Gay energy

[Moonlight]

Just bringing this into the mix... I have a good friend who is bi-sexual. She was married many years and had three boys. She left that marriage when she fell in love with a woman. That relationship became very complicated because of the children involved, so they separated. She then had another relationship with a woman for many years, until death brought them apart. Her next relationship was with a man again for a couple of years, which ended recently. She is now single again and says that she does not know if her next relationship will be with a man or a woman. To her, it is not the sex of the person who determines if she can love or not.

I have met two woman who were married, had children, and then their husband confessed to be homosexual. In those years, being catholics, they were told to get married and that would heal them... That makes for a lot of sorrow.

[Hermit]

I'm having a really difficult time writing a post to this thread, and that's odd because I *am* gay.

First, a timeline.

Age four, I knew. I wasn't sexualizing at age four, but I knew. I tried talking about it with my parents, tried expressing it to my family, but they weren't able to comprehend what it was I was sharing. Not only that, I think that accepting what I was trying to communicate was too dangerous.

Age nine, I started fantasizing about being in contact, physical contact, with men. I didn't have my first sexual experience until I was eighteen years old. I wasn't in my first relationship until I was in my 20's. I wasn't 'out' until I was in my mid-20's, and the only reason I came out was because I got involved with my local Pride committee and my dad's church (which was affirming) was going to march in the parade we were planning. It was either come out before the parade, or potentially meet my family on the street. Nobody was surprised, nobody was negative. Which was different from my elementary and high-school years. School was hell because the others knew before I did, or were able to verbalize it in ways I wasn't able to. They tormented me about it, beat me up.

What's occurred between now and then has been a realization that the great majority of other gay men are obsessed with sex...not sexuality. Intimacy is found in orgasms, not in emotional connection. As a result I find myself a hermit, a quiet traveler waiting, watching, hoping and trusting that one day someone will come around who is my match.

Is it a blessing? Is it sacred? Of course it is. But it is no more unique or unusual than any other human being's sexuality. What it is however challenges attachment, forces the human being to become extremely aware about physical desires separated from spiritual, or even emotional desires and needs. There is a struggle every human being undergoes in their lives, namely coming to terms with the physical--the demands for excess, the chasing of pleasure. Being gay doesn't make this more acute for me, although some days it certainly feels this way because when you put two men with physical desire together in the same room, the energy is powerful, potent, and often directed in ways that aren't always the most constructive or healthy.

That's the struggle I've found in my own experience. It's not necessarily everyone's experience or challenge, but it's what I know to be true.

This didn't feel like cohesive thought, but it was a start.

[Naga_Fireball]

Hey, very lovely post; it answers so many of my questions.

You and my spouse hit on the same issue, which is the hyperactive sex drive.

I have a cousin who is openly gay but not openly promiscuous. His brother is "straight" but seems unable to truly humanly connect with the victims of his serial relationships. The former works in hollywood practically meal to meal and the latter being the older brother worked black ops after allegedly being sodomized by a college mental health worker!

right??

But my guy inhigh school, his parents made two mistskes. The mom repressed him as badly as Bruce Wayne (batman) but they both let their son access HBO from his bedroom starting right after middle school.

I'm sure that if he had been encouraged to chase girls by his dad TV would not have been his only outlet. As we all know, Porn addiction gets people in a very terrible loop. People begin to associate fetishes and other strange things with their intimate feelings.

Its almost like their minds have split, with one half playing the puppet parent entertainer figure and the other playing the innocent shocked audience.

Neil gaiman said once, we create our own cages, acting surprised as we back into them.



I struggled one year of college with watching the shit on shock sites -- a fellow wow player from australia introduced me to perversity. I'm not proud.

And after 9/11 hit I suffered my first manic depressive episode as an adult, started depending on Dungeons & Dragons for fun & sex rather than my peers or better yet focusing on work.

You mentioned an early awareness of sex. I too was aware of sexual pleasure before kindergarten because parents had left one of their electric things lying about in back. Lol

I'm not intetested in gay as a person poking the dead dolphin on beach with a stick -- I'd like to know a lot more about how the mind works and which people were born that way and which are simply hiding other appetites under the rainbow umbrella @@

Damn HBO btw

[Hermit]

lol@hbo!!!

Showcase here....Q.A.F....dammit. (I still WoW btw, but I haven't DnD'd in ages...I bet we'd have a few laughs you and I, Naga!)

My mind is no different from your mind. Now in saying that, I have to ignore a lot of the philosophy I was taught and edge into faith, and common sense. So skip philosophy of mind as existing.

But I would say with fair certainty that you see things basically the way that I see them, except one important way. I like outies more than innies. Which isn't to say I've had fun in my life falling in love with innies. It's happened! But it's Platonic. (I love Plato, hence the capital P.)

Lust is lust is lust. Passion is passion is passion. But in the creation of the universe, God had an inclination to make some of us heterosexual and some of us not. There are, I would agree, a great number of people taking advantage of the rainbow umbrella. There are probably a lot more people on the gradient scale that are more homo-sexual than homo-emotional, or homo-spiritual. I'm using the term homo here to refer to a broad band of identities in the queer spectrum. I use homo or gay because I am male in the same way I would use the pronoun 'he'.

I'm attracted to individuals of the same gender. The church I believe in, the church's teachings I have faith in, canonized saints who were of this gender. My icon, Sts. Bacchus and Sergius, a couple, who were martyred because they would not sacrifice as the emperor commanded to pagan gods. But it also teaches me that there is a struggle that human beings face daily. Now there are two teachings primary to my faith, which are: Love your neighbour as you love yourself, and love your God with all you heart and all you mind and all your spirit. But (and I bet Christine is gonna love, love, love this) there is also a third teaching, a secret teaching, that has been so buried for so many millennia that at it's very heart I think it actually might be the greatest of the three teachings because one cannot comply with the first two without knowing the third, and likewise one cannot comply with the third without deep knowledge of the first two. And, that teaching is implicit in this topic, this thread, and the notion of LGBTQ peoples all over the world. It's the gift we as a group of people, a community, have to share with the world if we can only come to know it. God buried it so deeply that it can not be found easily in scripture, and very rarely is it found in the pulpit. Every saint expounds it. Every prayer leads one closer to it, deeper into it. One cannot know God until one realizes that God wants us to know *ourselves*. I suppose in that aspect, God is within us as much as God is without us. God is Gay. God is Straight. God is everything that is ... T R U T H.

In that aspect, our minds work the same in that we grapple with the same realities, the same truths. We try to bend them in the same ways to get what we want, to believe what we'd rather...but the truth doesn't change, and the reality that we know those truths doesn't change either. So lemme say this: The difference between those that hold the umbrella and those that hide under the umbrella is simple (and extremely complicated). One is holding the truth, and one is hiding under it.

Hope that wasn't a critical hit. And yeah, the night elves are pretty hot. Just saying.

[Naga_Fireball]

Hi Hermit,
Thanks for your great post. I've been too scared to reply Jk.

Will do so soon (in longer format).

But two stories, first waiting for band practice with gay friend Kelly. He realized I was farm girl and went for huge shock factor. First he said he was gay and went on to say If i was straight I'd be all over you, lol.

Then he said in front of me while talking to another girl that c*ck is yummy (LOL)


The other fellow Back Home was opposite of Kelly. He dressed like a lawyer and plotted evil destruction with energy best saved for sex (a big IMO here)

He (2nd one in DC) also pranked me during a high school improv show. I was narcissist in drama class and was pissed that i didnt have major roles in the improv. He noticed this and shoved me through the curtain before the "family skit" started. He was supposed to play "dad" bit thanks to the shove I got to play a gay mom.

The skit was great but that was a completely different personality lol... Fifteen Minute Hamlet is one of my best memories of this guy being happy.

I wish we had gone to same college but I need to let it go, he's gay end of story , my sttaight heart was made to be broken lol



You make me miss WoW lol.

[Naga_Fireball]

I need to get over this. I mean it was friggin junior prom. But they screwed us over.

I suspect my friend's mom knew he was gay. I did not know. I suspect my grandmother was told.

The two older women, his mom and my grandmother, were using the second line in our houses to eavesdrop our calls.

The night I told the guy i loved him we were on the phone and our parents/grandparents were listening and made us both hang up.

We were 16 fucking years old and they did this.

Now I am thinking those bitches were sick and meddlesome enough that they encouraged the boy to take me to prom as there was virtually no risk of sex.

Even though he is gay and now married this guy admitted years later that night broke both our hearts and that he was so sorry.

Sorry you got used as my closet door on one of the biggest nights of your life.

If he is ever president I'm gonna beat down the door of the oval office.


Cry sigh Lol get high

[Naga_Fireball]

Hey.

Here's a super fascinating page with many thoughtful theories backed by research.

Guy says that gay people tend to have more connection between right and left sides of the amygdala and it has lots of evolutionary explanations.



https://www.god-helmet.com/mob.gaybrain.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Thinking about Gay Male Brains.

Todd Murphy, 1999


There is one brain part, called the anterior commissure, that's bigger in gay men's brains than in those of heterosexual males. Most of my thoughts here are about looking at what that might mean, and how it might appear. (Reference)

So, what's it do?

It connects two structures together. The temporal lobes on each side of the brain, including the amygdala.

So, what does the amygdala do?

Its a very, very emotional structure. And it's fast. If you suddenly notice a bus heading toward you, and you feel a 'burst' of fear, that's your amygdala; the one on the right. If you feel a burst of elation when someone looks at you with attraction in their eyes, that's your amygdala, too; the one on the left.

A gay man's brain has more connections between the opposite emotional and primal cognitive centers than other brains.

The amygdala does an important kind of recognition, too. It recognizes other people, or more importantly, how they're feeling. It responds to facial expressions, tones of voice, and, I'd guess, body language as well.

My guess is that its important in seeing potential mates, and so, its the part that knows who you're attracted to, gay, straight, transsexual, bisexual or whatever.

The gay male brain uses the same parts to be attracted to a man that I use to be attracted to a woman.

I cannot help but wonder if the extra connections might allow extra recognition skills, and a wider sense of what a person's meaning might be. When a male brain selects people of the same gender as the focus for sexual feelings, it gives its owner a set of concerns and needs in common with women. Men become the people they want to be with, forcing them to pay attention to men's needs, and women become the object of identification, at least in some ways. At the same time they ARE men, so they still have to identify there, too. As a straight man, an attractive woman 'means' something very different to me than she does to a gay man. And guess what? The amygdala mediates our experience of 'meaningfulness'.

Such a person would be able to empathize with a very large portion of the total population; larger than heterosexuals of either gender.

Most evolutionary biologists will agree that if a species preserves a trait, its because that trait helps that species survive, or at least did so when it first emerged.

One of the traits of the human species is that close 10 percent (the number changes according to who does the counting) of our populations are gay. If Darwin (and some others) are right, the our species needed gay males when we first appeared, and we might need them now.

What for?

Well, gay men do not compete with straight men for one thing, but they understand many, if not most, uniquely male concerns, because they are men.

And they share enough in common with women that they understand women's concerns, too. Many lesbians are a bit taken aback by how indifferent many gay men are to feminist political concerns, but those aren't the women's concerns I mean. I'm talking about such things as 'cognitive style', 'linguistic patterns' and other things that you need a special dictionary to get.

Gay males might have enhanced their tribe's ability to respond to danger quickly. Their voice in the councils of the first human tribes could have been a profound advantage.

There are two things that help an individual be heard in human cultures. One is to be the boss, and the other is to have as few conflicts with others as possible.

Gay males, being less interested in war than other males, do not conflict with their tribal neighbors.

They do not compete with straight males for sexual opportunities,

And, they do not compete with women over the resources for their young. A hundred thousand years ago, this was probably VERY important. It takes a decade to raise a child, at least. In a ten-year period, most of our young probably had to live through at least one lean season. When it was going on, the gay man only had to find food for one. But he was quite strong and intelligent to find food for several, just like anyone else, if it was to be had at all.

Our species arose 100,000 years ago, and we were hunters and gatherers. Most of these societies today are a loose kind of democracy, and the chiefs don't really have the power to command obedience from anybody. Decisions were and are made in councils. In our earliest history, these decisions were sometimes a matter of life and death. Making sure that our populations produced some individuals who had extra empathetic skills might have given us more intelligent leadership than otherwise. The larger anterior commissure implies that gay males might be more able to perceive meaningfulness, too. "Meaningfulness" is an amygdaloid function - innocuous things become omens, possibly selected because the event taken as the omen has some association with a concern among one's people. (Stimulate your amygdala - learn more here)

One example might be what a storm cloud means when its windy outside. The extra left/right connectivity in gay males would give them a greater sense of the nuances and subtle implications of events in their world. Being men, however, they would have a greater ability to articulate their subtler perceptions, because the male brain is more 'single-tasking' than the female brain; it is more likely to use one or two areas at a time - including the language centers.

Because gay males have more communication between the hemispheres, they perceive non-verbal information (including the sort we call intuitive) more readily then straight males. Because they still possess male brains, their cognitive processes are more focused (less multitasking) than they would be in women, allowing them an advantage in getting non-verbal information into words, where it can be shared with others. An intuition becomes a channeled voice. A dream contains spoken instructions. A gay male, all other conditions being equal, was more able to go from a sense-that-something-is-wrong to seeing and describing a specific danger. They might also be better able to find ways to improve things, be more comfortable, and stay healthy.

Consider the stereotype that gay men are 'esthete' - they are gourmets when eating, film critics when seeing movies, interior designers at home, and fashion and grooming experts in front of mirrors. Nothing but the best. Now, imagine that same trait 100,000 years ago, and add to it the caveat that people acted for their tribe as much as for themselves, there being little one could claim as one's own. Nothing but the best and most sheltered campsite. Nothing but the clearest water. Everyone should be clean and attractive (by whatever standard his nation held) - as much as possible. With their extra emotional sensitivity, they would encourage people to be nice to one another. Further, freedom from many of the usual social obligations - like the need to let others save face - could allow gay males to be more vocal than other males might be. Someone demanding the best for himself in those days would have had to demand the best for the whole tribe.

I know I'm making many generalizations here, and many gay men do not fit the stereotype, but my point is that gay male traits, though held by only a few, can benefit many.

When a gay male had an opinion, a hundred thousand years ago, his people probably listened.

In our earliest evolutionary history, as hunter/gatherers, we were better able to survive our crises, and to avoid them when we could, by having a group with a different set of cognitive skills who tended to avoid the conflicts that were most pressing to everybody else. They probably were important peacemakers in our first cultures. And peace is one thing that we need to survive, and to raise our young.

One study found that women who were pregnant in Berlin at the end of World War Two delivered a slightly higher percentage of gay male children than others. Perhaps the response to war is to try and deliver more peacemakers.

That may be why our gene pool contains instructions for making our populations include 10 percent gay males.

So why should this man, and not that man, be gay?

There is a process that could create this difference. The emergence of a recessive, neotanous trait.

Neotany is the name used when an adult in a species retains a childhood trait. The best-know example is human curiosity. Other primate species are as curious as our children, but it stops with puberty. Our adults are capable of retaining the trait their whole lives.

Brains don't grow uniformly. They grow in steps. First one part grows outstrips the others, then another gets bigger. Then another. Then another.

My guess (speculation) is that there is a phase in the growth of every male brain when the anterior commissure has outstripped its neighboring structures. I also guess that there is a trigger that signals when its time for the anterior commissure to stop growing.

And that, in gay males, this trigger is absent. This kind of adaptation is called "Neoteny"

Some gay men say that they've 'always known' they were gay. Others have said that there was a single decisive sexual experience that brought it out.

Its possible that the anterior commissure has two growth spurts when it might be able to shed its 'stop growing' trigger. One during in the womb, and another after birth, but before puberty. Perhaps there are several such 'windows of opportunity' in the development of a man's brain. There isn't enough evidence at this point to prove or disprove the case. The simplest thing I can imagine is an environmental 'cue' of some sort, either in the womb or in the environment.

One more thing about the anterior commissure. Its in the limbic system, and the limbic system is now the strongest contender as the source, within the brain, of religious and mystic experiences. There are scores of studies to support this, most of them published in medical journals, and are still unknown in spiritual teachings.

Nevertheless, a conclusion appears: Gay men were probably our first spiritual leaders. Our Shamans. In that social position, they would have been free to expect that their words would be heard, they would have been able to exploit their cognitive skills to the maximum, and they would have been able to access many altered states of consciousness that would've been unavailable to others.

The trust and respect that a skilled gay shaman might have been able to command might allow him to induce the placebo effect in other during times of illness, too.

Gay men may once have healed their people, led them spirituality, soothed interpersonal conflicts, and help them anticipate and avoid threats to their survival.

Who knows? Perhaps gay male sexual preference is a by-product of a specific group of cognitive and emotional skills that helped us survive - skills that may be expensive for the individual gay man, but were essential for the population as a whole.

A 100 percent heterosexual population might have gone extinct.

But then, we don't have a 100 percent straight population, do we?


E-mail the author

(Note: In response to several emails, the author of this page declares that is a heterosexual male)




Allen & Gorski, "Sexual Orientation and the size of the Anterior Commissure in the Human Brain"

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 89, 7199-7202, August 1992"