Did you "choose" to be gay?

[NCbear]

My own experience is that I didn't choose to be gay. However, I've known people who chose to be whatever they were, people whose sexualities changed or fluctuated over time, and people whose experiences made them grow into their sexualities.

So I think it's possible to choose to be X, whatever X is, and I think it's also possible to choose to accept what you are, whatever that is.

NCbear (who's known a lot of different types in my forty-seven years on this planet)

 

[deleted569656]

Hell no! No one would choose the abuse and bigotry we face on a regular basis.

 

[elixer26]

I'm 18 and gay, just came out and I this question has irked me since middle school. Did any of you actually choose to be gay? I'm not asking about whether or not you chose to come out or express youself as gay, I'm asking about whether or not you chose to be attracted to other men. It would boggle me if anyone would. I'm all for pride, but who would want to be a part of a minority struggling to fit in?

I understand that you're only 18 but how can anyone "choose to be gay"? Unless you mean in terms of social identity, for example, some guys choose to live in the gay community (coming out) or others choose to "play in straight" like most of the guys on this site?

 

[elixer26]

Check this out:

 

[IDeepThroatXXL]

Not to be simplistic, but: Do heterosexuals choose to be straight? Yeah. Same answer for homosexuals choosing to be gay.

 

[Smaccoms]

I hate how so many people are convinced of how it could never be a choice. Becoming sexually active is a choice. Your romantic partner is a choice. The people you choose to and not to become intimate with is a choice. What traits you find most attractive in other humans beings...they're all choices. So why wouldn't your sexuality be a choice too? Isn't that a good thing? Don't you WANT it to be a choice? I mean, what's wrong with intentionally choosing to be gay? NOTHING!

When the wind blows west, do you automatically start walking in that direction? What if it starts blowing east? What then? Do you hate yourself for now walking in the "wrong direction"?

I'm so sick and tired of hearing people complain of how terrible of a choice homosexuality is "because blah blah blah". In my honest opinion, it's heterosexist and utter bullshit. Apply the concept of self-determination on a personal level, and you get the idea that your sexuality is exactly that...your choice. So if you want to make the choice to experiment with this sex or that sex, even if it's not within the scope of your natural preference, do it already damn it!

You do you honey boo. You can worry about the labels and stereotypes later. They're just words really. Choose whom it is you want to be until you find that exact person. The only way to do it is by getting out of your comfort zone anyway, so you might as well choose which comfort zones you're leaving and why, you know?

Also, gay sex is awesome for so many reasons. THERE'S ONLY ONE WAY TO FIND OUT WHAT THOSE REASONS ARE Y'ALL!!!

 

[Reynard]

I think I was like a lot of gay teens. I tried as hard as I could to live a straight life. You hope that the gay feelings would go away.

You go through the motions of having a girlfriend because that's what's expected. Being a good looking guy without a GF raises too many questions.

But being with a girl is like assembling Ikea furniture. It feels like work and the furthest thing from sexy.

You get constant reminders that you are gay. You can't help looking that extra second at that hot guy in your team in the change room. You find yourself ravenously searching for gay porn to feed your desires. You get that stabbing pain of jealousy as your best friend picks up some unworthy slut to have sex with.

When you have sex with a guy, it just feels right. Like it was always meant to be that way. I remember sucking my first cock and thinking it was the most natural thing for me to do.

Brodie, I couldn't have said it better than you. And like you say sooner or later you remember the sucking your first cock and know it's the most natural thing to do.

 

[nickinoo]

Everyone is different so there is no definitive answer whether it is a choice to be gay. If some people say they made the decision, you can only take their word for it.

Personally I didn't choose. I chose to go with my desires towards having sex with men, because that's what I craved. It's what my dick and my heart wanted. I don't get hard for tits and pussy, I get hard for cock. Of course I could choose to go against my desires and sleep with women, but I wouldn't be happy about it. It would be like me eating mushrooms, I HATE mushrooms.

 

[Smaccoms]

Everyone is different so there is no definitive answer whether it is a choice to be gay. If some people say they made the decision, you can only take their word for it.

Personally I didn't choose. I chose to go with my desires towards having sex with men, because that's what I craved. It's what my dick and my heart wanted. I don't get hard for tits and pussy, I get hard for cock. Of course I could choose to go against my desires and sleep with women, but I wouldn't be happy about it. It would be like me eating mushrooms, I HATE mushrooms.

AAAHHH, but there's the thing. A person might very well HATE mushrooms as a kid, but LOVE them as an adult, right? What's the difference between each situation? Experience! That person might find that even if they didn't initially enjoy the mushrooms, they might eat them anyway for other reasons. It might be a practicality thing, or a health thing, or any number of other things, right?

The point is, you don't have to be absolutely obsessed with mushrooms to at some point, arbitrarily decide to experiment with them. Once that happens, it's really up to your life's journey whether or not you end up liking them or not.

I don't see why this analogy can't carry all the way through with sexuality.

 

[nickinoo]

AAAHHH, but there's the thing. A person might very well HATE mushrooms as a kid, but LOVE them as an adult, right? What's the difference between each situation? Experience! That person might find that even if they didn't initially enjoy the mushrooms, they might eat them anyway for other reasons. It might be a practicality thing, or a health thing, or any number of other things, right?

The point is, you don't have to be absolutely obsessed with mushrooms to at some point, arbitrarily decide to experiment with them. Once that happens, it's really up to your life's journey whether or not you end up liking them or not.

I don't see why this analogy can't carry all the way through with sexuality.

Maybe I shouldn't have compared sex to food. I have never had sex with a woman (although I have tried mushrooms several times, and still hate them).

But I don't need to sleep with a woman to know I don't want to. If I don't feel like putting my dick anywhere near a woman or even kiss one romantically, there's no reason why I should. The thought doesn't disgust me but it doesn't arouse me either. The thought of being intimate with a man on the other hand, is arousing.

 

[Smaccoms]

Maybe I shouldn't have compared sex to food. I have never had sex with a woman (although I have tried mushrooms several times, and still hate them).

But I don't need to sleep with a woman to know I don't want to. If I don't feel like putting my dick anywhere near a woman or even kiss one romantically, there's no reason why I should. The thought doesn't disgust me but it doesn't arouse me either. The thought of being intimate with a man on the other hand, is arousing.

The liking or disliking of a thing comes from experience, whether direct or indirect. You are not born knowing what it is you like or dislike. This knowledge comes from traveling through your life's journey.

A person might hate spinach as a child and as an adult, and that's perfectly fine. But that dislike was decided upon certain experiences the child possesses. The dislike didn't appear out of no where.

This knowledge is not innate, it is learned.

So people DO change, but do so SLOWLY. It is a simple fact of life, and insisting your sexuality doesn't change is foolish in my opinion. The fact you dislike sex with women might not ever change, but at the very least, the why of it most certainly will.

I also do not understand the argument where a person is entirely neutral on the grounds of straight sex, yet completely abstains from it over the course of their entire lifetime.

 

[nickinoo]

This still carries through the analogy. A person might hate spinach as a child and as an adult. They never eat spinach because they hate it. The decision to hate it forever is just as valid as choosing to try liking something so intensely disliked. It's your life's journey alone...only you can make the decision.

The entire point is that what a person does and does not like does not necessarily fit into a binary. If you compare two distinct points in time, it certainly could fit a binary. But this could be entirely false when inspecting a person's entire lifetime. People change, as well as their tastes.

But people change SLOWLY, and some people DON'T change. Neither type of person is better than the other; they are simply different from one another. I, for example, change. I used to eat a low fat / high carb diet in college. Now I eat the opposite. The change happened very slowly over the course of a year or two, with different sources of life altering experiences playing large roles. It was a change made with my long-term sense of well being in mind, intentional & goal-orientated.

It didn't happen instantaneously, which is (in effect) exactly what "gay conversion camps" attempt to accomplish. So harmful to a person's life journey!

I don't doubt that I could be attracted to women later in life. People do change. But that wouldn't be because I changed my mind, I would do it because I felt an attraction to a woman, which is different. The question whether people's sexuality can change in time is an entirely different question to "is being gay a choice?".

My taste in sexual partners has changed over the years, and I don't really have a specific type. I find it interesting and exciting to involve myself with different types of men, and perhaps challenge what I think I am into. But if these characteristics were on some kind of scale of what I am willing to experiment with, not having a penis, and being female are right at the 'no go' end of the scale.

You might still say that I am making that choice not to experiment, but it tells me that I am definitely gay and my body agrees. I don't know the science behind sexual attraction, but it is a 'feeling' and that's what I go with. As do most straight people, except they don't feel the need to doubt it or fight it because it's not an issue.

 

[Smaccoms]

@nickinoo I edited my response continually for the entire time allotted, so give it a re-read.

 

[nickinoo]

The liking or disliking of a thing comes from experience, whether direct or indirect. You are not born knowing what it is you like or dislike. This knowledge comes from traveling through your life's journey.

A person might hate spinach as a child and as an adult, and that's perfectly fine. But that dislike was decided upon certain experiences the child possesses. The dislike didn't appear out of no where.

This knowledge is not innate, it is learned.

You learn what you like through experience but you don't necessarily make the decision to like it. You just do or you don't and there is not always an obvious reason why.

I remember first being attracted to a guy when I was about 7, before I knew what that attraction meant. Then I continued having these feelings for guys all the time as I grew up. I didn't want to feel that way because what I did know was that it was not appropriate, and society saw it as wrong. I tried to act against it and have girlfriends, partly because before hormones kicked in and I became a sexual being, I thought it was a choice. I thought every other guy is attracted to girls so why can't I be? I also worked out as I got a bit older (say about 9 or 10 years old) that the alternative, being gay, being attracted to guys was seen as a bad thing by society, and seen as disgusting.

So if I could have made the decision to be straight at this point I would have.

Then when I hit puberty and realised what sexual attraction was, I again tried to convince myself I could be attracted to girls. But by this point my body told me what I liked and it was definitely males.

 

[Smaccoms]

If everyone is told over and over again that they must like spinach or be ostracized, those who have a natural aversion to spinach are going to be ostracized. Making a choice to try to like spinach only to avoid that discrimination is not going to work...it has nothing to do with your personal experience of eating spinach.

But choosing to keep an open mind to spinach out of pure scientific curiosity might be more successful. Again, the choice to keep an open mind is just as valid as the choice not to. But I still believe it is a choice...maybe not at first, but we all have our opportunities to attend a buffet if you will.

To translate, many gay men try forcing themselves into liking straight sex for the wrong reasons. This, of course, is going to fail. It comes from a place of self-loathing. Self-exploration is only helpful from a place of self-love, which is a difficult place to find when you are a gay man in a straight man's world.

I refuse to relinquish my autonomy over my sexuality. For me, that means allowing myself to explore sex with women despite my strong natural preference for sex with men. I was terrified by the fact I believed in this so strongly when I was in high school and college. I ran away from it. But by the time I turned 25, I learned to embrace it. Even today, most think of me as a gay man, and believe I am full of self-loathing when I tell them I am not a gay man. But I'm not going to those individuals stop me from...attending those buffets!

In short, I love sex itself more than I love sex with men.

 

[nickinoo]

In short, I love having sex more than I love having sex with men.

That's great that you enjoy sex with women as well as men. Variety is fun!

If I ever feel the urge to sleep with a woman I hope that I can, but so far I have never felt that urge.

I think that actually makes me open minded. But I won't do it for the sake of saying I have or because I feel I should because it would be unfulfilling. And I don't think many women would appreciate being my guinea pig.

Like I say, you have a great attitude towards sex, and it would be nice if more people had a similar point of view.

 

[Tbprivate]

There's also a difference between who you have sex with and who one chooses to be with romantically for life.

A 21 year old totally straight virgin friend of mine, who knows I'm gay, recently asked me to suck him off, as he said he was bored of jerking and wanted to experience the feeling

He's desperate for a girlfriend to fuck but I was available to help him orgasm.

This was the choice he made (and made me extremely happy at the same time)

 

[Smaccoms]

I'm not saying that if you DO ever experiment outside your natural preference, YOU MUST LIKE IT! No, I'm just saying to withhold your judgement until after the experience...so you can make an informed decision about it. You'll be far more confident in your decision that way. Insecurities be gone!!

Also, getting your first blow job from someone whom really knows how to do it is probably a great way to start your sexual career. It gives you the opportunity how much there is to learn about good orgasms!

 

[Smaccoms]

That's great that you enjoy sex with women as well as men. Variety is fun!

If I ever feel the urge to sleep with a woman I hope that I can, but so far I have never felt that urge.

I think that actually makes me open minded. But I won't do it for the sake of saying I have or because I feel I should because it would be unfulfilling. And I don't think many women would appreciate being my guinea pig.

Like I say, you have a great attitude towards sex, and it would be nice if more people had a similar point of view.

Honestly, I think most sex partners are guinea pigs. I think the only sexual partner that's NOT guinea pig are the ones you've made a serious & explicit commitment to. The best experience is direct experience!! This is why I despise the "no sex before your married" phenomenon.. It can make for one terrible sexual career!

 

[Dustin Berry]

I hate how so many people are convinced of how it could never be a choice. Becoming sexually active is a choice. Your romantic partner is a choice. The people you choose to and not to become intimate with is a choice. What traits you find most attractive in other humans beings...they're all choices. So why wouldn't your sexuality be a choice too? Isn't that a good thing? Don't you WANT it to be a choice? I mean, what's wrong with intentionally choosing to be gay? NOTHING!

When the wind blows west, do you automatically start walking in that direction? What if it starts blowing east? What then? Do you hate yourself for now walking in the "wrong direction"?

I'm so sick and tired of hearing people complain of how terrible of a choice homosexuality is "because blah blah blah". In my honest opinion, it's heterosexist and utter bullshit. Apply the concept of self-determination on a personal level, and you get the idea that your sexuality is exactly that...your choice. So if you want to make the choice to experiment with this sex or that sex, even if it's not within the scope of your natural preference, do it already damn it!

You do you honey boo. You can worry about the labels and stereotypes later. They're just words really. Choose whom it is you want to be until you find that exact person. The only way to do it is by getting out of your comfort zone anyway, so you might as well choose which comfort zones you're leaving and why, you know?

Also, gay sex is awesome for so many reasons. THERE'S ONLY ONE WAY TO FIND OUT WHAT THOSE REASONS ARE Y'ALL!!!

Because choosing to be gay means you're actively pushing away from the social norm, trying to "be a special snowflake" as most put it, for the sake of feeling unique. It's seen as immature, like dyeing your hair a flamboyant color. Also, it means your choosing to commit a sin according to Christians. Not saying I agree with it, but I'm pretty sure that's why it's an issue, it's more complicated than simply people not being ok with the choice.