Before Straight and Gay: The discreet, disorienting passions of the Victorian era | Hacker News Reader

Before Straight and Gay: The discreet, disorienting passions of the Victorian era

theatlantic.com

71 pointsVigier118 comments

To a certain extent I certainly find the current/modern fixation with classifying gender and orientation odd. It's not entirely clear to me why it's important that I know somebody is a "queer sapiosexual" or whatever else. But there are clearly a lot of people who think such things are very important.

And of course what seems a tendency towards needlessly complicated overly-expository self-labeling encompasses a lot more than gender these days. It feels like there's a subtext to a lot of it which sort of suggests that ideas can only be heard and understood clearly by those who own the appropriate labels (including gender), and so people seek to have expansive identities that give them the social bona fides necessary to have their opinions, thoughts, and ideas treated with respect and presumed relevance.

In other eras perhaps these social credentials came from wealth or class or other "accomplishments." But the modern world seems to have let an obsession with the the variously unfair, arbitrary, capricious, and discriminatory nature of these previous credentials become the basis for inventing new ones based around constructed identities, since such constructs are available to all.

In a way we can see this in how protest movements are labeled - it used to be that they were labeled by their goals or the problems they were trying to solve, like the "Civil Rights Movement" or the "Conservation Movement." But now we label things by their identity. Rather than conservation movement, at some point we ended up with "conservationists" and "environmentalists," which have given way to things like the "Women's March," "Scientist's March," etc, which seem to imply that identity necessarily indicates viewpoint - just by knowing what category/identity is marching I should know what it is trying to say.

As a lazy human being I find this not an all-together pleasing development, mostly because it seems to go along with a bit of all-or-nothingism, particularly for "allies," who, absent the appropriate labels, may only accept or not accept the broad determinations of those who own the operative label at risk of being excluded/denounced.

Anyway, I enjoyed the piece. Always enjoy reading about Victorian stuff.

it's very difficult to discuss a thing or build a community around an idea without a label. that said, I do think there has been a reactionary pressure, leading to encompassing labels like "queer" or "genderqueer" which are more general rejections of modern, delineated ideas of gender/sexual identity.

There's an old saying, I believe it was from a native American tribe (can't say for sure); "To name something is to own it."

> It's not entirely clear to me why it's important that I know somebody is a "queer sapiosexual" or whatever else. But there are clearly a lot of people who think such things are very important.

The people who think it's most important of all are the people who disapprove of it. If we're living in an era where everyone thinks the details of their gender and sexuality are important, that's not because of hipsters in Brooklyn, it's because of fundamentalists in Kansas.

>In a way we can see this in how protest movements are labeled - it used to be that they were labeled by their goals or the problems they were trying to solve, like the "Civil Rights Movement" or the "Conservation Movement." But now we label things by their identity.

I think this might be a rather hasty generalization. What about the peasants' revolt, or the women's march on Versailles? And there are lots of protest movements today that aren't labeled based on identity, such as most of the worldwide protests against Trump.

> If we're living in an era where everyone thinks the details of their gender and sexuality are important, that's not because of hipsters in Brooklyn, it's because of fundamentalists in Kansas.

I'm pretty sure no Kansas fundamentalists care (or even know) about subtle distinctions between sexualities. It's not like you can tell a socially conservative person, "I'm not actually gay, I consider myself queer and I'm attracted to personalities, not genders." and have them say, "My mistake."

They seem to have pretty strong opinions on exactly which groups of people should be allowed to use which bathrooms.

I can't say that I follow the news on identity politics closely, but my understanding from liberal sources is that conservatives believe that people should use the bathroom assigned to their biological sex, and they don't know or care about whether someone is post-op or pre-op or genderqueer or any of the other gradations of gender. So, again, it seems nonsensical to explain the subtle gradations of gender identity and sexual orientation that have emerged in recent years (i.e. past 30-40 years, say) by saying that conservatives were requiring this information somehow.

>and they don't know or care about whether someone is post-op or pre-op or genderqueer or any of the other gradations of gender.

But to enforce the policy you have to care about precisely this, because there are plenty of transmen who look like men and transwomen who look like women. So in practice you have to go around asking every man/woman in the bathroom whether they have a penis/vagina. If you "don't care" whether someone is genderqueer or not, then simply let men use the men's bathroom and women use the women's bathroom, without bothering to check their genitals first.

Again, my understanding is that they don't care what gender you say you are or where you are on the physical spectrum, they care about your gender at birth. This does not necessitate anything further than, "I was born male" or "I was born female", referring to biological sex, except in edge cases like chromosomal abnormalities and ambiguous genitalia. Handling cases of biological gender ambiguities is not covered by the emerging vocabulary around the gender spectrum, so again, those distinctions are entirely meaningless to conservatives.

If your hypothesis were true and these increasingly precise distinctions of sexual and gender identity are a response to conservatives, why did they emerge only after liberal attitudes became prevalent enough that people could openly embrace these identities? One would expect that if they cared about these subtleties, these differences would have been more important when the conservative viewpoint was near universal.

I think maybe you’re not picturing how such a regulation would work in practice. Suppose someone who looks like a woman goes into the women’s bathroom. Do you ask them if they have a penis, or do you just let them use the bathroom? To enforce the regulation that people have to use the bathroom corresponding to their biological sex, you would have to continually ask people about their genitalia. In other words, you’d have to continually take an interest in whether any given woman is a transwoman or a cis woman.

Also, I didn’t quite say that increasingly precise distinctions of sexual and general identity are a response to conservatives. I said that it’s because of conservatives that these distinctions are thought to be (and in practice are) very important. If we lived in some kind of free-wheeling hippy society, then these aspects of people would be of the same level of interest as, say, their dietary preferences.

As things currently stand, if you are a woman with a penis, there are lots of people ready and waiting to tell you that you're not really a woman. It's hardly surprising that transwomen take their gender identity very seriously when it's constantly under attack. Nor is it surprising that they construct new categories (e.g. 'transwoman') when the existing categories are so rigidly policed.

> Do you ask them if they have a penis, or do you just let them use the bathroom

And in case anybody thinks this is just hyperbole:

http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/self-appointed-bathroom-c...

> I think maybe you’re not picturing how such a regulation would work in practice. Suppose someone who looks like a woman goes into the women’s bathroom. Do you ask them if they have a penis, or do you just let them use the bathroom?

If you're trying to reason about what social conservatives think, it probably doesn't help to concoct some strawman half-LGBT half-social conservative ideology. A social conservative ideology doesn't have the dilemma you describe because, for them, gender expression should conform to sex.

Any...

> interest in whether any given woman is a transwoman or a cis woman

...was foisted on social conservatives from outside. They don't have an innate interest or need for such finely-graded labels.

Conservatives, if they’re in favor of restricting bathroom use based on biological gender, have to decide whether or not they want to enforce this regulation. Enforcing it requires attending to the difference between cis women and transwomen. So clearly they do have the dilemma I described.

> Enforcing it requires attending to the difference between cis women and transwomen. So clearly they do have the dilemma I described.

Conservatives of the flavor you are talking about consider trans-women to be men. They don't need to differentiate because they are trying to impose a simpler rule than that. In practice, if they wanted to enforce their rule, they could just require ID to use a toilet and require that the ID specify gender at birth (as verified by birth certificate). The current state of the person's genitals does not have to play into it.

Obviously enforcing such a rule (or really any bathroom rule) strictly would be incredibly annoying and basically pointless, and in practice it would be enforced about as intermittently as almost any other rules, but at no point do they actually care whether or not you currently have a penis.

>Conservatives of the flavor you are talking about consider trans-women to be men.

This point is not lost on me. I noted it in several of the posts that you're replying to.

>They don't need to differentiate

To enforce the rule, they need to differentiate between transwomen and cis women, since they do not consider the former to be women, and think that cis women, but not transwomen, should be allowed to use the women's restroom. You acknowledge this yourself in other parts of your post.

>In practice, if they wanted to enforce their rule, they could just require ID to use a toilet and require that the ID specify gender at birth (as verified by birth certificate). The current state of the person's genitals does not have to play into it.

This is a weird and pedantic objection. You're saying that they care about whether or not the person in question was born with a penis rather than whether or not they currently have one. Ok, but so what? Then you have to ask everyone who goes to the women's bathroom whether they were born with a penis.

The desire there was to provide women and boys with safe spaces more than to discriminate against anyone. It's a protective instinct, not an oppressive one.

I'm not saying women are right to think all men are potential rapists or something, but there used to be a system in place to help with that issue. Now, what? I guess women need to hang outside the restroom until it seems safe? Or always go in groups?

Maybe we'll see more single-person restrooms going forward.

Anyway, point being, it's easy and reductionist to boil complex human emotions down to bigotry. I think the "classic bathroom rules" had some good points to them that we haven't replaced.

>The desire there was to provide women and boys with safe spaces more than to discriminate against anyone.

But that doesn't make the slightest bit of sense. How would preventing transpeople from using the bathrooms that align with their gender identity make anyone safer? Is there a single recorded incident of a cis woman being raped by a transwoman in a bathroom?

Also, the effect on boys is that they'll be sharing bathrooms with transwomen instead of with transmen. From the bigot's point of view, that ought to make boys less safe (as they think that transwomen are "really" men and transmen "really" women, so that transwomen are more likely to be rapists). It's telling that the supposed justification in terms of safety isn't even internally consistent.

You misunderstand. The issue isn't trans people who are good citizens. It's bad actors that have a new loophole.

The mechanism ("no men in the ladies room") has been removed, so there's no longer a mechanism for the assistant manager of a Target to help his female customers relax and have a safe space to take care of things. That safety may now only provided after some sort of leering, proposal, or assault has already taken place.

Also, for the record, I don't think much of this makes sense. If we were objectively worried about safety, we would focus on driving less and slower and locking up swimming pools. Stranger danger is largely overblown. That being said, I've seen particular things where particular men (almost always men) harass particular women (almost always women) and in most cases there's not much the victim can do about it. This is more about concerns along those lines.

It's not clear to me any more what point you're trying to make. You seem to acknowledge that there isn't actually any safety issue with allowing transwomen to use the women's bathroom.

> They seem to have pretty strong opinions on exactly which groups of people should be allowed to use which bathrooms.

I was saying all strong opinions there come from wanting to protect women, not from a desire to get into other peoples' bathroom preferences.

Everyone professes to have good intentions, but the conservatives in question have a terrible record on "protecting women" in general.

Which seems pretty odd considering that with the exception of urinals, toilets themselves are enclosed in cubicles anyway. It seems kind of weird that they even segregate bathrooms... if they did away with urinals, all we'd be really sharing are sinks anyway. Though, I've heard horror stories about the state of women's bathrooms. I've never seen the inside of one. So perhaps they should remain separate XD

Having a good deal of familiarity with the sort of people you are talking about, I'd say that your understanding is almost exactly the opposite of the case. It depends a little on exactly which group of Kansas fundamentalists you are talking about, but the standard view is that things gayness or transexuality are not biological identities but character flaws. There is a common belief that homosexuality is a side effect sexual license. Much of the importance of a gay 'identity' or a transexual 'identity' is in reaction to just this attitude. Homosexuals find the need to emphasize that their homosexuality is inbuilt and not some moral failing and so turn it into an identity.

So they are actually fine with transwomen using the women's restroom? I'm not quite sure which part you're disputing.

It's this statement here that I disagree with:

"The people who think it's most important of all are the people who disapprove of it."

Social conservatives don't want transwomen using the women's bathrooms because they don't think that they are actually women. That's the only distinction that they care about: biological sex. Everything else is fiction to them.

Bear in mind that this is a simplification of the stances of millions of people, all of whom are different. Some will more readily admit to the existence of transpeople and homosexuals.

I'm not sure where we disagree. As you say, conservatives think that the difference between cis women and transwomen is very important, as they believe that transwomen are not really women.

For the record I do think you're quite right that it's the forces trying to impose some sort of quasi-traditionalism helped give rise to some of the label/identity stuff, and also for the record I think my own claim about labels and identity over time is a very hasty and quite an over-generalization. (It's not like I went and did any research.)

It's not important that you know someone is "queer sapiosexual". It's important that the person who is knows, and is able to describe themselves.

I'm a homo-romantic asexual, and it took me until I was nearly 40 before I understood this. I often wonder how differently my life might have turned out if I'd realised this sooner.

People often complain about labels. They're not labels - they're tools we can use to understand ourselves, and help others to understand us.

Labels can repress as well as emancipate, if there is a general expectation for people to conform to existing categories, and those categories are rigidly defined.

Looking at this from a technological perspective, it reminds me of the shift from categorization to tagging in information categorization.

Instead of being 'Male or female', or 'Gay or straight', now there are a range of different adjectives people can apply to themselves (cis/trans, gay/straight, male/female, a/bi/homo/pansexual, a/bi/homo/panromantic, and so on).

Rather than having to fit into one of two boxes, people who cross those boundaries in one way or another can specify that specifically. I think a lot of the confusion a lot of people have these days with regards to gender and identity politics is the proliferation of new terminology to describe the wide variations in preferences and identities.

Think of it like anything else with jargon. It's important to people, so they come up with words to talk about specific ideas more efficiently and less ambiguously.

I think a lot of it is also onset by the modern internet (twitter, instagram, tinder, etc.), where snap judgements of people are made based on a very limited set of information - typically a picture, and a short bio. In those cases, concise and effective social signaling is extremely important; and that's just what bios like "husband, father, christian, ruby programmer, beer lover" accomplish. In a few words, you've just made yourself relatable to a high proportion of people who will read your profile .

If your bio is more niche, like "bassoon player, atari 2600 collector", then you've put up an easy filter to only attract the attention of the very specific group of people you care about. Particularly when taken in a romantic/sexual context, it makes it much easier for one with niche preferences to find people whose preference overlap theirs.

There's another dimension to it, where these labels become aspirational. Perhaps I only play the guitar once a month, but really want to think of myself as a guitarist; in which case, just putting it in my bio gives it some air of legitimacy.

> To a certain extent I certainly find the current/modern fixation with classifying gender and orientation odd. It's not entirely clear to me why it's important that I know somebody is a "queer sapiosexual" or whatever else.

I think it's important to recognize the era that we are living in and what has been occurring over the last 20 years. It seems to me that we have been rapidly exiting an era of conservative ideas surrounding gender and sexuality where the rights and humanity of LGBT individuals were not recognized or were substantially suppressed.

It may seem silly or over-the-top to see someone fixate on gender or sexual orientation as a key part of their identity, but consider that the issue has truly been life or death for a lot of people in our very very recent past, and to enter an era where people can genuinely start to live what they consider to be an authentic life, I think that the outward expression and ownership of gender/sexual orientation labels is natural.

It can be difficult to feel normal if there isn't a word to describe how you feel. If all you see is depictions of a certain kind of person (straight and cisgender [1]), but you don't feel that way, are you broken, wrong, crazy even? I've seen countless accounts of people that fit the formula of "I felt different all my life, and it wasn't until I heard the word <label> that I understood."

So yes, maybe if you're straight and cisgender you never gave a thought to it, because the majority of people around you were as well, but to a little transgender or asexual teen, hearing the label is like finding a community and comfort blanket all in one.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisgender - Cisgender (often abbreviated to simply cis) is a term for people who have a gender identity that matches the sex that they were assigned at birth. Cisgender may also be defined as those who have "a gender identity or perform a gender role society considers appropriate for one's sex."[1] It is the opposite of the term transgender.

Edit: kid->teen, I'm not talking about pre-pubescent children

> but to a little transgender or asexual kid

Kids are weird. They often do a ton of weird shit at least until puberty. I think this trend with the internet-bound millennial left (at least, I haven't seen anyone else do it) of taking every possible aspect of someone's personality (like a child expressing that they wish they were boy/girl) and classifying/medicalizing it is just as harmful as overdiagnosing kids with ADHD and getting them strung up on amphetamines. Not everything needs to be turned into a medical issue or have a big deal made of it. Now, instead of just doping kids up on amphetamines, we're also giving them hormone blockers or even HRT. And no, that's not a bogeyman; it's not hard to find celebratory videos where the parents give their pre-pubescent kid their first round of hormone treatment.

According to [1], 80-95% of kids diagnosed with Gender Dysphoria completely get over it by the time they hit puberty (and [2] says 88-98%). It is almost always, as we used to call it, "a phase". Any diagnosis made before puberty is extremely likely to be a misdiagnosis.

So forgive me, but I don't really buy "Think of the (transgender/agender) children!" as a compelling argument, since the actual occurrence of permanent gender dysphoria in children is low bordering on negligible, with many persistent cases potentially attributable to parental treatment rather than any sort of neurophysiological disorder on the part of the child. See [3] as an example. I think encouraging children to see themselves and having dysphoria and to seek treatment is extremely harmful, given that in the vast majority of formal diagnoses, no medical intervention is necessary. The whole thing just reeks of projecting identity politics onto innocent bystanders in a way that is demonstrably bad for their mental and physical health.

[1] Cohen-Kettenis PT, Delemarre-van de Waal HA, Gooren LJ. The treatment of adolescent transsexuals: changing insights. J Sexual Med 2008;5:1892–1897.

[2] http://www.acpeds.org/the-college-speaks/position-statements...

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/oct/21/boy-living-l...

Maybe the word "kid" wasn't the right one for conveying my intention. I wasn't thinking "children 10 and under" but rather adolescents, maybe 13-18. The period of a person's life when they're sorting out who they are.

Speaking from experience, being a transgender kid sucks, but I agree that before 10 nothing a person says or does should be considered immutable gospel about their identity. That said, while it's not immutable, it's still something parents should listen to. Ignoring a gender nonconforming child expressing themselves is a bigger risk than encouraging a kid who eventually grows out of it.

Also, no pre-pubescent kids are getting hormones, just blockers, which are fully reversible if it is just a phase. It's not standard procedure to start actual hormones until about 16. If the kid "snaps out of it" then they stop taking the blockers, and grow up no worse for wear. But if they maintain their transgender identity, those blockers will save them a world of distress.

> If the kid "snaps out of it" then they stop taking the blockers

It seems astoundingly likely that a heavy dose of the correct set of sex hormones is precisely what causes these kids to "snap out of it" in the first place.

> and grow up no worse for wear

I'm very skeptical of this claim. There's no way that disrupting such a fundamental developmental stage in such an aggressive way can just be shrugged off.

Does the collective neurological and physiological damage of disrupting all these kids' development outweigh the benefit to the 2%-20% who actually end up continuing to identify as trans? And how much does that percentage decrease in the absence of hormone blockers?

> It seems astoundingly likely that a heavy dose of the correct set of sex hormones is precisely what causes these kids to "snap out of it" in the first place.

That sort of treatment used to be common. In general it results in the trans kids getting horribly depressed, often killing themselves.

Doctors with more field experience and who have done more research than me have settled on blockers as a safe and effective treatment with no long-term side effects if they're discontinued. You'll have to provide something more than gut feeling that they can't just be shrugged off.

I think the implication wasn't that one should "treat" people with hormones so much as let nature take its course (speaking from experience, the natural hormone surge at the start of puberty definitely counts as a "heavy dose").

> Does the collective neurological and physiological damage of disrupting all these kids' development outweigh the benefit to the 2%-20% who actually end up continuing to identify as trans?

Blockers aren't given to seven year olds who show up as gender nonconforming in Rorsach tests and play tasks in the GID studies that form the basis of that figure. The paper you quoted earlier states:

"GID persisting into early puberty appears to be highly persistent: at the Amsterdam gender identity clinic for adolescents, none of the patients who were diagnosed with a GID and considered eligible for SR dropped out of the diagnostic or treatment procedures or regretted SR. Even some of those who were not eligible to start treatment before the age of 18 years because of serious psychiatric comorbidity, extremely adverse living circumstances, or a combination of both, persisted in their wish for SR. Because their other problems had to be addressed before they were regarded eligible to start SR successfully, their treatment was usually delayed until after 18 years of age."

Whenever I see cis- and trans- applied to humans, I get the creeping suspicion that some subset of ortho-, meta-, para-, dextro-, levo-, gem-, vic-, hom-, syn-, anti-, exo-, and endo- will be next, and everyone will need to pass an organic chemistry course just to sign up for a dating service.

  (In queue at the local coffee shop.)
  Couple-A:  (reading a Quandr-E profile out loud) Orthodisexual
             dextromasculine cismale seeks polyamorous dyad for
             exo- addition (or endo- if it feels right)....
  Couple-B:  Awww... dang.  Too bad drhe isn't *para*-disexual.
             Swipe left.
  Sasquatch:  I know, right?  But gotta respect drhis life choices.
  Couple-A:  Hey, you wouldn't happen to be...
  Sasquatch:  Nope.  I only date unicorns.
  Senior Coffee-Service Engineer:  (surreptitiously applies alicorn wax)
  Dude:  (enters) Any hetero cisfemales in here?
  Chorus:  No!
  Dude:  (exits)
  Dodecagenarian:  One half-liter fair-trade, please.  No saccharoids.
                   Double cannabis-butter shot.
  Senior Coffee-Service Engineer: That will be $6129, sir and/or ma'am.
  Rod Serling:  (appearing from nowhere) Submitted for your approval:
                Birmingham, Alabama, in the year 2040,
                just 2 years after the Social Justice War....

Beautifully dense satire. A+, would read again.

I can sort of see where you're coming from... if The Hardy Boys, then Nancy Drew, if Nancy Drew, then Gay Hardy Boys, if Gay Hardy Boys, then Lesbian Nancy Drew, etc., and so on, until every label has its own version so everyone can enjoy their detective story.

But at the same time, it seems conceivable that somebody could just come up with an upbeat middle grade detective series where gender wasn't a central aspect of the construct and people could just enjoy mysteries and detectives fantasies without having to relate to the characters' choice of dates.

In any case I was fortunate to grow up in a family which (essentially) stressed that being "normal" was basically like being an idiot lemming, and, more particularly, implied that being/feeling different was fine even if it wasn't always easy. So I guess with the right framing it's possible to feel like a relative space alien without coming to be convinced that you're the broken one, but it's sure not a path of convenience.

Re: "It feels like there's a subtext to a lot of it which sort of suggests that ideas can only be heard and understood clearly by those who own the appropriate labels", linguistic prescription[1] seems relevant. From wikipedia:

"Prescription has a tendency to favour the language of one particular region or social class over others ... frequently, a standard dialect is associated with the upper class"

Interesting stuff.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_prescription

I've always been amused that the people I know who are most committed to identity politics are quick to dismiss conservative aspects of society they don't like as "just" social constructs that can be changed, even though identity is a social construct too.

I think the modern emphasis on gender/sexual identity has something to do with a widespread post-modern/relativistic worldview. In the victorian age, absolutes were part and parcel of the cultural context. Nowadays, we don't share that same foundation, and so people look for other foundations. And I think the foundation that a lot of people have come to rest upon is the idea that your sexuality is the core part of your identity, sort your most fundamental part.

Viewed through that lens, the sort of hyper-classification of gender and sexuality makes sense: in order to understand who you are you need to be able to define what 'type' of sexuality you have.

I'd like to put out there that I'm not sure about how useful this way of thinking about the issue is, it's just been on my mind a bit lately.

I think you've hit on part of why I find this stuff sort of odd at times -- I don't feel like anything gender related is at all core to my identity. Rather, the things I view as core to my identity are ideas, like "torture is always wrong," "slavery is always wrong," and "always wear shoes that allow you to move effectively in an emergency" if I may use some simplified cases.

It's easier for some, harder for others: http://www.robot-hugs.com/cognitive-load/

If I follow, why do you think experiences like the linked lead to a core identity of "I am an X (or B or Q...)" instead of one of "people should not be treated this way/experience this/have to think about these things?"

What is concerning about the transition from goal-based protests to identity-based protests is that the segregation of people has always been at the root of many tragic events in the past.

All genocides, persecutions, internments, etc. are necessarily preceded by the identification of a group of people. Most people don't like to hurt other people due to our innate empathy. But there's a more primal instinct we all have called "survival", and it will usually override empathy. Part of the survival instinct is the "warfare" instinct, and by splitting people into groups with insolvent identities, a state of war is created that will give group members the justification to fight other groups.

Most of the time the fighting is non-violent and results in positive outcomes - but only when the identity is associated with a tangible goal (as mentioned, the civil rights movement). Once the goal is achieved the group dissolves, satisfied. But as OP said, lately the goals have become less tangible and more fragmented, and the identities have become simultaneously broader and more exclusive. "Americans" vs "immigrants". "Cis" vs "LGBT".

It's concerning because I don't know how it can be resolved peacefully.

It may not be important to you, but surely you can see how it would be important for them?

As a straight guy, it's pretty easy for me to find people for romantic attachment. If you have some different identity or sexuality, it could obviously be hard. These names help people explain their preferences to others, which is important for finding a relationship.

You think of it as 'needlessly complex overly-expository' because it's not a problem for you - but if these things are a problem for you, then these descriptions help you communicate them to others and could even help you understand your own feelings.

As to the 'identity politics' claim - I see this a lot, and it comes across as very dishonest. Most of the time, the groups that are engaging in the so-called 'identity politics' are groups being targeted because of their identity. It feels like, in the current climate, Jewish people would get acccused of engaging in 'identity politics' for decrying the holocaust.

The claim that 'you shouldn't care about identity' ignores the reality where we live in a world that very much does care, and regularly discriminates against people. It seems very reasonable for them to stand up to that.

It's also useful to contrast that with the world described in the article in which sexual attraction and expression was more straightforwardly defined as normal/moral/socially-acceptable vs abnormal/sinful/illegal and most people engaging in behaviours society considered to belong to the latter group sought to avoid identifying too closely with them by acting out a pastiche of conventional married life and congratulating themselves on not being effeminate like a poof.

The idea expressed in the article that the Victorian era was gloriously genderfluid for anyone but a few well-to-do families without any notable enemies seems more than a little optimistic too.

I at least agree there are lots of people in this world who are obsessed with getting in other's business and unnecessarily making it theirs, whether it's sex or abortions or bathrooms or guns.

But rather than taking things for granted I think it's the opposite.

For example, your statement about it being hard/easy to find relationship seems to assume that trying to find love should just be acceptable and not hard in most social contexts, whereas I think it's often obnoxious regardless of orientation/identity and probably best reserved for contexts where it's explicitly okay.

Likewise, I agree that understanding yourself and your own feelings is really important, but I'm not sure why everyone's own internal voyage of discovery is something to be worn on on the sleeve more like it's some security blanket and less like it's as intrinsic to them as gravity. I'd actually posit that past a certain point a need for social acknowledgment of one's identity suggests some level of discomfort and uncertainty with it, which is fine. But why it's something everybody has to parse when they're just trying to bag your groceries or go over a quarterly report or something is beyond me.

I do think there is something to "targeting" as you put it, or people not minding their own business as I may have put it. But I'm also definitely naive enough to think that telling those people to mind their own business shouldn't require a particular identity.

Who are these people making you parse their precise identity while you're bagging their groceries?

I mean, if someone comes to you and starts explaining their sexuality while you are bagging their groceries, they are over-sharing, sure. Has that happened to you? It definitely hasn't to me.

I find your post kind of hard to reply to because I've read it a couple of times and I can't really understand your issue. You state it's "obnoxious" to search for relationships, but that's a big part of life for most people, and it influences most of our human iteraction.

I think it's very easy to just take it for granted you can do literally nothing and people you are attracted to can take an interest. How many people do you know that met in a 'context where it's explicitly okay'? Virtually everyone ends up in relationships through casual contact that grows into more, in my experience. That's hard if you can't signal in those contexts.

Furthermore, it's not just that, but also things like gender identity - where it's partially about how other people see and treat you, becuase you want people to see you the way you see yourself. I just fail to see how it's so burdensome for us to deal with slightly new situations when it can improve someone's experience of their life so much.

Sure, people have private business, but some parts of life are public, and interacting with people is a part of life. I think to pretend that we can segment that all away and ignore it is weird, and only really works for people when everyone can make assumptions about you that are right, which often isn't the case.

This is a very kind and gentle way of describing the current state of ideology in media. I have to commend you for your ability to communicate a critical message in such a friendly manner.

> overly-expository self-labeling

When large numbers of people tell you to hide your sexual preferences and your gender identity in shame and even for safety, when they are target of public ridicule (e.g., gay jokes in movies), and when they label you and define your identity for you -- then asserting what you are, in the face of all that, becomes very important personally and politically.

> It's not entirely clear to me why ...

You might find it inconvenient, but if you look around, it's obvious why:

> In other eras ... these previous credentials

Today, right now, discrimination is very widespread against non-male/female gender identities and non-heterosexual sexual preferences. In the U.S., a major political party embraces discrimination; states make discriminatory laws. In other countries these things are outlawed and put people at risk of public violence and death (the latter is true in parts of Western countries too).

If you are tired of this issue, IMHO, it's a bit short-sighted to complain. Imagine what it must be like to have to live with it, every day of your life, with every person that you meet; often just turning on the TV or reading a book. If you are tired of the words used, the people who live with it must be absolutely exhausted, worn down almost to death.

> Though sex between men was a criminal offense ..., there was, as yet, hardly a homosexual identity defined by same-sex desire. Until the early 1950s, a man could have sex with another man without thinking himself in any respect “abnormal”

How do you reconcile the fact that gay sex was a criminal offense with the claim that it wasn't considered abnormal?

This feels like wishful history rewriting.

> How do you reconcile the fact that gay sex was a criminal offense with the claim that it wasn't considered abnormal?

Just because something is illegal doesn't mean people consider it abnormal. (I agree with you that it feels historically revisionist, but I don't agree with your argument.)

For instance, smoking marijuana isn't considered "abnormal" by many folks. And yet it is a serious federal criminal offense in the US, punishable by significant jail time.

That's a good point but there is lots of evidence indicating the prevalence and acceptance of marijuana in spite of its illegality. Where is the evidence that make homosexuality was largely considered acceptable or normal by before the early 1950s?

Again, this just feels like historical revisionism. As if gay male sex was totally acceptable until a ~50 year period starting in 1950. Meanwhile this whole article is about a family of gay people who (at least the males) couldn't or didn't engage in this supposedly accepted behavior.

> Where is the evidence that make homosexuality was largely considered acceptable or normal by before the early 1950s?

To be clear, the article's not saying that male homosexuality was largely considered normal. It's saying that having sex with men was not considered abnormal, which is a bit different. I think this is probably a bit of an oversimplification, but certainly, men who had sex with men would have been less inclined to think of themselves as different at the time than now.

I have trouble buying that claim. In a world where gay sex happens but isn't acknowledged, I don't see how people engaging in gay sex would consider it "normal". As if it became "abnormal" only when we started labeling it consistently as homosexuality. Was "furry" sex also considered normal before we had a name for it?

I can buy that men who had sex with men wouldn't consider themselves gay (or bisexual or whatever) because that wasn't really a recognized thing. That doesn't mean that the gay sex itself would have been considered "normal" even by the people engaged in it.

> Was "furry" sex also considered normal before we had a name for it?

Yes, you could make the argument that it was (setting aside the question of how "furry sex" differs from "normal sex"). Consider the following quote from an article on Winston Churchill:

> Like other lovers, they invented pet names for each other. Clementine was “Cat”, or “Kat”, Winston was “Pug”, then “Amber Pug”, then “Pig”. Drawings of these animals decorated the margins of their letters to each other, and at dinner parties Winston would reach across the table, squeeze her hand, and murmur “Dear Cat”. [...]

> These were not one-offs, taken out of context. Due to Churchill’s odd schedule and frequent travels, he and his beloved Kat didn’t see much of each other, and even while living in the same house they wrote each other frequent letters. Practically all of them are full of love—and they’re equally full of what we today would recognize in a heartbeat as typical anthropomorphic on-line role-play.

http://www.adjectivespecies.com/2012/12/28/blood-toil-tears-...

You can't really be comparing pet names based on animals to furry sex?

I glossed over this in the parent, but how exactly are you defining "furry sex"?

People having sex while dressed in big furry animal suits.

That's not nearly as common as you might think--among other things, it's a good way to ruin a several thousand dollar fursuit. (The best analogy I've heard is "Yes, there are furries who have sex in fursuits, but probably not more than people who have sex in space suits."[1])

The furry fandom is much less inhibited than general society--members tend to be willing to discuss sexual topics in a way that most people aren't. (This probably also accounts for the higher incidence of homosexuality[2], since it's not felt to be something that needs to be hidden.) However, the vast majority of furry-related sexual expression (as opposed to two people who happen to be furries having otherwise non-furry sexual relations) comes in the form of various types of media--published stories and images, but also private roleplay. In this regard, pet names based on animals are absolutely a part of "furry sex", certainly more so than dressing in animal suits during the act.

1: http://www.adjectivespecies.com/2015/08/29/yiff-murr-sex-in-...

2: https://doi.org/10.1163/156853008X323376; poorly-formatted PDF at https://archive.org/details/pdfy-vF2uQGRhrwdL1oe3. "...they are less likely to be heterosexual compared to other males in the study."

> Yes, you could make the argument that it was (setting aside the question of how "furry sex" differs from "normal sex"). Consider the following quote from an article on Winston Churchill

I think you're answering a much different question than what I asked. You seem to be answering whether it existed before it had a name. I was asking whether it was normal before it had a name. I have no idea whether Churchill was actually a "furry" but I don't think giving it a name suddenly made it abnormal. To whatever extend "furry" behavior is normal or abnormal, it was the same before and after it had a name.

Admittedly I did not make this point particularly clearly. [I also realized as I was writing this reply that I made a possibly unwarranted assumption: that Churchill's actions were well-known and generally accepted at the time. I took from the quote that he was doing this at dinner parties, but have no idea what the public scope was. The remainder of the reply continues with this assumption, but I would want to do more research before continuing to use this particular example.]

I'm interpreting "normal" as considered not out of the ordinary by a reference group (as opposed to e.g. within one standard deviation of the mean). This brings the opinions of the group (here the general public) into play. I argue that giving it a name did, in fact, make it abnormal. It is difficult to discuss anything without having words to describe it with, in part because no clear boundaries have yet been defined. As a result, these sorts of things fall into a grey zone where they can't really be described as "normal" or "abnormal" (even if individual instances could be called "unusual"). Once they have been classified, they can be given a name (e.g. "furry"), and also the group as a whole can then be easily classified as normal or abnormal.

Holding someone's hand and calling them a pet name at dinner is not the same as having one's private sex/romance practices publicly known. I doubt that if Churchill was engaging in furry fetishes that it was well known. But even if it were well-known that wouldn't mean it was generally accepted as normal. But it's weird debating Churchill since I have no idea if it's even true or if it's made up or or wildly misinterpreted.

I don't agree with the naming argument. It might be harder to discuss something without a label on it but the underlying behavior can still be seen as normal or abnormal. We didn't have a real word for cisgender until recently but it doesn't seem to have made a difference in how cisgender people are perceived. We still don't have a word for people who are sexually excited by Ikea couches but it's pretty unusual/abnormal regardless. (I don't see unusual and abnormal as meaningfully different here.)

The most obvious example would be the acceptance of homosexual acts in societies where the lgbt identity is or was not common. The most obvious example is the Roman Empire where same sex acts were considered something men did but the idea of gay marriage would be ridiculous, since marriage was about producing heirs.

The Roman Empire collapsed centuries ago. I'm talking specifically about the claim that gay sex was considered normal before the 1950s, so let's say 1900-1949 in Britain.

Where is the evidence that in 1940 a guy could engage in gay sex and consider it normal and what the hell happened between then and 1952 when Turing was chemically castrated for engaging in gay sex?

For that matter, adulterous heterosexual sex, and in some cases even premarital sex, was strictly speaking illegal in many jurisdictions in the same timeframe (amazingly, pre-marital sex is still theoretically illegal in a few states in the US, though the laws are likely unenforceable), and no-one thought of that as abnormal either.

So's speeding. This isn't a particularly controversial reading of history, most historians acknowledge a lot of same-sex encounters between people who considered themselves heterosexual.

In an environment where no one recognizes the legitimacy of homosexuality, everyone is de facto "heterosexual" even if they engage in gay sex. The question is whether gay sex was considered normal or if it's something that was kept hidden.

There is a distance between thinking oneself abnormal and the act being considered abnormal that is critical here.

One can break the law without considering oneself a criminal, for instance.

The implication is that the modern identity of "gay" is a recent, politicized, Western (& really more like American) construction. The further implication is that this identity is also deconstructable. Which seemingly refutes the whole idea of "innate gayness" in as much as it amounts to any particular pattern of behavior.

> The implication is that the modern identity of "gay" is a recent, politicized, Western (& really more like American) construction. The further implication is that this identity is also deconstructable.

Yes, that's the implication, and it's one that most people who have studied historical attitudes to homosexual behavior agree with.

> Which seemingly refutes the whole idea of "innate gayness" in as much as it amounts to any particular pattern of behavior.

There is no refutation of that -- behavior and predispositions can be innate, but basing a person's identity on a certain set of them is a social construction. We know that is the case because all human societies exhibit homosexual behavior, but only some have adopted the concept of homosexuality as a personal identity, frequently as a binary opposite of heterosexuality -- and western society only did so somewhat recently.

[nothing]

Labels are just an easy way for people to dismiss each other. Let's not.

Categorization is important. Those who wish to use such categorization as a means to discriminate are not important, and should not be given any services until they change their ways. If society went back to this simple structure, (plus our educational system would recognize this instead of co-opting it) then this would change. But we're now in a more complex age. Good luck with that.

The problem is we can't really categorize people in the past. Was the Chevalier d'Eon[0] for instance a straight man who cross dressed, a homosexual man who dressed in feminine clothes as an expression of his homosexuality, or transgender? Karl Heinrich Ulrichs[1] is often thought of as one of the first homosexual activists but the word homosexual didn't exist at the time, he coined the phrase Uranian to describe himself and identifed as a female psyche in a male body, so should we say he is gay or transgender? Trying to retrospectively put people into categories that didn't exist when they were alive is impossible.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevalier_d'%C3%89on [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Heinrich_Ulrichs

Those were the historical examples of a Hermaphrodite. "Uranus was both man and woman."

But neither of those sources bother with real Greek Mythology, just their poor interpretation of such.

Source: JCL 4th level.

I disagree. I think "description" is important, and some words facilitate communication.

For example, I consider "heterosexual" and "homosexual" mostly as categorization words, as they tell you almost nothing about a person.

On the other hand, if we used words like "penis-loving" and "vagina-loving", which are descriptions, we'd get along much better. I'm pretty sure I have more in common with vagina-loving women (i.e. bisexual women and lesbians) than with only-penis-loving men (gay men).

>On the other hand, if we used words like "penis-loving" and "vagina-loving", which are descriptions, we'd get along much better.

I think that would just be confusing, as you're conflating very different things. I'm gay in terms of who I'm actually attracted to, but I find both penises and vaginas sexually interesting. Similarly, gay men aren't necessarily particularly into penises and straight men aren't necessarily particularly into vaginas. (With regard to the latter, witness all the nasty misogynistic things straight men are liable to say about them.)

I'd also point out that as a gay man I'm far more attracted to transguys, who generally have vaginas, than I am to transwomen, who generally have penises.

So in short, describing my sexuality in terms of which genitalia get me going would be very misleading, and I'm not an isolated case.

> I'm pretty sure I have more in common with vagina-loving women (i.e. bisexual women and lesbians) than with only-penis-loving men (gay men).

How many of either do you know and / or call as friends?

There isn't a label for "these people" but their agenda is called "identity politics" and it often operates on the same scientific level as creationism.

Please don't post unsubstantive comments, especially not in flamewar territory.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13608057 and marked it off-topic.

Irony can be substantive. My comment was a laconic way to respond to the parent. Essentially what i said is "categorizing people like products in aisles brings unhappiness, let's stop doing it by NOT creating a label for the people who categorize". On its own my comment is useless, so i 'll remove it.

Sure, but in its effect, which is what we care about, that's a distinction without a difference. The internet can't handle that kind of sublety—at least not without a lot more context.

Is it just me, or are people who were telling us that homosexuality is a genetic predisposition the same ones now saying that it's a choice and things are flexible?

I don't think that is what the article is saying. We can look at it as essentially there is a set of desires which have a genetic/environmental factor (hormones you are exposed to in utero for example). Then there is a society around you that shapes how you act on those desires. So taking a hypothetical person and transplanting them to different cultures will change how they express/act on their desires. If you take someone who identifies as a homosexual today and brings them to Victorian England they wouldn't identify as homosexual but might, as the son in this example wonder if they had the soul of a woman. In the same fashion if we took someone who identified as straight today and raised them into ancient Greece they would probably engage in behavior we would think of as homosexual because it was the standard part of the culture at the time.

Yeah, that sounds totally plausible. But Lady Gaga has a song called "Born this Way", while at the same time saying that she's queer and denying that she was born any particular "way".

Edit: I'll add in a better source here than a pop star. American Association of Pediatrics: "The mechanisms for the development of a particular sexual orientation remain unclear, but the current literature and most scholars in the field state that one’s sexual orientation is not a choice; that is, individuals do not choose to be homosexual or heterosexual." https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/pediatrics/11...

We call that 'marketing to your audience.'

Maybe, but there is a specific audience she's selling to. One that claims their sexuality is fixed. (I just needed an example and I didn't want to pick on a private person.)

I'm all for discussing the intricacies of this topic. However, by the way you position yourself it sounds like you think millions of people are choosing to be gay just to mess with you or something.

On the contrary, I've always found it difficult to believe and I'm glad the establishment is coming around to seeing it my way :)

You've always found what difficult to believe?

So clearly, if you can take the 152 words that Neaden wrote, make them rhyme and set them to a catchy beat, then you might have a hit, with the added advantage of being more scientifically precise than Lady Gaga.

What is it you think the song is about?

(one way to summarize it would be "your labels aren't important"; in which case, it's not going to work well to analyze it in terms of consistency with the labels you want to apply)

I think the real issue here is that yes, people are probably born into some kind of sexuality, but the standard binary distinction of gay and straight (or even bi) doesn't really work that well.

People can be more or less attracted to one gender than the other. For some this shows up as 100-0 or 50-50 others it's 70-30. To put it crass, someone could be a really slutty straight person but also a very picky gay person.

The whole "born this way" issue I think stems from semantics of "you can be anything you want". I think a lot less people fall into the 100-0 category then they let on but because of societal pressures they don't chose to express or explore a different side (historically this also seems to be reflected). Saying someone can be what they want in that context means that they should feel free to express/explore those curiosities not that they are not innate to them as a person.

And some people just say what they feel is the best thing, not giving it much rational thought, too.

> "The mechanisms for the development of a particular sexual orientation remain unclear, but the current literature and most scholars in the field state that one’s sexual orientation is not a choice; that is, individuals do not choose to be homosexual or heterosexual."

The fact that sexuality isn't a choice doesn't entail that you're born with a particular sexuality. It just means that your sexuality is due to factors outside your control, which could just as well have to do with environment or upbringing as genetics.

(To avoid any misunderstanding, I personally have no strong opinions on what actually determines peoples' sexuality, and don't think that it's particularly important.)

First you need to stop seeing it as a binary (being gay isn't a bit that gets 'flipped,' it's more of a range that you are predisposed to fall somewhere within) and then this will start making more compatible sense. If you're willing to accept that, here's a really good interview on the subject: http://www.salon.com/2012/01/22/the_invention_of_the_heteros...

"First you need to stop seeing it as a binary (being gay isn't a bit that gets 'flipped,'"

Are you as gay as I am? I had NO disposition towards men until I hit about 17 years of age. Suddenly, I couldn't stop dominating them in bed.

Something sure as hell 'flipped' in me to suddenly make me go from banging tons of girls in high school to dominating men almost exclusively.

And I've done modeling. I can pull whatever I want any day. Why did I suddenly prefer men? I still can't answer that.

Most people ignore women's general bisexuality, and confuse this by equating sexual preference as "complicated".

Not for men (for the most part, as in 99%). They either love vagina, and are disgusted by penis, or vice versa.

On the other side, most "straight" women, fantasize and experiment with the same sex, and to them, preference is usually on a sliding scale.

That all said, sexual preference is further confusing when we have a large subset of straight males, being attracted to very feminine transsexuals, like Bailey Jay.

To me this means male sexual preference is holistic, meaning if you pass as a woman, but have a penis, you may attract many straight males, who would gag at the idea of a well toned and very masculine male.

Even if the masculine "man" was a woman passing as one, with a vagina.

> To me this means male sexual preference is holistic, meaning if you pass as a woman, but have a penis, you may attract many straight males, who would gag at the idea of a well toned and very masculine male.

Hm... I'm generally attracted to (some) people who look like women, but that's just an assumption, open to change/dispute. I'm pretty sure I'd equally gag at the sight of that "pretty lady"'s penis...

  Not for men (for the most part, as in 99%).
  They either love vagina, and are disgusted by penis, or vice versa.

In ancient Rome, "It was considered natural and unremarkable for men to be sexually attracted to teen-aged youths of both sexes, and pederasty was condoned as long as the younger male partner was not a freeborn Roman." [1]

Most people would agree that genetically, men haven't changed all that much in the last 2000 years or so, which lets us discount the idea that a genetic bit has recently been flipped.

That leaves the notion that sexuality is - at least in part - a social construction.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexuality_in_ancient_Rome

If little boys were raped in culture, they would likely replicate that behaviour no?

An example being pederasty of little boys in Afghanistan being common, similar to your example. Completely cultural and I would argue traumatic.

>They either love vagina, and are disgusted by penis, or vice versa.

I don't think it's normal for straight men to be "disgusted" by penis or for gay men to be "disgusted" by vagina. There's often social pressure on both groups to pretend that they have these feelings, but I don't think it's actually very common.

Yeah, but that's always been true. So why was the emphasis on immutability for a long while?

Maybe look at the various social consequences in places where the "immutability" line is or has been sold, versus places and times where it isn't or wasn't.

Could you be more specific?

Bluntly, because when we still had such things as sodomy laws and the "gay panic" defence[0], society wasn't ready to deal with that nuance in a productive way. You need to keep your message simple when you're trying to change deep-seated beliefs, lest people perceive a loophole in the minutae to excuse clinging to their prejudices.

Both the notions "anything but complete heterosexuality is unnatural" and "sexuality is a strict binary" were widely-held misconceptions in need of correcting, sure, but it was prudent to dismantle western sociey's attachment to the former before tackling the latter. If the idea of sexuality as a gradient had been popularized first, it would have been misused as a stick to beat down the campaign for acceptance of minority sexualities: "Why should we allow homosexual behaviour? As you've just been telling us, it's not a binary thing, so surely you're all a little bit straight? Sorry, you'll just have to put up with living according to only that part of your inner self. Stop complaining - according to you, we're all a little bit gay, and you don't see us grumbling about not getting to act on it."

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_panic_defense

there's a spectrum of sexuality which expresses itself in different ways to different degrees in different people /= sexuality is [almost] invariably mutable

Especially when the argument over mutability is usually framed as "people attracted to the same sex or inclined to gender nonconform are bad influences on others and they can and must adapt their behaviour to conform to social norms" vs the argument that it's imposing the obligation to change one's sexuality that causes some people psychological harm

There was a very good documentary on the NatGeo channel here in the US just this week that did an excellent job of explaining all of it to me.

http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/gender-revolution-a-jo...

One thing I found especially interesting is toward the end, where Katie Couric sits down with Renée Richards and Hari Nef. It was interesting seeing Hari talk with Renée and realize they disagree on the binary topic.

I had always thought that thinking of sexuality as a genetic predisposition was strange and essentializing, especially given the rest of the discourse around that understanding of sexuality.

However, in the context of the larger cultural argument between people who are okay with various queer behaviors and people who did criminalize those behaviors, it makes more sense: the idea of 'genetic predisposition' is, I believe, an appeal to biases of the biased.

A similar but unrelated case would be along these lines: I am for total decriminialization of drugs, but I can see the value in the argument for "medical marijuana".

I don't particularly care about having just cannabis legal via prescription, but the people who have made cannabis illegal may be willing to compromise in that direction. That may be an improvement even if it's not a total victory.

And though it may not be enough of an improvement to spend time arguing for, I also don't see the need to make an effort arguing against the position, either.

As a general rule, no probably not. In my experience most claims to the hypocrisy in groups are due to the mental categories in which people group each other, not actually hypocrisy of any individual people.

I can't be the only one that read "of all the doings in the Benson household" as "of all the dongs in the Benson household".

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