From: rstevew@deeptht.santa-cruz.ca.us (Richard Steven Walz)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.homosexuality,alt.sex
Subject: Re: Homosexualism
Date: Sun, 12 Apr 92 23:24:05 GMT
Organization: The Armory

In article <1992Apr10.185448.10939@husc3.harvard.edu> zeleny@coolidge.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:
>In article <3265@daily-planet.concordia.ca> 
>gsmith@concour.cs.concordia.ca (Gene Ward Smith) writes:
>
>>In article <1992Apr5.201831.10729@husc3.harvard.edu>
>>zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:
>
>MZ:
>>>I recommend the biography of Oscar Wilde as evidence of such a change, and
>>>that of John Maynard Keynes as a case study of the opposite.
>
>GWS:
>>Crap. Robby Ross got Oscar in the sack, and it was goodbye women. A
>>clear case of a man discovering, or accepting, what he likes. 
>
>A clear case of a man choosing to follow one inclination to the exclusion
>of another.  Which is something your interpretation fails to exclude.
>Also, observe that discovering, or accepting, what one likes is (a) subject
>to a moral judgment, because determined by a free choice (compare "likes"
>and "is compelled to"), and (b) morally ambivalent, depending on the nature
>of the preference in question (some like cannibalism, others -- consensual
>torture).

RSW:
If a man has never tasted a mango, then he might discover upon first
taste that they are his favorite fruit and that he never had expected
to find such in his life. He has not chosen to like mangos, he simply
does. He can then choose what to eat, but he will likely continue to
prefer mangos. Isn't this plain, Mikhail? I doubt that your sexual
orientation is simply you following one inclination over another,
there is such a thing as tasting a mango and finding out that you are
made violently ill by them. But why roam the world then telling people
that liking mangos is a bad choice?

>GWS:
>>								As for
>>Keynes, I thought he was bisexual, but I have read no biographies. In
>>any case, you need to indicate where the choosing comes in.
>
>Judging by his progeny, good old Oscar was fully capable of orthogenital
>heterosexual relations; given that, his switch seems anything but a case of
>absolute compulsion.

RSW:
Again Mikhail, orientation is not a compulsion. It is simply that one
has no access to that in himself which discovers that he prefers
mangos to anything else, even though he has settled for eating food
which pales by comparison in the past. It does not demonstrate that he
chose to love mangos.

>GWS:
>>							      The
>>trouble with the theory that everyone is really bisexual is that while
>>it is certainly logically possible, it happens to be false. And I'm
>>speaking as one who actaully tried to do what you suggest is so easy.

RSW:
Not to offend or contradict, Gene, but is it possible that
generically humans are bisexual, unless influenced in some manner
inaccessible to them to be strictly homosexual or heterosexual, such
as trauma or early preverbal experiences which might make the other
seem as sickening as the mango "illness" in my analogy above? Is it
possible that if one was starving that his body/mind might learn
quickly to tolerate or even enjoy mangos?

You see, I have been sickened all my life by liver. I have tried it
and cannot stomach it, literally. My wife had a similar reaction to
bananas all her young life, but when we were starving during a hard
week and had no food one terrible recessional summer, a friend brought
a huge bunch of bananas. She finally yielded out of desperation and
ate one, and after eating one she ate three more, and has loved
bananas ever since. I don't know whether I could be similarly de-
sensitized to liver, but if it's an actual food allergy, since I
always vomit, I don't know if it would work even if I was dying of
starvation.

And so I wonder whether deprivation could change sexual orientation.
People in prison claim both that for some it does and that for others
they simply learn to use homosexuality as a release that they abandon
when they leave prison. Perhaps these are the two types of reaction to
something they learned to dislike, one which is remediable, and one
that is not, not that gayness needs remedy, in my book. And finally,
is it possible that much rigid homophobia and heterophobia might be
simply a limitation occurring from some preverbal experience, and that
homosexuality in some might be a limitation due to a early developed
dislike for heterosex, while the same is true inversely for many
rigidly heterosexual. But then again, perhaps some dislikes, as mine
for liver, are non-changeable. I think this point is really possibly
that complex. What do you think? 

- R. Steven Walz
Newsgroups: alt.politics.homosexuality