Is homosexuality a genetic or cultural phenomenon?

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Colbert is a genius

That's precisely my point. IMO most people are born bisexually with a strong preference towards their own gender for friendship and a strong preference towards the other gender for sex. In a traditional culture, hese preferences are cultivated and people who deviate from the norm adapt to these preferences due to social instincts like peer pressure. In the post-modern West, however, people are actually stimulated to question their sexuality. This, in combination with whatever positive experiences people may have had with other people of the same gender, whatever negative experiences people may have had with other people of the other gender and unusual parenting situation are in my opinion the causes of people labeling themselves as homosexual or bisexual.

However, feel free to tell your story. If possible, please explain to me where you think I may be wrong and why you think that way. I'm genuinely interested in your position as in spite of my experiences with lesbian women I haven't met anyone who labels himself or herself as bisexual.

Here you're actually making a case for it being genetic. You dislike women and prefer the company of men. But you are unable to override your innate (not chosen) heterosexuality and turn your intellectual attraction to men into a physical one as well. Nor are you able to override your physical attraction to women. It seems clear from this and other posts that your physical attraction to women is a burden to you since you dislike them so much and if it were actually a choice, you would have chosen otherwise.

I suspect my revulsion of the idea of having sex with men is largely cultural as is everyone else's. It's hard to tell really, because how can we know for certain why we have certain feelings?

With regards to my physical attraction to women, even heterosexual women tend to find women more attractive than men on a purely physical level. Women truely seem to be more attractive than men objectively. What attracts women most to men is usually not so much their body but their personality and behavior, unlike with men's attraction towards womenwhich is largely a physical thing. Again, homosexuality among men seems to be the only phenomenon that's more difficult to explain.



Well, the kind of women I date are usually women very atypical mindset for a woman. Those I tend to be more comfortable with and vice versa. There's no need to go for males, although I might have gone that route if I'd never mey any atypical women like the ones I've dated.

If you're talking just labels for the sake of drawing a clear line, then I agree it's mostly cultural.

As for me, I knew I was having 'weird' feelings for a female classmate. I also knew I had those same feelings for a male classmate. At the time, I was told only a boy and a girl could make a couple and get married, so I had no idea same sex pairings were even a possibility.

It wasn't until I was 15 that I stopped lying to myself. I admitted I was not straight, and even got myself a girlfriend.

It would be quite a few years after that that I admitted I didn't feel fully female, but that's another subject altogether. lol

Given that there are 3 spatial dimensions (at a human level of perception, anyway), I wonder if one could say that roughly one-third of all the objects in the universe are phallic-shaped? (now that I think about, probably not, but anyway...) If so, it smacks of the homosexual agenda at work on a cosmic scale! Will they stop at nothing? ZOMG

Even string theory involves phallic objects. IS THE UNIVERSE MADE OF DICKS?!

That's more or less what I was implying, yes.



I suspect your Asperger's Syndrome may have something to do with that (Asperger's Syndrome is in a way an über-male brainset), although it may not be as unrelated as you think it is. Asperger's Syndrome means not having any emotional intuition and it may be precisely that lack of emotional intuition that made you feel the same way about boys and girls in your class.

What about black holes?

The whole warped space thing is rather vaginal.

And it all got started with .. what.. the big bang!

The question is usually framed as such: is homosexuality genetic, or is it envirnomental?

In other words: are individuals wired that way at birth, or do they get that way because they grew up in somekind of screwed up family?

The consensus seems to be that that it mostly genetic ( your gonna be what you're gonna be), but enviroment might play a role.

This is the first time ive ever heard the suggestion that gayness could be 'cultural".

The reason that few ever even entertains the idea that it could be 'cultural" is because of the obvious- western culture severely punishes homosexuality but it exists anyway so it obviously exists despite culture not because of it.

I assume that you are aware that homosexuality was not invented in the 1970's by Elton John.

It existed for centuries before that despite repression.

So how exactly could homosexuality be "cultural"?
You dont have to prove your theory. Just explain how it works.

The Greeks, 'nuff said.

You have not said anything.

So the ancient greeks were open about gayness than we are.
So what?
Whats your point?

People's experiences in life strongly influence their opinions and feelings towards other people. As such, bad experiences with those of the other gender, positive experiences with those of the same gender, exposure to hard core porn (where both male and female genitals fly in your face all the time), an overly dominating mother or father, the lack of a particular parent, exposure to liberal propaganda and many other experiences can change the way people perceive themselves and the way they perceive others to a point they start questioning their own sexuality and declare themselves homosexual when they would never have done so and never have even considered the possibility in a society where heterosexuality is the norm as it used to be for most of human history. Much the same way, one could argue that people who naturally have a disposition towards homosexuality would become heterosexual in traditional society because it was the norm and they never really questioned that norm.



Pistonhead references a phenomenon called pediastry. It appears that in ancient Greece there was a cultivated form of homosexuality called pediastry that existed not as an equivalent to heterosexual couples but as a supplement to it and that was pretty much limited to a mentor and his student. Unless our current interpretation of pediastry is wrong (I'm not an expert on the matter) it seems that Greek culture actually cultivated homosexuality as a norm for a particular form of relationship (that between a mentor and his student).

Bingo! I didn't want to take the effort to teach an online history class for charity but I didn't want the ignorance that is saying that homosexuality can not be rooted into culture to continue. So good job Salon for doing the hard work for me.

There isn't much evidence that the ancient Greek social institution of pederasty implied a homosexual attraction. Though not a punishable offense, sexual intercourse was usually highly frowned upon in such relationships.

Seriously you think the greeks weren't into gay sex? Look at their art damn it, loads of examples of dudes touching each other and worse. Very obviously people felt like immortalizing those acts, most of which probably either were VERY experienced or had admired watching it at the very least.