Sexuality is obviously mutuable if you look at the historical evidence of significant changes in sexual orientation depending when and where you were born. You don't need an expert historiographical analysis of Greek city-state sexual practices to pick this up.
Another readily apparent example is children, who do not emerge with a predefined sexuality but develop this over time.
However, saying that sexuality is mutable is very contentious in the West because if you accept that sexuality can change, then the default response to behaviour and desires seen as abnormal is to use coercive and stigmatising methods of criminalisation and 'treatment'. So the rhetorical strategy of the immutability of sexuality was and is a key part of legalising homosexually and ensuring it is broadly accepted here.
I don't see any real harm in believing that sexuality is immutable beyond the discursive knots people tie themselves in trying to 'discover' their 'real sexuality', and what happens when their initial discovery turns out to be not entirely how they feel at the next moment.
Personally, I'm much happier to leave the typologies, medicalisation and inadvertent pathologisation of anything outside the accepted bounds to the medical experts.
that makes sense. The reason why I was curious on why mutability might make more sense is because there very well could be alot of people who at one point were actually straight and became heteroflexible/bi/gay etc later on. usually i hear this written off that they were always some form of LGBT and just repressed it due to pressure. but that feels reductive and while likely very true for some not so much for others. Thanks for your take i like getting new perspectives and i always appreciate effort posts :)
Sexuality is obviously mutuable if you look at the historical evidence of significant changes in sexual orientation depending when and where you were born. You don't need an expert historiographical analysis of Greek city-state sexual practices to pick this up.
Another readily apparent example is children, who do not emerge with a predefined sexuality but develop this over time.
However, saying that sexuality is mutable is very contentious in the West because if you accept that sexuality can change, then the default response to behaviour and desires seen as abnormal is to use coercive and stigmatising methods of criminalisation and 'treatment'. So the rhetorical strategy of the immutability of sexuality was and is a key part of legalising homosexually and ensuring it is broadly accepted here.
I don't see any real harm in believing that sexuality is immutable beyond the discursive knots people tie themselves in trying to 'discover' their 'real sexuality', and what happens when their initial discovery turns out to be not entirely how they feel at the next moment.
Personally, I'm much happier to leave the typologies, medicalisation and inadvertent pathologisation of anything outside the accepted bounds to the medical experts.
that makes sense. The reason why I was curious on why mutability might make more sense is because there very well could be alot of people who at one point were actually straight and became heteroflexible/bi/gay etc later on. usually i hear this written off that they were always some form of LGBT and just repressed it due to pressure. but that feels reductive and while likely very true for some not so much for others. Thanks for your take i like getting new perspectives and i always appreciate effort posts :)