A website supporting my switchingview YouTube Channel

This webpage defines and explains the various ideas I have used in my work, in much more detail than I can give in the videos.

I also list the definitions I have used. Some of these will be standard defintions already in widespread use. Others will be newly invented words neologisms created to describe new concepts that I have developed.

In my experience it is vitally important to pay close attention to definitions. It is very easy to create confusion when different people mean very different things despite using the same word.

Talking about Homosexuality - Video 1

Homosexuality - Innate Disposition or Social Construct

Homosexuality - Innate Disposition or Social Construct

The main question I begin to explore in this video is "what is homosexuality?" For these early gay campaigners, trying to analyse their own personal experience, homosexuality was something inborn and innate. They began to argue that this innate disposition was a perfectly natural and healthy variation of the human condition. The main opposition was from a medical establishment which argued that this disposition was in some way pathological, abnormal or unhealthy.

Later in the 20th century a second set of arguments appeared contradicting this idea of innate disposition. Homosexuality was defined as a social construct

"an idea, concept, or category that is created and maintained by society rather than existing naturally or objectively, its meaning is determined by collective agreement and cultural context."

Within this understanding a homosexual person was somebody who fitted within such a construct, and who conformed to social patterns in terms of dress and behaviour. Homosexuality was a learned and assuemed identity.

The tension between these two very different understandings can be a source of confusion. For example, homosexuality as a biological innate disposition is stable across history, but homosexual social constructs differ from culture to culture. So whether one can describe a Greek soldier as possibly homosexual depends on what definition you use.

I have explored this issue in detail in the Homosexual Identity and Orientation section of Theme 1 - Discussion, Definitions and Laws.