Business meeting pick-ups - Page 13

It's so tough and, honestly, often you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. "Identity," whatever that means, is fluid and we good dualistic Cartesians make ourselves pick a place... and stay in it. I do it to myself, even though I don't mean to. I tell my students everyday about "embracing multiplicity," allowing yourself room to maneuver, change, grow, and not feeling constricted by oppressive social structures. I tell them not to WORRY if they like boys or girls and I even give them the tools to analyze their situations and themselves such that they can start NOT to worry. And yet, I'm not perfect and I rarely, if ever, am actually able to practice what I preach. I've honestly never even considered, nor do I know how... what it might be like to LIKE a girl/woman. Does that mean I'm 100% gay? Doubtful... it probably just means I've swung the pendulum in the opposite direction from my upbringing, to tell myself now that all that conflict was "worth it" because now I "know" who I am. Do I? Doubtful. Nobody does. We change by the hour/minute/day. I've studied enough Zen to know the stakes, and yet I'm the worst Zen, most insidiously Cartesian, you can get.

I'm pretty sure you mean Rip Taylor, not Rip Torn.

Yeah I thought "Isn't that the guy from Men in Black?" and wiki'd to confirm him as a straight alcoholic.

I thought the same thing, but knew somebody else would post it.

It seems more unlikely if the non-preferred gender is one's own gender (i.e., heterosexuality), since most people don't seem to find their own anatomy repulsive.


A person might be bisexual without being bi-affectional, i.e., a person might be sexually attracted to both genders but only be emotionally attracted to one gender. Conversely, a person might be bi-affectional (emotionally attracted to both genders) without being bisexual in the usual sense (as in the case of a "Boston Marriage" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_marriage).

In an earlier post in this thread I referenced the Klein Sexual Orientation Grid, which recognizes these kinds of distinctions. See also "Affectional Orientation" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affectional_orientation

I took it just for fun: 17% straight for me, though I think it is probably because of the "your past" thread of the grid. Growing up in the Bible Belt, obviously I didn't meet other gay people until college, so the "affiliations" and such were predominantly heterosexual until then. Nevertheless, 17% of me apparently is REALLY digging the "NSFW Tittaaaay" threads. Who'd a thunk it?

There's something interesting here that might rely on the seeming inferiority of femininity--or better, on the seeming superiority of one mode of masculinity (even if that one mode is awfully hard to pin down). If there is a rigid image of manliness that many straight men aspire to, then anyone who comes to terms with their exclusion from that image is free to experience much less rigid social roles. That freedom may take on sexual or social manifestations more fluidly and can be experienced by gay men, women, 'sensitive' men equally. If this were the case, would completely astigmatizing 'feminine' characteristics de facto force more people into defined social roles? Just throwing it out there.

Why, the ancient historical interest isn't necessarily to help understand the experience of gays today, but to understand why and how social roles change over time, and how that might be instructive to think about the future.

Should we start a thread about this? I just took the survey. 62% straight, which seems about right, maybe a bit low.

Les grands esprits se rencontrent! I was just wondering about this; if you start one, I'll re-post my results.

I didn't expect the straight numbers to be so low. This is sure sign that the apocalypse is imminent.

I guess I'm 13.5% gay, if I read my results right. .81/6 I expected more to be honest.

Done.

Funny to read this - Mrs. T has a friend who was out (or semi-out, I guess) in college. They lost touch and when they reconnected, he's married with a child. Imagine our surprise.