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AWARENESS OF BEING GAY AND MECHANISMS OF REMOVAL AND UNDERESTIMATION
#1
Let us now try to highlight the typical mechanisms underlying the unawareness and non-acceptance of being gay, in this sense we will consider some of the most typical mechanisms of removal and underestimation of all the elements that, if properly interpreted, would lead to awareness and acceptance of being gay.

BEING GAY 

We assume as a basic definition that being perfectly heterosexual means to fall in love affectively and sexually in an exclusive way with people of the opposite sex and that being perfectly homosexual means to fall in love affectively and sexually in an exclusive way with people of your own sex. Of course, all intermediate positions are certainly possible. Now the problem is to identify, first of all, how the affective and sexual falling in love takes shape. 
What does it mean, for example, to fall affectively and sexually in love with a guy? I’ll try to respond based on the experience gained in Gay Project. 

Falling affectively in love with a guy means: 

1) Intensely wanting for him to be present, creating opportunities to stay often with that guy, trying to delay the separation moment as much as possible when you are with him, perceive that time passes very slowly when you wait to see him and that passes very quickly when you are together with him, exchange as soon as possible texting with that guy and anxiously wait for his answers, try to put him totally at ease, have the pleasure of listening to him. 

2) Feeling for that guy forms of solidarity, feeling discomfort when he is in trouble or is not well, feelings happiness when he is happy even for issues that have nothing to do with you, looking forward to stay close ho him to help him to solve his problems. 

3) Desiring to know as much as possible about that guy’s life: if he has a girlfriend, who his friends are, how he spends his time, what hypothesis he does for his future. 

4) Experiencing forms of jealousy when that guy shows particular sympathy or attention for a girl or another guy, even at the level of important friendship, hope that his love stories will end soon or that they can leave him at least the time to stay with you. 

Falling sexually in love with a guy means: 

1) Perceive the pleasantness of the physical presence of that guy, being struck by his gaze, his voice, his handshake, his way of smiling, moving his hands, walking, seeing something perfect in some physical details of that guy, like the color of the skin, the hair, the harmony of his body, the shape of his hands or face, the heat emanating from that guy, his smell. 

2) Experience the presence of that guy as sexually exciting, to go into erection when you are close to him, especially when you are alone with him, even without any apparent sexual implication. 

3) Asking yourself if that boy is also sexually involved and trying to understand, for example, if he too goes to erection in your presence. 

4) Lingering repeatedly to fantasize about what you would do with that guy imagining him sexually involved. 

5) Dreaming of that guy in situations of nudity or sexual involvement with you. 

6) Masturbating thinking about that guy and dreaming that he can do the same. 

It is obvious that between the forms of affective involvement and those of strictly sexual involvement there are ample coverage and continuity zones and that too analytical distinctions have a very relative meaning. 


A single concept must always be kept in mind, namely that to have a real falling in love, neither sexual interest nor just affective interest is sufficient, the two components are both necessary. 

UNDERSTANDING AND ACCEPTING TO BE A GAY

People can experience the situation of “being gay” without attributing to the objective falling in love that they live any consciously gay connotation, in this case we cannot talk of gay identity because the meaning of falling in love has not yet been correctly framed by the person who lives it. The problem of understanding and accepting to be gay emerges this way, a problem which, in environments strongly orientated towards heterosexuality, may not be easy to solve. 

AWARENESS 

The most typical mechanisms that delay the awareness of homosexuality are linked to the substitution of the terms that contain references to sexuality with others more neutral, which tend to validate alternative motivations for the interest towards another guy, completely detached from sexuality. Let’s try to synthesize the most typical mechanisms: 

1) ”I am not in love with a guy but I consider him an example to follow because he is beautiful, fulfilled and happy and I am not”. This is the socalled category of the ”model” very in use in the past times to counteract the awareness of being gay by reading the interest in another guy in terms of pure emulation. 

2) ”I like him but it’s just an aesthetic pleasure”. In this classic statement you don’t use the expression ”I’m in love” but in its place the expression ”I like”, identifying the reason for the attraction outside of the sexual sphere in a purely aesthetic dimension. One can say: ”I turn to look at him but only because he is beautiful” and that ”only” tends to exclude the idea of a sexual involvement. 

3) ”I feel physically attracted to him but I am not in love with him because I am heterosexual and therefore I fall in love with girls”. In this regard, I note that the last statement reverses the logic of discourse and transforms what should be the conclusion in the premise. According to the logic one should say: ”I fall in love only with girls (as a matter of fact) so I am heterosexual (I match the definition of heterosexual)”, instead they say: ”I am heterosexual (axiomatic statement assumed by principle) so I fall in love with girls only (due behavior as a deduction from the axiom) ”. I emphasize that saying ”I feel physically attracted to him but I am not in love with him because I am heterosexual and therefore I fall in love only with girls” means to make a separation between sexuality ”being physically attracted” (I note that even here we don’t use the expression ”falling in love”) reserved for guys and the emotional love that would be the ”true falling in love” reserved for girls. Those who use this language are convinced to live for girls a ”higher” love because without sex. 

4) ”It’s just a transitory phase, when I find the right girl, all these fantasies will pass”. This phrase expresses the so-called conception of transitory or evolutionary homosexuality. Here the homosexual attraction is not denied but is debased by confining it in a chronologically limited dimension, but it would be better to say attributing to it a dimension of substantial emotional and sexual immaturity that will be overcome by the advent of a mature heterosexual sexuality ”when the right girl arrives”. I would say that the idea of the transitory phase is particularly subtle because it does not define any concrete temporal limit and allows an indefinite series of referrals of the question to a hypothetical automatic resolution generated from the outside.

The point of view of homosexuality as an expression of an adolescence that has not yet been completed, that is, of surmountable homosexuality, is that adopted by the Congregation for Catholic Education for the admission to the seminary of people with homosexual tendencies. 
The Church ”cannot admit to the seminary or to holy orders those who practise homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called ”gay culture”. Such persons, in fact, find themselves in a situation that gravely hinders them from relating correctly to men and women. One must in no way overlook the negative consequences that can derive from the ordination of persons with deep-seated homosexual tendencies. Different, however, would be the case in which one were dealing with homosexual tendencies that were only the expression of a transitory problem - for example, that of an adolescence not yet superseded. Nevertheless, such tendencies must be clearly overcome at least three years before ordination to the diaconate.”(1)

DIFFICULTY OF ACCEPTANCE

Once you have reached the awareness of being gay, this awareness is not always accepted peacefully, because a number of very rooted preconceptions hinder acceptance. Many of these preconceptions are of religious derivation and are therefore intrinsically dogmatic. The mechanisms of non-acceptance always rely on the need for a belonging (familiar, religious or social) that would be incompatible with homosexuality. 

The most typical ideas that make the acceptance of homosexuality difficult can be summarized as follows: 

1) ”These are things that everyone does, they are just forms of exploration of sexuality”. In this sentence two distinct denialist approaches are concentrated: 
a) ”everyone does it” (which is absolutely not true) so yours is not an authentically homosexual behavior. 
b) ”It’s not about homosexuality but about sexual exploration”, here comes the technique of changing names to things to deny them. 

2) ”Gays are people who are addicted to sex and make things of all kinds and I have nothing to do with them”. With statements of this kind people try to generate a sense of disgust towards homosexuality by degrading it morally. Here one can speak properly of internalized homophobia. 

3) ”It’s a vice that I have to take away”. This statement in a sense represents a step forward because homosexuality is fully aware but branded, even by those who live it, with the mark of immorality. In these situations, the iterate condemnations of homosexuality on the part of the Church weigh heavily. The catechism of the Catholic Church and the papal documents in the matter of homosexuality speak of ”serious depravity”(2) , ”fatal consequence of a rejection of God”(3) , ”lack of normal sexual evolution”,(4) ”pathological constitution”,(5) ”intrinsically bad behavior from the moral point of view”.(6) Saint Pius X, in his Catechism of 1910, classifies the ”impure sin against nature” as second by gravity only to the voluntary homicide, among the sins that ”cry out revenge in the presence of God”.(7) And adds(8) ”These sins are to cry out for vengeance in the sight of God, because the Holy Spirit says so, and because their iniquity is so grave and manifest that it causes God to punish them with more severe punishments”. These statements do not need comment. There is no doubt that a homosexual to be Catholic should consider homosexuality the worst of vices. The idea of homosexuality ”against nature”, which is derived from dogmatic, is still very widespread even among people in other aspects of good cultural level. 

4) ”I must go to a psychologist because things don’t work properly”. Among the most widespread prejudices about homosexuality there is the fact that it is considered a psychiatric pathology or a mental disorder. It should be emphasized that the path to eliminate homosexuality from the catalog of psychiatric disorders has been very long and tortuous, has led to an infinity of controversy and still, despite the contrary positions of professional orders, many psychologists, psychiatrists and psychotherapists, who claim ”the right of homosexuals to be cured ”, paradoxical expression, tend to apply therapies aimed at the modification of sexual orientation, the so called ”reparative therapies of sexuality” sustained by Nicolosi in the United States and in Italy by Cantelmi with the support of strong religious groups. I must stress that even today some health workers, who should be reliable reference points, come to confuse sexual orientation and gender identity. 

5) ”If I were gay, I would give terrible displeasure to my parents who expect their grandchildren”. This sentence represents in sublimated terms a reality that should be described in a more pertinent way: ”If my parents understood that I’m gay, my family life would become hell, and since I have no choice, I have to accept to sacrifice my sexuality”. Strong and insistently heterosexual family environments are a very deep reason for concern for gay boys. I must stress that coming out in the family is still a fairly rare reality among gays. 

6) ”Maybe I like guys, but I don’t really feel gay”. Behind this sentence we see the substantial acceptance of homosexuality but not of homosexual identity. ”I can also behave like a homosexual but I am not homosexual”, as if being gay did not correspond to a set of tendencies and behaviors but had a further ontological connotation, that is as if there was a difference between behaving as gays do reasoning like them and being gay in itself. 

7) ”I don’t want to be gay and nobody can impose it”. Behind this sentence hides a further mystification that is to consider the fact of being gay a voluntary choice and not a reality to be accepted for what it is. 

COURTSHIP AND LOVING FRIENDSHIP 

Being gay can manifest to the outside through behaviors that make clear the state of falling in love and tend to get an answer from another guy. These external behaviors constitute the gay courtship. It should be emphasized that gay courtship is often unaware in the sense that several guys, who implement forms of objective courtship against other guys, read their behavior in a very strong friendship, at the limit of sexualized friendship between hetero guys and tend anyway to exclude the classification in the category of homosexuality. If a guy falls unconsciously in love with another guy, courtship can be characterize by an extreme lightness that it is not even perceived as a form of courtship by the guy to whom it is directed, because he is not perceived as such neither by the guy who puts it into practice. In these situations, courtship often manifests in very soft ways and, from the smile to prolonging the conversation more than usual, from the offer to do a stretch of road together or to accompany the other at home, to the proposal to go out with other guys and, in some cases, even to the proposal to go out together alone. Often these ”amorous friendships” are experienced at the beginning in a gratifying way and are transformed into very close interpersonal relationships which however maintain all the apparent characteristics typical of a friendship. Girls often don’t understand why their boyfriend prefers to go out with his best friend rather than with them. Sometimes it may happen that those that seem common friendships are love friendships, that is, at least one-sidedly, unconscious forms of homosexual falling in love.

___________
(1) Instruction Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations with regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in view of their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders, n. 2, November 4th 2004.
(2) Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2357.
(3) Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Human person. Some questions of sexual ethics - 29 December 1975, n. 8 - Homosexual relationships 
(4) Ibidem. 
(5) Ibidem. 
(6) Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the pastoral care of homosexual persons, 3. 
(7) Major Catechism, n. 966.
(8) n. 967
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