The Typologies of Homosexuality - Reprint

This is a reprint of an older Romanian article of the same name, which I had referenced a few times and people were trying to translate.

You know how I sometimes say at the beginning of an article, "prepare yourself for vivisection"? Well. Prepare yourself.

The most important type, what we'll call proper homosexuals, is also the least numerous. There are folks who in all honesty prefer their own gender to the opposite, sexually speaking. It's not clear if this preference has a genetic basis or is simply that, a preference, just like how some people like apples and others like pears. I'm inclined to be persuaded by the latter explanation for some purely statistical reasons, but I can't say it's proven to me.

The statistical reasons of which I speak consist of two. The first is the fact that on average proper homosexuals comprise something in the neighborhood of 3% of the population. This density seems, at least to my mind, to fit with what you'd expect to come out of the model with apples and pears. The second is the fact that on average proper homosexual men are about three to five times more numerous than proper homosexual women. This density of distribution by gender once again seems to fit with what you'd expect to come from the model with apples and pears, because of what we know about the makeup (and hormones, and psychology) of women and men.

From the ranks of proper homosexuals society recruits exceptional people, those Michelangeloes or Turings of the world, a detail probably explainable by reference to the fact that exceptional performance (vulgo genius) has something in common with the assumption of rare (and perhaps unpopular) personal preference: the courage to ignore orthodoxy in favor of truth.

The argument which for my part convinces me, without question, to be in favor of perfect social tolerance of homosexuality is also constructed on the basis of their existence : rather than a single other unhappy Alan Turing in this world, it'd be much better to have however many stupid dorks angry because other stupid dorks are kissing in the bar or whatever stupid things dorks do among themselves. Elitism to the marrow, heh.

The second type, somewhat more numerous than the first in the majority of concrete situations, is composed of improper homosexuals. These people use homosexuality as some sort of solution, temporary or permanent, in their struggle with certain mental problems or certain psychological defects. Improper homosexuality may appear in childhood or more rarely in adolescence following unsuccessful relationships with a difficult father or deviant mother, or in the course of life following exposures to certain types of exceptionally psychologically stressful situations (as is often the case for instance in jail).

It's unclear to me whether improper homosexuality is more or less evenly distributed among the two genders than proper. I imagine without having proofⁱ that men dominate, even if to a lesser degree than in the preceeding case. Let's say two to one, if you must absolutely have numbers to laugh at me.

Improper homosexuals can be "healed", in the sense that if the defensive psychological structures their alleged homosexuality provides have not become an integral part of the definition of their own identities then that "homosexuality" can be resolved through the methods of psychotherapy like every other psychological problem. On the other hand, because of the often very young age at which the respective defective coping mechanisms are formed, the psychotherapuetically accessible cases are in fact rare. In the majority of cases any sort of "healing" would absolutely imply deep and often very abrupt modification to the identity of the individual, perhaps to the degree of rendering them socially unrecognisable, which is unacceptable from a therapeutic perspective. Certainly people have the inalienable right to alter their identity however they think just and proper, and certainly this is what life is, in the end : the gradual modification of identity, from newborn to recently departed. Nevertheless, these modifications are the intangible dominion of the citizen in question, and cannot be the object of "therapies" born of a doctor.

The particular problems which the improper homosexuals confront put them in a situation that's particular to them almost to the degree of being specific (and which makes them quite easy to spot in general society, anecdotally) of needing confirmations for the universal and objective nature of their homosexuality. As a minor result of this state of affairs improper homosexuals put the medical profession in a formidable ethical dilemma whenever asking for a sex change operation (in the vast majority of cases they are those who ask for such a thing). On one hand we have the discussion above as to who owns the identity of the individual, which is solid and stands on itself. On the other hand, the Hippocratic Oath and primum non nocere.

For many doctors this dilemma is unsolvable, even if during the last two or three decades orthodoxy seems to be gradually evolving in the direction of the supremacy of the right of the individual to biological self-determination over the principles of medicine. The cause of this evolution is however not a widening of the acceptance of some sort of intellectual solution to the above dilemma, but simply the commoditization of the profession, which sees more and more people intellectually and technically not qualified to practice medicine practicing medicine nevertheless. As you add more and more truck drivers to the pool this once glorious field is evolving slowly but inexorably from a liberal occupation to a technical one, and with it the problems it may consider and the solutions it may offer also evolve.

As a major result of the same facts discussed above, improper homosexuality tends to follow certain typical professional lines, of which by far the most important would be two : the "austere" so to speak, of the military, biker clubs etc and the "histrionic" so to speak, of singers, actors, TV personalities and tightrope walkers of all kinds. The popular intuition would indicate the "austere" direction as being indicative of an active homosexuality within the frame of copulation, and the "histrionic" direction indicative of a passive, or receptive homosexuality. This presupposition is not found in fact. It may also merit observing that for homosexuals copulation is a less frequent and less important activity than it is for heterosexuals, oral sex having a more important role, for example.

It should perhaps also be noted that the psychological problems which lead in plenty of cases to a resolution through the mental artifact of improper homosexuality are much more frequent than there are improper homosexuals around. The vast majority of cases don't become acute quite to the degree, but rather settle on a continuum. Without doubt you've observed the manifestations which suggest a latent homosexuality among guys perhaps overly passionate about cars, bodybuilding, entertainment and so on and so forth.

In the end, the last type, otherwise completely irrelevant in any serious discussion of homosexuality, are the social homosexuals. These have chosen their homosexuality like someone would choose a color for a suit or the type of car he drives, it's an assumed social identity. Some high school kids "are" emo, others "are" rock n' rollers, others "are" whatever they'd be. Just in the same manner some adults "are" homosexuals, or CEOs, or Supernodes... These "are"s don't have much to do either with existence or with essence, they're simple tomfoolery of one kind or another, in the end not terribly interesting for anyone. The people who matter aren't any one of these in highschool, but simply follow their own shit, and by the time they're adults and makeing the world go round they're still minding their own shit, still without "being" experts, homosexuals, stars or whatever else it is that the irrelevant chaff "is".

The frequency of the last type is of course a function of the fashions of youth - they can become ten or a hundred times more numerous than the sum of proper and improper homosexuals in twenty years, they can disappear to the last one in another twenty... The present abundance of them is of course advantageous for today's improper homosexuals, in that it provides them with the advantage that they may resolve to some degree their need for self-justification, even if only temporarily and fragmentarily (the notion of "gay spat" pretty much exists to describe unsuccessful interactions between an improper and a social homosexual, by the wayⁱⁱ.), but otherwise is not particularly relevant, or for that matter interestingⁱⁱⁱ.

In relation to organized repression proper homosexuals tend to become neurotic, improper homosexuals tend to become psychotic and social homosexuals tend to disappear. In the United States the three typologies (which otherwise are socially and subjectively quite separate and distinct) have managed to discover their common needs and interests, and are trying to somehow tailor three completely disparate things into a joint, marketable identity. Such a miracle is impossible, beyond a political front the three groups don't have anything in common, or in other words social repression, if it exists, is the only thing uniting them^iv.

The absence of such repression in Romania is a proximate cause for the three groups going on with their separate, somewhat parallel lives unruffled, and also the profound reason why it's impossible to organize a half-decent parade, or at least something more substantial than a flaccid tweetmeet.

1. Because everyone knows how to ask for grants, but virtually nobody in "social sciences" knows how to use any amount of money for any useful purpose, such as answering a question that makes a iota of sense. They're running around like headless chicken trying to answer questions that aren't even questions in the first place. [↩]
2. And since we're doing this, Philip Seymour Hoffman's character in Flawless is type II, whereas Robert Preston's in Victor/Victoria quite I. Their respective, mostly anonymous, background lovers that unpleasantly dump them are both type III, on the "for pay" scale of type III. (Because why would you pretend you're a duck ? Either for fun or for money, or for some admixture of both, right ?) [↩]
3. And it's also not by any means the first time it became fashionable to pretend you're gay, the same was true just before Renaissance Italy went to shit, and just before Imperial Rome went to shit, and just before classical Athens went to shit (three passes with this) and on and on and on. It's just end-of-the-world retardation, nothing more. [↩]
4. Which will explain why talk of repression, preferably imaginary, is so fundamental to the pseudo-identity of the US gay movement. (Imaginary is better because if you're telling me you're pouring coffee on your head because a duck is purple I might produce some ducks to laugh at you, but if you're telling me you're puring coffee on your head because a dragon is purple there's jack shit I can practically do. As long as one's looking for pseudo-objective justification, the imaginary always works better.) [↩]