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Date Posted: 18:23:35 06/03/08 Tue
Author: manwitch
Subject: Re: sexual identity
In reply to: ScottS 's message, "Re: sexual identity" on 10:03:23 06/03/08 Tue

Lost and delirious is a fine movie.

I agree with most everything you say. I am about as far from a conservative, politically speaking, as it is possible to get. I understand the motivation of those who seek a "biological" source for homosexuality. I am not sure, however, that such a "discovery" would produce the results they seek. Such knowledge has little use. Except perhaps to insurance companies looking to deny coverage, or to political entities looking to curtail civil rights.

I recall some ten years ago or so the idea was forming that hormones during pregnancy seemed to create a part of the brain that was enlarged in homosexual men. The liberals wanted to jump for joy at the biological nature of being gay, thinking it meant they could not be discriminated against. But of course, there is already a biological basis to being a woman, and that doesnt' stop them from being discriminated against.

And again, for the enlarged part of the brain to become the indicator of homosexuality would merely indicate a change in definition, and not one that I can see producing positive consequences. I just believe that the hidden identity, sexual or otherwise, that has no manifestation in behavior but that can be measured scientifically is a very dangerous and philosophically problematic illusion. I have no objection to people feeling about themselves however they wish, or describing themselves to themselves as they wish. I have a stong objection to others making an appeal to science to tell someone they manifest an identity to which they do not subscribe in feeling, thought or behavior. Or more to the point, which is simply nobody else's business.

Sophists vision of sexual identity, while something I have no problem with, does not apply to Willow, who shows not the slightest confusion in her sexual desire for Oz, or for Xander for that matter. Her love for Tara is a love for a specific person. That she stays lesbian after is, well, whatever. But tara wasn't just any old girlfriend. She was the other half of the orange, spiritually speaking.

Anyways, we all like to believe we have unchanging identities hidden inside us. But we don't. Our identities change constantly, in all our different relationships and environments and conditions. We may try to make a consistent story out of it, but that's what it is: storytelling.

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