A new understanding of human sexuality - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14802377
For thousands of years, the scientific consensus was that our biological sexuality was determined by our genitalia. However, in recent times, we may have reason to question this view.

Dr. Bill Nye, who is considered by many to be among the leading scientific minds of the age, has made a startling new discovery. Human sexuality is not binary as was once believed. Rather, it lays along a wide spectrum of possibilities, with our genitalia playing little to no role in determining one's biological sex.

Recent scientific research is now calling into question the belief that the sole function of human genitalia is reproduction. According to Nye, "We should be careful not to think of human reproduction as requiring one male and one female. What was once considered simple biology is now thought to be much more complex than it once was."
#14802380
Bill Nye's doctorate is honorary. He's a mechanical engineer.

Do you have an article to link to this? You'll have to forgive me for not taking your word on this.
#14802381
This is confusing.
1) Title about sexuality
2) First paragraph talks about sexuality determined by genitalia?
3) Speaks about sexuality not being binary but then back to speaking about genitals and its relation to one's sex fe/male
4) Then back to the role of one's genitals to sexuality

This is all over the shop, be more straight forward if it was all just about sexuality as in attraction and expression. To which we could refer to how the origins of hetero and homosexuality arise along side the psychiatric community which designates genital to genital attraction because the ideology of the time was against homosexuality with big emphasis on making them kids. Because speaking about attraction doesn't require a reference to one's own sex, but it was important for the time period that was idolizing the male to female relationship in the west under evangelicalism.
Such a point is made clearer by some of the terms used by those who worked with transsexuals who simply avoided reference to a person's sex and denoted only the direction of one's attraction. Though the reduction of sexuality to attraction to a set of genitals is certainly ill conceived and more about setting normative standards than speak to what is captured by sexual attraction in a holistic sense, considering we don't even see other people's genitals when we decide we want to fuck.

But to go down the path of the relationship between sexuality and sex, Foucault seems to be the big hitter and here's a rather light read to perhaps consider his view in a 2nd hand way.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/03/04/sexuality_as_social_construct_foucault_is_misunderstood_by_conservatives.html
I think the idea is to not say that sexuality isn't real but to consider how properly framed our sense of sexuality is. So that one isn't necessarily exploring what is true yet, but asking, have we posed the question of what is sexuality incorrectly? To which I think the origins of terms like homosexuality show how the power relations of the time imbued it with particular framings that aren't essential to one's conceptualization of human sexuality. How confusing such a framework is, becomes clear when trying to speak of sexuality for those in more ambiguous attractions and expressions. Leading to strange sentences like straight men who had their dicks sucked by gay men. And wondering what it means for sexuality when say there' gay for pay pornstars. To which if we emphasize the direction of attraction, it makes sense, that they may do sexual acts with other men as a man but still their sexual attraction is primarily women. But I think the act and the psychological/attitudinal disposition seem to be conflated so that questions of a man who is raped by another man is considered gay because the rape is in a sense a homosexual act.
See Perceptions of male victims in depicted sexual assaults: A review of the literature for how hompphobic attitudes underpin the denigration/delegitimization of male victims of sexual assault. And maybe compliment it with Male Sexual Victimization: Examining Men's Experiences of Rape and Sexual Assault.

Overall, don't know if your focus is like that of Focualts in interrogating sexuality or whether interested in interrogating the idea of sex. Which I have played with at times trying to think of categorization and wittgenstein's familial resemblance or whether sex should be conceived of in discrete ways. Where even though intersex is a minority it could conceptually simply be a third category making sex a triad. Because it seems everyones trying to turn things into spectrums because they find the drawing of lines between categories as hurtful. And think they're overturning a gender paradigm by positing such a thing, but it's unclear it has such efficacy as any belief system maintained in society is somewhat stable and concrete based on the sort of real world relations that help to underpin such categorizations in a socially significant way. Without disrupting the real world gender segregation, they're idealists wasting their time. And one even wonders to what extent they are stuck in an abstract realm, true to the nature of academics, where their consciousness sis shaped by their labour, in this case rather abstract and not concrete.

And Bill Nye is a science popularizer, but whether he's a leading scientific mind of the age seems to be overly bold. He's a mechanical engineer that had a popular TV show about science and has often speak publicly about scientific things, but that doesn't put him at the frontier of a scientific field.
#14802531
Wellsy has made many good points.

Bill Nye is like a puppet for more brainier science folks. He tries to make science look cool for kids or for people who cringe at the word science.

Is there anything really new about human sexuality? The subject has been debated over for decades.

For thousands of years, the scientific consensus was that our biological sexuality was determined by our genitalia. However, in recent times, we may have reason to question this view.


What do you mean by "recent times", that is vague. Are you telling a story here like "long, long ago in a galaxy far away..." or are you stating facts? We have been questioning this view since at least the 19th century when there was the women's suffrage movement, perhaps and people were questioning a woman's role in life and what that meant about her sexuality.
#14802575
The main point to be taken away from this is that we need to stop thinking of human reproduction in terms of "one male and one female". That is not scientifically accurate anymore. Since human sexuality lies along a spectrum, with an infinite number of different sexual identities, "one male and one female" is just one possible means of reproduction among many others. In many cases two individuals with the same genitalia are required for sexual reproduction, as is the case with two individuals with penises who are attracted to each other.
#14802602
Agent Steel wrote:The main point to be taken away from this is that we need to stop thinking of human reproduction in terms of "one male and one female". That is not scientifically accurate anymore. Since human sexuality lies along a spectrum, with an infinite number of different sexual identities, "one male and one female" is just one possible means of reproduction among many others. In many cases two individuals with the same genitalia are required for sexual reproduction, as is the case with two individuals with penises who are attracted to each other.


:excited:

Anyone who seriously believes this shit can go and reproduce with himself.
#14802882
The main point to be taken away from this is that we need to stop thinking of human reproduction in terms of "one male and one female". That is not scientifically accurate anymore. Since human sexuality lies along a spectrum, with an infinite number of different sexual identities, "one male and one female" is just one possible means of reproduction among many others. In many cases two individuals with the same genitalia are required for sexual reproduction, as is the case with two individuals with penises who are attracted to each other.

Look, if you want to fuck a guy, then just do it already. Don't bother trying to justify it to us; we're not fucking interested. Be, like, a free spirit, maaaaan. :smokin:
#14803128
I have never had sex with a man, nor do I have any desire to. But let me remind you again, that there is no such thing as a "man". Sexuality is not binary as was once believed. It is both a behavior and a mindset that can be anything you want it to be. It is going to take some time for society to accept this, but it is the reality and the science is there to back it up.

Chromosome sets such as "XX" and "XY" are something completely different than sexuality. "XY" does not tell you anything about a person, other than that they have certain genitalia. THAT'S IT. Such a person can be anything they want to be, and is free to create their own identity. Our species is evolving past gender roles and becoming a more advanced type of life, much like the J'naii alien race from the Star Trek TNG episode "The Outcast".
#14803137
Accepting trans gender or third gender people is an old tradition in a number of societies. Fighting the fact that apparently our society is gearing towards being that kind of culture seems like pissing in the wind to me. Old people will die off and as they do their essentialist beliefs will die with them.

It doesn't really effect someone like me who can pass fine. It really sucks for those who cannot though.
#14808525
If understanding sexuality required a doctorate, the human race would not be here. The current fashion for questioning the validity of gender in society is the pathetic offspring of those homosexuals in the media who crave, not equality, but the reassurance that they are normal. That is not something society can prescribe, it is up to the individual to come to terms with who they are. Such gender fluidists may change some percentage of post industrial society, but they will not be able to change the human condition. National Geographic enthusiastically devoted an entire issue to the subject recently. One "authority" was quoted as saying the what the human race needs is to get rid of gender. That is just how neurotic these people are. "She" is a well known lesbian "Feminist."

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