7/19 We Were Not Born This Way

This is an example from the theory I'm starting to write down on pieces of paper. But I'll write my example here since it's faster to type down.

Having been around numerous gay men in my life, I have heard the same and same conclusion all the time, which is even depicted by the mega-hit "Born This Way". I don't know who first stated that gays were born gay, but this is just a lie used to explain their "difference" and make them accepted in society. Because biology doesn't have an answer for homosexuality, people had to find another reason: innate behavior. But no, this isn't right. Homosexuality isn't a physical reaction, it is a psychological reaction between another person. A gay man will react sexually to another gay man because of psychological behavior. We all understand that. What we don't understand (and most of the time do not try to understand) is where this male-male attraction originated from. The answer is society, or in other words, people around the child.

The child will HAVE to distinguish the differences between male and female. But not only physically, the child will get numerous false statements about psychological aspects of each sex. For example, the child will see and understand that male are stronger physically and therefore that female are weak physically. As much as this could be considered true on an average comparison (because of the muscles of the male body usually growing faster than that of the female body), it creates too many prejudices. Does that mean if I am a boy I will be strong and if I am a girl I will be weak? Can I be a weak boy or a strong girl? Who wants to be a girl if girls are weak? (is being strong better than being weak?) And I could keep rising questions about the difference between men being "stronger" than women, but let's come to the conclusion that everybody is different and therefore the evaluation of "strong" or "weak" is meaningless. We can even go further by saying that these two words have different connotations, and thus the language is an issue, but I will leave the language problem for another time.

From what s/he has been told by the society and by looking at the society around her/him, the child then considers all the differences between male and female and does not come to a conclusion. A child does not need to choose whichever he "believes" is better. The child just observes and takes note in her/his head. The problem (because yes, holding a belief is definitely a problem) is when the child HAS to choose which s/he prefers.

For me, the choosing time was quite late: I only had to choose when I was 19 year-old. Before then, my parents would assume I was heterosexual, but my mother told us we could also be homosexual and it wouldn't make any difference to her. Was I given a complete free choice of being whoever I wanted? No, I was still considered to be heterosexual by my family, and by my friends, and by myself. In fact, I wasn't thinking about whether I was gay or straight. I had other more important concerns. And I lived quite well enjoying a life full of porn (both heterosexual and homosexual) while not having real sex with anyone (because I had no need for it).

In elementary school, I played a gay character (full of stupid stereotypes) in order to "raise awareness" but mostly to get attention from everyone since I wasn't really popular. Because I didn't care if people would think of me being gay, it didn't make any difference for me. And no, for skeptics, I wasn't "born gay", since at that time (10 year-old) I haven't had any feeling toward any particular sex, though it follows that I was already influenced at that time by the idea that men were of "superior quality" in my head. Later on, when someone asked me if I was gay, I would just say "no! I'm completely straight!" because my gay acting was just for fun, and I had to tell them that it was a joke and that I wasn't gay. Yet I had no idea and didn't care much, I told them I was straight just as a "I'm normal" answer. Because I learned (wrongly) that being straight was the normal (good) behavior, and gay was the exception (wrong). So whenever asked, my answer was already made up and was coming without much thinking. It doesn't mean I considered myself straight, just that I knew how to evade questions about my sexual orientation.

In college, though, I was made to make a choice, to be part of a category, to be labeled as either straight or gay. My friends were straight acting men, and their excessive behavior on jokes/posters/videos/girlfriends/etc. about female sex shown to me would eventually annoy me until I started thinking about whether I liked women or not. There were many other factors, such as surveys or identification, "do you have a girlfriend yet?", and all these comments given by people all around me. It went to a point where I couldn't resist anymore to the pressure. I had to think, out of pressure by society, about my sexual orientation and have an answer to it. My answer was that I was gay, because I watched gay porn (that simple-minded).

The worst part of this is that this identification as "gay" made me part of a group of people. Like them, I believed I was gay. I believed that men were better than women. I believed that men were sexually attractive to me. And then, like other members of that group, I started to believe that a gay man has to come out of the closet, has to tell his friends, has to assume he is gay, has to look at other men and judge them physically. In short, I was made to believe I had to be "gay". Later on other questions arose, for example: am I top or bottom? being asked from too many people, and answering too many different answers to please them. This all followed the same process.

In fact, I am not gay. Neither are any person on this planet. I have been considered crazy multiple times by saying that we all are bisexuals. There was something I forgot in my theory: everyone who is completely rational and free of beliefs will come to the conclusion that they are bisexual. Now this sounds like "being bisexual is more open-minded and smarter and better than everything else". But let me be accurate here: even if I use words with connotations (for example "open-minded" has a positive connotation) I do not use them as such; take my words with no good or bad meaning attached to them. I am not saying being bisexual is better than being gay or straight, and I will never try to say something similar or opposed. I am just saying that we are not born with a preference for any sex, therefore according to definitions, we are born bisexual.

When someone tells me they are gay and find pussies disgusting, it annoys me. I usually go on asking "have you tried to like pussies?" to which most people will answer yes. I clearly doubt that. They probably "tried" just a little bit. The man who considers himself as gay is not telling me the truth, but only a belief he holds. Well, not exactly. It isn't a belief he is holding, it is a belief he feels the need to say in order to be part of the group who is saying the same belief. Once one labels him as gay, there usually is no turning back. Why would there be? We are told that being gay is "good", there is now something to fight for (gay rights around the world) and since we were "born this way", there is nothing that can be changed, so why even bother thinking about it? And eventually the man believes so much he is gay that he will never try (or maybe even think to try) to doubt about this now "fact".

In phases, it would be: (1) Observation, (2) Requirement of a Choice, (3) Making of a Choice, (4) Validation, (5) Acceptance, (6) Belief.

(1) Observation
This phase is when the child looks around and is given many different information, or not at all. There is definitely no belief here, and no matter what the child might answer to a question, it will not mean anything for her/him. This phase is also seen at any age,, as soon as someone discovers something new.

(2) Requirement of a Choice
When society is asking for the person to make a decision, to choose between different options (for example indirectly just by looking that mostly everyone else around her/him has already made a choice), the person will, at some point, feel the need to answer the question. This phase is ultimately asking to the person that s/he needs to believe in something. There can be rejection of making a choice, if the person feels like s/he does not need to make a choice even if s/he is asked to.

(3) Making of a Choice
By making a choice, the belief is created, yet it is still not be believed in. The choice (or choices) made here do not define the person, it is either randomly selected or influenced by people around the person (either agreeing or opposing to them).

(4) Validation
This phase is when the person tries the choice s/he took. S/he will answer anyone's question with the answer found in the previous phase. This phase can be short or long. Actually, I would like to think that this is the final step and that no one really comes to believe anything. If for example one changes from a choice to another one, then that person was still in this validation phase, because s/he figured out that the first choice wasn't the right one and that the second one might be the good one.

(5) Acceptance
When the person has clearly tried out the choice and has considered it to be so accurate that it is true, then s/he accepts the choice as defining her/him. At this point, the person will not try to doubt her/his choice and it will eventually become a belief.

(6) Belief
The belief is when it makes no sense at all for the person to even think that her/his decision might have been wrong. There will never be any doubt about it, and the person will not be able to change her/his mind on this belief.

Most people I know are in the latter phases (4-6), that I will call the Belief Phases. For example, as I understand it, my gay friends all assume their homosexuality and do not doubt it, so they are part of the Belief Phases. Children, however, are part of the Questioning Phases (1-3). They do not need to make a choice yet, and society will in most cases give them time to "find on their own" until they think the children are grown-up and have to answer "questions about life".

With this example of homosexuality, I tried to understand how beliefs (the belief of being homosexual, or the belief that men are more attractive than women) are created during one's life. My conclusion is that it is not innate, like we are believed to think, but completely made out from a decision that society asks us to take at one point in our life. I made my observations with the idea that everyone is a rational being, i.e. that everyone is able to find out what made them homosexual in their past. Yet I also tend to think that not everyone is able to think so rationally, my point being that they do not try to seek the truth, since they already believe in it. (How can someone realize this at every phase?) Most homosexuals do not rationally think about whether they really are gay or not, but prefer to keep it that way, since the society wants to make their lives easier by telling them that they were born this way. This example lacks the explanation of communication of beliefs between individuals, creation and maintenance of beliefs in society, language connotations, and sexual and physical attraction. Thus, I will need to come back and define these in more details.