller so they act 6 feet 3 inches. Nobody really changed anything.
 
Jeremiahcp

Jeremiahcp

Well-Known Jerk
lostwanderingsoul said:
Some people who are born male do not want to be male so they act like females. Some people who are born Mexican do not want to be Mexican so they act French. Some people who are born 5 feet 6 inches tall want to be taller so they act 6 feet 3 inches. Nobody really changed anything.
Click to expand...

"Some people who are born male do not want to be male so they act like females"

It is a bit different then just acting.

Sociology recognizes a difference between sex (biology) and gender (cultural construct) a transgender male to female is no more "acting" to be female than a biological female is; as in, there is nothing in our biology that says girls wear pink and boys wear blue.

Sex, we told students, was what was ascribed by biology: anatomy, hormones, and physiology. Gender, we said, was an achieved status: that which is constructed through psychological, cultural, and cultural, and social means.
Click to expand...

The idea that gender is different than sex is a commonly accepted notion in Sociology. Same with the idea that gender is a "learned" (using that word loosely) trait; however, that is not what defines the drive for our sexual orientation. A person who is male in simple outward biology could be driven to adopt femininity due to the physiology of the brain which could be more in line with that of a biological female.

Garfinkel's (1967, pp. 118-40) case study of Agnes, a transsexual raised as a boy who adopted a female identity at age 17 and underwent a sex reassignment operation several years later, demonstrates how gender is created through interaction and at the same time structures interaction. Agnes, whom Garfinkel characterized as a "practical methodologist," developed a number of procedures for passing as a "normal, natural female" both prior to and after her surgery. She had the practical task of managing the fact that she possessed male genitalia and that she lacked the social resources a girl's biography would presumably provide in everyday interaction. In short, she needed to display herself as a woman, simultaneously learning what it was to be a woman. Of necessity, this full-time pursuit took place at a time when most people's gender would be well-accredited and routinized. Agnes had to consciously contrive what the vast majority of women do without thinking. She was not "faking" what "real" women do naturally. She was obliged to analyze and figure out how to act within socially structured circumstances and conceptions of femininity that women born with appropriate biological credentials come to take for granted early on. As in the case of others who must "pass," such as transvestites, Kabuki actors, or Dustin Hoffman's "Tootsie," Agnes's case makes visible what culture has made invisible-the accomplishment of gen
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So while gender is something "learned", it is not an act.

This is an excellent article if anyone wants to understand the difference between gender and sex.

Doing Gender on JSTOR

It should also be noted that gender identity does not necessarily need to line up with sexual orientation. You could have a transgender female who is sexually attracted to biological females.
 
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sun rise

sun rise

The world is on fire
Premium Member
If you study and talk with transgender people, it's clear that this starts manifesting before puberty in many if not most cases.

And it's clear to me that sexual orientation is a continuum, with many being on one pole or the other but a goodly number being somewhere in the middle from being curious about what same-sex sex is like to experimenting to identifying him or her self as bi.

Then there's the animal evidence where even fruit flies have homosexual behavior showing that being gay is far from just a human trait and is present way down in the animal kingdom.

From all of this it's clear to me that what is being debated is the morality of acting on same-sex desires rather than having them which is innate.
 
Jeremiahcp

Jeremiahcp

Well-Known Jerk
If sexual orientation was choice we'd have a lot less heterosexuals. If people could get laid twice as much they would chose to be bisexual.

But really, the idea that we'd have such a high proportion of heterosexuals without biology driving that behavior is not realistic. If heterosexuality is not by choice then I don't see how homosexuality could be by choice.
 
Shadow Wolf

Shadow Wolf

Certified People sTabber
It's a very complicated subject. While many homosexuals are aware of their differences early on, there are also studies regarding the fluidity of sexuality, environmental/cultural aspects that effect it, genetics, and even things exposed to while in utero.
I would doubt it's hard set at birth, as someone just born has no sexual interests, curiosities, or knowledge, but that doesn't detract from the many, many studies that show it isn't a conscious choice.
 
Politesse

Politesse

Amor Vincit Omnia
PopeADope said:
If you are gay, I would appreciate it if you let me know whether or not you feel you were born that way. Thanks!
Click to expand...
Oh, I should have clarified. I am gay myself, or some sort of very gay-tinted bisexual perhaps. No, I don't think I was born with that or any other label. I do not feel that I "chose" homosexuality either - the chips fell where they did, whether anatomy, physiology, culture, social interactions or (as I have outlined in my original post) all of the above were to blame for it. I cannot imagine a world in which I did not love or at least deeply admire my partner. But previous generations or other cultures might have had very different ways of understanding that relationship. Perhaps were I born Washoe my partner and I would come to be seen as Two Spirits; in Victorian England, "dear friends" who spent more time with each other than our wives but never thought to make it a sexual matter; In Rome, tutor and pupil who hung on to the erotic element longer than was quite seemly but would never have thought to make it a family thing, unless by marrying off our daughters to each other like Marcus and Lucius. Every time, every nation has its own ways of channeling and defining the potentials and parameters of human attraction. Whatever I might have been "naturally" is wholly obscured by the customs and assumptions of my time and place.
 
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