Originally posted by
pepperlandgirl
I don't disagree that there's a sexual desire outside of the cultural labels and identities that we currently live in. I am definitely not one of those people who will look at deeply impassioned love letters between two men in the early 18th century and shrug it away with "That's just how men talked back then. Homosexuals weren't even around!" As I said in my post, there were always men and women were simply different from, or outside of, the social, cultural, and religious constructs of their time. But when I say that it's a cultural construct I am not saying "la la la sexuality is fluid." I'm saying that in the modern 21st century western world, we are dealing with specific labels (man, woman, homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual) and each one of those words is heavy with meaning. Men might be "hardwired" to only be attracted to one specific gender, but if that's an immutable fact that has always been true for homo sapiens sapiens it's also an immutable fact that men who are naturally attracted to other men still did not have the luxury to indulge that desire, let alone self identify as homosexual, join a community, become politically active in the name of said identity, and have a realistic chance to change their culture for the vast majority of human existance.
We're imprisoned by language. We can't conceive of our own existence outside of language. Our physicality is completely constructed by language. Our culture, our impulses, our beliefs, our myths, our values, our sexuality is all circumscribed by language. When Zuul asks if "homosexuality objectively exists", she's essentially dealing with two issues. First, are men and women biologically inclined to prefer one gender over the other. Second, what means homosexual? The first is outside of my ability to discuss, though I accept that the answer is yes (because that's what trusted scientific sources tell me). The second, though, is a far more difficult problem. How did we get to the point in the 21st century where people can openly identify as homosexual, and what does that even mean? I think it means they're not heterosexuals. So what? What does that mean? Why do we divide people up into these categories? What is the origin of that and the benefit of it? How are we hampered or helped by our own language? Grappling with those issues is not the same as saying "sexuality is fluid la la la" and I don't believe I ever even implied as much.