Post 4: Sexuality and Nature vs Nurture
Leah Ruchlin
Yesterday in class we were talking about how sexuality and sexual preference weren’t considered during the feminist movement, or any other literary criticism, and how that opens up a whole new set of interpretations for literature. We kind of touched on the whole Nature v.s. Nurture issue, but we didn’t really look into it that thoroughly, so I kind of wanted to see where people stood on that. To be completely honest, I’m not 100 percent sure where I stand on the issue either. Being a girl who grew up with two brothers and no sisters, it makes it really easy to argue for Nurture: I hate wearing skirts and dresses, I have maybe three articles of clothing in my closet that are pink, and I’m much more at home playing video games than I am going shopping. The environment I was raised in partially helped shape my personality. Yet, at the same time, I still have some very feminine qualities: I put on makeup in the morning, I worry about how I look in the morning, I will sit with a small group of close friends and gossip at times, so it would seem as though despite the fact that I was raised in a masculine environment, I still have something that’s making me think like a girl.
Another thing that Nurture doesn’t really cover is social environments. And when I way it doesn’t cover it, I mean that it can’t really explain why, when people are harassed and made fun of for having a different sexual orientation, why would so many people choose to be homosexual? Human beings try to take the path of least resistance, so why would they willingly decide that they want to love someone who they know they’re going to get socially slaughtered for?
Keely Dorsey
Post #5
I don't think nurture is supposed to imply that it's a direct choice either though. It's less, "I think I'll date this lady now" and more "My friends date ladies, ladies are pretty, this lady sure is sitting close to me...maybe I'll date this lady?" This is part of the reason queer communities are so tight-knit; your friends are the ones who shaped the environment that allowed you to realize this part of yourself in the first place. I know I never considered the possibility of queerness for myself until I found friends who identified in ways much, much different from straight and cis. Your personal environment has shifted, so you feel comfortable exploring an identity you didn't know you could have.
That being said, I don't really know if I'd buy that sexual preference is entirely nurture-based anyway. Because, yeah, when you’re divorced from a community that embraces queerness, why would you explore it alone? Part of it is definitely being able to strip away that veil and fully understand yourself, but I think the sliding scale of preference is still ingrained. Person A may like boys this much [------] and girls this much [-----------------] and that isn’t going to change, whether they end up partnered with a boy, a girl, or anyone else. The result does not force the identity.
There’s this great website called everyoneisgay (they give advice about stuff and they’re really fun and cool!); their Thing is that…everyone is gay! In some way, somehow, everyone has the potential for queerness, and I support that a lot. There are people who go their whole life loving boys and then turn around and get married to a girl. And then there’s genderqueerness and trans identifying people, which are a whole different realm entiyely--I feel like there are so many facets to queerness that it’s tough to simply layer “nature vs. nurture” over them and get a complete answer.
Micah Tauscher
I tend to put a lot of stock in an individual’s ability to choose and the extent that those choices will affect their lives. At the same time I believe that the subconscious has a lot of power over how we perceive things and is constantly building and updating our identities from even our smallest choices. This means that who we are, in almost all respects, is the result of a long process of nurture but not always on a conscious level. At the same time I’ve known people who would exhibit traits found in their biological parents without ever having spent any significant amount of time in their company which tells me that there is at least a slight predisposition from birth to certain patterns of behavior. In practice this would mean that I believe a man could convince himself of almost anything no matter how unnatural or how much it goes against his natural predispositions just because of certain thoughts that he’s entertained often enough for his subconscious to internalize them. For instance, I’d think that an otherwise healthy man could easily convince himself that having sex made him sick and by repeating the thought often enough or by associating the act of intercourse with something that does make him sick he could easily make that thought a reality despite a basic Darwinian impulse to reproduce and enjoy the act.
Further, while I agree that people are inherently lazy and always on the lookout for the path of least resistance, I’d also say that people will put an unreasonable amount of work into pursuing their own pleasure. So, in the end, human behavior is much more determined by an active pursuit of pleasure than just the pleasure of leisure that is inherently passive and associated with small amounts of activity.
Courteney Jones
I'm glad to see nature vs. nurture being brought up on here, because we didn't really touch on it in our class, I don't think. Nature vs. nurture is something that's always interested me, and I don't think there's a right or wrong answer in the argument, and I think most people tend to agree that there's some sort of 60/40 or 70/30 split there. I had a general psych instructor that said nurture had a heavier influence, and a developmental psych professor who seemed very confident in the statistic that it was 70/30 nature/nurture, which was something I struggled with, because of the last psych instructor I'd had, and my own belief that he had it backwards, and it should be 70/30 nurture/nature.
Sure, the fact that you had brothers may have influenced the fact that you dress more “masculine,” but certainly there were other female influences in your life, be they your mother, aunts, friends, neighbors, teachers, and most certainly you were influenced by the portrayal of females in media. But the hard thing about this argument is that nature's influence is much more difficult to prove. Who's to say which of the varied things about your personality can be attributed to genetics? Are you more like your brothers because you grew up with them, or because you're related to them?
To digress (even further, but sort of bring us back to the point, maybe?), if we're talking about sexuality, I have to say I'm split. I agree with what Butler said, that gender is performative, but how do you decide which show to put on? There's a lot of noise from those against equal rights LGBT people, with one of the arguments being that they “chose” that lifestyle, and that they could be reformed—just like we talked about in class, with homosexuality being treated as a disorder in the early days. I'm not really sure how I feel about what influences your sexuality, but I do know that either way, I don't consider this argument salient to the equal rights discussion. You make a choice to marry someone of the opposite sex, why should it matter if you choose to marry someone of the same sex?
Nicole Mishler
Post 5
When it comes to homosexuality and nature verses nurture, I personally think it is 110% nature. I am not homosexual, but I have friends who are. We have talked about this topic and from their stories and personal experiences I have found that being homosexual is not a choice. I believe being gay is not something that happens because of nurture. I took a class in called Multicultural Diversity in Education at TCC and we had this conversation where students from the LGBTQ Student organization came and talked to us about growing up homosexual. Many of the students talked about how their parents kicked them out of the house and the struggles they went through as kids going to school. Some of the students broke down crying when telling their stories and admitted to having suicidal thoughts and huge struggles because of their orientations. Before this experience I never really had thought about this topic, but after hearing from my peers who have personally experienced growing up gay and the different struggles they experienced to be able to just be themselves, I have no doubt that your sexuality is something you are born with. One of the male students talked about how growing up in a strict Christian family where he didn’t even know his sexuality had a name. He talked about how he thought something was wrong with him going through his preteens. He made a point that he wasn’t exposed to others who where homosexual and his family homeschooled him so he never had a chance to meet others who may be gay too. I defiantly believe from this experience I can never say that being gay is a choice. I see sexuality as something everyone is born with. I believe we as humans try to put too many labels on other humans.