queerbychoice | Eureka!

verdana looks weird in boldface. basically i'm just not that fond of it in the first place, though; it always just looks to me like helvetica with the letters stretched slightly and spaced funny. also, the "security: public" lines annoy me (and they have no purpose in your journal anyway; your posts are always public). and the grey background is too medium for my taste, as i already said. i know most people don't dislike grey as intensely as i do, but really even any other shade of grey in the world would probably be an improvement. or find yourself a background picture to relieve the monotony. you seem to be following my own "overwhelming" aesthetic in reverse: you try to overwhelm people with underwhelmingness. i am whelmed.

i think default font is a wonderful thing.

and you need to answer my question about poll question #6.

i changed my body font to a gothic typeface; it's more interesting than the refried verdana default.

apparently i'm not very good at remembering which font name goes with which. your current journal fonts are not my favorite but i seem to be getting used to them because they're more okay on my second look than they were on my first, the colors are still seriously unappealing, though.

and are you ignoring my question about your response to the gay gene portion of my poll on purpose? if so, it's extremely rude of you. this is the third time i have asked.

christ, gayle, i've been clear about the fact that i have about five minutes of time a day lately. that's why i haven't been updating my journal. because this is an important question for you i've been holding off til i had time to word it carefully. fuck it. i'll just do it quickly now.

i believe that biology does play a role in sexual preference (i've stated this before on the mailing list) but given that there are so many other factors, and that whatever "predisposition" might be inborn can be overridden and compromised, and given the wider-than-acknowledged variety of sexual configurations and given that early experiences and decisions play a major role in determining the physical structure of the brain (hence biology and social construction become less separate than they seem) i don't feel this factor is dominant or even significant. it is certainly not possible to isolate and most definitely does NOT have a gene of its own (there just aren't enough genes to justify the current frenzy of sociobiological theory).

sorry; it was just that you answered the same comment in which i asked the question but ignored the question entirely. it would have been okay if you'd said, "and i'll get to the other question later."

". . . and most definitely does NOT have a gene of its own"

so, am i correct in thinking then that what you do believe in is not "genes that predispose people to sexual attraction to members of the same sex" but rather, say, "genes that predispose people to be rebellious, which in turn indirectly, within our culture, tend to cause people to turn out queer"? are you only asserting the existence of indirect genetic influences and not direct ones?

and, if the answer to that is yes, then: doesn't this mean that babies do not in fact come out of the womb with some of them being inherently more likely to be queer than other babies - because, say, a baby born with genetic tendencies toward rebelliousness who was born into ancient greece where he would be socially expected as a societal duty to take a male lover?

"i believe that biology does play a role in sexual preference"

of course it does: the mere fact that a person who is born with no higher brain function and grows up in a vegetative coma-like state their whole life will never be sexually attracted to anyone is sufficient to justify saying that biology "does play a role in sexual preference." the mere fact that if i'd been born with half my amount of brain cells i'd probably never have been anywhere near smart enough to figure out that it was possible to choose to be queer is sufficient to prove that biology played a role in my own sexual preference. that's not even in question. that's not even possible to question.

my intent in phrasing the poll question was to isolate something more specific, a question that is not synonymous with asking merely whether biology "plays a role." i'm not sure that you understood this question in the same terms that i did.

however, as long as you do not believe in genes which directly program for sexual preference itself, rather than for other factors which indirectly affect it, then i think i am fairly unlikely to throw a fit and declare you unworthy of my esteem. so my general impression here is that you're okay. but it would be helpful if you would comfortingly re-verify that for me.

and rita mae brown was truly a horrible experience this evening. good night now. sleep well under your green plaid sheets.

my thoughts on this subjext shouldn't be the beginning and end of my esteem-potential.

i don't think there's a "gay gene" of course. i don't think thee's a "tennis gene" either, but some people seem to be MADE better for it than others

your thoughts on this subject are not the end of your esteem potential but they were, chronologically speaking, the BEGINNING of your esteem potential. they were the positive first impression upon which everything else was subsequently built. so if my first impression turns out to have been wrong, then i have to re-evaluate everything else in order to figure out whether my positive impressions were just biased in your favor more than i realized by the mere fact that my preceeding impression had been a positive one.

for the record, i did some re-evaluating already and have been surprised at the degree to which i would <>not be inclined to throw you away. i suppose it's possible that you, however, might be more surprised at the degree to which i would be inclined to throw you away. i don't know to what extent you are aware of my priorities in that. and i don't think i'm able to explain them accurately, because if i tried, i would be inclined to start off by saying, "only people who agree with me about gay genes are designated as being qualified to enter the most elite circle of my closest friends," but my re-evaluation of you over the past few days indicates that in reality i would have a rather harder time removing you from that elite circle (which, um, doesn't exactly have anybody else as far into it except you at the moment, which is part of the problem) than i have liked to believe i would.

perhaps the most accurate thing i can say is this: if you disagree with me about this subject, and somebody else comes along who seems at all reasonably nice and who agrees with me about this subject, i would be significantly more likely to be at least tempted in a comparatively short amount of time to decide i like them better than you.

but i don't know whether you would actually even mind that. you might not. the prospect of it is disturbing to ME, though. it weakens my sense of being able to predict who/what i'll care about in future years, which makes the unknown future seem a little scarier.

in any case: what does it mean to be "MADE better" for same-sex attraction than someone else? do you believe people are born predisposed to be attracted to large biceps, a trait biologically more likely to occur in males? or that they are born predisposed to be attracted to social submissiveness, a trait more likely to be culturally inculcated into females? what exactly are you talking about here?

you know, dear, i asked you a question in the comment above this one and i've been waiting extremely patiently for you to answer it, but you don't show any sign of planning to do so. this kind of behavior tends to discredit you complaints, in a comment further up, that i don't wait patiently enough for you to get around to answering my questions.

the issue could also probably be resolved a lot faster via aim. you haven't chatted with me since november and that adds up to very nearly six full months. it doesn't have to be even a twenty-minute conversation; i just don't like only being allowed a real-time conversation with you less than twice a year.

i know you are busy but you said that you knew this issue was important to me, so if you knew that then you shoudl have been able to find the time to answer my question within the last several weeks.

i thought i made my response clear. perhaps you're just waiting for an answer you'd like better?

obviously it was not clear to me yet, or i wouldn't have asked a follow-up question.

my question is "in any case: what does it mean to be 'MADE better' for same-sex attraction than someone else? do you believe people are born predisposed to be attracted to large biceps, a trait biologically more likely to occur in males? or that they are born predisposed to be attracted to social submissiveness, a trait more likely to be culturally inculcated into females? what exactly are you talking about here?"

that is what i want clarified.

and for the record, i do listen and weigh your opinion carefully. i don't dismiss it out of hand. if anyone could change my mind about it then you would be the one and i am listening whether you believe it or not.

i really don't know. this isn't a very developed area of my identity ideas because, as i said, i think the threads of identity are difficult to unravel. as sex drive in males seems to have links to testosterone levels and sex-drive in females to estrogen (and yes i know there are already holes opening up in this statement) it seems likely that there is some kind of built-in gender-bias. i also think that this is far less significant than social conditioning and choice and, as i mentioned, because the structure of the brain and thus possibly even hormone levels are impacted by outside stimulus at early ages, even a biological aspect of identity is conceivably impacted by behavior.

i don't think that attraction to one behavior or another is likely to be biological at all, but that opinion is based not so much on anything i've researched as that it just doesn't make sense to me, and that i'm unwilling to accept the underlying gender issues to begin with.

1. okay. thanks for explaining. even though i don't agree i have decided that i can deal with your opinions.

2. as i understand it (and yes i've definitely researched it as best i know how), sex drive in both males and females has currently ONLY been found to be linked to testosterone, not estrogen. the exact manner in which this occurs is, however, extremely unclear so far (not just to me but to everyone). since males have something like 600000 times more testosterone than females (okay, i made up a random number but it's a really huge amount, i did see the real number online someplace once) and i think it would be awfully noticeable and irrefutable if males had 600000 times more sex drive than females, the link is obviously not a simple direct case of "more testosterone = "more sex drive." my personal guess, which could certainly be hopelessly inadequate although nobody else seems to have any clear guesses either, is that it has something to do with the fluctuations of testosterone levels over time, rather than the absolute volume of testosterone; but it is also probably more complicated than that and the mere fact that nobody has been able to prove any connection to estrogen whereas they have with testosterone does not necessarily mean that estrogen and/or other things are not also involved in some way at least to a small degree.

3. also complicating matters is the fact that estrogen is actually manufactured in both males and females from testosterone. ovaries and testes both manufacture testosterone, not estrogen, this testosterone is released into the bloodstream and then converted into estrogen. more of it, for reasons i haven't done enough reading to have any understanding of at the moment, is converted into estrogen in females than in males. but initially it all starts out as testosterone.

4. i actually think that attraction to one behavior or another is more likely to be biological than attraction to one body type or another, due mainly to my mother's incessantly reading me all the latest claims about the profound impact of seratonin, epinephrine, etc etc etc on people's docility, tractability, etc.; but again i am no expert and if i bothered reading those articles in more extreme depth the for all i know i might decide they're just as flawed as simon levay.

5. i am willing to cease interrogating you now. thanks.

::unties the ropes and switches off all the torture chamber gadgets::

the font change was VERY recent and i think perhaps subtle enough that you didn't really notice it at first.

i know. you don't like grayscale.

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