If LGBQTetc. Is Real, Everyone is LGBQTetc.

(This is another rant that doesn't really work on several levels.) 

[JMR202412171406: On the other hand, it seems to work better than not talking about it.]

I have no right to deny anyone the right to choose their own labels. Nor, really, do i want to.

But when you choose your labels for yourself, be aware that you do not need to limit yourself to the labels society offers.

About twenty-two years ago, I read some in a blog by a guy who was the maintainer of a certain program that was considered by some to be essential in working with the SGML family mark-up languages. Or maybe it was XML. I don't remember the name of the program now, nor do I remember the name of the developer. Neither seem to come up in web searches any more. 

I guess the web is just too big now. (I can't even find my own blogs by simple web search on my name any more.)

He identified as gay, and had several posts that defended his identification and, as he thought, the existence of the gay community. 

In one particular post, he posited that there was no such thing as a true lesbian. The short version of his theory was that, at any particular time, one of the partners would be taking the role of butch. Gay males, on the other hand, would have no similar requirement.

I thought, at the time, of taking screen shots of the post, but I figured no one would believe I hadn't created them in the GIMP (i. e. Photoshopped them), anyway.

I rather fancy that he realized what he was saying, and took the post down.

At the risk of drawing the ire of all sorts of people, as near as I can tell, this is the substance underlying LGBQTetc.: identification based on mistaken concepts of sex, gender, and the nature of human relationships.

When I was in elementary school, somewhere around 4th or 5th grade, there was a group of budding jocks in the locker who would show each other what they had in their shorts and tease each other about it. They generally tried to get the rest of the guys to join in, teasing, or even bullying those who would not with crude comments about the supposed size or shape being the cause of their reticence.

I was tall enough and heavy enough that they mostly left me out of it, although some of the alpha-wannabees would complain that I didn't join in the fun.

What kind of is never said about this is that it is fun -- in a sense. Showing and seeing stimulates certain brain activities, which respond in blood rush to the gonads, which is perceived as pleasant, and cyclically reinforcing. Mix into that the sense of camaraderie when being part of a group engaged in edge behavior, and you get addictions. 

The alpha wannabees were the ones who would then seek out the most vulnerable of the other boys after school and badger them for sexual favors.

That's one of the lenses that I still view the whole question through.

Anyone who lets their own self-image get tangled up in the way they react to various hormones is going to get turned on by seeing flesh, whether of the same gender or the opposite gender.

You do filter your reactions by your subconscious perceptions of what is acceptable and desirable.

But turn-on is turn-on.

If turn-on is the purpose of relationships, we are all lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, and transgender. The only question is whether we are in the closet or not.

There is a side question of physical expression of gender. 

No two people are alike, and it would be really difficult to specify what is "full sexual differentiation". 

Large breasts do not a woman make. Breast size does not indicate ability to lactate. Penis size does not correlate with sperm count. Etc.

So the term sexual differentiation has (probably rightly) become deprecated. (Yeah, I used to use it, too.)

Some men will not be able to produce a high enough count of viable sperm count to induce conception. 

Some women do not produce egg cells, or will produce egg cells that are not viable. 

This does not make them less than others. It's just one more way to be different.

Nature makes a variety of people for many reasons. 

(For those who believe in God or such, by the evidence we have before us, God makes us all different.)

One person will be good at raising wheat. One will be good at raising oats. One will be good at adding numbers. One will be good at manipulating abstract symbols.

Even within a "specialty" there will be specialties.

With all the different things people are good at, the necessary jobs and the important jobs are much more likely to get done. 

Put in the negative, if we were all the same, we would all have to live thousands of years to be sure there would be enough people with enough skills to handle every necessary job, because we would all have to pick up every specialized skill. 

... because we would all have to learn everything before we could learn anything -- before we could live.

One thing that cannot be forgotten is that specialization changes over time. Someone who is pretty good at raising grain may change paths and learn how to raise cattle or manipulate abstract symbols instead of just continuing to get better at raising grain. 

Sexual function is similar. So is sexual attraction. Both change. That is, I've seen plenty of blog posts by people who at one point identified as gay or lesbian, but later decided they were bi or even ace. 

Variety is good. Since we are all different, there is a greater chance for each individual to find someone, compatible or otherwise, with whom they can maintain a relationship, perhaps for the purpose of raising a family, perhaps just for the purpose of having companionship.

(It is a gross evil to box people up in stereotypes, and we, as a society, as a world, have been doing that since millennia before Machiavelli and de Sade.)

We separate children as boys and girls at birth for reasons that are and are not reasonable.

But when we find it difficult to assign gender, instead of just letting the assignment wait -- or, what may be better, just deciding we as a society don't need to assign gender -- we have doctors who believe they can "correct" nature's "mistakes". 

At very minimum, we should be much slower in our attempts to correct nature.

If we, as a society, were not so insistent on enforcing a binary classification between male and female from birth, rainbow and gay could go back to just being about art and about enjoying being alive.