I know ya'll are tired of my questions, so Im only gonna ask one more. Then Im going to shut up and finish typing this essay. There were so many responses last time, with excellent answers, I thought I'd try again.

What does it mean to be gay?

The answers i have so far are:

Everything other than heterosexual. And Any deviation in normal heterosexual relationships. My friend says he's not gay he has a preference. Men. lol

I've also writen( one of my personal turn ons, but they dont have to know that): Some gay men tend to be articulate and elegant with the english language, especially when writing about love, sex and relationships. And they all seem to pay attention to details concerning anything. At other times their just to visual. With the exception of the latter, these are generally feminine attributes.

Anyone want to expand on this thought?

Guess what I'm finished. I'm done with the questions.

Oh and polecat,

I liked what you said in the previous thread: Gay men are wonderful people, make Ideal fathers and are generally very well balanced especially in the current culture with its expectations about male/female relationships. I intend to use this analogy.

thanks

dolphinwolf (imported) wrote: Sat Aug 13, 2005 2:55 pm I know ya'll are tired of my questions, so Im only gonna ask one more. Then Im going to shut up and finish typing this essay. There were so many responses last time, with excellent answers, I thought I'd try again.

What does it mean to be gay?

The answers i have so far are:

Everything other than heterosexual. And Any deviation in normal heterosexual relationships. My friend says he's not gay he has a preference. Men. lol

I've also writen( one of my personal turn ons, but they dont have to know that): Some gay men tend to be articulate and elegant with the english language, especially when writing about love, sex and relationships. And they all seem to pay attention to details concerning anything. At other times their just to visual. With the exception of the latter, these are generally feminine attributes.

Anyone want to expand on this thought?

Guess what I'm finished. I'm done with the questions.

I think you make a mistake when you label anyone. People are individuals, with individual characteristics. If by GAY (I personally hate the word) you mean a person who has sex -- or wants to have sex with another of the same gender -- applying the label Gay or Queer tells you nothing. I would bet that the range of individual characteristics among them are almost as varied as among those of the general population. Although some might seem more feminine than the heterosexual male, some are certain to be just as masculine.

I like this analogy better:

If I prefer chocolate cake to white cake, you're not likely to put a label on me for that. It's just a matter of taste. So, if I happen to prefer same gender sex, that's also just a preference -- a matter of taste. Why should I be labeled for that. If everyone would ditch the GAY -- STRAIGHT -- BI labels, I think we'd all be better off.

Some "Gay" men might be articulate and elegant when writing, but I doubt that many more are than there are in the rest of the population.

Tell me something about Joe Blow or John Doe and you've given me some useful information. Make a broad statement about "Gays," and you've told me nothing useful, no more useful than saying all whites are: or all blacks are: There are enough variations in any group to make such statement useless.

Slammr is right about diversity among gays. And certainly one big problem in discussing human sexuality has been our primitive systems of classification. For so long we wanted to work with just two categories, male and female. We at last admitted that there is more than one way for males and females to relate to each other, and so we added straight and gay.

Bisexuals will tell you that they experience negative attitudes from both gay and straight folk. Transgendered people know that they have an uphill fight to convince others that there can be women in men's bodies, or vice versa, and that fight is far from being won at present. Eunuchs know, too, that western society even at its trendiest is hardly prepared to accept or respect a man who chooses to live with his balls off.

But minorities need names and labels in order to unite, as flags to rally around, and a minority group has to be known and recognized in order to make a bid to have its rights acknowledged and respected by the majority.

So it's back to the question of what it really means to be gay. I am still buzzed up after discovering yesterday via the COGIATI text that I am a certifiable androgyne. Here I just thought I was gay! I'm excited about my new label. It seems to say a lot more about me that the old one. And I have to say, it fits me like a glove.

Yes, gay men seem to do well as writers, painters, musicians, actors and dancers. Of course, in many cases this has been the only way society at large will make room for gay men. I suspect that today, with fewer barriers to overcome in law or medicine, or even the business world, you will find more gay men going into these traditionally straight areas.

A few more thoughts, Dolphinwolf, from your pagan-friendly Christian,

Society has already associated being gay, with our sexual preference. I dont need to tell them this. Maybe I should have said "What sets us apart from others." For me, its being intersexed. That doesn't have anything to do with my sexual orientation,even though Im openly gay.

Being "too visual" has been regarded as a symptom of Asperger's syndrome, often thought to be a mild form of autism. I don't think that it has anything to do with sexual preference at all. It is common among straight engineers, sometimes called the "geek syndrome". I am so visual that a great deal of my reasoning is totally non-verbal. I can figure out how to reach a destination or build something I need without using any words at all, merely mentally manipulating images. This ability is commoner in males than in women, but it seems to have no relationship to sexual preference. It does, however, tend to be associated with the insular self-sufficiency (the "loner" personality) and difficulty in understanding human relationships which are typical of Asperger's Syndrome and present to an extreme degree in autism.