Rudynate

Once, a friend was trying to think of a thesis topic for his master program in psych. Understandably, as a gay man, he wanted to do something around the cause(s) of homosexuality. To me, studying the "cause" of homosexuality is premised on a homophobic view that homosexuality is "deviant" or "abnormal" and a gay man doing it is a clear-cut case of internalized homophobia. I pointed out to him that nobody is studying the "cause" of heterosexuality. He decided to keep looking for a topic.

Why doesn't it work for you that you were "born this way?" Your sexual orientation, or lack thereof, seems as hard-wired as being exclusively gay or straight does. One of the dictates of your trait is that you can form erotic attachments with either sex. Of course, it is very constructive to experience it as a freedom, but it's not the only way of seeing it. Someone might look at you and say "That poor guy, he will never know the joy of a deep sexual/emotional connection with someone of his own sex. Or, "that poor guy, he is constantly torn between his deep love for his wife and family and that vexatious same-sex attraction that he can't seem to shake."

But you're not a testing psychologist or someone of similar stature who is qualified to express an opinion on the accuracy/validity of IQ tests found on the internet?

And you are certain of this how?

I have an old friend who just turned 90 - I don't know that I would want his life. He is in a real fix because he is seriously mobility-impaired and he lives by himself in the top-floor flat of a San Francisco Victorian that is several steep flights of stairs up from the street. He has reached a point where he needs professional caregivers and refuses to have them around him. He is extremely reliant on his tenants and thinks that this is an acceptable situation that can go on indefinitely without his having to pay them or compensate them in any way. I keep telling him "You're going to wear them out and drive them away because at some point they will burn out." Whenever he needs to see the doctor, which is frequent, he has to hire a patient transport that costs him $500.00 for a round trip. They have some device that I haven't seen yet that allows one person to get him up and down all those stairs easily.

Retirement planners say just the opposite - that you need a bigger cash flow early in retirement because you're more active. As you become less active, you don't need that much money. The pandemic has shown us already what our later years might be like - you don't get out much, you don't travel much, you don't buy that much stuff so you spend less.

"any valid and reliable assessment" Is anyone here looking for one of those? Doubt it. When I took internet test after internet test until I scored 140 on one, I had no illusions about the reliability of the number. I was just looking for a number, that validated what I already knew about myself - that Im an intelligent guy. I would certainly never put it on an employment application.

Linguistics and languages are two different things. Many years ago, I knew a guy who had an advanced degree in linguistics. He also happened to be good at languages, being fluent in both Polish and Russian.

I like speedo trunks. I used to wear speedo racers but they are a little to "racy" at my stage of life.

And everyone knows that the way to deal with a troll is not to engage with them.

Ah ha - that's your problem!! You're a troll.

Don't confuse lifestyle and sexual orientation.

"The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats. It is a fundamental of taxonomy that nature rarely deals with discrete categories... The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects. While emphasizing the continuity of the gradations between exclusively heterosexual and exclusively homosexual histories, it has seemed desirable to develop some sort of classification which could be based on the relative amounts of heterosexual and homosexual experience or response in each history [...] An individual may be assigned a position on this scale, for each period in his life. [...] A seven-point scale comes nearer to showing the many gradations that actually exist." Alfred Kinsey

The gay lifestyle is not nearly as emblematic as it was because the gay community has become so diverse, but there definitely still is a "gay lifestyle" pursued by urban gays. There have always been people who opted out of the gay lifestyle. I remember on one of my early trips to San Francisco, I met a guy who had gotten fed up with drugs, sex and rock & roll and bought a general store in a small town in the Sierras. There used to be a magazine called "RFD" for rural gays who were homesteading.

You're the one who mentioned evidence.

Is evidence necessary? For me, someone saying that he/she is bi is enough. It isn't my job get them to prove that they are bi.

I love this thread.

I hardly ever identify as gay anymore. Of course San Francisco is a special case, but it hardly seems necessary to talk about sexual orientation. When it comes up, I just say that I'm into guys. "Gay" this and "Gay" that are artifacts of people who are attracted to their own sex being marginalized and oppressed. And of course plenty of that remains, but I'm able to imagine a society in which sexual orientation just isn't an issue. When it isn't an issue, people won't feel driven to live in gayborhoods and to go to gay bars and to go to gay churches, etc. Believe me, I will miss my outlaw status as a gay man, but being an ordinary person who happens to go for men is pretty comfortable.

Of course. Not everyone is as sharp as you.

I have gotten so that I like a guy to be trimmed and balls shaved. I also find a clean-shaven crotch to be intensely erotic. But no problem with natural either.

Or a Battenberg.

Not many here will remember newspapers from the 50s. The Sunday paper always had a pictorial supplement and, back then, European royalty was always heavily featured. As a little boy of 5 or 6 yo, I used to get boners over Prince Phillip.

I don't think I have ever seen a pic of him - amazing. Why do those Windsor men all go to seed they way they do?

In his day, he was very sexy.

Not me. I do believe that it is a real phenomenon and I love 'em. I am 90+% gay, but I do have a tiny bi streak that I could probably cultivate if I wanted to.