To be raised as something?

[md0]

Yeah, I think that's pretty annoying even to a male cishet. It's an awfully personal question that I think is likely to be pretty embarrassing for the kid being asked (at least in Western culture, for instance).

Yes, it's annoying to every child, it doesn't matter if they are cis and/or heterosexual. I mean, at six, most of us are still preteens, so non-sexual, which renders *sexuality irrelevant.

But it's clear as day that kids are indeed raised as straight and cisgender.

[Jurgen Wullenwever]

Sexual stuff was never mentioned, and children do not have such feelings, so that was definitely not part of the child's world, unless you count hearing of family relations as indoctrination into heteronormative society.

So how many stories did you read or see on screen where the prince ends up with another prince?

None, probably (unless you count Casablanca and similar), but I did not read any romantic hetero-ended stories either. Children's books in Sweden in the 1970s were about social stuff, with titles like "Dad's in prison" (Pappa sitter i fängelse). The boy's books I read later had no romantics either. Indian books with able characters that achieve things and cut up snake bites to suck out the poison of someone else's leg - that sounds rather gay-ish in retrospect, if anything. Biggles went around the world with his male chums and male enemies. The Smurfs were all male back then, and Tintin seems also like a gay-icon if considered in that light, with Haddock and the Duponts.

There's a lot more to heterosexuality than just sex.

There is? I thought sexual meant specific physical activity, otherwise it would be in the romantic sphere (or have I listened too much to Johanna's definition of things?).

[linguoboy]

Sexual stuff was never mentioned, and children do not have such feelings, so that was definitely not part of the child's world, unless you count hearing of family relations as indoctrination into heteronormative society.

So how many stories did you read or see on screen where the prince ends up with another prince?

None, probably (unless you count Casablanca and similar)

Why wouldn't I?

No Grimm's tale for you when you were growing up? No Hans Christian Anderson? No Disney films?

The Smurfs were all male back then, and Tintin seems also like a gay-icon if considered in that light, with Haddock and the Duponts.

Tintin seems asexual if anything. I don't recall him ever evincing any romantic or sexual attraction towards anyone, male or female. (Homosociality is quite a different thing from homosexuality.)

There's a lot more to heterosexuality than just sex.

There is? I thought sexual meant specific physical activity, otherwise it would be in the romantic sphere (or have I listened too much to Johanna's definition of things?).

No, the meaning of "sexual" is broader than that:

Of or relating to having sex, sexual acts and sexual reproduction.
Of or relating to gender.
Of or relating to sexuality.
Of or relating to sexual orientations, sexual identity or preferences with respect to sexual intercourse.

The whole notion of splitting "romance" from "sexuality" in this way is very recent. (As she said in the OP, she created the thread specifically because no one else here had ever divided the question up in that way.) The only people I've known who romanced a different sex than the one they were sexually interested in were forced into it by circumstance.

The American Psychological Association defines sexual orientation as "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions to men, women, or both sexes. Sexual orientation also refers to a person’s sense of identity based on those attractions, related behaviors, and membership in a community of others who share those attractions." [Source: http://web.archive.org/web/20130808032050/http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/sexual-orientation.aspx] Thus, it is something present in every aspect of your life, not just that tiny percentage of your time you actually spend engaging in sexuality activity.

[Jurgen Wullenwever]

I was raised without any religion and rules (I recognise what Jurgen mentions about that!), ...

It is nice to hear about shared experiences.

None, probably (unless you count Casablanca and similar)

Why wouldn't I?

Lines of the type "This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship." do not necessarily have any covert meanings. People can work and act together without being lovers.

No Grimm's tale for you when you were growing up?

Hänsel und Gretel or Little Red Ridinghood or Snow White or Dornrösschen or Cinderella never appeared to me back then to be focussing on coupling. Anything like that was only done to end the story, while the important stuff was the action in the middle.

No Hans Christian Anderson?

The emperor's new clothes or The girl with the matches or The ugly duckling do not describe any sexual relations, as I remember them.

No Disney films?

The Disney characters are definitely odd, with all their uncles and nephews, but no parents or children. Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse had girlfriends, but they never actually did proceed anywhere in those relations. The film with those dogs in 1900 did have a heteroromantic relation with a childbirth at the end, and Mowgli ended up manipulated by some cunning girl, but as above, the important stuff was what happened before, between friends and enemies. Fernando the bull only loved flowers, and was solitary.

Tintin seems asexual if anything. I don't recall him ever evincing any romantic or sexual attraction towards anyone, male or female. (Homosociality is quite a different thing from homosexuality.)

Perhaps things were just described in a decent way. If HBO made a Tintin TV series, those relations might be more explicit. Anyway, the point was if it was heteronormative or not, and I suppose, as you say, that it is not, since it does not really point in any direction.

The whole notion of splitting "romance" from "sexuality" in this way is very recent. (As she said in the OP, she created the thread specifically because no one else here had ever divided the question up in that way.)

Where is that original post, and in what thread? I searched (only a little) but did not find it.
EDIT: It was probably this one: http://www.unilang.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=39598#p855971

The only people I've known who romanced a different sex than the one they were sexually interested in were forced into it by circumstance.

Does romancing imply activity as well? Otherwise I do not see how it would be possible to be forced to fall in love with someone.

[Dormouse559]

Hänsel und Gretel or Little Red Ridinghood or Snow White or Dornrösschen or Cinderella never appeared to me back then to be focussing on coupling. Anything like that was only done to end the story, while the important stuff was the action in the middle.

Focus isn't so important. The details are as revealing as anything of what's considered normal in a culture. Who sent Hansel and Gretel into the woods? Their mother and father. Would it be an insignificant change if Snow White were kissed and woken up by a princess? We don't need details with Cinderella, though. Her entire story arc is how she was saved from poverty by charming and marrying a prince (let alone the father being married to women twice and the stepsisters maiming themselves for the chance to marry a prince). Your upbringing has been filled to the brim with examples of heterosexual couples, whether central to the story or not. How many explicitly non-straight couples can you think of in fairy tales?

Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse had girlfriends, but they never actually did proceed anywhere in those relations.

That they never did more than kiss hardly matters. We're talking about the main protagonists being depicted in heterosexual relationships. And I don't care to count how many times the storyline was Mickey saving Minnie and getting a smooch for his trouble. The chaste nature of these relationships doesn't change the fact that they are positive depictions of heterosexual couples. Add that to the overwhelming trend of only showing straight people in children's media, and kids won't realize that any other kind of relationship could be legitimate.

The film with those dogs in 1900 did have a heteroromantic relation with a childbirth at the end

Lady and the Tramp? Two heterosexual couples in that one, with two births. Those were very positive depictions of heterosexual relationships, weren't they? Too bad you'll never find anything like that for non-straight relationships in a Disney movie.

Mowgli ended up manipulated by some cunning girl, but as above, the important stuff was what happened before, between friends and enemies.

If that final scene was unimportant, why was it even there? Mowgli's orientation could very well have been left unexplored; in the Kipling originals, Mowgli is exposed to humans through an adopted mother. But the filmmakers went out of their way to say, "He's straight," and even went so far as to write a song romanticizing straight couples.

[Jurgen Wullenwever]

Mowgli ended up manipulated by some cunning girl, but as above, the important stuff was what happened before, between friends and enemies.

If that final scene was unimportant, why was it even there? Mowgli's orientation could very well have been left unexplored; in the Kipling originals, Mowgli is exposed to humans through an adopted mother. But the filmmakers went out of their way to say, "He's straight," and even went so far as to write a song romanticizing straight couples.

The final scene was Bagheera and Baloo walking back, I think, and they were both male, it seems, so you have a Casablanca ending there too.

[Dormouse559]

The penultimate scene, then. Still, it's the last one where we see the main character, which wraps up the main plot. Our final memory of Mowgli is of him discovering heterosexual attraction.

[Irkan]

TV has never been keen on gay relationships. I grew up without ever seeing a gay kiss. TBH, I'll say that my first time ever seeing a man-man relationship on screen was when I discovered porn. And I think the first time I have ever seen a romantic gay couple out of a comedy was in Brokeback Mountain (so that's 17 years without ever seeing gay as a possible romantic thing). This one of the things that really irritates me about TV: you only get to see gay in comedies. Like what? My sexual orientation is a joke? This has contributed to nothing but to our becoming posh girls' best friends. Like, my friend once told me: "I was reading a magazine ysterday and it had this article about all the accessories a girl needs: a purse, some red chapstick, ... and a gay friend. I have 'em all!". So basically, magazines teach girls that gay people are accessories and TV shows how a gay guy can't ever be not-flamboyant, or whatever.

[Jurgen Wullenwever]

This one of the things that really irritates me about TV: you only get to see gay in comedies.

Yes, that is a little odd.

Non-straight relations were criminal offenses in Sweden until around 1970, so they would probably not be prominent in media earlier. When I was a few years old, there was the American comedy series Soap, which featured some gay character(s), although probably in ridiculous circumstances. The La cage aux folles movie was also about something along those lines, and I think there was some Julie Andrews comedy movie (Victor Victoria) where she dressed as a man, which made some male character realise that he was gay. In Sweden in the early eighties there was a tv-series called Lösa förbindelser ("loose relations") that featured a lesbian couple and other stuff that I do not remember, and that was not a comedy.

In written fiction available in my childhood (born 1971) there seems to have been an abundance of non-hetero cases when I ponder the question a little more (not that I remember very much).

There was that then-current novel (early eighties) where Ramses II was bisexual along with everyone else in ancient Egypt.

Tolkien usually had ideal straight marriages, but a fair number of his characters (e.g. Bilbo, Frodo, Boromir, Earnur) were not interested in such.

From antiquity, both Xenophon and Plato referred to paedophilia as something normal. Three of the male gods mixed their semen to make children, and Zeus even gave birth by himself. One human person had been a man sometime, and a woman some other time.

Christian saints' stories mentioned straight attraction as sinful and something to be abhorred.

The New Testament has a number of close relations between Jesus and the disciples. The Old Testament features a god first giving birth by himself, but later becomes rather tight in his views, so sexual deviants are killed en masse, but at least Sodomites are mentioned as something in existence.

The Norse gods have several cases of peculiarities where they change sex and give birth, and where they crossdress, and where they are mentioned to have had non-straight sex.

[Dormouse559]

Christian saints' stories mentioned straight attraction as sinful and something to be abhorred.

Care to elaborate?

The New Testament has a number of close relations between Jesus and the disciples.

What do you mean? Earlier, you said that close friendship didn't imply romantic/sexual attraction, but now apparently it does.

The Old Testament features a god first giving birth by himself

Again, what do you mean?

There was that then-current novel (early eighties) where Ramses II was bisexual along with everyone else in ancient Egypt.

From antiquity, both Xenophon and Plato referred to paedophilia as something normal. Three of the male gods mixed their semen to make children, and Zeus even gave birth by himself. One human person had been a man sometime, and a woman some other time.

The Norse gods have several cases of peculiarities where they change sex and give birth, and where they crossdress, and where they are mentioned to have had non-straight sex.

Did you ever get the impression that it would have been okay to follow their examples? The West has long borrowed from antiquity, but sexual norms are one thing it's left largely alone.

[md0]

TV has never been keen on gay relationships. I grew up without ever seeing a gay kiss. TBH, I'll say that my first time ever seeing a man-man relationship on screen was when I discovered porn.

One of the worst things to happen in my life was that I discovered 'gay relationships' through the worst medium possible. Yaoi anime and manga. That was the first time I saw depictions of romantic same-sex relationships, and I'm sure you can all easily find out how screwed-up is the notion of 'romance' in yaoi.
It was a huge part in way I thought abusive relationships were normal and even 'romantic', making me stay in an IRL one for so long.

Now, the first mention of homosexuality for me was during Lit Class in middle school, when Cafavy's poems were studied (no, not the sexual ones. No school book includes those).
When Cafavy comes up in school, the professors always whisper "You know, they say he was a... you know. He had issues".

[Jurgen Wullenwever]

Christian saints' stories mentioned straight attraction as sinful and something to be abhorred.

Care to elaborate?

There was one story where a man praised something in a woman's exterior, perhaps her eyes, so she tore them out just to end this attraction. Other stories are not that extreme, but they still endorse avoiding romance and carnal stuff.

The New Testament has a number of close relations between Jesus and the disciples.

What do you mean? Earlier, you said that close friendship didn't imply romantic/sexual attraction, but now apparently it does.

(First, Linguoboy said above that such relations counts, so I just conformed to that.)
The boundaries are fuzzy. At least they talk of loving one another. And the sexually fixated media culture of today make it seem as if there was something going on in the canonical texts. The apocrypha have a more straight alignment with Mary Magdalene as a closer relation, but I had never heard of those back then.

The Old Testament features a god first giving birth by himself

Again, what do you mean?

We are talking about whether there were examples of non-heterosexual relations when we grew up. I have so far, at age 42, not encountered any such couple in real life, so they might not be very frequent around here, but there is of course the possibility of people hiding in the closet. That leaves the media, and here I am mentioning some examples of non-straight activity that I encountered in my childhood (not that I considered them in that light until this moment). First, you have a male god that gets a male child, Adam, by himself, without any straight coupling. And then, this male god gets another child, Eve, through using Adam's body. In those two cases, hetero-normativity is nonexistant.

From antiquity, both Xenophon and Plato referred to paedophilia as something normal. Three of the male gods mixed their semen to make children, and Zeus even gave birth by himself. One human person had been a man sometime, and a woman some other time.

The Norse gods have several cases of peculiarities where they change sex and give birth, and where they crossdress, and where they are mentioned to have had non-straight sex.

Did you ever get the impression that it would have been okay to follow their examples? The West has long borrowed from antiquity, but sexual norms are one thing it's left largely alone.

I have never thought about that. I rather recoiled and avoided those parts. Besides, I grew up believing that any sexual stuff was indecent and improper and criminal, so I was rather not raised as a sexual, or raised at all, as I said previously. Sex was a wicked thing that the previous generation indulged in, with all their short relationships and having children with everyone.

[Varislintu]

Hm, the first normal gay person I remember seeing in fictional TV was in the series Melrose Place, which all the girls in my class watched at the time. It was the 90s, we must have been 10 or 11. There was a gay man character in that series, and he was depicted normally, but I don't know if he got to kiss on screen. I don't remember having any particular opinion or reaction to him at the time -- I knew about gayness and I didn't have negative thoughts about it. But of course I noticed that it was something unusual in fiction -- that's why I still remember it, probably.

[Dormouse559]

That leaves the media, and here I am mentioning some examples of non-straight activity that I encountered in my childhood (not that I considered them in that light until this moment).

Because any thought of these examples as non-heterosexual, as opposed to having nothing to do with sexuality, is, for the most part, pure speculation. There is no need to speculate about straight couples in the media. They're there quite clearly for all to see, no matter how major or minor the character, or how relevant to the character a relationship is.

First, you have a male god that gets a male child, Adam, by himself, without any straight coupling.

The term in the Bible is "create", not "give birth to" (as far as I can tell, Swedish versions use "skapa", which also doesn't imply birth).

And then, this male god gets another child, Eve, through using Adam's body. In those two cases, hetero-normativity is nonexistant.

That's a creative way to think about Eve's creation. The most common interpretation I know is that, being created second and from Adam's body, she is subservient to him as his wife. "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife; and they shall be one flesh." (Genesis 2:24) The very first straight couple, divinely ordained! If that's not heteronormative, nothing is.

[linguoboy]

The New Testament has a number of close relations between Jesus and the disciples.

What do you mean? Earlier, you said that close friendship didn't imply romantic/sexual attraction, but now apparently it does.

(First, Linguoboy said above that such relations counts, so I just conformed to that.)

Where did I do that? Wait, were you seriously proposing Casablanca as a depiction of non-heteronormative sexuality merely because it ends with a shot of two men walking off together?

[Jurgen Wullenwever]

Where did I do that? Wait, were you seriously proposing Casablanca as a depiction of non-heteronormative sexuality merely because it ends with a shot of two men walking off together?

Nowadays, everything gets a sexual interpretation.

I read somewhere a comment on the ending of Casablanca that was explicitly along those lines, that is, that writer supposed that these two male characters would have something sexual going on between them in the near future.

For my part, I do not see things as sexual, so I just suppose that they will fight together to win the war.

Are your replies not serious? I just interpret them literally.

[linguoboy]

I read somewhere a comment on the ending of Casablanca that was explicitly along those lines, that is, that writer supposed that these two male characters would have something sexual going on between them in the near future.

Say we allow it for the sake of argument. Then that's one counterexample in the face of how many examples of the male and female leads going off together?

For my part, I do not see things as sexual, so I just suppose that they will fight together to win the war.

That might explain some of the difficulty you're having seeing relationships as "romantic" (and, thus, heteronormative) in the absence of an explicit sexual component.

Are your replies not serious? I just interpret them literally.

To the point where it often feels to me like you are willfully misinterpreting them. But I believe you're arguing in good faith so I think any appearances to the contrary are due to the gulf in our basic assumptions.

[Jurgen Wullenwever]

To the point where it often feels to me like you are willfully misinterpreting them. But I believe you're arguing in good faith so I think any appearances to the contrary are due to the gulf in our basic assumptions.

Yes, I am making honest questions (with a joke here and there) and people do misinterpret each other all the time. I do not like when things get down to aggressive and mean behaviour, so I would never do such a thing myself. I started this thread since I was curious about something, and not for any hidden reasons.

[md0]

On how kids aren't raised to be heterosexual again...
This is a pop quiz from a Cypriot primary school, Grade 4 according to the professor who scanned it.



The mouth, for example is the place from which the [food] enters [...] if we put our hands or someone else's to [suck] on them, this is an [] use of the mouth.
Similarly, other parts of the [body] exist whose natural function is to be used to conceive, carry, and give birth to a new [human]. Especially in that case, the cooperation of a man and a [women] is needed. Alone, two men or two [women] cannot "cooperate", or to put it other way [have intercourse] to conceive a baby. Those immoral actions (prostitution, sod[], etc) were common in Corinth where the Apostle went to preach the word of God.
[...]

And then you have four words to match with their definitions:

a. Natural Use
b. God Creator
c. Kingdom of God
d. Perversion of the sexual (reproductive) instinct

1. Pederasty
2. Is Eternal
3. The One who ultimately knows what's correct and what's against Nature
4. That which is in accordance with the natural and biological laws