Are you straight because I am gay? (Details inside)

I remember the line in the movie The Hours where the author is being asked, but in your story why does someone have to die and she says “so the rest of us know how good we have it”. That does apply to your situation, no good or bad references insinuated but to say contrast and context are, well, just are.

If there were no variants, we would still “create” (by create, I mean come up with the notion, due to imagination) homosexuality, it would be a part of our imagination, like science fiction. Assuming there would be no homosexuals, the notion would still be there because humans have vivid imaginations. I think the same goes for other things, but it’s hard to imagine a world without stratification as well. There would never be a society without diversity of some kind.

There were no cars with “standard” transmissions until there were cars with “automatic” transmissions. The concept of “standard” wouldn’t have arisen without its conceptual foil.

But, I’m not asking about creating opposites or diversity. I’m asking “if there were no opposites, how would you personally know who and what you are?”

There will always be variables. If homosexuality didn’t exist, the oddities would be those who engage in sodomy, oral sex, or different positions.

I think we all define ourselves partially by what we’re not and partially by what we are. Specifically, I knew I liked boys (Bill Rapp in 5th grade) long before I had thought much about homosexuality. I am Jewish, leftwing, a book reader and artsy because of how I was raised and my innate inclinations; I haven’t really had to look at the other options to decide that.

I do feel that in politics today that we define ourselves by the positions of the other party and that there is demonization on both sides to our great detriment.

You’re talking about dialectic. It seems to have been a strong current of Occidental thought for millennia.

Let me repeat…

This question is not about whether or not variants exist.

Let’s set this aside for a minute.

I’m not suggesting nor debating the non-existence of any specific human variable or trait.

I’m asking point blank: How do you / would you know who and what you are, IF you did not have any opposites (people completely different from yourself)?

@prolificus It’s a pretty difficult question for me, since I don’t know what it would be like. It’s a good question, so I’ll just see what others have to say.

I would assume we just wouldn’t think about it, or it would only be a notion. People would ask questions like “I was thinking…...what would it be like if men had relations with men, and women had relations with women?” or, “What would it be like, if people were different skin colors?”

@prolificus – I don’t think the opposite defines the original; rather, the recognition of a concept allows the definition of another.

However, what’s the opposite of grey?

You are, whether you know it or not, raising the issue of science methodology. The first step in any investigation of phenomona is to categorize that phenomenon. You start by defining the boundaries—in this case, who you prefer to have sex with. Then you look at human sexual behavior and see all the range of sexual behavior and at some point, you try to group sexual behavior into groups that make sense based on the way our minds work.

All category schemas are arbitrary. I always like to use the example of flora. Someone, at some point, had to come along at decide that there are trees, shrubs and grasses. There will always be examples of flora that seem to fit in more than one category. You have to draw a line, and that line is always arbitrary.

For example, look at race. There are so many hues of skin color, and yet people seem to have a pretty good idea of what is black and what is white. And yet, there are yellow and other hues in between that different people will assign to different races. Race is assigned in two ways: self-chosen and imposed by others. How you see yourself may be different from how I see you. My point is that these category boundaries are often quite arbitrary. There is no effort to define the boundaries of the categories very precisely. But even if they are defined well, there will always be exceptions that make the definitions look stupid.

The simplest form of categorization is, as @the100thmonkey pointed out, the dialectic: either, or. One or zero. It is or it isn’t. This, in science, is quite unsophisticated. But it is easy for people to see.

Next, we can have a number of categories. Typically, when we allow more than one category, there are between two and nine categories with seven being the most common number of categories. The thought is that it is seven because research shows that that is about the most number of differences people can keep in mind at the same time.

Once we reach seven, we tend to subcategorize rather than expanding the number of top level categories.

This is all to say that the number of categories of sexual behavior is more dependent on how we think than on what is really out there. In fact, there are people who think there are more that two categories of sexual behavior. Maybe they think there are seven categories. Ask SimonedeBeauvoir. She would know.

So if we didn’t have homosexuality as one of the categories, then there would be something else to define our either/or understanding. There will never be one category. It will always be, at the very least, this or not-this. For more complex thinkers, there will also be a number of not-thats.

So yes, you can think of it as “opposites,” although they aren’t opposites. You should think of it as this and not-this. Or that and non-that. It is a way of thinking, I believe, that is built into the architecture of our brains. It got there because it is useful. It helps of make sense of our world. It helps us survive.

If you think about it, it will probably make sense to you. If we do not differentiate between things, then we are all one. When the tiger leaps out at us, we think it is us, and soon we are tiger food. We have to distinguish things if we are to survive. Often times we have not made distinctions and it has killed those of us who didn’t make the correct distinction. A good way of learning. Harsh, but effective.

In addition, we may also make distinctions where it is not so important. It’s hard to tell. How important is it to distinguish based on sexual preferences? I don’t know. Is there any harm in sexual preferences? Or is it all good? I don’t see the harm. So I’m not sure it matters except as an easy way to determine who you want to hang out with.

[Edit]

To answer prolificus amendment to the question: if there were not what he calls “opposites,” we would be dead.

As soon as the impulse arises to define one’s self, then one is going to look for a point of divergence. The concept of “self” depends on difference, identifying a “not-self”. If by this question, you’re asking us to imagine a world in which no differences are recognized, then I would suggest that the notion of a self wouldn’t arise at all.

@thorninmud Would that be the ideal state in Buddhism?

@janbb No. We do, and really must, recognize differences. This is vital for functioning in the world. The important thing is to understand that “difference”—dividing the world into discrete objects and “selves”—is a conceptual overlay on reality. Differences are boundaries that the intellect draws on the world of experience.

In Buddhism, this point is driven home by the actual experience of not drawing those boundaries. “Things” and “self” disappear when that happens. It’s not an “ideal state”, because you can’t function from it. But the experience does make the pevisional nature of the self very clear.

@thorninmud I think that the point of learning how to perceive the world as a unified whole is to understand how we connect and how we relate. When we differentiate, we tend to buy into the idea that there is us and not-us and that can be dysfunctional since we are also dependent on not-us almost all the time. We need both ways of understanding and they aren’t incompatible.

In addition, there are different emotional states associated with the different modes of perception. Differentiation is stressful. It identifies danger. Oneness is calming and creates peace inside. It makes us feel ok because there are no comparisons when we are one.

Both states are helpful in different ways. Both help us with survival Differentiation helps us handle a lot of things necessary for physical survival. Oneness helps us handle things necessary for psychological (mental and spiritual) survival. A lack of either one can kill you, so both are very important.

It would be a non-issue. You might need contrast for definition, but not everything needs definition.

@wundayatta Exactly. It’s all too easy to get locked into the mode of perceiving difference. Difference is extremely compelling; evolution has made it so because it confers survival value, as you said. Being locked into that “differentiation” mode, though, gives us all kinds of maladaptive behaviors: wars, racism and any number of sociopathic behaviors are just extreme manifestations of being locked in the world of difference. Less extreme manifestations are the isolation and self-concern that come from taking the self/other boundary too seriously.

The remedy is not to set up camp in the world of non-differentiation. It’s to see that neither can fully describe the world. They work in concert.

No, a definition of A naturally creates NOT_A but conceptualizing NOT_A isn’t necessary to define A. But as A is usually defined in subjective terms, further developing NOT_A can aid in “drawing the line” and establishing the range of A. More simply, if I define 1 as 1 I don’t need to know every number that is not 1 for 1 to be 1 (though it would clearly be beneficial to know more).

However in a more practical sense, opposites or I’d rather say degrees of difference have been adapted very practically to help us navigate the vast number of unique combinations that make up humanity. Sadly as I believe I noticed somewhere in a previous comment, too many people focus on those differences (and use them for their own gain) rather than the similarities that can benefit us all.

Here’s a twisted thought experiment that might help think about the problem. Suppose that it turns out that homosexuality is 100% genetic, and then imagine a radical evil scientist who engineers a special virus that kills off only those with the homosexuality gene. After this homosexual holocaust, further suppose that some event happens where knowledge of this history goes away (maybe a meteor impact wipes out most of humanity). Now, many years after the event you could theoretically have a post-apolyptic society that cannot have homosexuals (perhaps because they all still cary the virus which kills any children born with the gene), and has never had knowledge of the concept of homosexuality.

In such a sad scenario, I believe @Nullo is pretty much spot on. Society could still exist, and I’m not sure it would necessarily even occur to them to even consider homosexual relations. Then again, if there were prisons, the behavior might crop up in straight people.

I go along with @thorninmud ’ s initial answer. If there are no variations then the concept does not exist. If I was born seeing everything as being blue, I would be color blind. The concept of color would not exist for me.

I suppose if homosexuality did not exist, It probably wouldn’t occur to me that there was anything different. In the present tense, nothing much would change. I would still have the capacity to love others, but in the absence of homosexuality I would love men the way I love my male friends now, and would love those women I choose to love in a romantic way the way I do/did. (I’m too old to think of romantic love the way I did when I was a younger man)

Let’s parallel the thought:

If there were no people with glow-in-the-dark skin how would you know that your skin doesn’t glow in the dark?

Can I realize I have a property, even though there isn’t a variation or opposite of it?
Sure I can.

@prolificus You would know because – You Are!

Oh, and ”..homosexuality..” does “exist.”

I don’t really understand the context of the question. If homosexuality didn’t exist – okay, let’s suppose – then why or how could anyone even wonder about “straightness”?

That’s like “Suppose Martians didn’t exist on Earth” (which we probably do suppose is the reality of our current situation, unless you know of some Martians around here) ... “then how would I know that I was an Earthling?”

As far as we know the only beings we interact with are Earthlings. Right now there’s no other alternative that we know of. So the question never comes up in a serious way, “Are you from this planet?” because there’s no alternative.

However, this is what kind of kicks your premise in the ass: Let’s assume that homosexuality still doesn’t exist. Even so, we still have “men attracted to women” and “woman attracted to men”. In that case the “other” for me is women. Now, even if I’m not gay, it’s still possible for me to identify traits shared by other females and not by other males of my acquaintance, and then mimic the female traits. I could “act like a woman attracted to men” and more or less mimic some elements of homosexuality, right?

@CWOTUS

Repeated from above:

Let me repeat…

This question is not about whether or not variants exist.

Let’s set this aside for a minute.

I’m not suggesting nor debating the non-existence of any specific human variable or trait.

I’m asking point blank: How do you / would you know who and what you are, IF you did not have any opposites (people completely different from yourself)?

You could categorize yourself in any one of the nearly innumerable ways that humans have always done this:
as a parent or non-parent
married or single
celibate or not
by religion
by nationality
by family name
by sports team affiliation
by employer affiliation
by club affiliation
mammal instead of reptile, fish, amphibian, plant, etc.
bipedal and non-winged…

If there’s no “gay” then there’s also no “straight”, so you can’t define yourself as the opposite of something that doesn’t even exist, or for which there is not even a concept.

You could be a “non blob” if you conceive of existences that are blobs, I suppose.

[mod says] This is our Question of the Day!

I’ve never met an anti-human. Humans are different from each other in a variety of ways, but I don’t think any differences between people are necessarily true opposites.

I do agree that we do define ourselves on fairly standard deviations though. Many of the these characteristics do require an “opposite” as you term it (though it is really just a difference). So yes, we do define ourselves and others by differences, and will neglect parts of ourselves that don’t have differences.

For millenia, people didn’t develop notions of homosexuality or heterosexuality as such – the change (at least in the Western world) came around the 1800s (Foucault does an excellent job explaining the so called ‘perverse implantation’ of that era in History of Sexuality Volume I) when, as a result of repression of sex for individuals, discourses of sex by institutions expanded. Medicine, psychiatry, the legal and religious systems (as well as the educational system) became involved in speciating people into varieties like the homosexual and, by opposition, the heterosexual (which if you read Jonathan Katz’ Invention of Heterosexuality, you will see was also treated with some discomfort). Basically, there were always sex acts but there weren’t always sexualities as such. So, the answer is ‘yes’ to your question, technically speaking. You can also look at Gayle Rubin’s ‘Thinking Sex…’ in the Lesbian and Gay reader (edited by Halperin) and Halperin’s own ‘Is there a history of sexuality?’ in same.

I am not sure there is an answer, because you would likely be unaware of who you were, and your sexual orientation. I believe that people are born the way they are; trauma plays a role, but sexual preference is pretty well decided by about age 7, perhaps earlier. It’s kind of a chickan and egg thing, and I don’t think there is a right (or wrong) answer.

If there weren’t any variations, then yes, we wouldn’t need terms to differentiate ourselves from the “deviants.” Terms are created as a tool to help us define and differentiate ourselves from those who are not like us. If everyone was the same, we wouldn’t have a need for labels.

I think @CWOTUS has a good analogy with the Martian idea. If no-one is homosexual, we could still imagine a situation where men had sex with men and women with women. We don’t need Martians to exist to have a concepts of them. But as @CWOTUS says we don’t often call ourselves Earthlings to distinguish ourselves from Martians. It’s just not very relevant. Likewise if homosexuality didn’t exist we would rarely need to refer to it

@filmfann—You said, ”... If homosexuality didn’t exist, the oddities would be those who engage in sodomy, oral sex, or different positions.”

If homosexuality didn’t exist, there would still be oddities. By saying what you said, you imply that “different position”, “sodomy” and “oral sex” are “oddities” As beauty, “odd” is in the eye of the beholder, and while history may document convention, there is nothing new under the sun.

By the way: Pick up the fully illustrated guide on positions, and you will see that there are lots of positions that make missionary seem as unexciting as white bread. As many of us know, apart from whole grain breads, a sandwich is pretty mundane ;)

@ majorrich: You’re never too old for romantic love :)

@ prolificus—The question becomes absurd. If that is the case, then the answer is:

OF COURSE NOT.

We are social creatures, and require a mother to raise us, or mother substitute. All animals identify with like kind. We are no different.

I’m not sure how many people got the intent of this question. To my mind, the question was more about “Do we define ourselves by the “Other?” than literally about straightness and gayness. I may be wrong though. @prolificus?

@DreamTrees I think you misunderstood me. I do not find “different positions” odd, but the perception would be that something is odd, and those who dislike homosexuality would focus on people who have the nerve to Reverse Cowgirl. They would say “Sex is man on top, get it over with fast”, and start some silly movement that specifies that other peoples sex positions somehow effects theirs.

@janbb – You are correct.

I like how (whoever posted this question on Faceb00k Fluther’s page) rephrased it: “In the absence of opposites, how do we define ourselves?”

I’m noticing that this is a complex question to explain, consider, unpack, and resolve.  It is interesting to watch people wrestle with the idea of the question on a surface level, and then come back to it on a deeper level. I, myself, am doing the same internally.

There are countless ways to rephrase the original question:

Am I poor because he is rich?

Am I short because he is tall?

Am I considered unhealthy because she is in perfect health?

It seems like we need opposites in order to describe what is different or unique. Not that this is either good or bad, rather it just is.  Even if we have a strong sense of self regardless of “other,” at some point “other” and/or “opposite” serves as a way of understanding one’s uniquenesses – differences and/or similarities.

So, simply speaking, yes.  “I” am considered/identified as gay  because “you” are considered identified as straight (in agreeance with @Simone_De_Beauvoir).

However, the details of the original question ask for us to consider responses that are deeper than simply speaking.

Going back to Fluther’s rephrase, I’d like us to consider this: “In the absence of opposites, how do we define ourselves?”  I think the focus here is on “how do we do it?” not on “what” or “who.”

In more direct terms: How do you define yourself? Describe the tools you would use to understand who you are in a world where, hypothetically speaking, everyone is similar.