being in possession of the mechanism of attraction a member of the opposite sex typically has for one’s own sex
The wording here is strange and overcomplicated, and I think you’re stacking the deck. In common usage, a man is called homosexual if he is interested in taking men to bed and uninterested in taking women to bed. Why is that an extraordinary claim, and why would it require evidence beyond the say-so of the man in question?
I’m discussing the concept of a “sexual orientation”, the mental model of which is a mechanism of attraction within individuals that can be either for the opposite sex or the same sex but is essentially the same thing, and juxtaposing it with what I believe to be the more accurate account that homosexuality falls on a continuum that includes various fetishisms. The problem is that political acceptance of homosexuality has become almost completely (and needlessly) aligned with a particular mental model of how homosexuality functions and it’s therefore difficult to talk about it without sounding like you’re on the wrong side of the politics. But essentially I’m saying that the mechanism underlying same-sex attraction is potentially not at all similar to the mechanism underlying opposite sex attraction.
You might be right that there are important differences between the attraction that a typical gay man feels for a man and the attraction that a typical straight man feels for a woman. Certainly there are important cultural differences. But the claim, from a man, “I feel about men the way most men feel about women” is far more innocuous than your contrary idea that he feels about men the way some men feel about feet, or rubber.
Most gay men after all report feelings of romantic love for other men. A fetishist who claims his object or activity of erotic focus is something more than an entertaining sex fantasy is much more rare, or so I think. Also note that there is something obviously culturally contingent about many famous fetishes, while men who take men to bed have existed in thousands of cultural contexts across thousands of years.
The scientific understanding of fetishism is even poorer than the scientific understanding of sexual orientation. By positing a “continuum of fetishism” you’re already on dubious ground, whether or not we would go on to accept that homosexuality falls on that continuum.
Also note that there is something obviously culturally contingent about many famous fetishes, while men who take men to bed have existed in thousands of cultural contexts across thousands of years.
Eric Raymond has a good discussion here of just how culturally contingent models of homosexuality are. He analyses four “types” of homosexual behavior:
Most educated people in the U.S. and Europe have a default model or construction of homosexual behavior which I will call “romantic homosexuality”. Romantic homosexuality is homoeroticism between equals; men or women of roughly the same age and social position, with the relationship having affective elements similar to the emotional range in heterosexual relationships (from one-night stand through lifetime marriage).
At one opposite extreme from romantic homosexuality is what I’ll call deprivation homosexuality – homoerotic behavior by men or women who are normally heterosexual but isolated from contact with the opposite sex for long periods of time. I won’t discuss this further in this essay except to note that for good analysis of what goes on in (for example) prisons, the difference between deprivation homosexuality and other kinds is significant.
We are generally aware of two other types of homosexual behavior. One is pederasty: homosexuality between adult men and adolescent or prepubescent boys in which the older partner is always, or nearly always, the one doing the penetrating. It is a significant datum, to which I’ll return later, that neither modern Western culture nor any other that I am aware of has a well-defined category equivalent to pederasty among women.
The last category I’ll discuss here is what I’ll call domination sex. In this kind of homoeroticism, penetration is equated with dominating or humiliating an inferior, the slave, the prisoner, the catamite, the helpless object. It is in this spirit that Sioux Indians threatened to rape the corpses of their defeated enemies, and gangsta rappers speak of “making him my bitch”. It provides the threat and the hostile charge when someone says “Fuck you.”
He goes on to say that for male homosexuality acceptance of the “romantic homosexuality” type is the exception, and by exception he means that
[he is] not able to identify any culture which held to it until after the Industrial Revolution in Europe
Eric Raymond has a good discussion here of just how culturally contingent models of homosexuality are.
“Models” of heterosexuality are also culturally contingent.
The essay is interesting but not altogether convincing. Socrates would not recognize pederasty as a category distinct from romantic homosexuality, as the author does.
Socrates would not recognize pederasty as a category distinct from romantic homosexuality, as the author does.
Not in the sense that Eric uses the term. In particular, he wouldn’t consider consensual homosexual relations between people of comparable ages in any way normal.
The wording here is strange and overcomplicated, and I think you’re stacking the deck. In common usage, a man is called homosexual if he is interested in taking men to bed and uninterested in taking women to bed. Why is that an extraordinary claim, and why would it require evidence beyond the say-so of the man in question?
I’m discussing the concept of a “sexual orientation”, the mental model of which is a mechanism of attraction within individuals that can be either for the opposite sex or the same sex but is essentially the same thing, and juxtaposing it with what I believe to be the more accurate account that homosexuality falls on a continuum that includes various fetishisms. The problem is that political acceptance of homosexuality has become almost completely (and needlessly) aligned with a particular mental model of how homosexuality functions and it’s therefore difficult to talk about it without sounding like you’re on the wrong side of the politics. But essentially I’m saying that the mechanism underlying same-sex attraction is potentially not at all similar to the mechanism underlying opposite sex attraction.
You might be right that there are important differences between the attraction that a typical gay man feels for a man and the attraction that a typical straight man feels for a woman. Certainly there are important cultural differences. But the claim, from a man, “I feel about men the way most men feel about women” is far more innocuous than your contrary idea that he feels about men the way some men feel about feet, or rubber.
Most gay men after all report feelings of romantic love for other men. A fetishist who claims his object or activity of erotic focus is something more than an entertaining sex fantasy is much more rare, or so I think. Also note that there is something obviously culturally contingent about many famous fetishes, while men who take men to bed have existed in thousands of cultural contexts across thousands of years.
The scientific understanding of fetishism is even poorer than the scientific understanding of sexual orientation. By positing a “continuum of fetishism” you’re already on dubious ground, whether or not we would go on to accept that homosexuality falls on that continuum.
BDSM is often spoken of by practitioners as being integral to their identity and to the emotional content of their romantic relationships.
Eric Raymond has a good discussion here of just how culturally contingent models of homosexuality are. He analyses four “types” of homosexual behavior:
He goes on to say that for male homosexuality acceptance of the “romantic homosexuality” type is the exception, and by exception he means that
“Models” of heterosexuality are also culturally contingent.
The essay is interesting but not altogether convincing. Socrates would not recognize pederasty as a category distinct from romantic homosexuality, as the author does.
Not in the sense that Eric uses the term. In particular, he wouldn’t consider consensual homosexual relations between people of comparable ages in any way normal.
Your wording was ambiguous.