‘Why is straight the default?’

[JeremyCorbansFancyWoman]

I want to start of by saying I’m not prejudiced. I 100% believe everyone has the right to be attracted to and love whom ever.

But, there’s a movie coming out called Live Simon or something and I’ve seen a tag line from it asking ‘why is straight the default?’

This is going to sound awful and I really don’t mean it to be but if we were being very basic that the meaning of life of everything is to reproduce, it’s a biological man and woman that can do so. (Obviously I mean without modern day ways of helping people have children). I also read an article that said a million people in the U.K. identify as LGB but that’s 2%.

I would make the assumption someone was straight until told otherwise. And of course I wouldn’t have an issue, but does anyone else think that straight IS the default?

(I tried so hard not to offend in this post so apologies if I did!)

Which part of "Ancestors" did you have a problem with?
A "sperm donor" would have been an affair (or a rape) 50 years ago
IVF has been going on for years. Gay people have been getting married to people of the opposite sex and having kids because society expected it for years.
(Have your ancestors all been rude and ignorant or is that a more recent thing?)

Coldilox very tiresome! But absolutely lovely when someone doesn't assume you are straight - it makes my day if someone asks 'is your partner male or female?'

at Ember - will have to remember that one!

I don't think using sperm donors in homosexual relationships was common until recently. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the whole of stone aged Europe was rife with gay couples having babies. Maybe we walked hand in hand across the African savannah with our carefully chosen surrogate carried babies.

Or are you a Flat Earther who thinks we were created 6006 years ago?

"What on Earth are you talking about?"

Heritability of DNA and it's role in creating default behaviour in animal populations. What on Earth are YOU talking about?

I really don't understand why the T has been added to LBG - surely the issues are totally separate.

The film the OP has mentioned is just a mainstream coming of age film. The handle is the kid is gay, so there is the "coming out" to hang the romantic comedy around. As someone said it's rather old fashioned, hardly edgy or disturbing to anyone except maybe some of the religious right in America (given it is an American film). For most of society "17 year old boy is attracted to other 17 year old boys and is feeling conflicted about telling his parents because they probably assume he is attracted to 17 year old girls" is a very bland, gentle, ordinary thing to make a film about.

I don't see what T has to do with LGB. LGB is about which sex you are attracted to.

T is about which "gender" you identify as and is far more complicated because its all about some kind of "feeling". The very idea you can identify as a man one day and a woman the next makes a mockery of it being packed in a parcel with LGB surely? A lesbian or a gay man doesn't "identify as" lesbian or gay one day or straight the next and can't. A bisexual isn't changing their mind about which sex they are attracted to, they are always attracted to both sexes, they don't wake up one day with no attraction to women as a sex but still attracted to men as a sex, and the next find women as a sex attractive, and then the next back to not feeling any attraction to anyone female.

They are separate issues. a T person might be LGB but many or most aren't, many or most are straight...

But surely this strapline is stupid?? You can't describe a natural variation as 'default' there are more women the men in the world are we the default gender? Brown eyes are most common are they default? No of course not! How rare does something have to be for the alternative to become the default. It's actually a really bizzar way of speaking. It suggests there is a default 'person' who is brown eyed female etc and that isn't how we think of the world. Being gay is more common then having red hair but you would never describe hair like that! ! Sexuality is naturally occurring (there are gay genes in simplic terms) and is part of our species (abd others) natural variation. It will is simply playing with words to bring defaults into it. It's like saying who wants to be normal and suggesting being gay isn't normal when it clearly is perfectly natural.

I think it depends on what you mean by 'default'. If you mean that purely statistically, any given person is more likely to be straight than gay then you're are factually correct.

However, 'default' is often used in a different sense - it is used to make the statement that straight is 'normal' and any other sexuality is not. We don't do this for other characteristics; a statistically small percentage of the world's population is Inuit, but that doesn't mean we consider them to be abnormal humans.

The real danger is when viewing straight people as the default leads to prejudice or discrimination against gay people. For example, if people suggest that gay teenagers can't really know their sexuality or are just going through a phase when the same isn't said of straight chidren, or a gay couple kissing on TV is considered gross when nobody minds a straight couple kissing, or when bisexuals are considered to be more likely to cheat than straight people.

Just because people assume someone they meet is straight doesn't indicate that they have a problem with gay people.

Because it's what the majority of people are. It's much more common/usual that someone you meet will be straight, hence it's the 'default' option and only natural that a lot of people would (probably subconsciously) assume a stranger was straight until told/suspected otherwise.

You wouldn't try setting a new bloke at work up with a male friend unless you knew they were gay. You wouldn't specifically make a vegan meal for someone unless told they were vegan. You wouldn't set up a wheelchair ramp for someone unless told they were a wheelchair user.

The majority becomes the default option in more ways than just sexual preference.

red hair isn't the default either

Nor, if we are looking at the species as a whole, is lactose tolerance in adults

Saying something isn't the default isn't saying it's bad.

I really don't understand why the T has been added to LBG - surely the issues are totally separate.
Totally!

“Something being the majority does not mean you have to treat it as the default.”

This ^

How about neutral being the default? Maybe that’s what we should aim for as a society?

The assumptions people make generally in society are kind of interesting, but although they can be changed I don't think you can stop people making some kind of assumptions.

Either people don't think about whatever category it is at all (when I'm replying to a poster I don't "assume" they are right handed, but if I was lending them a pair of scissors I suppose I would unconsciously assume they wouldn't struggle to use right handed scissors - many left handed people don't anyway...) If there is a thread about language teaching in schools say, people replying to other posters probably won't be making assumptions about the poster's sexual orientation because it is totally irrelevant. People might make assumptions about whether the poster had school age children or was a teacher, or about their age if they were writing about their own experiences.

Mostly humans make assumptions because they are a kind of short hand and otherwise it would take so long to figure out the parameters of a conversation or relationship that communication would grind to a halt or be too much faff to bother with at all. Having to correct people if they have assumed wrongly must be annoying, but it is human nature to make some assumptions to hang relationships off to start with - as long as people are not silly about it when the assumptions are corrected it's probably just how life is.

I'm not sure all parents assume their kid is straight - by whatever age the kid in the film is meant to be (he's driving a car in the trailer) I think a lot of parents wouldn't be shocked by their child being gay, as there would probably have been the odd hint over the preceding few years especially if parents and their kids have a good relationship.

Don’t be silly. To reproduce you need eggs and sperm and a womb, it makes no difference who fancies who.

It is true. It makes no difference. A same sex couple can have a family. But they cannot do this without our default 'straight' biology. A man's sperm still needs to have a meet and greet with a woman's egg. And that's just the way the cookie crumbles. 'Straight' biology dictates how we reproduce. But our sexuality is much more flexible, as is our ability to have families.

What does it mean to say 97% of people are straight? Surely all scholarship on sexuality suggests that sexuality is a spectrum and that the most common natural place on the spectrum is bisexuality?

This is why most upper-class men in Ancient Athens managed to have relationship with men at the same time (or at a slightly earlier stage in life) as marrying and procreating- while 700 years later, when the country had turned Christian, this was no longer the case.

In a society like ours which has until recently (and still is in places) strongly condemnatory of gay sex, most bisexual people will naturally present as straight. If you have the natural propensity to do either and one will win you the approval of your family and a firm position in society, while the other is likely to get you locked up or beaten up or medicated, naturally anyone who can choose will choose the safe option. The very thought of gay sex will be reserved for those who are so far out on one end of the spectrum that they have no option.

But what I am hearing from my daughter's generation is that, at least in some circles, they are a lot less hung up on the whole gay-straight divide and more willing to experiment. Can't see a problem with that personally, and if it leads to a better world for those who were never able to choose then that seems to me a massive gain.

"How about neutral being the default? Maybe that’s what we should aim for as a society?"

Seriously - why?

I don't have a husband at home, should I be pissed off that people assume I do? My 15 year old isn't neurotypical, should I be pissed off that people assume he is? I have allergies, should I be pissed off when someone offers me a banana because they assumed I didn't have an allergy?

Instead of neutralising our entire society, how about we introduce some resilience? How about if the default wasn't gay, or straight, or neutral, but defaulted to "Fuck you, it's none of your damned business"?

Littlecaf because assuming a blank slate on everyone and everything, everyday is too time consuming. And a bit narcissistic tbh. Ok if it's a film aimed at teenagers it makes more sense. (I am aware that I used a generalisation. )

People make short cut assumptions about me too. And I really don't care anymore.

It's called a heuristic

Are you a psychologist? :)

Agree that majority does not = default.

What people don't actually seem to realise is that our present situation is very much the result of centuries of non-resilience on the part of a Christian establishment that took anything other than straight marital sex (possibly with a little discreet brothel-visiting) as a direct challenge to its right to impose its very narrow views on sexuality on entire populations.

I can't think of anything less resilient than the scene in Forster's Maurice where the Oxford don makes his students skip a passage in their Greek translation because it would have made them see that the views on sexuality they had been taught were not the only ones possible. There is very good reason to believe that scene was drawn from life.

I prefer rule of thumb but it doesn't go down well on MN..

yes, the religious footstamping is a good example of lack of resilience

maybe now is a good time to introduce some resilience into society

healthy boundaries around privacy etc

"Do you have homosexual thoughts, my child?" "mind your own business, you paedophiliac control freak"

I think it's the word "default" that's at, er, fault here. There's not a "default setting" for humans so I think we're getting our semantic knickers in a twist.

Default settings kick in where there has been a failure to specify another choice at the outset. The word default means fail!

Heterosexual is certainly the majority position, but it's arguably nature's choice (so not a default) so that our species (and every other) can reproduce and keep the species going.

It matters not a jot if some people, whatever the percentage, are not in the majority. Our species can take it, and it makes life more interesting.

It'd be interesting to find out about homosexuality in other species.

Fugitive

I agree. Being straight is the default, the normative for humans. But being gay isn’t abnormal.

I’ve had a relationship with a woman in the past. People who I mention this to in a “I went to x place with an ex, she loved it, I didn’t so much” or whatever, sort of way are genuinely astonished.

I think openly bisexual people, rather than straight or gay or the ones people find most confusing. I’m more likely to have a bit of a crush on a female celebrity than a male one but day to day in real life, I have met more men I find sexually attractive than I have women.

Sexuality is absolutely a sliding scale but I think most people do err more to one end or another. I was aware from quite a young age that I find both men and women attractive and didn’t really think about it. I assumed everybody did! Of course the fact that I lean more towards societies default is perhaps why I didn’t question it or find it a difficult thing to reconcile within myself.

Oxytocin, If I told you my background I'd have to kill you..

( to those under 45 and MN moderators this is NOT a real threat.)

I just googled Heuristic - I think I spent several paragraphs waffling around the idea that is summed up in that one word :o What didn't I know it will try to remember it :o

From wikipedia:

In psychology, heuristics are simple, efficient rules which people often use to form judgments and make decisions. They are mental shortcuts that usually involve focusing on one aspect of a complex problem and ignoring others.[1][2][3] These rules work well under most circumstances, but they can lead to systematic deviations from logic, probability or rational choice theory. The resulting errors are called "cognitive biases" and many different types have been documented. These have been shown to affect people's choices in situations like valuing a house, deciding the outcome of a legal case, or making an investment decision. Heuristics usually govern automatic, intuitive judgments but can also be used as deliberate mental strategies when working from limited information.