Current Residence: Manhattan's East Village, New York, USA
7/2/00: I believe that human beings, including myself, have a range of capacities, and being turned on by what is not necessarily an imprint is certainly one of them. If anyone told me that a cuddly cat could be a turn on, I would not have believed it until Seaver snuggled next to me (Note: I have NEVER practiced BESTIALITY—beastliness maybe, but never bestiality). [T]here is this great flick (out as a video, I'm sure): "A Very Special Sunday" with Sophia Loren as an ordinary housewife (!!!) and Marcello Mastriani, playing a closeted fag journalist during the time of Mussolini in Italy. Sophia gives Marcello his first hot het experience before he's taken off to the prison camps, if I'm not over-fabricating the plot in my head. The reaction of gay friends to this plot was: "Oh well! Sophia Loren! Is that what it takes to induce heterosexuality in a fag?" If [a] gorgeous, rich, and celebrated [woman] came on to me, would I be able to resist? I'm not sure. If I focused on her image, could I become aroused? Probably, but it would take some work. Frank once said to me that heterosexuals are repressing their homosexuality and vice versa. I believe it to be true.
7/19/00: I've been a longtime student of the work of psychiatrist and social theorist, Paul Rosenfels. I hope that the following quote from Paul's gay liberation classic Homosexuality: the Psychology of the Creative Process will be of interest to other members of the forum. Be sure, when Paul speaks about "men" in contexts referring to civilzation, he is just using the scholarly language of his time, and he means both men and women. An exact search for "Paul Rosenfels" on most any browser will bring up the full texts of his published works, and lots of other good information about him, and the Ninth Street Center, which he helped found.
from Paul Rosenfels' Homosexuality: the Psychology of the Creative Process:
"Homosexual capacity is a component part of the personality of civilized man. Men choose to use this capacity in spite of the social pressures against it only when their need for individuality is very great, and this need is related to their inability to cope with the severities of socially reinforced gender roles. Whenever an individual finds that conformity to social pressures brings an increasing and inflexible depression, he must seek to relieve that depression in any way that promises to be effective. It is the need for this kind of self-therapy which guides men in their deviancy from established social patterns in the romantic area. The right to such deviancy is essential to the creative development of individuals and to social progress itself. To attain so-called normality in a world which is itself abnormal in the sense that it justifies ignorance and immorality as the inevitable price of stability can only lead to a compromise with psychological depression which must ultimately prove itself to be unworkable. Those who insist on independent access to contentment and happiness in the name of mental health are received as the enemies of social stability. Without mental health, no apparent human accomplishments can be rewarding, either for the individual or for society, and the right to pursue mental health is an irreducible necessity in the civilized world. No animal save man has this obligation to provide for his own psychological health. The individual cannot pass this obligation to others. The deterioration of any human personality is an event which he alone experiences, and he alone is in the position to make the choices which lead away from psychological disability."