Orientation and the reproductive imperative.

Drifterwood

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Reproduction seems more of a potential consequence to my orientation rather than a conscious driving force behind it.

I have never liked the term breeder, but does that label of heterosexuals infer that the desire to reproduce is the reserve of those predominantly heterosexual?

I don't think so or see why that should be, but I would be very interested in the thoughts of all orientations.
 

got_lost

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Blimey.

I am on a different planet to you, or you to me, when it comes to how our brains work (and everything else for that matter.... I feel a complete retard when you're around:rolleyes:)

But as it is a monday morning and I am putting off starting the day with a shower and instead sat here with a cup of coffee... I shall have a feeble attempt and answering one of your implacable questions.

I can only answer from the heterosexual side. I have several gay friends but none of which have ever shown signs of the desire or need to breed. But I am sure some do.

But from the heterosexual side, certainly nowadays, the need or urge to breed seems to have reduced in a proportion of the population.

In my parents day the urge was greater (or did they just question life less and just get on with reproducing cos that was what was expected of them?!)

Amongst my peers and people I grew up with, very few of us have been driven to reproduce. Wrongly or rightly choosing career and/or life over a family. That said, now we're in our 40's some are beginning to hear the bell ringing (time, gentlemen, please!!!) on their reproductive abilities and are now starting to think about it a little more.

My bell, as yet hasn't rung and quite frankly if it does now I accept it's just too darn late. I've never made a decision not to have them but I never made to have them either. However I was surrounded by women who were DESPERATE to have them at one time and did recognise that I could never knock on their door and say 'hey! I'm pregnant' as it would mean a trip to A&E with them probably having taken an overdose.

So is it now more black and white than the greyness of half a century ago, when they just did it, with more of us either really really wanting to or really really not.... or us waiting for the urge (which might never come) rather than just jumping in and doing it?

I don't know. Will go and have a shower and maybe think on it some more. :redface:
 

vince

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I too view reproduction as a consequence rather than something I have been driven to. At least on a conscious level. When we wanted to have a baby, we weighed the pros and cons and considered the timing. It wasn't an animalistic urge by any means.

I've only heard the term "breeder" used in a sarcastic way by homosexual men when referring to straights. I don't get the humor. Perhaps someone more in the know could explain it.
 

The Dragon

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I got pregnant to my (then) husband 5 times.
Of those 5 times I managed to keep 2 of my babies by the skin of my teeth and the very best medical interventions.
I can safely say that I am not a maternial person, I loath other peoples children.
When I was single I regarded children as a form of STD.
I had no urge to breed.
After 4 years with my husband I fell pregnant for the first time.
The feelings of protectivness for my baby is nothing I have experienced before.
I stopped all drinking, no coke, no coffee..I became a fire breathing cunt to anyone who dared to smoke around me, if I could smell it they copped it.
My husband was over joyed.
We went shopping for nursery furniture and contacted a service about a nanny.
Our first day shopping for nursery furniture in a larger town I got severe crapping and I bent double and fell to the floor and couldn't rise.
I was raced to hospital where an internal exame was undertaken and an untra-sound, pat on the head and told to go home to my city and the results would be sent to my doctors.
the nexy Monday I got the results that there was no heartbeat and that the baby was dead and not to worry, I should stay home and the "tissue" (my dead baby) would pass "natrually".
What made matters worse for me was the day I found out the results of the ultrasound and found out for certain my baby was dead the next door neighbour brought their new born home from the hospital.
Oh the tourture of those new borns cries.
We shut up that side of the house but the cries still went straight through the brick work and we had to move away while we greived our baby.
I had to deliver our dead baby myself with just my husband there.
The medical proffession called it "tissue".
What I delivered that night was NOT fucking tissue.
It was my child.
My dead child.
I morn my baby every day.
as do I the two other I lost after that happened.
My husband and I grew apart, he did not understand my greif or my sense of loss.
He got angry whe I mentioned my lost babies.
and so I grew asexual.
My libido and sexuality dried up.
I hated him but I did not leave him.
 
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Lex

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I don't think that reproduction is a driving force behind sexuality/orientation, but as Drifter said, a consequence. We are driven by uirges to have sex. If you are heterosexual and have sex as such, you are more likely to reproduce and continue the species.
 

ManlyBanisters

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Reproduction seems more of a potential consequence to my orientation rather than a conscious driving force behind it.

I have never liked the term breeder, but does that label of heterosexuals infer that the desire to reproduce is the reserve of those predominantly heterosexual?

I don't think so or see why that should be, but I would be very interested in the thoughts of all orientations.

You kinda shoot yourself down in the first paragraph there - I know you are only speaking for yourself but the question, when prefaced by that, becomes a no brainer. I would say for the vast, VAST majority of people, regardless of orientation, reproduction is not a conscious driving force. In fact many of the people here who are in, or have been in, relationships or situations where reproduction is a possible outcome (i.e. fertile people, at least one male one famale, having sex) will tell you that a great deal of conscious thought goes into NOT reproducing.

If you're talking about subconcious and unconscious drives then it is totally different matter. A lot of the time when I fantasise about sex my fantasies involve ejaculation in the vagina. When I'm actually having sex I enjoy having my man cum in my mouth, my ass, on me and in my pussy - but in fantasy semen in vagina is more of a mental turn on. I find it difficult to believe that does not relate to a sub/unconscious reproductive imperative. I don't think it has much to do with the types of things I find pleasurable or my orientation in general - those things are stimulous response and, just talking about myself, I believe they have far more to do with nurture than nature.

Also, nearly every gay person I have known (and have had this conversation with) has expressed a desire to have kids of their own. I can only think of one exception, a lesbian who had severe issues with men and everything male, she said she'd never have children because there was no guarantee she wouldn't have a son and she felt with all her hangs up (her words, not mine) she'd be an apalling mother to a boy.

I also know a not insignificant number of straight people (both male and female) who appear to have no desire to reproduce.

This, of course, is anecdotal and therefore amost completely worthless. Not to mention that I believe cultural imperitives about reproducing have such a strong effect on us that it is extremely difficult to differentiate.
 

DC_DEEP

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I also know a not insignificant number of straight people (both male and female) who appear to have no desire to reproduce.

This, of course, is anecdotal and therefore amost completely worthless. Not to mention that I believe cultural imperitives about reproducing have such a strong effect on us that it is extremely difficult to differentiate.
Very good points, MB. A lot of people believe it's a biological urge to have children. I disagree. The cultural imperatives cannot be discounted, but I don't think that's the whole story. I think it's mostly an intrinsic and innate part of a person's psyche that really has little to do with orientation.

One of my neighbors is a straight woman, very nice, very sweet. We get along well, and socialize fairly often. One evening, she told me her reasoning behind becoming a single mother: as a teen, she had decided that if she were not married by age 30, she would do whatever was necessary to have a child anyway. At age 30, she was not married, and did have a child. I later discovered that she has something of an obsession with reproduction, and not just her own. When her cat got pregnant, she was like a worker bee tending the queen, and it was all she could talk about. A young straight couple had moved in our neighborhood, and after about a year, announced their engagement. 4 times since then, my obsessed neighbor has mentioned that she "can't wait until they start having babies." And their wedding is not until next month.

I know a lot of people of various orientations who want or have children, and a lot who don't. It would be logical that a higher percentage of the "gotta reproduce" types are straight, but it does sometimes defy logic and cross boundaries.
 
D

deleted3782

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My dad married my mom late in life primarily on the chance that he would get her pregnant and have a son. He had two daughters by a previous failed marriage, and he didn't get along with either of them very well, more or less abandoning them to the financial care of my grandfather (dad's father). He is the one who supported them financially through graduation from their universities. Both daughters have issues with dad to this day, and limit their contact with him.

Dad did get a son (me) and he remained a father figure to me throughout my childhood. He is a great fan of the concept that first-born sons take all, and that excluded his daughters. To this day they resent the ground I walk on. He kept central to me ideals that likely propelled him to marry my mom; that I was (as was he) the last of a long family tree of a strong family with inheritable assets. He made it clear that he expected me to produce "issue" (that term is used in legal documents related to me) that would be the sole beneficiary of any family inheritance.

And for the first 25 years of my life, I bought into his dream, thinking I would get married, produce several "issue," and life would be good. But as I got older, I realized that I was not attracted to women the same way I was to men...and these feeling grew as I got older. I had my first meaningful same sex relationship when I was 28. In the years thereafter, I held on to the notion that I would reproduce and be a father one day, in spite of have a same sex attraction.

Now that I am older, I am learning to let those feelings go. I will likely never be dad. I am not convinced I would be a good dad. I realize the commitment and patience involved in raising a child for 18 years, and I'm not prepared to make that sacrifice. Lately, I have let dad know that there will be no "issue" and there isn't much he can do about it. Now that he's 85, he's too old and tired now to counter me...somewhat good timing on my part.

So I have sort of done a 360...started out wanting a family, and now realize I won't. Who will care for me when I'm old? Probably nobody, but if I had kids in order to provide a social network for myself in my sunset years, then that's a terrible and unsure motivation.

Dad did give me one parting shot a month ago that gives me pause. He said I needed to have kids, because when I get old, they are the only thing to live for. All the elders in his retirement community do are pass photos of children and grandchildren among themselves, wait for family visits, and talk to family on the phone. He said, if it wasn't for his kids (meaning me and my two horrible half-sister), he would have no reason to live.

In the meantime, perhaps I will have fun blowing the family inheritance. If the family name is to die out, I might as well have it die out in style - right?
 

Drifterwood

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This, of course, is anecdotal and therefore amost completely worthless. Not to mention that I believe cultural imperitives about reproducing have such a strong effect on us that it is extremely difficult to differentiate.

I don't like to preempt the discussion in my threads, so I try to keep the OP's to a minimum.

I think that there is enough anecdotal evidence including the short amount here so far to say that orientation has little to do with either the wish to have children or the potential for a biological imperative to reproduce.

I know a woman who only really enjoys sex when there is a possibility that she can get pregnant, I know another woman for whom the thought of getting pregnant was so appaling that she got sterilized. I know women who are horniest when they are ovulating and women who are horniest either side of their period.

I have a thought that all this mish mash of desires, conscious and subconscious, rest in the fact that primates can have sex for fun. We are not driven to mate only when the female is in season. As a result we have sex for fun and preference and that preference can be for same sex fun so we orientate that way, or both ways.

And I agree that the imperative seems more cultural, someone to care for you when you can't, a need to keep the tribe strong or simply to fill the world with good cathoilc souls :rolleyes:, or as above, a notion that the family should continue. The latter seems a somewhat vain hope to me as you wouldn't be there to see it anyway after a generation or so, so why should that give some people comfort. Just hope perhaps.

I am interested though in whether the cultural imperative diminishes in a post industrial post feminist culture with good medicine. We would, as a species, be very odd indeed if we didn't have a desire to reproduce, perhaps we can see that more clearly as we are now more open about our orientations, have access to birth control and are freer from previous cultural expectations.
 

erratic

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Dragonfly, my sympathies.

As for the OP, I don't believe reproduction has anything to do with sexuality except inasmuch as society expects heteros to breed and homos not to. I myself have always felt a drive to father and am endlessly envious of hetero couples' ability to produce children. That being said, I have no pretensions of "owning" children, I believe one only raises them (and that they assert their autonomy as quickly as they realize it), and therefore am more than happy to adopt.
 
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I have never had a strong desire to have children. My sister's oldest son and I are very close.

He is about the only thing I have in the way of children. I was in the first grade when he was born, me being the youngest of four it was like having a little brother only better.

I don't refer to heterosexuals as breeders, for one I am not an animal and neither or they. There is an association that word has, that somehow for me personally dehumanizes and diminishes the more noble aspects of procreation. In this day and age, I prefer to allow people to simply be as they are, human beings.

My concerns now are more along the lines of who will be there for me when I am older? I used to fear it, but now I realize life and it's many possibilities are more powerful than any fear I could possibly conjure up and that my trust in those things is best left there and not in fear itself.
 

Bbucko

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If the only thing someone wanted to do -ever- is have vaginal sex with (or as) a fertile woman, and felt this overwhelmingly to the extent that anything else would be abhorrent, then I'd say that reproduction is a kind of orientation.

But people of all stripes and flavors enjoy masturbation, oral and anal sex (giving and receiving), and sex with infertile or post-menopausal women.

The libido is a pleasure impulse, and orientation is how that impulse is most pleasurably and meaningfully achieved on an emotional level.
 

B_ScaredLittleBoy

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But ex...who's that lady? Sexy...lady? :biggrin1:

As for me, after reading ex's post I do see how the thing about the elderly only living for their protege could have some truth in it.

And then I read the bit about the family line...well I have always thought I would want to have kids but right now I am almost at the point of truly hating my family. I swear no one is properly related to anyone; its all half relations and 'convenient relations' eg family friend/construed relative = cousin etc. And there is a lot of bitterness and anger and unresolved "issues".

So I wouldn't want to bring anyone into that. Having said that, I do still hope that I would have children one day, and find someone who would want children with me. I think its quite a nice display of affection, much more personal and raw; not as 'showy' as weddings tend to be.

I think its instinctive; the desire to procreate. Although my personal, familial experiences make me a bit wary of having children too young or having children with many different people. So I do want kids but I'm in no rush and not going to fertilise the first egg I come into contact with.
 
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Drifterwood

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Actually, I thought that it was quite beautiful and raised a very significant question. Namely, do our parental instincts only really kick in when we have to sort ourselves out and be responsible for children. I.e. we deal with the consequences rather than the actions.
 

mista geechee

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Reproduction seems more of a potential consequence to my orientation rather than a conscious driving force behind it.

I have never liked the term breeder, but does that label of heterosexuals infer that the desire to reproduce is the reserve of those predominantly heterosexual?

I don't think so or see why that should be, but I would be very interested in the thoughts of all orientations.

interesting question. its probably instinct. personally i prefer long legs that reach up to a neatly trimmed (but still hairy) muff rather thatn the sexual attention of another man. but that's just me.

but who knows, is there really a gay gene? or is it something that develops during childhood ?
 
D

deleted3782

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Forgive me folks for going off topic with my previous post.

You are a sincere person, please don't apologize for that. You were very much on topic.

As for me, after reading ex's post I do see how the thing about the elderly only living for their protege could have some truth in it.

Hopefully, the next generation before me will reinvent the golden years before I get there...:cool:
 

kalipygian

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The percentage of GLBT people who have kids is not very much lower than that of straight people, in the single digits, I think, not going to quote any numbers offhand.

I like kids fine, don't have a particular desire to have any, though. Enough nieces and nephews and friends kids around.

Dragonfly, thanks for sharing your story, and my sympathy as well.