Last night John Barrowman (Jack Harkness of Torchwood fame) presented a TV programme entitled “The making of Me” in which he went in search of why he is gay. Is it nature or was it Nurture?
From the outset John made it clear that he wanted objective proof that his sexual orientation was innate, that it was hard wired into his psyche from birth and not a product of his education or upbringing. He started with his childhood showing us his wardrobe at his parents’ house in the USA. The wardrobe was full of Barbie dolls, Sonny and Cher dolls and one lone action man. John moved with his parents from Scotland to the USA aged 8 and on his way back to visit them reflected that homosexuality was only decriminalised fairly recently in his native Scotland. Had he remained there he might have been “one of those kids that ended up taking their own lives”.
John met an old school friend while staying with his parents and reminisced with her about playing “make up” and dressing his friends Barbie dolls’ hair. His father showed John a picture of him aged 8 dressed in a bikini, “were you an oppressive mother?” he asked his 81 year old mum in a vain attempt to discover a Freudian reason for his sexual orientation. John eventually “came out” to his parents aged 24.
Now John went after a more objective truth that would underpin his belief that he had always been gay. After a series of MRI scans, PET scans, penile arousal measuring devices and having been shown a variety of gay and straight porn the answer was that yes John does have a gay brain. At least the right bits of his brain lit up like a Christmas tree when he was shown pictures of Brad Pitt rather than Angelina Jolie. Visibly relieved John moved onto the next stage, to show that sexuality was hard wired into us at birth
First he interviewed someone who had been openly gay as a young man but had decided to “change” his sexual orientation to straight and was now married with two kids.
Our formerly gay now straight man explained that in his opinion sexual orientation was a “lifestyle choice” and he had on reflection “decided” to become straight. Religion had played a part in his decision to convert but the analogy he drew was that he also had an “innate” liking for chocolate but chose not to eat chocolate because he knew that eating chocolate was bad for him. The liking for chocolate might be innate but the choice not to indulge was not. Perhaps not the best analogy he could have chosen and not one that appeared to impress John.
John then moved on and spoke to a scientist who thinks he may have identified a certain candidate for a “gay” gene. Located on the X chromosome, G1 confers gayness while G2 confers straightness. His mother (having two X chromosomes) has both G1 and G2 genes. His older straight brother had G2 and John also had G2 and not G1 as he had expected and hoped. John appeared disappointed because genetic confirmation of his sexual orientation had not been provided. But supposing it was possible to conclusively predict the sexual orientation of an unborn child by way of an amniocentesis. Female infanticide is already a problem in certain parts of the world as is the aborting of foetus’s revealed to be female by increasingly sophisticated ultra sounds. Is the probable sexual orientation of an unborn child really the sort of information you would want to hand over to a religious bigot like Irene Robinson MP? I can see the possible utility of a criminal gene for identifying potential psychopaths and I can see why ME suffers would be relieved to discover that their condition has a genetic basis and is therefore “real” after all (NB those are “ironic” quotation marks). But do we really want to identify a gay gene?
John reviewed other physiological and psychological data that appears to confirm that sexuality may be determined not genetically but in the womb by higher or lower levels of intrauterine testosterone. (Men, if your ring finger is longer than your index finger you are straight, gay if they are about the same length and the presence of older brothers appears to significantly increase your chance of being gay owing to a possible immunological reaction on the part of your mother) John’s results were mixed, he reads a map like a girl (has to turn the map to keep himself orientated on the page) is verbally fluent like a girl (off the scale in fact) he has an older brother and his mother also had a male miscarriage some time before he was born. But his ring finger remained resolutely longer than his index finger.
Why is John so intent on proving that he is gay? That he has always been gay right from birth in fact before he even knew he what being gay was. And why did he feel the idea that choosing ones sexuality was such a ridiculous one? John appears to equate realness with a very narrow definition of objective reality. What is real for John in relation to his sexuality is what can be proved by facts and in this case facts mean genes, intrauterine hormones and the like. But if reality has any meaning it is composed of not just of facts (objective reality) but also meaning (subjective reality) and maybe sexuality lies in the realm between these two poles and is to a certain extent a matter of choice.
For most of man’s evolutionary history it has made sense to have a strong alpha male who goes out of the cave each morning to slay the woolly mammoth or sabre toothed tiger while his submissive mate stays at home with the other females looking after the young and preparing her man a nutritious yet tasty meal for his return while doing a little light dusting about the family cave. But things have moved on in the past 3,000 years since man first started living in fixed and stable communities. There are no sabre toothed tigers to be slain and sex is no longer purely for the purposes of procreation but has today become a form of recreation or even social grooming.
Patterns of social relationships are changing and people are experimenting with alternative social groupings and lifestyles. Polygamy, monogamy, serial monogamy, open marriages, bisexuality, the list goes on. There is a lifestyle choice in America called “The lifestyle” over here it used to be called wife swapping but is now more usually called “swinging”. Within the swinging community sex is treated purely as a recreational activity and bisexuality between women at least is commonly accepted in fact it appears to be the norm rather than the exception. Perhaps in another 100 years time we might be in a situation where the traditional nuclear family is a thing of the past and the only time you do anything as boringly conventional as have sex with a member of the opposite sex is when you want to make babies. May be in a hundred years time sexual orientation might be replaced with sexual choice for men and for women.
Anyone for tennis?
If you are misusing a class A drug how on earth can you not be causing physical harm to yourself ?. I`m assuming drugs aren`t classified by children pulling letters out of their spaghetti. I`m not expecting nurses to make citizens arrests any time soon but I`d be hugely impressed by anyone making a stand. I`m sick of the appeasement of cannabis misuse. I`m sick of indulging smackheads and I`m sickened by the idea of nurses chewing the cud and oozing unconditional positive regard on those misusing metamphetamine. I`m sick, to the back teeth, of feeling useless when families cry and beg me to detain their loved ones and provide a physical barrier between them and drugs. I`m sick of people with no moral compass. I`m sick of those who can`t differentiate between right and wrong. And I`m sick of those who think upholding the law is, in some way, optional.
Is everyone on metamphetamine performing anal sex “properly” ?. I haven`t claimed anal damage due to “improper” sodomy is a major public halth issue. I`m speculating as to why the normal incessant hectoring seems to stop when nurses are confronted by a militant lobby and the spectre of political correctness.
I know two people who have been denied operations due to weight problems.
Hey man! What’s this downer on Cannabis? I’ve smoked it all my life and I’m…, err…, a homeless, madman… The biggest problem with today’s weed is its lack of Cannabidiol content. Cannabidiol is rapidly becoming the new wonder drug for psychosis, cancer, dementia; and a THC/CBD combo, is just about the only recourse for pain relief for people on the maximum tolerable opiate dose [He says, desperately trying to get off the bottomry thing...] Dr Julio Julio-Julio: What have you been doing lately Mr Socrates? Me: Hanging out with a bunch of RMN’s, talking about sodomy…
I haven`t claimed anal damage due to “improper” sodomy is a major public halth issue. I`m speculating as to why the normal incessant hectoring seems to stop when nurses are confronted by a militant lobby and the spectre of political correctness.
Or maybe it’s because, as you yourself concede, it just isn’t a major public health issue?
Last time I visited A&E, it wasn’t full of gay men (or straight women who accede to some of their boyfriends’ requests) with broken bums.
OSB – We`re losing the point here.
To be followed with:
I`d also be happier to see nurses making citizens arrests on those using crystal meth
where ARE you going?
Class A sodomy should be taught in school – like it used to be in Eton, perhaps?
There’s an element of tangential nature to your arguments that requires I check in not out of interest in the argument but more out of curiosity where it might end up. Are you on a quest like “Six degrees of separation” to prove all mental health problems are linked to blancmange or something?
Anyhow, yes Mr Ian does advocate the non-judgmental take all comers approach to health care – mental or otherwise. This does take a bashing when I start to pathologise why someone stole a chocolate bar and needs a hug. I’m idealistic in my quest I know – as an existentialist that relies on principles of the ‘human condition’ – (and not the medical one) – whereas yours appears to be of the misanthropic persuasion for anyone outside your increasingly insular perspective.
I do this for two reasons:
1. I prefer to become agitated by social ineptitudes rather than individual ones. This makes life’s problems easier to accept as well as the individuals who bring them. Even tho I see exactly the same problems as everyone else – I simply address them in a different way and seek different solutions to those who would otherwise remove all hope.
2. The solution for your concerns is to change the problem person – mine is to change the problematic mould they come from.
Schizophrenia wouldn’t exist as it does if we didn’t say it did.
If you are misusing a class A drug how on earth can you not be causing physical harm to yourself ?. I`m assuming drugs aren`t classified by children pulling letters out of their spaghetti
Actually, they may as well be. Ecstasy, for instance, is a class A drug despite the fact that it has a less deleterious effect on the body than alcohol. Classification seems to rely on notoriety and bad headlines rather than any real subjective examination of their damaging effects.
Your incessant ranting about gay men not being “nannied”, even in the face of the facts, demonstrates little more other than that you just want to bore on about gay people and their “militant lobby” and will latch onto any old issue to do so. Hence the chimera about the public health disaster of anal sex-related damage, the claim that gay men aren’t advised about the damage anal sex can do and the utter nonsense about arresting gay men who admit to meth use. All wrapped up with a little stompy-foot froth-flecked wibble about people not knowing wrong from right blah di blah. Like a Mail editorial on…well, on crystal meth!
“Fat does not equal unhealthy, sorry.”
Sorry DeeDee but all other things being equal being fat is unhealthy
“Obesity is fast becoming the developed world’s biggest health problem, with over 9,000 deaths a year in England being caused by obesity alone. (NHS Direct)”
1. Obesity is “health time bomb” (BBC News 2003) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2683167.stm
2. Obesity, (NHS direct Health encyclopaedia) http://www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk/ar.....ctionId=34
Socrates,
If today’s cannabis does not contain cannabiods then what does it contain? I thought this new stuff that every one is smoking, squirrel, skid mark or what ever it is called was supposed to have a very high THC content. By the way when can we expect some more writing on New republic you haven’t written anything for a while.
I think you’ll find, E, that those deaths are associated with not taking much in the way of exercise and with metabolic syndrome.
Being fat increases your chances of developing metabolic syndrome (type 2 diabetes, cardiac problems and the like). Being inactive does that too. And yes, I guess being thin reduces your chances of developing heart disease, although it doesn’t eliminate it. (As an aside: olanzapine and friends make everything worse).
However, it’s perfectly possible to be healthy and active and still carry a fair bit of weight around. Sure I may be in the minority. But I do get fed up with people assuming all I do is sit around stuffing my face all day. And I’m not even that fat, I don’t qualify as ‘obese’ for example.
I’m fed up this whole argument being about what you look like, rather than what is going on health-wise. Especially for women. God forbid you be an obese woman. I have a sneaking suspicion some of this is cultural mores masquerading as health concern.
Z, THC content of Punk Weed is sky-high, the CBD has been reduced to almost zero. It seems the CBD protects against psychosis and screaming-heebeegeebees, hence (according to the Daily Flail) the thousands of pot-heads filling the acute wards… The New Republic’s next set of posts are sitting here in manuscript and will eventually find their way to the web…
“However, it’s perfectly possible to be healthy and active and still carry a fair bit of weight around”
Tell that to your arthritic knees or your enlarged heart in 40 years time. 5ft 6” and 13 stone gives you a BMI of 30 which puts you (just) in the obese range so despite how fit you are your weight is still doing you harm. ( I make no comment on your life style.)
Please explain E exactly how my weight is, right now, doing me harm. And I expect you to back up your assertions with sources and citations. (No, the BBC does not count).
Otherwise, I’ll assume you are just repeating what you’ve been told without doing the appropriate research (such as posting a Kevin Myers article without making any effort to check the background first).
Actually E forget it, I’m crabby and tired and forgetting my manners. I would like to apologise for the snarky tone above.
I’ve put on 2 stone as a result of appetite disturbance due to illness and am not happy about it. I do get fed up being lectured about it as that doesn’t help and am unreasonably sensitive about it. Going to the gym more is what will help…
Sorry again.
OSB and Six degrees of Separation, no OSB just has one degree of separation, everything is the fault of NuLabour Political Correctness. Everything will be solved by a good Etonian Birching and the return of National Service.
Sorry, very short on time
A and E may not be full of gay men with anal tears but neither is it full of people who have just sprinkled a touch too much salt on their fish supper.
Have made my views clear about drugs before. I`m no great defender of alcohol, no interest in tobacco. Something has got to be done about the drug menace in its current form. No great supporter of bklanket legalisation but it would be a bold, decisive and interesting move move and I`d be fascinated by the outcome. However, there is a law in this land. I`ve limited experience of crystal meth but it does seem to ravage you at a rate of knots. The law should be respected, upheld and enforced.
Do c Nu lab, political correctness and health and safety as the great evilos.
NO to national service
YES to birching, Etonian or otherwise
“A and E may not be full of gay men with anal tears but neither is it full of people who have just sprinkled a touch too much salt on their fish supper.”
OSB you are a poet. There is a mental image there that will probably scar me when I start dreaming tonight
At the height of Thatcher’s Reign of Terror and the Short Sharp Shock, the Royal College of Shrinks (Or it might’ve been the IoP), asked Mr George Normal RMN to study the effect of various degrees of being beastly to young offenders across the forensic estate. The Result: the greater the brutality – the worse the long-term outcomes. In a monumental act of cowardess, the commisoners buried it alive. George is still furious.
I believe Max Moseley was a big fan of birching. Of the heterosexual variety however.
Seriously though, I was under the impression that meth was mainly a problem stateside. I didn’t think it was making inroads in Europe at all. it’s a huge problem in the rural USA.
An 85 kg man walking down stairs with a 150 cm deep fall, assuming he lets his body fall by gravity will be travelling at approximately 3 m/s when he reaches the next tread.
V= u + (a x d)
where v = final velocity
u = initial velocity
a = acceleration due to gravity (9.81 m/s)
The force impacted on each knee as 85 Kg comes to rest from 3 m/s to zero in lets say 0.2 seconds is 1250 N or 125 Kg
F = M x dv/dt
A force of 1250 N spread over the average knee joint measuring 7cm x 5cm would result in a pressure of 357 000 Pa or 52 Ib/sq inch
P = F/area
A 120 kg man walking down the same stairs would experience a pressure of 73 psi. The force on each knee as he steps down each tread equivalent to 176Kg
The same man jumping from a first storey window (2.5 m) and assuming he was able to break his fall in 0.5 secs would weigh the equivalent of 1,176 kg when he came to rest as opposed to 833 Kg for a 85 Kg man.
The heavier you are the harder you fall and the quicker your knees wear out.
I think you’ll find E that when descending a staircase, one does not allow gravity to accelerate one at 3 m/s2. That’s called falling down the stairs.
Therefore an opposing force is applied by the leg muscles to bring the speed of staircase descent down to a manageable level. You need to do your calculations based on the total net vertical and horizontal forces applied to the knee.
Also, the tread may be 150cm, but you are omitting the associated forward motion, so your calculations are inaccurate, the total distance travelled is the hypotenuse of the right angle formed by the stair treat and the back of the foot.
In addition, the leg muscles apply damping movements when the foot is placed on the next step, one does not smack the foot down, so you need to take those forces into the equation (literally) as well.
You can’t take high school physics, which simplifies the real world a great deal by assuming that the immediate environment of the exercise/problem is a closed system – and think that it applies to real life. In particular, once you take biomechanics into account, you have a whole other level of complexity. No I don’t know what the adjusted numbers are (ask those nice people at Loughborough Uni).
However, your illustration does a good job of showing firstly why falling even one step down the stairs, where you _are_ exposed to these forces, can result in a nasty injury, and secondly what a fantastic job your body does every second in shielding you from the effects of these forces.
You’ll notice that the coaches who teach athletes efficient, safe movement do not have physics degrees, but generally know quite a lot about the body and how it moves.
Y’know, I’m amazing that you’re willing to go to this much trouble simply to have a go at me about my weight. I’d go on, but I have 2 dozen donuts awaiting my attention here and the remote control is calling my name so I’d best get busy. *chomp chomp*.
The heavier you are the harder you fall and the quicker your knees wear out.”
..and on that principle E, and in evidence of the extent of work you put into that last post, you are destined for dementia at the age of 45*.
Meanwhile… back at the happy meal home… I couldn’t help picking this one out of the news….
“Royal College Of Nursing Re-Elects Gay Man To Chair Its Annual Congress”
http://www.medicalnewstoday.co.....116435.php
Initially I was shocked at the blatant nature of even noting his sexual persuasion as being of any concern –
But on reading further….
“Jason Warriner, a Matron for Sexual Health and HIV at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust… “
Matron? ok.. it’s a colloquial term and it seems that Jason is more than ok with his sexual orientation…
“I am hopeful that my election and re-election serves as an example to other LGBT workers and encourages them to play a more prominent role in their workplace; and to stand for positions of influence.”
Nothing against LGBT – but is this guy promoting nursing or LGBT?
“I am also pleased that in the last two years there has been a greater recognition of the contribution LGBT nurses make to the health of the nation and I’m hopeful that this will continue.”
ok, so now I’m thinking all this guy is representing is gay and lesbian nursing…
It’s all a bit Carry On Matron for me…
“The RCN Congress is an important fixture within the world of nursing, where thousands of nurses from across the UK gather to debate healthcare policy and the future direction of the organisation”
…but all I can think of is the RCN Mardi Gras headed by Jason in a Carmen Miranda creation.
I’m not homophobic – so why does this article about ‘gay man runs RCN congress for gay people’ in a medical news service cause me to suffer some cognitive dissonance? WTF has his sexual orientation got to do with nursing or RCN?
I think there’s too much LGBT and not enough Nursing.
Perhaps they just lifted the stuff from a LGBT magazine or website.. which would be a wholly understandable place to be emphasising an LGBT orientation.
Think if I got elected to do something they’d quote me:
“I’m very happy to be taking this appointment with the NMC and to have the opportunity to represent the heterosexual divorced males with one dodgy knee** community”
[* - "assuming he lets his body fall by gravity" - Why did he let it fall? Is he suicidal? In which case - what right do I have to tell him he's overweight as well as depressed? And being such a health care burden - should we not push him?]
[** - from a laterally applied direct blunt force - I didn't let myself fall down the stairs]
Mr Ian> I think the fascinating thing about the knee is, it can take an amazing amount of punishment if the force is square on the direction of the joint.
But it really, REALLY doesn’t like any kind of side impact at all.
I remember a knee injury as a teen that I got doing cross-country. I could barely walk, seriously, for a month. And I only noticed it after I cooled down after the race. ouch. So I do sympathise with your dodgy knee…
Thanks for you support. I wish my knee offered the same.