Bias

(Before you all jump on it: Yes, that pun is intentional.)

I was watching this video, when I began to wonder to what extent objective, philosophy-type arguments for our respective understandings of sexuality might be valid. Face it, we've got a double-standard. As an absurdly broad generalization, there tends to be this funny dichotomy between the way the non-heterosexual culture says, "Yes, I absolutely affirm all orientations!" and then develop a special attachment with our own orientation such that it seems universally true to us. I mean, feel free to wash your hands of the accusation, but the truth of the matter is that we - human beings, not just the LGBT community - tend to argue from experience. The best of us have done this. "I have experienced this, so I know it to be true." The problem is that we can experience a great number of highly subjective things, and those subjective things are only reflections of objectivity. I'd be writing too much like Apostrophe if I got into too much philosophy, though, so I'll keep moving.

The point, though, is that personal philosophies and sexuality get intertwined. If I experience something as beautiful, or as emotionally attractive, or as fitting to relationships, it's very easy to string an argument together explaining why I think those things and frame it as objective. One time, I was in a class on Augustine and during a discussion on the nature of beauty, I actually found myself arguing that female bodies are more beautiful than male bodies. I'm Kinsey 4, so it's not surprising that I'd be the one making that argument, but somehow I managed to make what seemed in the moment to be a philosophically-objective argument to support that point. Something about women having a more varied/detailed shape - you know, curves - so there are more lines to be attracted to. But by the same argument, you could say that muscly men are more attractive than less muscly men, and I'm not in that camp. So there my own argument falls flat, and we see the massive problems that arise from the misuse of inductive reasoning.

I can identify with the argument in the video I linked to above. It seems to be a very humanizing principle that we would - or even should - fall in love with people for who they are and not what gender or sex they happen to be. But I mean, I also believe in the validity of the spectrum. There exist Kinsey 0s and 6s. And I accept, intellectually, that those orientations are completely okay and right and humanizing. So how do these understandings come together without exploding into massive cognitive dissonance?

To be honest, I don't have much of an answer. This is one of those places that only discourse can really reach. I think it's in our design to approach matters from personal experience; it's why God's given us lives to live. He shows us things in a physical world, and then our little brains try to wrap their neurons around it. It must be very cute to watch. But at some point, it becomes necessary to step outside of that experience to understand objective matters, or to understand how other people function. For more thoughts on this matter, you might check out this blog post. It ends the same way I think it's appropriate to end my thoughts from this post; it's all epistemology. I agree very much with what was said.

"I believe that things can be subjectively true but objectively wrong. This tends to happen when dealing with people, because humans are contradictory and it's tempting to try and generalize them into a noncontradictory philosophy. Nothing wrong with that - it's how we understand things, after all - but it leads to confusion. So, in the words of rationalist Eliezer Yudkowsky, 'I am confused. That means something I believe is wrong.' We have to examine what we already believe, and determine what we've actually experienced as opposed to what we derived and then spent years gathering evidence on. And really, that's all we can hope to do."