(no subject)

[dreamer_easy]

So I thought I'd cheer myself up by watching The Making of Me avec la Barrowman. There's lots of lols, but I defy you to watch the bit with Pete, who was subjected to the whole Clockwork Orange bit in an effort to torture teh ghey out of him, and not want to have a little cry. JB is appalled to learn that homosexuality was only decriminalised in Scotland in 1980. He wonders if, had he grown up there instead of Illinois (the first US state to drop its sodomy laws, in 1961), he might have been one of the many gay kids who take their own lives.

To balance that a bit, here are some cute dogs.

ETA: That reminds me - murasaki_1966 pointed me to a New Scientist news item: Bisexuality passed on by 'hyper-heterosexuals'. "How can there be 'gay genes' given that gay sex doesn't lead to procreation? The answer is remarkably simple: the same gene that causes men to like men also causes women to like men, and as a result to have more children." Interesting... now do the same experiment with lesbians!

Comments

[colonel-barker.livejournal.com]

I completely forgot about that.. I got it the day it came out and it's been sitting on my DVD player since.

So... is it entertaining and informative?

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Yeah - both. A good general introduction to the topic, if a bit skewed towards "What makes people gay" rather than "What makes people gay, straight, or bi". Also it's amusing, if oddly discomfiting, to see Barrowman less than his usual bluff and confident self. (He had a panic attack in the MRI. Poor boy. So would have I. :)

[qthewetsprocket.livejournal.com]

yeah, that's exactly the bit that upped my respect for him about a gajillion points...i have to be sedated just for an *open* mri. *shudder* remember in that torchwood declassified where he said he was so claustrophobic he didn't even like having those fake sideboards put on his head for the 1800's ep? yikes.

on a lighter note, though, john and scott's old married couple bitchery is worth the whole damn show. ♥ '...what, you think i read it? what?'

[colonel-barker.livejournal.com]

hahaha. I might just have to watch it.. I know nothing about the subject.

Having said that K9 Tales came in stores today. *Soo much choice*

[antikythera.livejournal.com]

I was slightly afraid when I had an MRI, but I think I was kept on the low side of panic by the amusing cartoon-illustrated light panel telling me when to breathe and when to hold my breath.

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

Many a comfort is given in jest - as a frequent transatlantic flyer, my favourite safety videos were always the slightly-offbeat Virgin Atlantic ones.

(The Virgin America ones are, if anything, funnier still.)

[leoniedelt.livejournal.com]

Watched it the night it ran, and then had a 2 hours long argument with my mom on why Barrowman and other gheys did not 'choose' it as a lifestyle choice, or, as my mom says, turn to the same gender as a result of abuse or trauma. ALL of them, she says. How the Bible says this and that etc...

*headdesk*

there's no point in arguing with closeminded stupid people shouting from behind a Bible :(

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

If it's the outcome of abuse or trauma, why would gays deserve death or damnation? *skritches head* Don't ask your mom that, I'm just thinking out loud.

[leoniedelt.livejournal.com]

heh, i refuse to bring it up again. ever. lol

she ought to learn not to argue with a pregnant woman!

[doctor-toc.livejournal.com]

I have to say I found that show fascinating, endearing and heartbreaking, and raised my already high opinion of JB to new heights. The bit with the twins, one of whom was sweetly camp and the other who was all about the action figures, was a real eye-opener.

[alisoneales.livejournal.com]

I didn't see the John Barrowman doc, but there was a lot of ranting about it among my LJ friends, the vast majority of whom I know through the UK bisexual community. There was a lot of anger at how the whole documentary was structured around the gay/straight dichotomy (one which most halfgays, understandably, dismiss as a load of bollocks).

I think it serves to highlight the danger of this fixation on the hunt for a 'gay gene': it's just sending the world back to this ridiculous mentality of 'either/or', when it has always seemed more likely to me that the answer will turn out to be 'both'.

On a related note, a good friend of mine posted to his LJ not long ago posing what I thought was a very important question: in terms of equality, why does it matter whether same-sex attraction is down to nature or nurture (or even a conscious choice)? Isn't it important to fight for acceptance regardless? I understand that a definitive genetic 'answer' would allow same-sex attracted Christians to say "God made me this way," but I don't think that the end-goal should be an answer which shuts up the Christian Right (although that would be lovely). If a genetic predisposition to same-sex attraction becomes identifiable without the underlying bigotry being addressed, surely they'll just shift their focus from 'we can make you straight' to 'excellent, we can ensure that you aren't even born'. *shudder*

They gay rights lobby, in Britain at least, is immovable from its stance of 'being gay is not a choice'; however, I know a handful of gay/bi people who say that, for them, they were aware of elements of choice. The idea of sexuality as a spectrum goes some way to making sense of this: depending on to what extent you are same-sex attracted, and how acceptable it is in your own society, you can choose to act on it or not. I probably include myself in this category - I seem to be predominantly attracted to the opposite sex, and I live in a country where I have been able to be open about my same-sex attraction in relative safety, so I have been able to choose to explore that. If I lived in Saudi Arabia, I would probably have kept that side repressed.

Sorry for the rambling comment as usual. Take it as a compliment: you get me thinking. :)

[kelemvor.livejournal.com]

...surely they'll just shift their focus from 'we can make you straight' to 'excellent, we can ensure that you aren't even born'.
Only by shifting their position on abortion. That would be a fun discussion in the Phelps Mansion - which is the greater evil, homosexuality or terminating a pregnancy?

[alisoneales.livejournal.com]

Indeed. I think those people in particular are more full of hate for gay/bi folk than they are of love for the unborn.

[kelemvor.livejournal.com]

Being a borderline evil person, I would like to put that to someone like Sarah Palin...

[the-cockfighter.livejournal.com]

I understand she voted against an amendment that sought to remove rights from same-sex partners.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Some more detail on this here:

http://www.equalitygiving.org/Sarah-Palin-on-the-issues-Equality-Quotes-Gay-Rights

[alisoneales.livejournal.com]

Oh she's a vile creature.

Last week I heard an interesting show on Radio 4 by a great journalist called Jon Ronson. He was talking to a chap from Los Angeles who became a born-again Christian, but lost his faith when the Catholic child abuse scandal broke; he said he saw too much evidence of the church covering it up. The final nail in the coffin of his faith was when he learned that many priests known to be abusers were seemingly shipped up to Alaska, where they perpetuated horrendous abuse of eskimo children on a huge scale - when the victims came forward they were offered $10,000 each by the church to keep quiet.

That's all I can think about now when I hear the words 'Christian' and 'Alaska'.

[hnpcc]

I don't think that the end-goal should be an answer which shuts up the Christian Right

Me neither - I think the focus will just shift from "you can choose to be heterosexual" to "you can choose not to have homosexual sex." For them it will always be about "choice" of some description. I've had people argue that it's no different to choosing not to act on sexual attraction to children - personally I think the argument would just shift further in that direction than it already is (at least here. *sigh*)

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Are there still people who think queer folks don't fall in love or get crushes, but are merely bored and decadent and looking for new, perverted thrills? If so, are these the same people who think same-sex couples shouldn't be allowed to marry? *headdesk* I can never make sense of this stuff.

[the-cockfighter.livejournal.com]

No I think the anti-gay marriage issue comes out of the fear that gay folk do fall in love.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to work out where money comes into it. Discrimination against women and POC are obvious money-spinners, but how do bigots make a profit out of homophobia?

[the-cockfighter.livejournal.com]

I think gay folk dismiss bisexuals, because it makes it easier for gay folk to form their own sexual identity.

[alisoneales.livejournal.com]

There are plenty of gay folk who accept and understand bisexuality. There are others who themselves identified as bi for a period as a 'stepping stone' towards identifying as gay, and so (wrongly) assume that all bi folk are actually transitioning somehow to being gay. And there are some who, for whatever reason, really can't accept that bisexuality exists.

I think you're completely right though - for some gay people their sexuality is defined in terms of 'otherness', and don't like it when pesky halfgays come along and prove that actually there isn't a gaping vaccuum between them and the hetties.

[kelemvor.livejournal.com]

The thing that got me about the documentary was that Barrowman's quest was performed in true grail-hunter style: "There must be one answer, and by licence-fee-payers' money, I will find it!"

There might be a gay gene. Abnormal levels of testosterone in the womb might affect a child's sexuality in later life. A mother's immune response to carrying a male child might have a similar impact on later males foetuses. Matt Ridley, in his excellent book "Genome", mentions apart from rare cases, that no one thing has overall control of how a human body develops. Genes are expressed as a result of other genes, or hormonal shifts, and hormonal shifts can be brought about by genetic expression or environmental factors, and how we respond behaviourally to the environment can affect which genes get activated and our hormone levels. (Sadly, it was too long ago that I read the book to find the chapter. I remember that he likened trying to control a human body to trying to control an economy, though.)

So Mr Barrowman decided that he must be gay because he wasn't the first male foetus incubated by his mother? All well and good, except that I am an only child, and several of my partners have been either only children or sole or first-born sons. Where does that leave us? Faking it?

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

"The thing that got me about the documentary was that Barrowman's quest was performed in true grail-hunter style: "There must be one answer, and by licence-fee-payers' money, I will find it!""

Depressingly, that's the way they do *all* documemtaries over here now. Not just the "there must be one answer", but also the "I must travel from place to place, finding a new clue in each location taht eads me to the next place... (that I already had the flights booked to by the production asistant because she'd read the synopsis we worked up three months in advance of how we were going to structure the documentary). Oh, plus the "I must waste two minutes of screen time out of every five staring out of car/plane/train/apartment/office windows, so that my narrator can helpfully repeat everything we've covered thus far for the benefit of anyone with the attenstion span of a heavily concused goldfish (or who is trying to watch the show on an American commercial TV station, and has forgotten where we were sometime during the six week long ad break).

Even bloody *gardening* shows are doing it now! =:o{

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

I think this can be blamed on the documentary makers rather than their bitch guinea pig amusingly clueless celebrity presenter. :)

[kelemvor.livejournal.com]

True. He was just their mouthpiece, albeit one guaranteed to pull in the viewers!