What the Hell is Gay?

 Don’t get me wrong. I am a man who is proud to be gay, but I am sometimes confused about what exactly that is. Gays are a minority as they make up only about ten percent of the population.  If being gay didn't bring with it serious consequences, it would be no different from having green eyes or being left-handed.  People have an instinctive fear of the unknown, so ethnic minorities suffer racial slurs because it is impossible, nor would they want to, hide what they are. The mothers or fathers of these minorities might give them tips on how to survive in an alien culture, but unlike gays, these children never have to hide from their parents the reasons they struggle to fit in.    

It’s entirely appropriate that the rainbow flag has become a rallying symbol for LGBTQ people because there are so many hues of sexual preference that only a rainbow having a psychedelic dream could represent them. There isn't enough space here to unravel all of the colours so I will stick to what I know and explore the gay male part of the spectrum.

There has been a sea change in gay male behaviour in the new century.   When the sexual liberation of the 1960's bloomed, many men understood that along with women, they had the right to love whoever they wanted, and that society's backlash against this was outdated and prejudicial. Through the last decades of the twentieth century, being gay went from something secret and scandalous to showing itself off in gay pride marches.  As unabashed gay life opened up, men were surprised to discover how many others there were like them.  In the gay community they found that heir preferences were not a sin or something they should be ashamed of.  The more men who came out of the closet, the more they were accepted by the straight population.  Everybody knew somebody, or had a relative or a friend who was gay. 

This acceptance caused a sexual shift in the next generation.  Children grew up with the knowlege that it was okay to be gay.  If men wanted to colour their hair, wear nail polish, or call their friends bitches, it was nobody's business but theirs.  Along with this openness, the cultural arbiters and opinion makers honed in on certain aspects of gay culture they found worth exploiting.  What could be funnier than watching a man in a wig tottering around on unaccustomed high heels?  The problem with this stereotype, is that people come to believe that the comic character with a feather boa and wig, is what being gay is all about. They assume every gay man wishes to be a woman so they make them into figures of fun since everyone knows that the clown in the high heels will come to a bad end.  This misinformation has led many young men who suspected they were gay, to commit suicide.  They didn't behave like the mincing stereotype and had no desire to wear women's clothes.  Their sexual preference for men would make marriage to a woman dishonest and harmful.  There would be no children.  What they imagined their future would be, had been extinguished.  Some found no way out of this impossible situation except death. 

Rather than cry about tragic statistics, I believe that those who peddle ideas to media conglomerates, should get off the gravy train of humourous tropes and portray gay men and women as they really are. There have been attempts, but television still desperately milks the comic vein.  The connected world we inhabit today is made up of many people who don't fit the family mode of two parents of the opposite sex, with two children, living in a home in the suburbs. Fewer people than ever fit the example of what is considered the default. It is possible, if all the non-traditional family units, including single people were counted, they might outnumber the traditional ones. Roles have changed. People's lives have changed.  They no longer feel stigmatized for living by their own lights, for finding a way to survive and thrive that works for them in today's world.  As the expression goes, "I'll do me."

Gay couples are a part of the landscape because humans have a natural instinct to be partnered, though many gays prefer to stay single given the strictures of traditional fidelity.  People who are not gay don't realize that for a gay man to work in an office of only men, is like a straight man working in a office of only women. The sexual tension and temptation are difficult to deny.  Although it is not the same for all gay men, most of their interest in other men is sexual, some of which involves penetration.  This is not something straight couples ever have to consider.  Because of this, there are categories gay men have organized themselves into, that a straight man would never think about.  There is a minefield of sexual preferences to sort out at first contact.   If either party in this complex mating ritual draws a line and says "I won't do that," the connection can fail completely or the two might settle into being just friends, and in some cases, friends with benefits.  .  

There are tops. There are bottoms.  Some men are 100% tops and some are 100% bottoms.  There are tops who sometimes bottom and bottoms who sometimes top.  There are power bottoms who take control of penetration and power tops who are sexually aggressive and long lasting. There are transvestites, drag queens, and transgender individuals. There are men who behave like drag queens but don’t dress up in women’s clothes.  There are men who are gay but prefer an ultra-masculine look with facial hair instead of a smooth face, but who give themselves away as soon as they speak.  There are men who are gay but show no evidence of it in either speech, dress, or manners. There are men who will only have sex with another man if there is an emotional connection, and there are men who will have sex with anyone and anything.  There are daddies and sons, bears and cubs, masters and slaves, leather men and sissies. Although the gay community has always celebrated diversity, the general trend seems to be toward the asexual, neutral, and celibate.  It could be that this trend was the result AIDS and other STD's, causing some young men to judge it too risky to engage physically.  It was safer to connect online.  Apart from a strong eeewww factor in a snowflake generation who have never known the blood and guts of life, there is also an economic consideration for young people.  Setting up on their own when they have no experience cooking a meal or paying a bill, is daunting for them, and having children would be unthinkable when they are still children themselves.  A few generations of this cultural shift away from breeding, might get the world's spiralling population under control.   

Most scientists accept that homosexuality is caused by a combination of genetics, hormones, and some post-natal influences.  The genetic element is passed through the mother's side, and the hormonal influences take place in the womb.  Although the cake is baked by the time the child is born, there are some after birth factors such as permissiveness which can determine whether children grow into or away from their tendencies. 

The public aren't generally aware of all the conditions a child can be born with.  There are common problems that can be fixed with surgery like a cleft palate or a clubfoot, but there are others that involve organs not being fully connected, partially missing, or in the wrong place.  I once wrote a novel that had an hermaphrodite as the main character, and learned in my research that although the majority of people are born with the standard X and Y chromosomes in combination, XX for female and XY for male, there are also those who are born with XXY chromosomes, or XXXY.  Some of these combinations cause conditions that result in babies being mis-gendered by doctors, and some are said to cause psychological problems. 

Although medical science continues to study the causes of homosexuality, there is reason to worry about how the knowledge could be used.  Once a condition is fully understood, there are questions around whether its course should be altered.  Treatments might be developed to prevent serious diseases by tampering with an embryo's genetics, and before long the techniques might be applied to eye colour or other physical traits. At that point, how long would it take before there are similar alterations to eliminate homosexuality? It would be unethical to do this but the worst among us have been known to behave in unethical ways.  Given the uptick in singles and childless gay couples, scientific fixes for homosexuality are not only unethical and counterproductive.  Whatever it means to be gay, which is different for every man and woman, it would be a crime to rob humanity of the kaleidoscopic manifestations of the third sex.