Firstly, this is a question asked within a particular context and entered into in the spirit of sceptical enquiry - so you should probably have quoted the whole comment. Secondly, what 'makes me think' that the hypothetical man might be 'OK with that' is the hypothetical nature of the question itself. And thirdly, the question isn't about the reality, or otherwise, of the hypothetical, but about the performative nature of an nominal individual's sexuality and mode of sexual expression.Hermit wrote: ↑Sun Apr 10, 2022 10:47 amNo. Gayness is a matter of sexual preference for having sex with members of the same sex, regardless of whether or not that preference is acted upon. Conversely, someone who sucks another man's cock or lets him fuck up the arse solely in order to get enough money for the next fix is not gay.Brian Peacock wrote: ↑Sun Apr 10, 2022 8:58 amif a man who is always and only ever attracted to other men never acts on those impulses and instead leads a 'regular' life, marries a women, has kids, never talks about it to anyone, and only gives the impression of being as 'straight as a die', and I guess is OK with all that, is he actually a gay? Wouldn't he be, to all intents and purposes, straight?
What makes you think that men who marry women, have kids, never talk about it to anyone, and only give the impression of being as 'straight as a die' are actually OK with all that, rather than suppressing their homosexual desires because of the social pressure to conform?
Cnut thought that he'd define 'gay' as meaning acting, you know, gay. Now, we both know that doesn't really illuminate anything does it(?) because then we're obliged to ask what 'acting gay' involves i.e. if being gay is acting gay, then acting gay is what defines you as gay - it's a self sustaining subjective definition that doesn't really define anything. Nonetheless, his framing of gayness as a matter reliant on specific categories of personal action is genuinely interesting to me, and so I asked him, in a way I thought he'd relate to and understand, to expand on what he'd said by encouraging him to think about the idea of a gay man who did not 'act gay'. I thought this would be a good first step to teasing out what categories of specifically gay personal action he might be thinking about.
You see, he's embodying gayness in personal action, but not necessarily in terms of personal experience, that is; not in terms of things like emotion, feeling, sensibility, attraction, desire, passion or love etc. Presumably, for Cnut, to be a man is simply to act like a man, to be a woman is to act like a woman, and to be a gay man or a gay woman is to act like a gay man or woman, etc. People's identity is grounded in their actions and interactions with others and not located within their personal being per se - it's not about who you think you are or how you feel about yourself, but how you act and react to others in the World, and, to some extent, about what you think others understand about you through your actions. Don't you find that a fascinating idea?
Maybe I'll read along to see if there is a difference between pErv's definition (acts) and Hermit's (thoughts)
