I have known quite a few gay people over the years, some quite well. I’ve employed a few, had some as tenants, and some are close friends. Occasionally, I have discussed issues regarding the origins of sexuality with these friends. If asked, they would all say they were born that way— nature, in other words. From their first awareness of their attractions, they were homosexual.
Likewise, in many discussions on the subject that I have seen on podcasts, TV, in focus groups, vicious duke-outs on Piers Morgan, panel discussions, and, I presume, college curricula the “born this way” point-of-view seems to be favored, perhaps mandatory.
I’d reframe the claim, “I was born this way” as, “As far back as I can remember, I’ve felt this way.”
Here’s the conundrum: at whatever age you realized your sexual orientation— however early or late in your childhood— you have already been subjected to some amount of nurture, at a time in your life when you are most impressionable. You are almost entirely dependent on nurturing during those early years, which suggests to me that nurture has a profound effect on the development of your personality and proclivities. How could it not?
But at that age, be it three, seven, or ten, when you discovered you were gay, straight, or these days, any of myriad magical subcategories, would you have the cognitive ability to parse the question of nature vs. nurture? Would you even understand the question?
I think most children assume their experiences are “normal” regardless of how good, bad, or influential those experiences are. People raised in captivity or extremely repressive societies believe their experience is universal. North Koreans, for example. Ask Yeonmi Park.
When we are very young we don’t have anything with which to compare our experiences. There’s no experimental control version of our lives. Typically we haven’t developed the analytical skills to contemplate something this theoretical and abstruse at such a young age.
When I was a kid I was severely myopic. The farther away objects were, the blurrier they appeared. I thought that this was what “seeing” was like. “Of course things that are far away are blurry— they’re farther away.” Later, in third grade, I found out I was severely nearsighted and started wearing glasses. Then I learned that my conception of vision was wrong. Strangely, even though I somehow knew that other people could see differently than me, it didn’t change my perception of “normality.” I was sitting at the kitchen table with my family when I asked “What time is it?” Someone said, “There’s a clock right there on the wall.” I said, “Well I can’t read it.” Apparently, I knew the others could, but it never occurred to me that I was different.
In whatever ways a child is “different,” they think it’s normal. Why would sexual orientation be any different?
If I had begun to be aware of my sexual orientation at that time, (I hadn’t), I would have assumed I was born that way, similar to my natal eyesight. How could I have understood it to be otherwise?
“Mommy, is our family dynamic likely to influence my future sexual orientation? The other kids are making fun of me because I don’t know the answer to the nature/nurture conundrum. Also, can I have some cookies?”
Once the “born this way” conclusion is reached, it gets burned into ROM. I imagine very few people revisit this question later in life. If they did, what would be the corrective lens? Change who you are?
Another aspect of human cognition, in my experience, is that we are more comfortable with being “born this way,” than with the possibility that growing up in a certain environment made us the way we are and that it might have been different under other circumstances. If that’s the case, it might be “correctable,” and if so, does that imply there is something “wrong” or “abnormal” about you?
It seems almost cliché that gay men have overbearing mothers and aloof, or even abusive, fathers. Nearly every gay male I have known has an unusually high attachment to their mother that they don’t feel for their father. Often they speak very disdainfully of him. It seems too common to be a coincidence. Admittedly, this is a stereotype, but where do stereotypes come from?
A thought experiment: if your parents’ interpersonal dynamics, relationship, parenting style, or family culture tended to create gay males, how would those children be able to understand the cause of their orientation? To say “I’ve always been this way” could mean either that you were born gay, or you’ve spent your entire life, so far, in an environment that would produce a homosexual child. You couldn’t possibly know the difference or the relative influence of each.
This is not an argument that there is something wrong with being gay. That’s why I use the scare quotes above. This is a discussion, in part, about children’s cognitive abilities.
So, how can a three-year-old know he’s in the wrong body?
Trans activists insist that gender is a social construct and that it is somehow both innate and malleable by whoever experiences it.
Here’s the rub. If your little boy likes the color pink, he might be a girl trapped in a boy’s body. But— and this is a big one— the idea of pink as a feminine preference is itself a social construct. So that means that a trans person rejecting a conventional social construct is using a social construct as a signal of that rejection. Is the color pink a feminine preference in all societies? Was the 2008 fad of men wearing pink Izod shirts a sign of widespread gender confusion? In the 1700s aristocratic men wore pink as a sign of affluence. Were they all trans? If I wear a pink shirt can I go into the ladies’ room?
I can’t possibly pry apart the mixture of nature and nurture that resulted in who I am. I can tell you that I see parts of both parents in my personality, which leads me to conclude that nurture played a role— of some size— in my development.
However, what if some of these traits are hereditary, and affected me in the same way as they did my parents? How could anyone figure this out for certain? And of course, I’ve had nearly seventy years of a mixture of nature (living) and nurture (learning and thinking) in unfathomable proportions.
Yet, no one is going to sit opposite Piers and say, “My mother did this to me.”
So, to ask a sixty-something gay man why he’s gay is to ask an unanswerable question. And why does it matter anyway? Even if we could parse this down to fine detail, and figure out the precise mix of nature vs. nurture, he’s still gay.
I suppose if someone sits firmly on the nurture side of the argument, it might be possible to see why they consider homosexuality a treatable social condition. But nurture is off the table for therapy professionals.
It is strictly verboten to provide counseling to a gay person that would lead to that patient questioning his sexual orientation or, heaven forbid, becoming straight. That’s called “conversion therapy” by the various psychological associations that control, through intimidation and licensing threats, what counselors can and can’t say to patients. If you think you’re gay, you are. Full stop.
These policies ignore the possibility that someone could be uncomfortable with their sexual orientation. Or that it might be a temporary phase. Rather than working to achieve the best outcome for the patient— whatever that might be— the industry seems to be committed to an agenda in which only one answer is acceptable.
It seems obvious to me why the LGBTQIAdnauseam community is committed to the “nature” explanation— think of the chaos if people suddenly realized that they weren’t actually “born this way.”
Yet, there’s one glaring contradiction to the “nature” argument:
Trans.
If being gay is about accepting yourself for what you are, why is trans about rejecting yourself? Conversion therapy for gay people is considered to be medical malpractice, yet conversion therapy is essentially mandated for gender dysphoria. Don’t you dare talk a confused teenage girl out of chopping off her healthy breasts. She’s trans.
This is “gender-affirming care.”
To hell with the consequences.
Excellent, thoughtful article.