LGBT Issues and Philosophy

[Doctor Faustus]

To some, this might seem a little heavy, but I didn't know where else to put it.

I wanted to circulate a few articles and things I've collated on this subject, for anyone interested in the philosophical dilemmas raised in the discussion of LGBT issues.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is as good a place to start as any. It has an extremely lucid entry on homosexuality: Homosexuality (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).
This is one on "Feminist Perspectives on Trans Issues": Feminist Perspectives on Trans Issues (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Among the articles listed in the Stanford homosexuality entry under "Further Reading" is one you might consider controversial, from John Finnis, entitled "Law, Morality and 'Sexual Orientation'": http://www.princeton.edu/~anscombe/a...rientation.pdf

More generally, linking the discussion to politics, human rights and the notion of the "other", this article from Baden Offord on "The Apartheid of Homosexuality": http://www.badenofford.com/writingOf...eidArticle.pdf

Feel free to link any articles that might be worth reading and/or throw out some discussion! There are a whole host of issues we could debate. A few examples: the ethics of pornography/masturbation; epistemic problems of sexual/gender orientation and identification (e.g. what qualifies as 'knowledge of one's or others' sexual/or and gender orientation'?); the legality of homosexuality (e.g. what, if anything, might justify the criminalisation of homosexuality? What standards should we determine for legally permissible 'normal' sexual practices?).

Look forward to hearing from you!

[jargon]

Your question on "knowledge of one's orientation" is something I've often wondered about. With all the cultural variation in groupings (real and imagined) for orientation/gender roles, its hard to imagine that our "knowledge" of our own orientation isn't hugely influenced by those cultural forces.

Anywho, great idea! I'm a bit of a philosophy nerd so I'd love to see this take off.

[Catherine25]

Thanks for the links. I'm a philosophy major and I haven't read much about LGBT philosophical issues so I can't wait to these out. If I come across anything I let you know!

[DarkClarity]

Interesting. I'll definitely check out those links.

[Doctor Faustus]

Thanks for all the interest everyone!

I found some more articles/essays. As I have them in PDF format, PM me with your email if you'd like copies.

The articles are:

Broach, R. (1998) "Does Human Dignity Require Outing Homosexuals?"
De Block, A. and Adriaens, P. (2004) "Darwinizing sexual ambivalence: a new evolutionary hypothesis of male homosexuality"
Halwani, R., Jaeger, G., Stramel, J., Nunan, R., Wilkerson, W. and Murphy, T. (2008) "What is Gay and Lesbian Philosophy?"
Halwani, R. (2002) "Outing and Virtue Ethics"
Nussbaum, M. (2002) "Millean Liberty and Sexual Orientation: A Discussion of Edward Stein's 'The Mismeasure of Desire'"

Hope you find them useful.

[kris burns]

This is quite an interesting thread. I read the stanfrod article (well..parts of it) some time ago. I hope people will post more such articles here.

I recently came across this book titled, "From Disgust to Humanity: Sexual Orientation and Constitutional Law". I am planning to borrow it from the library next week. Has anyone heard of it/read it?

[Doctor Faustus]

Hey Kris, thanks for the reply!

Cheers for flagging up that Nussbaum book! Will have to add it to my must-get-round-to-reading list alongside "Gender Trouble" (Butler) and Foucault's "History of Sexuality".

Any comments on the Stanford article?

Best,

Doctor Faustus.

[kris burns]

Hello Doctor Faustus,
I read the stanford article a while ago but I remember being confused and somewhat bothered by the idea of social construction of sexuality. It made sexuality sound like a feature of external circumstances rather than innate character. I just find the idea of innate-ness more comforting and somehow unifying. I mean I would like to think the essential aspect of gay-ness in america or india or nicaragua are basically the same...but if sexuality is constructed maybe they aren't? Am i making sense?

Anyways, I recently listened to this BBC radio documentary which may be interesting to you.

BBC - BBC Radio 3 Programmes - Sunday Feature: Out in the World - A Global Gay History

[Doctor Faustus]

Sexuality as "innate" is all very well, but I think we have to acknowledge that our sexuality is at least in part socially constructed. The Greeks, Romans and even the Renaissance English didn't have the same understanding of "heterosexual", "homosexual" etc. that we do in the modern world (and these modern paradigms of sexuality are largely Western inventions, I might add). A whole series of norms, attitudes and values are intimately bound up with sexual and gender identity.

Good shout on the link btw! Thanks for sharing

[kris burns]

Well..I agree but it still troubles me

As someone who spent part of my life in the East and part in West, I have seen cultural attitudes ranging from complete denial (``we don't have gay people in this country'') to general, though sometimes uncomfortable, acceptance. But, is my sexuality a consequence of my migration? Am I gay because I have accepted the modern Western notions about being gay? Would I still be gay if I had never come to the West? I don't know...and I am probably out of my depth here

[jargon]

Well its true that there are all sorts of different modes of expression of alternate sexual orientations in the world. I took an anthropology course on latin america, and we did a whole section on sexuality. For one, it isn't considered "gay" in many latin american countries for a man to have sex with a guy if he's the one "on top," and homosexual brothels are tolerated, though the employees are degraded and treated with disgust, because its considered ok for men to patronize them. I'm also told there's a whole culture of transgender men in brazil that use silicon injections to appear more feminine physically, though they would never want to become biologically female.

The important part to remember is, even though the expression various from place to place, there is no nation or culture that can honestly claim to be free of homosexuality (despite the efforts you mentioned) no matter how much its suppressed legally, culturally, etc. So I don;t think we can say its a result of culture, but it certainly does ineract with it on some level.

[Doctor Faustus]

A couple more articles I've dug up, from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (which hails itself as 'A Peer Reviewed Academic Resource' xD):

Philosophy of Love*[Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]

Philosophy of Sexuality*[Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]

[anatta]

Originally Posted by jargon

Well its true that there are all sorts of different modes of expression of alternate sexual orientations in the world. I took an anthropology course on latin america, and we did a whole section on sexuality. For one, it isn't considered "gay" in many latin american countries for a man to have sex with a guy if he's the one "on top," and homosexual brothels are tolerated, though the employees are degraded and treated with disgust, because its considered ok for men to patronize them.

All that means is that they don't have a word translating exactly to the English word 'gay', because they don't consider the sexes that you are attracted to to be an important enough distinguishing characteristic to warrant a word. It doesn't mean that the nature or statistics of orientation are different there. Much as there is no word I'm aware of for people who can touch their nose with their tongue - they exist but they're not referenced enough as a group for a word to be invented or well-known.

What they consider important is not whom you're attracted to but how you have sex with them. So there is a word for men who are attracted to men AND who want to be the passive partner, but not a word for gay men in general. That doesn't mean there are fewer gay men there, i.e. men who are attracted to men, just that there are fewer men who have a noun distinguishing their sexual desires from those of the majority.

I wonder how lesbians and bisexuals are referred to in those countries, do they have nouns of their own or would you also have to explain who they are attracted to in order to reference them as a group/concept?

[jargon]

I didn't mean to suggest that the number of gay people is different there. In fact that was part of my point. The attraction to members of the same sex shows up everywhere consistently accross cultures. But the expression of alternate sexual attractions tends to conform with the types that they recognize. Its the same thing that applies in this country in our categorization of sexual orientations as either straight, gay or bi (often implying about 50-50 attraction to both genders). Orientations really arent that neat, but when you have nothing but the terms your language provides most of us pick the one that seems close enough.

EDIT: although looking back, I can see how I was misleading in using the word "gay" there myself. I didn't know the spanish-language terms to use so I reverted to english.

[anatta]

Originally Posted by jargon

I didn't mean to suggest that the number of gay people is different there. In fact that was part of my point. The attraction to members of the same sex shows up everywhere consistently accross cultures. But the expression of alternate sexual attractions tends to conform with the types that they recognize. Its the same thing that applies in this country in our categorization of sexual orientations as either straight, gay or bi (often implying about 50-50 attraction to both genders). Orientations really arent that neat, but when you have nothing but the terms your language provides most of us pick the one that seems close enough.

EDIT: although looking back, I can see how I was misleading in using the word "gay" there myself. I didn't know the spanish-language terms to use so I reverted to english.

Oh I see, sorry. I wasn't sure either way but I thought I'd give my take seeing as the kind of thing you're talking about is used by some as evidence for queer theory, which makes no sense to me and as far as I can tell has actually been thoroughly debunked via history, neuroscience etc.

The 50-50 split phenomenon is interesting. I've read several kinds of evidence that around 90% are at least somewhat bisexual, but for most the same-sex attraction is easy to suppress or ignore. So most people who identify as bisexual are close enough to the 50-50 point or far in to the same-sex side of the spectrum that it's harder for them to consider it insignificant or deny it than it is for the majority of bisexuals. Orientation appears to be quite a smooth continuum with no part particularly more common than any other.

[kris burns]

I am not sure where else to write this, so I am just writing it here. I started reading this book, "From Disgust to Humanity: Sexual Orientation and Constitutional Law". One of the things it talks about is the US supreme court case Bowers v. Hardwick which upheld a law criminalizing sodomy.

Its not the legal theory that upset me but the details of the actual incident. I mean it is so obviously wrong how this person was treated and yet 5 supreme court judges found it okay. The stupidity of it makes me angry. The tyranny of stifling and controlling and criminalizing makes me angry. And these people inflict so much mental and psychological harm while claiming to be defending morality. I am just angry and disgusted.



Sorry, I had to spew it out somewhere before I could sleep tonight...

[Doctor Faustus]

Originally Posted by kris burns

I am not sure where else to write this, so I am just writing it here. I started reading this book, "From Disgust to Humanity: Sexual Orientation and Constitutional Law". One of the things it talks about is the US supreme court case Bowers v. Hardwick which upheld a law criminalizing sodomy.

Its not the legal theory that upset me but the details of the actual incident. I mean it is so obviously wrong how this person was treated and yet 5 supreme court judges found it okay. The stupidity of it makes me angry. The tyranny of stifling and controlling and criminalizing makes me angry. And these people inflict so much mental and psychological harm while claiming to be defending morality. I am just angry and disgusted.



Sorry, I had to spew it out somewhere before I could sleep tonight...

I know, it's insane.

In Hong Kong, where my parents grew up, homosexual sex was illegal for most of the twentieth century under a sodomy clause in the Offences Against the Person Act, a piece of legislation instituted by the British, in fact. That clause prohibiting sodomy was only repealed in the early 1990s, more than twenty years after homosexuality was formally decriminalised in England in 1967.

Elsewhere though, in places such as Nigeria, these legacies of imperialism are still enforced. The Christian church in these countries, itself a product of British imperialism, has been swift to defend such anti-gay laws. It's as if formerly oppressed people such as the Nigerians have decided to oppress themselves instead.

(sigh) What a mess.