Who chooses their sexual orientation?

[+ WilliamM]

14 hours ago, Unicorn said:

Yes, of course. That's it. Posters aren't contributing to your imaginary thread on "journey of bisexuals" because I'm stopping them. I just swat their fingers off of their keyboards!

Or could it be that you yourself hijaked the thread from whether sexual orientation is a choice to another subject of your imagination? You asked a question most gay men find offensive (we don't need science to tell us that our sexual orientation is not a choice, although it's nice to have the scientific back-up). You got a lot of blowback on this, and decided to steer the string elsewhere. 

And you've go the forum's most brilliant minds such as @WilliamM to back you. 

 

I am certainly not brilliant, my friend. But unlike others here, I don't have a giant ego

[Marc in Calif]

On 1/17/2023 at 5:23 PM, pubic_assistance said:

The question is posed to people who DO and HAVE made choices.

No. Your original topic title Who chooses their sexual orientation? is NOT directed solely to those who "do [sic] and have made choices."

The question was much too general for that because it used only the present-tense verb chooses. In reality, your original question can be interpreted -- and has been interpreted in this thread -- in alternative ways, such as:

• Are there people in the world who chose their sexual orientation?
• What kinds of people have chosen their sexual orientation?

If you had really wanted to address those who "do [sic] and have made choices," you would have worded it as follows:

Who on these forums chose their sexual orientation after first having either heterosexual or gay sex?

 

[pubic_assistance]

24 minutes ago, Marc in Calif said:

The question was much too general for that because it used only the present-tense verb chooses. In reality, your original question can be interpreted -- and has been interpreted in this thread -- in alternative ways, such as:

Maybe you can be my personal secretary and edit all my posts in the future ? The pay isn't great.

So now that you've definined what should have been said and how I should speak. Let's get back to the discussion.

 

 

[Marc in Calif]

6 minutes ago, pubic_assistance said:

So now that you've definined what should have been said and how I should speak. Let's get back to the discussion.

But which discussion? The revised discussion that only you seem to want to have? 😇

[Guest]

2 hours ago, WilliamM said:

I am certainly not brilliant...

I'm glad we can finally agree on something! 😄

[Guest]

6 hours ago, Italiano said:

... Some of us stuck his toes in heterosexual sex (I did until I was 20 and came out for good), some did not until the "final" decision was taken. Most gay men (I think, at least in Western societies) are out to the world now, some are not, some keep tasting both waters, some (like myself) are only homosexuals. And the choice is there...

Yes, but the choice is not your sexual orientation. As you know, you didn't choose to be gay. The choice is whether to lie about it to some (usually) unsuspecting woman, and to those around you.

[+ WilliamM]

18 minutes ago, Unicorn said:

I'm glad we can finally agree on something! 😄

I rarely mention by younger brother's accomplishments.  And , unlike you,  I barely mention my work  here in Pennsylvania (or my retirement).

[Guest]

4 hours ago, WilliamM said:

I rarely mention by younger brother's accomplishments.  And , unlike you,  I barely mention my work ...

There you go, posting under the influence, again...

FYI, I don't have a younger brother. Had you read the links to the research on this string, you'd know it wasn't even a good guess, because the odds of a man being gay increase with each older brother he has. And I haven't worked in 2 years. 

Edited January 30, 2023 by Unicorn

[MikeBiDude]

Moderator note: @Unicorn and @WilliamM please stop. Let’s keep this thread on topic. It’s very very close to “pizza time”.

[+ nycman]

[+ José Soplanucas]

Conclusion: you can choose any kind of pizza, but you cannot choose your sexual orientation.

[+ Italiano]

17 hours ago, Unicorn said:

Yes, but the choice is not your sexual orientation. As you know, you didn't choose to be gay. The choice is whether to lie about it to some (usually) unsuspecting woman, and to those around you.

Exactly what I meant, if I wasn't clear

[+ Italiano]

21 hours ago, José Soplanucas said:

I am not sure whether or not I understand. I think (correct me if I am wrong) you are saying that the choice is in your life style, not in your sexual preference.

Exactly!

[pubic_assistance]

I am curious for all of you desperately clinging to the old "born this way" narrative....

HOW do explain this sudden uptick in sexually fluid / bisexual activity within the  18 to 25 age group if there is absolutely no way for anyone to consciously affect their sexuality ?? 🤔

Are you pretending that women gave birth to a far higher ratio of bisexuals in the late 90s ?

That growing social acceptance of sexual fluidity has nothing to do with it ?

If so...why did women suddenly pop out all these bisexuals, gender fluids and other non confirming homosexuals ?

The prevalence of vegetarianism ? Yoga ? Starbucks ?

[+ José Soplanucas]

Indeed, I smell desperation here.

[Guest]

6 hours ago, pubic_assistance said:

....HOW do explain this sudden uptick in sexually fluid / bisexual activity within the  18 to 25 age group if there is absolutely no way for anyone to consciously affect their sexuality ?? ...

As mentioned in prior posts, there's a remarkable absence in almost any research regarding bisexuality. I suspect this may be because those identifying themselves as bi probably represent a diverse group of people, which is far more difficult to study. Any theory as to the sudden uptick of people identifying as bisexual in early adulthood would be highly speculative at this time. The research simply isn't there. Once again, self-identification is not the same as sexual orientation. What almost all scientists who are involved in the research agree on, however, is that homosexuality and heterosexuality have an either exclusive or almost exclusive biological basis. Hopefully there will be some research done on bisexuals in the upcoming years. I'd especially be interested to see autopsy studies done on the brains of deceased bisexuals. Do their brains under the microscope look more like gays, straights, or something in between? 

[Guest]

7 hours ago, Italiano said:

Exactly what I meant, if I wasn't clear

Thanks for clarifying. I wasn't sure.

[pubic_assistance]

6 minutes ago, Unicorn said:

Once again, self-identification is not the same as sexual orientation.

I'm curious, since you're so insistent that your homosexuality is absolutely biological and beyond any volition and you're also insistent that every homosexual is a prisoner of biology...how do you classify all the teenage boys who get it on with each other in countries where it's important to marry a virgin ?
As an example, in Turkey, it's more common  now for women to attend college before wedding. So they are marrying later, and the boys their age group need to wait longer for their virgin bride.  Because of this they tend to take a male "lover" during those years in their late teens and twenties, to work out their sexual needs. The majority drop their male companion once married and a few do not.

Are these men, bisexual, homosexuals forced to marry or heterosexuals forced to have sex with homosexuals ?

You seem insistent that everything be packed up into tidy boxes with homosexuality being a chromosome,  and not influenced by any social issue.

Where are the lines drawn in your biological explanations of this community ?
What about bushmen in Africa who spend weeks out hunting and use the younger boys in the tribe for sex while they are away from their wife ? Homosexual, bisexual, heterosexuals holding their nose ?

You seem very oblivious to the vast gray areas of human sexuality.

[wsc]

I would think sexual attraction is more of a static feature, whereas sexual behavior can be more fluid or variable.

Men in prison, for example, have sex with other men more than with women since necessity is the mother of invention and not of convention; if you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with.

Men constrained by social norms instead of prison bars, as the young Turks you describe, may simply choose from what's available in their social circle, meaning other and available men instead of unavailable women, so as not to violate the social norm while still finding satisfaction where it can be found.

A hungry dog will eventually eat what's put in front of it, no matter how much not to its liking. Similarly, human sexual partners can be chosen simply based on circumstantial availability without regard to an unavailable preference.

[mike carey]

In many societies same sex attraction and same sex sexual activities are not taboo. If society doesn't care if you do something, you are less likely to refrain from doing it for fear of disapprobation. Although as @Unicorn notes there is little research into modern bisexuality and sexual fluidity, it would be courageous to assume that its increase is an indication of an increased incidence of the phenomena rather than simply a result of young people's increased willingness to talk about it.

[pubic_assistance]

2 minutes ago, mike carey said:

it would be courageous to assume that its increase is an indication of an increased incidence of the phenomena rather than simply a result of young people's increased willingness to talk about it.

Which is where I have a problem with Unicorn's insistence that people are just born gay.

There are obviously men who've never been attracted to women in the least, I get that.

But I think the population of men who are attracted to both is way under counted and are being deliberately ignored to further this search for "the gay gene" which allows devout homosexuals to claim to be a victim of biology. They may very well be so, but I find it interesting that the rest of us are consistently swept under the carpet. An inconvenient truth to the more broad definition of sexually fluid people.  Unicorn has been absolute in his insistence that not one single human being can have any volition in his sexual nature. It's all genetics. I don't personally feel that way about myself and I certainly know plenty of other men who have wandered in and out of homosexual relations before landing on a decision for how they chose to settle down.

The mere suggestion that anyone has chosen his sexual pathway seems to infuriate old timers who only wish to subscribe to the "born this way" narrative, as if NO ONE ever could possibly have this choice.

[+ José Soplanucas]

I do not see anyone here saying that sexual orientation is biologically determined. Instead, what I read is that our sexual preferences are biologically and environmentally conditioned. There is an array of biological conditions, gens one of them, and an array of environmental conditions, family and culture two of them), interacting, mutually influencing each others. 

Definitely, there is no choosing of our sexual preferences.

We can choose how we will express them, or even not express them at all, but we do not choose our sexual orientation. Some people may be mistaking discovering for choosing.

 

[+ José Soplanucas]

8 minutes ago, pubic_assistance said:

Which is where I have a problem with Unicorn's insistence that people are just born gay.

There are obviously men who've never been attracted to women in the least, I get that.

But I think the population of men who are attracted to both is way under counted and are being deliberately ignored to further this search for "the gay gene" which allows devout homosexuals to claim to be a victim of biology. They may very well be so, but I find it interesting that the rest of us are consistently swept under the carpet. An inconvenient truth to the more broad definition of sexually fluid people.  Unicorn has been absolute in his insistence that not one single human being can have any volition in his sexual nature. It's all genetics. I don't personally feel that way about myself and I certainly know plenty of other men who have wandered in and out of homosexual relations before landing on a decision for how they chose to settle down.

The mere suggestion that anyone has chosen his sexual pathway seems to infuriate old timers who only wish to subscribe to the "born this way" narrative, as if NO ONE ever could possibly have this choice.

Oh! THIS is why you opened this thread! You falsely talked about your curiosity for others' personal journeys. However, now I see that you just wanted to share your grievances against devout homosexuals!

You should have started there.

[pubic_assistance]

1 minute ago, José Soplanucas said:

now I see that you just wanted to share your grievances against devout homosexuals!

wrong.

 

[LookingAround]

15 minutes ago, José Soplanucas said:

Oh! THIS is why you opened this thread! You falsely talked about your curiosity for others' personal journeys. However, now I see that you just wanted to share your grievances against devout homosexuals!

You should have started there.

Bingo. And he keeps repeating himself.