Do you agree with the Kinsey scale of human sexuality?

[LikeAWillow]

Originally Posted by carrie721

i don't think it's about women being sexualized in society, though. i think everyone is sexualized - it's all part of being an animal. .

Jean Kilbourne hates you.

Haha, I have seen her documentaries way too many times, but I promise, if you have a spare 35 minutes, Killing Us Softly 3 (I'm not sure if it's intended to sound like a porn or not, but I like to think it us) is worth a watch.

www.jeankilbourne.com

I know the video is available to watch streaming free somewhere online. I'll edit this post if I find it. Apparently hinting at media I don't actually have at my fingertips is my thing tonight.

Edit:

Google is my best friend.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...68502337678412

[carrie721]

Originally Posted by LikeAWillow

Jean Kilbourne hates you.

Haha, I have seen her documentaries way too many times, but I promise, if you have a spare 35 minutes, Killing Us Softly 3 (I'm not sure if it's intended to sound like a porn or not, but I like to think it us) is worth a watch.

www.jeankilbourne.com

I know the video is available to watch streaming free somewhere online. I'll edit this post if I find it. Apparently hinting at media I don't actually have at my fingertips is my thing tonight.

Edit:

Google is my best friend.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...68502337678412

ha! you beat me to it. i just found it.

thanks for the tip. i will watch it.

[LikeAWillow]

Originally Posted by carrie721

ha! you beat me to it. i just found it.

thanks for the tip. i will watch it.

And you will discuss it with me afterwards, I hope

[carrie721]

Originally Posted by LikeAWillow

And you will discuss it with me afterwards, I hope

of course!

[carrie721]

okay, i watched the doco and then had a bottle of wine.

i think i need to watch it one more time to hammer out my thoughts. but my initial reaction is this: she has some good points about the pervasiveness of advertising and consumerism in everyday life. but i don't agree with her underlying theory which appears to be that gender roles are societal constructs.

will do some more thinking on this at a later, more sober, date.

[louielouie2000]

I don't know if I buy that gender roles are entirely social constructs. I can just look to the animal kingdom at mine, my friends, and families dogs, and see that gender roles are absolutely innate. My dog is a male, and I just laugh every day at how very feminine my friends dogs are who are females. Yes, dogs and other animals are social creatures just like people, but they don't have conscious social hang ups like we do. That being said, I absolutely agree that there are enormous societal pressures to fit your gender role. I see men and women, gay and straight, struggle with this constantly. Children especially seem to be much more fluid with their gender identity. Different cultures around the world also have vastly different ideas of what's feminine and masculine. But I still believe we're born with certain gender characteristics. My brother has both a daughter and an son, both young toddlers. Way before either could walk, talk, or even crawl, they had mannerisms distinct to their gender. That being said, as a gay male I absolutely have feminine qualities and sensibilities most straight men lack. There have even been studies proving that gay men and straight women's brains operate in the same fashion (same goes for lesbians and straight men). Even so, I'm distinctly and thoroughly male... I just have the good fortune of having female traits and sensibilities to compliment my masculine ones!

I definitely agree with the Kinsey scale. I think human sexuality is way more fluid than the majority of the population will confess to. Admittedly, most people fall into the extreme ends of the scales (exclusively hetero or homo), but I think sexuality is much more complex than just hetero and homo (or even hetero, homo, and bi). Bisexuality however, is a bit of a cloudy subject in my mind. I dated a guy who was bi for a couple of years in college. I think he was bisexual in the most basic sense... he could pleasurably have sex with both men and women. But I think he was only capable of having relationships with men. One of my Mother's friends dates only women, but he will occasionally have sex with men. The women I've known who have had bisexual tendencies have been much the same way. I keep thinking about what Carrie Bradshaw said about bisexuality in Sex And The City: "it's just a layover on the way to gaytown." I hate to say it, but I pretty much agree with that. I think bisexuality is absolutely a healthy part of human sexuality and experimentation during adolescence and early adulthood, but I've yet to encounter someone who I can truly call 100% textbook bisexual (meaning they can both have sex AND relationships with either men or women, at any stage in their life). I know you can argue that society doesn't accept bisexuality, and eventually the said person feels pressured to fit into a box, but I just don't buy that 100% either. I think much like gender, we are born with a strong leaning of whether we are gay or straight, masculine or feminine).

[jaycee]

I'll just offer some evolutionary biology I'm familiar with. Of course, being a physics student, I'm not a specialist, so I'll avoid conjecture where possible.
Obviously the purpose of sexual attraction is that it leads to procreation. After all, animals without desire to procreate won't produce offspring, thus removing asexuality from the gene pool (although that's not to say it never appears, as many asexual humans will testify... anyway, perhaps genes promoting asexuality reappear through a mutation?)
Homosexuality is an occurrence of genes "misfiring" - genes promoting a behaviour that won't actually promote the survival of the individual's genes. So in that sense it should be clear cut heterosexuality or homosexuality, as you (presumably) won't have genes that promote behaviour somewhere in between (although there could perhaps be genes that basically say "be attracted to any member of your species").
Now, for nature vs. nurture... the best way to understand this is to say that genes "react" to the environment they are in. Or, put another way, some genes "turn on" and others "turn off" depending on how we're treated and what we experience while we're growing up and well into our adult life. So ultimately "nature" puts all the bits in place, and "nuture" influences which bits are used and which aren't (needless to say the majority of bits are used).
As I said in my brief disclaimer, I'm not a biologist, so I'm not the best person to ask. The best options are to read the likes of Richard Dawkins or ask other evolutionary biologists, particularly sexual selectionists (i.e. specialists in things such as gender roles in animals).
The most important thing to remember is that all variation ultimately comes back to genes (I mean, the existence of life must necessarily come before any culture, and it's the genetic variation across the various geographic regions that gives rise to said culture), whether or not they are influenced by their environment.
Anyway, I hope what little I said was at least somewhat insightful...

[TrueFaith77]

I would think if bisexuality existed that I would have met a bisexual person by now. And that's counting all the straight men I've slept with.