Can heterosexuality exist without homosexuality, can one be right-wing whithout the left-wing?

My main argument here stems from the structuralist interest in binaries, or opposed dichotomies. Taking their cue from Saussure and the French collective of 1960's structuralsists, some see society as a system of difference. That means an identity or topic only exists because it is different from others. In the alphabet, "A" is only "A" because it's not "C" or "Z", or any other letter in that system.
Similarly, what makes people "right" or "left" only has meaning in the context of those specific, current terms, and their historical baggage. Most would say that the radical right are anti-communist neo-Nazis, yet that system was the NSDAP, or the National SOCIALIST German Worker's Party! In fact one has to be very fine tuned to see the difference in most political parties today.

Even in sexuality "gay and lesbian" identity politics over-ride de facto mass behaviour. Most same-sex acts on this planet are not performed by "exclusive" gay or lesbian people. However, "gay" is to "straight" what "left" is to "right", and femininity exists only in binary to masculinity.

So what I would ask people: if your political/gender enemy disappeared today, would you still have an identity?

thats a good point, never thought of it like that.

We learned in psychology that homosexuality and heterosexuality are like extremes on a scale, and barely anyone falls under those extremes. So, most of us are at leas a LITTLE gay (no offense!!)

that kind of confirms your thinking. Heterosexuals define their sexuality in not being homosexual, so i suppose homosexuality is necessary.

Interesting topic, star and flag.

My opinion?


Only a fool would base his identity on being in opposition to something. I think while many may feel passionate about what they believe, I think the number that let those beliefs actually define who they are as being marginal.

Also, I really can't see the analogy so clearly as regards sexual preference to political ideology. I certainly think heterosexuality is a definite by-product of nature and would exist absolutely.

The political differences, on the other hand, are merely labels, and certainly make defining those characteristics easier. That said, I feel that supporting or believing in what one might would exist regardless. Even if the labels didn't.

My two cents anyway.

reply to post by SPACEYstranger

Yes, also have seen psychology and other humanities' studies books influenced by this. I must agree so far - most sociological male groups amongst Western teens and young men (another dodgy difference) that were sociologically studied defined themselfves by what they "were not", and what "they were opposed to".
"Antithesis" makes up for explaining more human behaviour than several other factors.



[edit on 28-3-2010 by halfoldman]

[edit on 28-3-2010 by halfoldman]

reply to post by halfoldman


The fact is they both exist. It is not a question of if they can, they do! So yes they can.

Do people in their small minded and corrupted minds accept that they exist? That is a different question. Man always tries to rebel against nature. You cannot fight it. You cannot outsmart it, bend it twist it or break it.
You can only understand it and try to work with it to produce an end result that is respectful and fair to both humans and nature.

reply to post by halfoldman

I will never reproduce it, but I'm so tired of especially black and gay men being represented as life-long conflicted teenage boys.
I cannot believe the fictions of ourselves we accept every day.
And yet the power behind oppression goes unquestioned,
And unchallenged.
Every day,
In every way,
everyday.

Originally posted by rusethorcain
reply to post by halfoldman

 

The fact is they both exist. It is not a question of if they can, they do! So yes they can.

Do people in their small minded and corrupted minds accept that they exist? That is a different question. Man always tries to rebel against nature. You cannot fight it. You cannot outsmart it, bend it twist it or break it.
You can only understand it and try to work with it to produce an end result that is respectful and fair to both humans and nature.

A convincing position. But how have we defined "nature"?
Nature can be "dead" and "static", or something that men observe. A more female, native view would see it as including us, alive and fluid.

Originally posted by Clark Savage Jr.
Interesting topic, star and flag.

My opinion?


Only a fool would base his identity on being in opposition to something. I think while many may feel passionate about what they believe, I think the number that let those beliefs actually define who they are as being marginal.

Also, I really can't see the analogy so clearly as regards sexual preference to political ideology. I certainly think heterosexuality is a definite by-product of nature and would exist absolutely.

The political differences, on the other hand, are merely labels, and certainly make defining those characteristics easier. That said, I feel that supporting or believing in what one might would exist regardless. Even if the labels didn't.

My two cents anyway.

Are you really saying only "fools" would base their identity on what they oppose? Hell no, the Christians oppose the devil and Islam.
Is that so strong that it influences identity? Sometimes, I guess.

Only a fool would SOLELY base his identity on being in opposition I should have put. In that case, yes, I would think them fools.

Christians didn't like people who were left handed at one point in time. My mother never wrote me a letter in her life because she was hit so many times with a ruler for using her left hand.

This was thought to make her something of a devil sympathizer.

Looking back even the Church finally saw how ridiculous and inaccurate this was.
This left handed ness was not a choice my mother deliberately made to offend them.
She was not intending disobedience.
She could not physically help what hand she used to pick up a pen and write.
This is a natural attribute, a God given predilection.

Why persecute her for this?
Even though it was not the same hand used by 80% of her classmates - so what????
There was nothing wrong with my mother though for years the Church tried to claim there was.
It affected the quality of her life and mine.
Because of a mistake.

We can be ignorant of why things are the way they are but when we know more, open up realize and accept more, we do better.
Little... by painful little... we do better.









[edit on 28-3-2010 by rusethorcain]

reply to post by rusethorcain

My granny too was, and still is left handed. She hated school because she was beaten harshly for that. And still today being left handed connotes political things, and the "left hand path" (or black magic).

So it is true what you say: judgement comes from power.

reply to post by halfoldman

Can heterosexuality exist without homosexuality, can one be right-wing whithout the left-wing?

What a load of crap!!!!!! First off, the word "heterosexuality" itself, already is redundant 'cos MALE and FEMALE genders NATURALLY complete each other. Period. Life and species existence, spin around and depending on the MALE and FEMALE interaction. It's a CLOSE CIRCLE. "Homosexuality" doesn't exist, 'cos DOESN'T EXIST a third gender. The behavior of gays and lesbians is DISTORTION OF PERSONALITY. No matter how stupid theories and excuses they invent to justify the fact they don't accept the natural way the things are. Actually they hate the magnificent thing the MALE/FEMALE relationship is. The amazing and unequalled energy that flows between a man and a woman. The sexual act between a man and a woman, is the holy grail, it's a cosmic travel, it's the growth of the spirit, MAINLY if there is love among the couple. There's nothing like that. Anything in opposite side of this joy fountain, has failed as human being.

reply to post by halfoldman

People are born male or female mostly, but masculinity and femininity is learnt. And what is left-wing and righ-wing politics, when both Hitler and Stalin had concentration camps that killed millions?

So I'd say that no: heterosexuality cannot exist without the gay "other". There would be nothing to make it "heterosexual" otherwise.

Originally posted by ucalien
reply to post by halfoldman

 

Can heterosexuality exist without homosexuality, can one be right-wing whithout the left-wing?

What a load of crap!!!!!! First off, the word "heterosexuality" itself, already is redundant 'cos MALE and FEMALE genders NATURALLY complete each other. Period. Life and species existence, spin around and depending on the MALE and FEMALE interaction. It's a CLOSE CIRCLE. "Homosexuality" doesn't exist, 'cos DOESN'T EXIST a third gender. The behavior of gays and lesbians is DISTORTION OF PERSONALITY. No matter how stupid theories and excuses they invent to justify the fact they don't accept the natural way the things are. Actually they hate the magnificent thing the MALE/FEMALE relationship is. The amazing and unequalled energy that flows between a man and a woman. The sexual act between a man and a woman, is the holy grail, it's a cosmic travel, it's the growth of the spirit, MAINLY if there is love among the couple. There's nothing like that. Anything in opposite side of this joy fountain, has failed as human being.

Ok, you take a strong position. Some thoughts:
- You dislike the term "heterosexuality"; and you argue "people" a male and female "complete" each other. Considering all the hetero violence, abuse and legal troubles between the genders we see on telly and in our comminities every day, how can you argue that?
Whatever you mean by "completing each other" is mythological received knowledge, and not the reality most of us witness daily in hetero relationships - unless you think killing each other is "completing each other" .
So good on you mate, you're obviosly in the perfect relationship! There's gay relationships like that too.

At best, what you are expressing is an ideal. But still, you compare it to something else ...

[edit on 28-3-2010 by halfoldman]

This is the most absurd idea I have ever read.

You might as well say, "can this completely necessary function of biology that maintains the continuity of the species exist without this unnecessary hedonistic activity."

It makes no sense at all.

That's like saying "could breathing exist without sniffing airplane glue?" Yeah, some people might get off on sniffing airplane glue, but it's not the way you were intended to use your lungs.

reply to post by northexpedition

You seem to be repeating the binaries here with a moral twist: homosexuality is wrong/heterosexuality is right. More precise you refer to these sexual binaries only as acts rather than also identities and desires, but that's fair enough. However a lot of "hedonism" goes on in heterosexuality too, in fact all sexuality is open to hedonism, but you choose to label it only on the homosexual side of the dichotomy. Sure, hetero acts can propogate the species, but they can also endanger it through overpopulation, stretching scarce resources and producing masses of unwanted children. Since only a minority will be exclusively gay, the propagation will also not be endangered by heterosexual acts per se.

In any case, to move a bit to wider themes on the topic of structuralism in conspiracy, can the Western "freedoms" be percieved as such without dictatorial rogue states (like North Korea, for example, or at least that's how it's presented to us by the MSM)? Without the binary of a tyranny, our democracies would not seem that "free" in themselves at all. So the existence and creation of chaotic or tyrannical states is crucial to the MSM, because only by their comparison can we think of ourselves as free at all.

reply to post by halfoldman

My main argument here stems from the structuralist interest in binaries, or opposed dichotomies. Taking their cue from Saussure and the French collective of 1960's structuralsists, some see society as a system of difference. That means an identity or topic only exists because it is different from others.

Structuralism and postmodernist ideas in general are worthwhile and fruitful in literary and art criticism, and just about totally useless in any other area.

Worse than useless, in fact: tendentious and misleading.

The proposition is easily refuted thus: can there be gravity without antigravity? Evidently there can.

reply to post by Astyanax

Good point, and I think they can cause trouble when they are misapplied. It's the first crtitique of the methodology so far and I guess not too many people are familiar with it.
However, there is a great deal of interest in anti-gravity and do we really know totally that one can exist without the other? I mean if matter and mass are strings or tiny dimensions or whatever, them how have we measured those things so far? So even in science we have matter/anti-matter, gravity/antigravity - I'm not a scientist, but maybe one day those things will be refined into matter/dark matter and so forth.

reply to post by ucalien

The behavior of gays and lesbians is DISTORTION OF PERSONALITY.

Wrong.

Even animals in the wild can change their sexuality. If there are not enough female frogs to lay eggs male frogs will turn into females. They are not distorting their personality. They are surviving.

A persons given sexuality is in accordance with NATURE and the natural world. It is inescapable and unavoidable. It is determined by what ever the species requires for it's continued survival.

I am not mother nature but maybe the planet is too fat and overloaded with baby makers and our very existence, and the planets hope for survival is dependent on a little less population explosion and more adoption of the kids that are already here no one wants.

And btw there is a third sex - "all of the above."

Originally posted by northexpedition
This is the most absurd idea I have ever read.

You might as well say, "can this completely necessary function of biology that maintains the continuity of the species exist without this unnecessary hedonistic activity."

It makes no sense at all.

That's like saying "could breathing exist without sniffing airplane glue?" Yeah, some people might get off on sniffing airplane glue, but it's not the way you were intended to use your lungs.

I cannot begin to help you make sense of it all.

Screwing will always exist but not because it is necessary to continue the species. Loving someone and caring for them is not hedonistic. Hedonistic involves excess and there cannot be too much love among consenting adults.

There can be too little.

You are saying homosexuality cannot exist because you have a penis and are attracted to those that don't. This must mean everyone is that way or some kind of unnatural freak if they aren't.
A quaint and antiquated thought process...and though it may come as a complete surprise...totally devoid of truth.