Blog
The Myth of Biology
2009-01-26 19:12:01
One of the recent debates opened on Opposing Views is "Are People Born Gay?". Whilst this debate irritates me to an incomprehensible level, I decided to share my thoughts on why this question is pointless. Although I do not promote the homosexual lifestyle, I do not have a personal problem with people who are gay. I feel that the greatest mistake made by Freud was to assume that sexuality (as we know and experience it in current society) exists as a biological reality, instead of something which is constructed as a social artifact.
People are usually very afraid to approach this subject due to the magnitude of society's collective neurotic fixation on sexuality. I hereby launch myself into the darkness and offer an alternative understanding to this crucial part of our existence. (I plan to write more on this subject at some later point)
My comments to this article are below:
As this article points out, one cannot reduce the intricacy of our physiological makeup such that we assume social constructs are defined so completely by our genes. Despite various research studies, with findings such as heightened serotonin metabolism in exclusively homosexual males, sexuality is at best a social construct haphazardly linked to one's sense of self and concept of body.
Throughout human history, society has undergone such perversions from the natural that the act of copulation has been pathologised to such an extent that most people consider the resulting neuroses a physical drive. If we take a psychoanalytic view of socialisation, we will see that 'sexuality' is constructed and not inherited. From birth, it is drilled into us that the erogenous zones are to be repressed and hidden, this causes an unnatural psychological reaction, resulting in a neurotic fixation with copulation, and genital organs. The repression that occurs is so great, that the manifestation is what we refer to as sexuality. The magnitide of the repression is directly proportional to the societal weight of this 'topic', as is obvious from media content. In nature, such a distortion of copulation does not exist.
In conclusion, it is not a case of 'are people born gay?'. For homosexuality is simply a variation on the theme. It should not be pathologised to any greater extent than heterosexuality.
