Nobody is ‘born that way,’ gay historians say

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Left-wing humanities PhDs don't believe that biology influences society.  They have a large stake in that idea because they want to study society and language, instead of biology because they don't know how to study biology.  They have a bunch of dog-eared copies of Foucault books, not microscopes.  So, no surprise that they want to say sexuality is completely a social construction.  Obviously, that's garbage. 

Let's also clarify what we mean by gay.  There's sexually attracted to the same sex and there's identifying as gay.  Even today, many people are married to opposite sex partners and identify as straight, but are attracted to the same sex and have sex with people of the same sex.  Is that straight?  When people talk about other cultures not having the concept of gay people, that's about semantics.  Older cultures just treated gay people differently by forcing them into straight relationships or clergy/civil service or killing them.     

[bedstuy]

Left-wing humanities PhDs don't believe that biology influences society.  They have a large stake in that idea because they want to study society and language, instead of biology because they don't know how to study biology.  They have a bunch of dog-eared copies of Foucault books, not microscopes.  So, no surprise that they want to say sexuality is completely a social construction.  Obviously, that's garbage.

It's not only garbage, it's not what the article or the historians it refers to are saying.  What it is saying that historically, even in those cultures that were accepting of same-sex attraction or even in those that embraced it, there was no social construct that was analogous to that of "gay" as it is commonly understood today.

You don't need the vocabulary of sexuality for sexuality to exist though.  You just need boners and/or lady boners. 

[bedstuy]

I don't really understand the point this author is trying to make.  He argues that people aren't born with a sexual orientation, yet he acknowledges that sexual orientation is something that is beyond the individual's control.  Even if nobody is "born that way," why does the social construct theory become the default position?

My take is that he's arguing is that these social constructs, such as the concept of "gay" as a distinct sexual orientation, or even the idea that there are distinct sexual orientations defined solely by sexual attraction and no other factors is a relatively recent phenomenon historically speaking.  Hence sexual orientation is something that is beyond someone's control only if one accepts that the LGBS pigeonholes are the way that society must categorize people.  With a different set of pigeonholes, some currently in the same hole would be in different ones and some now in the different holes might be in the same.

Are we talking about a physical hole or a semantic hole (IE a category)?  That's the underlying problem here. 

I could call myself "gay" or a man that has sex with men or a snappy dresser.  You can put me in whatever category of sexuality you want, it's not going to make me desire a woman's physical hole, so to speak.  Ultimately, if this is just about semantics, who cares?

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It’s not as if society divides along hair colour, though there are issues of ‘preference’ involved even in that.

http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s09e11-ginger-kids

My unfamiliarity with Marxist philosophy limits my ability to comment on the rest of your post.

That's kind of a cop-out though.  I think you mean TL;DR.  But, since you started this thread.  I'm curious what your interest is in this article and this subject. 

If the point is that understandings of sexuality have changed over time and differ among cultures, who is remotely surprised?  Why is that an insight that matters to conservatives at a conservative news website?  Why is this relevant beyond a historical context?

Since this is coming from a conservative website, I feel like the implication is that gay people should not be treated as human beings with a right to love and express their sexuality as they choose.  Is that what you're driving at?

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Ultimately, if this is just about semantics, who cares?

If that were true, then why push for marriage when you can have civil unions? 

Obviously people care about semantics.  And with good reason.

That's true as far as it goes.  But, the question is what do you do with the meaning and existence of words.  Does this word describe human experience in an accurate and meaningful way?  That's a worthwhile conversation, but not one really posed here or in the article. 

Or, do you say, because this word wasn't used to describe human experience before, it doesn't describe anything and the ideas implied in the word are wrong (IE gay people were not born that way and chose to be gay, can be cured, etc).  That's a dumb idea.  That's like saying we should deny the existence of mental illness or autism because they didn't have a word for it in 1700, or we should deny the existence of germs because there wasn't a word for it until recently.  That's just nonsense.

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That's kind of a cop-out though.  I think you mean TL;DR.  But, since you started this thread.  I'm curious what your interest is in this article and this subject.

No, I definitely read, but since he was throwing some philosophical terms around I hadn't paid much thought to, I didn't want to toss verbage around willy-nilly, lest I make some boneheaded mistakes with the jargon.  However, I will do so some of that later in this post.

I came across this as a link on a another website (I forget which one; I'm not a regular reader of the Daily Caller, so it certainly wasn't on that site) and thought it would stimulate some discussion here.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Certainly not what I'm driving at.  I do think we tend to place an excessive emphasis on sexuality of all sorts in our culture and that as a byproduct this has led to undue emphasis being placed upon sexual orientation as a means of categorizing people. I don't have a solution to offer to that problem, and certainly as long as we do engage in this form of categorization, we need to ensure all categories receive equitable treatment.

Andrew described himself as an essentialist, one who feels that the categories we use are largely natural and contrasted that POV with constructionists who feel that the categories are largely social constructs.  Rather than being either constructionist or essentialist, I'd consider myself an existentialist who places emphasis upon people as individuals rather than as categories.  Regardless of whether the categories are natural or constructed, they are still arbitrary ways of organizing people into separate groups instead of an interconnected web of individuals.  So my concern about what I perceive as an undue emphasis on sexuality is largely because it leads to viewing people as objects belonging to a particular category be it blonde bombshells or burly bears rather than as individuals.

I think you're being an obfuscationist rather than an existentialist.

What do you mean by arbitrary?  Attracted to the opposite sex vs. attracted to the same sex vs. attracted to both sexes, those are descriptive categories that are applied to people based on discernible traits.  It's not arbitrary at all. 

Here's my take on that idea:  You don't need to read into these categories more than they purport to mean.  For me, gay doesn't mean flamboyant or constantly belting out show tunes.  But, it does describe something.  People have many different identities and each is diverse.  You don't need to define yourself completely as a "gay" or a "black,"  but identities still mean something or else they wouldn't exist.   

What exactly am I losing in identifying myself as gay?

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What do you mean by arbitrary?  Attracted to the opposite sex vs. attracted to the same sex vs. attracted to both sexes, those are descriptive categories that are applied to people based on discernible traits.  It's not arbitrary at all.

They're arbitrary in the sense that people feel obligated to include their sexual orientation as one of their primary characteristics.  That obligation is a main part of the arbitrariness I refer to.  What's also arbitrary is the idea that it is all versus rather than a continuum.

What's a primary characteristic?  There are times where I don't want people to know I'm gay, like if I'm walking through a bad neighborhood.  There are times when I do want people to know I'm gay like among friends.  I think it's really important that your friends and family know something about your sexual preferences so they can introduce you to other gay people and expect you to date certain people.

Here's my take on that idea:  You don't need to read into these categories more than they purport to mean.  For me, gay doesn't mean flamboyant or constantly belting out show tunes.  But, it does describe something.  People have many different identities and each is diverse.  You don't need to define yourself completely as a "gay" or a "black,"  but identities still mean something or else they wouldn't exist.   

What exactly am I losing in identifying myself as gay?

Starting here, starting now, let me point out that even tho you claim to not associate certain other characteristics with what you consider to be a primary characteristic of yourself, being gay, others do because of the arbitrary association of certain other characteristics with that primary characteristic.  It would be nice if that weren't so, but it is, so not everything is going to come up roses or daffodils.

(Incidentally, I like show tunes and I am not gay.)

I don't think people treat me that differently because I'm gay, honestly.  Once people get to know you, it doesn't matter, except if they're interested romantically.  I live in NYC so maybe that's different than the South.  But, in any case, if someone is going to treat me differently because I'm gay, I would not want to associate with them.

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It is well documented that heterosexuality and homosexuality are social constructs. This does not in any way reduce the importance of these concepts for modern society or the equal dignity that should be afforded to each, obviously. But it's always a good thing not to essentialize this kind of categories.

So sexual stimulation as the result of attractiveness upon sight of a male or female or either leading to changes in heart rates, sweating, pupil dilation, subconscious responses to smells , erection and self lubrication are 'constructs'?

Yes, obviously our sense of attractiveness is socially constructed. I thought everyone knew that. Just look at old paintings, every era and every area had its own specific definition of male and female beauty. The fact that it elicits physical reactions doesn't in any way disprove its social origins.

Sex predates society though, so sexual attraction cannot have a social origin.  Society can influence sex, it is not the origin.   And, what you're talking about is the preference for a type of female body or male body, not one or the other. 

Plus, just look at societies like Saudi Arabia where homosexuality is punished with the death penalty.  There are still plenty of gay people in Saudi Arabia, how is that possible if sexuality is based on their society? 

[bedstuy]

It is well documented that heterosexuality and homosexuality are social constructs. This does not in any way reduce the importance of these concepts for modern society or the equal dignity that should be afforded to each, obviously. But it's always a good thing not to essentialize this kind of categories.

So sexual stimulation as the result of attractiveness upon sight of a male or female or either leading to changes in heart rates, sweating, pupil dilation, subconscious responses to smells , erection and self lubrication are 'constructs'?

Yes, obviously our sense of attractiveness is socially constructed. I thought everyone knew that. Just look at old paintings, every era and every area had its own specific definition of male and female beauty. The fact that it elicits physical reactions doesn't in any way disprove its social origins.

Sex predates society though, so sexual attraction cannot have a social origin.  Society can influence sex, it is not the origin.   And, what you're talking about is the preference for a type of female body or male body, not one or the other. 

Plus, just look at societies like Saudi Arabia where homosexuality is punished with the death penalty.  There are still plenty of gay people in Saudi Arabia, how is that possible if sexuality is based on their society? 

The natural sex drive is simply the desire to stroke one's genitalia. What they are to be stroked against is determined, among humans, mostly by social constructions. Animals have pheromones, which serve as a means to further reproduction, but among humans it's scientifically documented that pheromones are much weaker than in most animal species.

By socially constructed, I don't simply mean based on norms of social acceptability. The two things can even be opposite. Actually, homosexuality was constructed as such in the 19th century mostly as a way to place a stigma on this behavior whereas before the stigma didn't really exist or take different forms. It's not that men having sex with other men didn't exist, it simply means that this wasn't considered as a fundamental category per se.

I'm no expert on the science of this issue, but intuitively, I think that's ridiculous.  Do you actually believe that?

And, again, we go on this circular argument.  Just because there wasn't a term for homosexual doesn't mean there were not homosexual people. 

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Tony? Really?

The TERMS homosexuality/heterosexuality/bisexuality/asexuality are constructs - because they're terms society has created over a long period of time to describe biology.

Sexuality is not just the desire to ... stroke one's genitals, it's a method to build and sustain relationships, to continue your genetic line etc etc...

But a) the use or non-use of terms, and the implications they carry, absolutely do have a tangible effect on people (note my "civil unions" example upthread), and b) it's beyond silly to deny that society and culture has an impact on what people find sexually desirable, and how sexuality is practiced.  

Nobody is arguing that biology plays no role- that's a strawman.  But to say that society and culture plays no role?  Just take a look at the relative prevalence of pubic hair in pornos of the 1970s and today, and tell me with a straight face that sexuality and gender isn't at least a little bit socially constructed.  You can't.

Note: this is not to pick on you specifically, but is more to push back generally against the people who are basically denying that anything besides biology matters.

Has anyone denied that society affects sexuality?  Has anyone denied that words and categories are human inventions?  No.

But, it's ridiculous to compare sexual orientation and pube length preference.  I'm sure some society  could theoretically turn pube length into a huge moral issue and taboo where people were burnt at the stake for their pube length.  However, there is something far, far more eternal and biological about sexual orientation.  You can't tell me that if only my society had taught me that having sex with women was more fun and exciting, I would be heterosexual.  Human sexuality is clearly a realm of behavior governed by very deep, evolutionary impulses that society puts its spin on, but doesn't determine.

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Also, I find it a sad reflection on the ideological state of our society, that in order to be considered rightful and deserving of respect, a type of identity has to be grounded in nature. Why is considering something to be a social construct equivalent to dismissing their worth? Most of the good things humanity has have been given to us by society, rather than by nature.

The obvious problem with pretending that we're just ethereal consciousnesses floating jars divorced from our evolutionary heritage, from our bodies, from a real sense of being human animals, is that it's completely wrong.  If you make decisions based on ideas that are wrong, you make bad decisions.

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You won't convince them. They have read Foucault. They are 'sage'

Sexual preference; choosing desirable characteristics in a mate is not the same as sexual orientation or sexual drive. You and I know this. It's not f-cking rocket science but constructionists go insane with it. As I said before if you say to someone who is heterosexual your sexual attraction to thefemale is a nothing more than a social construct because you happen to prefer afemale with 36DD breasts or a female with wooden cleft in her pallet and access to 36 goats you will be met, rightfully with ill concealed laughter.

My position has a lot less to do with Foucault than you imagine, and a lot more to do with the practical goal of maximizing rights and freedoms, than you imagine. 

The fact that we have a "gay" identity now, and we didn't hundreds of years ago, is intimately connected with, and in fact a prerequisite to, the rights you enjoy and the ability you have to express your sexuality freely and naturally.

And, yes, the idea of "heterosexuality" as a distinct category is constructed as well.  If people are trying to argue that one is but the other isn't, well then that would be gibberish, and offensive gibberish at that.  Luckily nobody is doing such a thing, not here at least.

That's not the issue.  "Heterosexuality" is a term that categorizes a set of sexual desires which occur in human beings because of their genetic and hormonal makeup.  Maybe the better word for what we mean is "heterosexual desire" or lust.  The same goes for homosexuality.  The desire for sex and intimacy is an innate impulse in humans due to their biology.  How people act on their desire, what words we use to describe it, the particulars of what is attractive in a man or woman, sure, that's influenced by society a great deal.  But, where someone sits on the spectrum of heterosexual/homosexual is not very influenced at all by society.  Do you disagree?

It has previously been suggested that humans are not by nature sexually attracted to other human beings.  Basically, that human nature is to be a masturbating loner, but society has taught us that having sex is desirable activity.  That is ridiculous.  I find that idea fundamentally dehumanizing because it is opposed to the basic nature of the species I belong to.

Just an added line of argument:

Would anyone say, "nobody is born with autism?"  After all, autistic people used to just be called dumb or cretinous or idiotic.  So, autism is a social construct and nobody is born with autism.

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You won't convince them. They have read Foucault. They are 'sage'

Sexual preference; choosing desirable characteristics in a mate is not the same as sexual orientation or sexual drive. You and I know this. It's not f-cking rocket science but constructionists go insane with it. As I said before if you say to someone who is heterosexual your sexual attraction to thefemale is a nothing more than a social construct because you happen to prefer afemale with 36DD breasts or a female with wooden cleft in her pallet and access to 36 goats you will be met, rightfully with ill concealed laughter.

My position has a lot less to do with Foucault than you imagine, and a lot more to do with the practical goal of maximizing rights and freedoms, than you imagine. 

The fact that we have a "gay" identity now, and we didn't hundreds of years ago, is intimately connected with, and in fact a prerequisite to, the rights you enjoy and the ability you have to express your sexuality freely and naturally.

And, yes, the idea of "heterosexuality" as a distinct category is constructed as well.  If people are trying to argue that one is but the other isn't, well then that would be gibberish, and offensive gibberish at that.  Luckily nobody is doing such a thing, not here at least.

That's not the issue.  "Heterosexuality" is a term that categorizes a set of sexual desires which occur in human beings because of their genetic and hormonal makeup.  Maybe the better word for what we mean is "heterosexual desire" or lust.  The same goes for homosexuality.  The desire for sex and intimacy is an innate impulse in humans due to their biology.  How people act on their desire, what words we use to describe it, the particulars of what is attractive in a man or woman, sure, that's influenced by society a great deal.  But, where someone sits on the spectrum of heterosexual/homosexual is not very influenced at all by society.  Do you disagree?

It has previously been suggested that humans are not by nature sexually attracted to other human beings.  Basically, that human nature is to be a masturbating loner, but society has taught us that having sex is desirable activity.  That is ridiculous.  I find that idea fundamentally dehumanizing because it is opposed to the basic nature of the species I belong to.

Just an added line of argument:

Would anyone say, "nobody is born with autism?"  After all, autistic people used to just be called dumb or cretinous or idiotic.  So, autism is a social construct and nobody is born with autism.

It sounds like we've been talking past each other somewhat.  You're arguing that sexual desire is more or less innate; I'm saying that how that desire is expressed (and, crucially, how it is able to be expressed) is influenced by society and culture and the various self-identifications that people have available to them.  I don't think these two arguments are necessarily contradictory; in fact it's much more likely that they're both correct.  FWIW I agree wholeheartedly with Progressive Realist's perspective upthread, and I'd say that nearly everyone who accept that social construction is a thing that happens would also take that more nuanced tack as well.

So, yeah, I don't disagree.

As for autism... that's kind of a really complicated question, because there's this whole idea now of the "spectrum" that includes a lot of people who have some social difficulties but can function in life mostly okay in addition to the hardcore non-verbal folks who are more profoundly disabled.  I don't really feel qualified to analyze that particular phenomenon, but if someone were to say that Asperger's diagnoses were primarily a social construct, I wouldn't dismiss that out of hand- and I also wouldn't assume that meant they were any less tangible or "real" than any other diagnosis, either.  But I really don't know.

I don't know about the nuances of autism or asperger's, but that's not all that relevant to my point.

If someone can't talk and is severely disabled, they have something wrong with them, no?  They were born with some type of disability or problem.  There is a biological reason, albeit a complicated one.  It would be wrong to say, that severely disabled person was not born that way, they've just developed that way because of how society categorizes or understands development disability.  There's something different about that severely autistic person in a way that there isn't something different about a person who is shy because they grew up an only child in a small town or something.

That difference (nature vs. nurture) matters, .  If you ignore that difference, you can do things like pray-the-gay away therapy and families emotionally destroying their gay kids.  You allow gay kids to despair over why they can't just be heterosexual.  We aren't just talking about words here.  When you use words that don't describe reality accurately or you think that your vocabulary or social framework can overcome human nature, you just end up with awful results.

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Left-wing humanities PhDs don't believe that biology influences society.  They have a large stake in that idea because they want to study society and language, instead of biology because they don't know how to study biology. They have a bunch of dog-eared copies of Foucault books, not microscopes.

Okay, I've stayed out of this so far because I've of late almost entirely stopped caring about aetiology when it comes to things like this but I just have to say that this is one of the most wildly chauvinistic and unfair characterizations of whole swathes of academic disciplines I've ever read, to the point that I'm not sure I can bring myself to believe it's serious.

No, I'm serious.  And, yes, I think "whole swathes" of US university humanities departments are terrible and useless. 

But, I think my deeper point is that you can't ask a historian or a linguist to answer the question posed in the original article.  The way the article is framed is blatantly stupid. 

[bedstuy]

Left-wing humanities PhDs don't believe that biology influences society.  They have a large stake in that idea because they want to study society and language, instead of biology because they don't know how to study biology. They have a bunch of dog-eared copies of Foucault books, not microscopes.

Okay, I've stayed out of this so far because I've of late almost entirely stopped caring about aetiology when it comes to things like this but I just have to say that this is one of the most wildly chauvinistic and unfair characterizations of whole swathes of academic disciplines I've ever read, to the point that I'm not sure I can bring myself to believe it's serious.

No, I'm serious.  And, yes, I think "whole swathes" of US university humanities departments are terrible and useless.

Then how exactly do you think society and language should be studied? Not at all? With the same turgidity and obsession with replicable results as the so-called hard sciences? Because you can't study society and language that way. It makes exactly as little sense as attempting to use reader-response criticism to study a quasar.

Or, in other words, corporate-liberal STEM PhDs don't believe that anything but biology influences society. They have a large stake in that idea because they want to study biology, instead of society and language because they don't know how to study society and language. They have a bunch of computer printouts of experimental results, not poetry or interesting prose.

Totally.  Everyone is biased and sees the world through their own lens.  But, come on, academics don't write interesting prose.

But, I think my deeper point is that you can't ask a historian or a linguist to answer the question posed in the original article.  The way the article is framed is blatantly stupid. 

A linguist perhaps not, but historians, at least historians specializing in sexuality--of whom there are many--would surely have at least some insight.

Read the original article.  It's a dumb premise for a historian to answer that question.  Also, it's probably 99% the journalist's fault for taking someone's research out of context for their own conservative machinations.

[bedstuy]

I think I'm understanding what others are saying.

If I've misinterpreted what you were saying I apologise. This strikes me as two people driving down a divided road... you don't understand why the other isn't on your side of the road...

I think mostly what I've been trying to say, and not doing a very good job of, is this:

Left-wing humanities PhDs don't believe that biology influences society.  They have a large stake in that idea because they want to study society and language, instead of biology because they don't know how to study biology. They have a bunch of dog-eared copies of Foucault books, not microscopes.

Okay, I've stayed out of this so far because I've of late almost entirely stopped caring about aetiology when it comes to things like this but I just have to say that this is one of the most wildly chauvinistic and unfair characterizations of whole swathes of academic disciplines I've ever read, to the point that I'm not sure I can bring myself to believe it's serious.

I mean, obviously the article in the OP sucks, but that is entirely on the author of the article for misunderstanding the scholarship and introducing an undue political slant that, to be honest, is the exact opposite of what the quoted academics are trying to go for.  But of course some folks are entirely content to just run with that misinterpretation because it comports with their prejudices against humanities scholarship- prejudices that I'd expect to see from someone on the anti-intellectual populist right, but which feel like a deep disappointment and betrayal coming from well-educated liberals.

Not that one necessarily ought to agree with any particular scholar or anything, perhaps these folks are in fact barking up the wrong tree, but consigning entire subjects to the flames in this manner:

And, yes, I think "whole swathes" of US university humanities departments are terrible and useless. 

But, I think my deeper point is that you can't ask a historian or a linguist to answer the question posed in the original article.  The way the article is framed is blatantly stupid. 

is an obviously ridiculous and ignorant position to take.

Does that make any sense?

Hmmm.  I think the point I brought up against myself is the good counter argument.  I haven't read the original scholarship, I just read the article.  Obviously, Tucker Carlson's cyber-rag is not a reliable source.  But, if it is presenting the key points somewhat accurately, I think the article is garbage.  The reasoning is deeply flawed.

Here's the basic reasoning that I disagree with:

Other and prior cultures did not understand there to be something known as "homosexuality."  Therefore, "sexual orientations are not innate." 

I'm totally fine with the first point.  I think it's illogical to make the leap between the two.

On my somewhat audacious condemnation of university humanities departments, I get that I'm probably overstating the case.  There are plenty of great academics in sociology, history, women's studies and the various amorphous " XYZ studies."  However, I do find them overly-politicized and cult-like in assailing the idea of biological, geographic, geological, hard science relevance to the study of their own subjects.  There is a serious problem of excessive post-modernism, gender and race victimhood and denial of any scholarship not based on run-on sentences, so to speak.  That's my underlying problem and it's born of having gone to a couple of elite colleges where a lot of smart people foam at the mouth about things like white privilege and neo-colonialism.  It's an inchoate complaint, I admit, but it bothers me. 

[bedstuy]

Here's the basic reasoning that I disagree with:

Other and prior cultures did not understand there to be something known as "homosexuality."  Therefore, "sexual orientations are not innate." 

I'm totally fine with the first point.  I think it's illogical to make the leap between the two.

It depends upon what one means by "sexual orientation".  If one means by that simply the characteristics people gravitate towards when deciding who they would like to boff, then yeah it's an illogical leap. 

Thank you.

But if "sexual orientation" includes other psychological and sociological characteristics that a society layers upon sexual attraction to construct a framework that provided individuals what is necessary to channel such feelings into spontaneous action, then it does make some sense.  Of course, things can still make logical sense without having any common sense.

I suppose I agree.  I just don't see any practical application of that knowledge in the case of homosexuality.  I guess the lesson is not to take the social norm as a priori correct.  But, that doesn't mean scrap our current social understanding of homosexuality and adopt 19th century understanding.  Maybe, the lesson is rather that we ought to look at how we treat every sexual minority and think hard whether we're being fair.  Take transsexuals, our society often treats them like freaks and that's wrong.  But, the knowledge that one social norm is not by definition the gospel is only the start of the conversation.