The Pitters' Place

This article is... interesting:

http://www.firstthings.com/article/2014 ... osexuality

What's particularly interesting is that it's written by a conservative Christian who believes gay sex is a sin, yet who seems far more sympathetic to and at home with modern queer theory than most LGBT people I know. He's kind of giving off closeted-gay vibes.

I disagree with his religious-based argument, but I like his criticism of how people use orientation-labels as shorthand for a person's entire character, where straight = good and gay = bad. I also appreciate how he calls for the eradication of those labels even though he says it will hurt straight people most, because they'll no longer get the self-righteous thrill of feeling automatically superior to gay people by the unearned virtue of who they happen to be attracted to. Though, like the harm of pushing colour-blind ideology in the context of a currently-racist society, orientation labels do currently serve an important political purpose in naming and defending a marginalised group.

I still like the idea of everyone being equal humans, though. It's hard to put into practice now, because society is not a level playing field to begin with, but if we get there in the far future... it would be nice.

Interesting—but I'm not impressed. You don't get to argue against an orientation model of human sexuality without making reference to modern empirical psychology: you know, the work of people who actually study human attitudes and behavior. But that's precisely what this guy has done. Citing some queer theory ("Look! Some people in this humanities discipline agree with me about this social scientific topic!"), Foucault, and a passing reference to Freud is not enough.

But he uses big words!

I like the orientation model, and it seems to be the best one we have right now, but it also does seem to be an approximation - which is usually where criticism of it stems from. Once you try and break it down to its actual components, things get more complex. e.g. someone might be romantically attracted to men alone but sexually attracted to women alone. A lot of alleged 'ex-gay' success stories are the result of that kind of ambiguity where there's space to move around, and I think most if not all people don't adhere so strictly to the standard model. The mere existence of this bloody list, Poe or not, already suggests that there are so many components to sexuality that get ignored or aren't accounted for by the standard model of "if you are gay, you're exclusively attracted romantically and sexually to people of the same sex and gender, actively pursue sex and relationships with them, and have always been that way and always will be", and vice versa. Which does apply to lots of people, but even those usually make exceptions now and then. e.g. I have a friend who says he's "totally straight except for Johnny Depp."

The boundaries also get blurred when you start looking into history, particularly places like Ancient Greece - where people were more or less assumed to be bisexual, and there was enough (almost universal?) male-originated interest in teenage boys and young men that pedarasty was an established institution. Same with rich, powerful, masculine men buying slave boys for the purpose of sex, but who were otherwise repulsed at the thought of sex with a free male or one of similar age or social standing as they. The orientation model doesn't entirely account for that, where things like class status can affect one's sexual attraction, and it's uncertain how much our concepts of sexuality actually shape our behaviour and even experiences of attraction, even given an immutable core orientation.