August 20, 2010
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Homosexuality
I’m wondering why sex has to be in the middle of Homosexuality. I tend to think that being “gay” isn’t as much about sex as it is about relationship. My daughter spent several weeks in China and observed this: Girls hold hands a lot. A Chinese friend explained to Alicia that girls holding hands with girls is a Chinese culture and that homosexualit and lesbianism is almost unheard of. Yet if girls do that in America, well we know what they would be labeled. Is America so hooked on sex that that is the glasses we look out of? If a guy acts femine he is labeled “gay”. If a girl acts masculine, the reverse does not apply. Have we forced people to take sides just because of our ”American” role plate. Are all men expected to act like John Wayne or Clint Eastwood to be a man?
Thoughts? (I’m not looking for whether you agree or disagree with homosexuality.)
Comments (5)
We definitely have very structured gender roles here, where if you don’t quite match what people expect of a straight woman/straight man, in either the way you dress or act, you’re seen as abnormal.
I remember a few years ago I wrote a post on men specifically, where they’re supposed to maintain this precarious balance of sensitive-caring-feeling-listener with macho-fearless-strong-courageous in order to be what people expect of an ideal man. Going too far one way makes him seen as ”girly/over-sensitive/gay” and too far the other way “callous/insensitive/cold”.
We’d all be a lot happier if people were just accepted to act however comes naturally to them and not have such rigid expectations of what “normal” is with regards to gender/sexual identity behaviour.
In Thailand, males held hands with males and females held hands with females. It was not a good thing for males to hold hands with females.
what does “normal” mean anyway? we just need to accept how pple are or just look other way
@steph843 - You are so correct. We do need to get over this rigidness that we’re obsessed with – happiness would follow.
@Kowpatty - That’s interesting about Thailand. I saw that in Africa also. In fact at times our guide (male) would grab one of our hands. It didn’t feel unnormal when that happened.