The choice is to go to McDonald's or Burger King.

When a person grows up, huge changes occur to him, what nature has put into him. One such investment is an innate attraction to something. Already in childhood, by sub-signs and obvious signs, one can judge in which direction the child is developing - humanitarian or technical, into art or music, into dancing or soldiers. The same signs can be used to determine the orientation of a child before puberty. And these are not toys or the gait of a child (as they present to us in the Voronins), these are certain sets of psychological signs. In American psychology, and Western psychology in general, this topic is so developed and thought out that an analogue of the Luscher test was even developed to identify such signs for children.

But this is just a rudiment, which, if desired, can be extinguished for a while. By the beginning of puberty, a teenager, as a rule, is in a “limbo” state: by the age of 12-14, boys (by 11-13 girls) ask quite logical questions - what, how, where in the sexual world. And from these questions, sooner or later the teenager comes to relationships with the opposite sex. At this moment, the parents move away from the child, the child is embarrassed by everything and everyone, especially his beginning sex life. And naturally, he has no one to discuss his sexuality with, and he googles everything related to it. By the age of 15, homosexual, bisexual, pansexual, etc. teenagers already know that they are “different.” I also realized that I was gay at the age of 15, when I began to understand that I only enjoyed communicating with a girl as a friend, when I felt something different for guys. At that moment I was in such self-hatred, in such anger towards myself that I simply did not know whether I should live. VGTRK and Channel One especially helped me realize that I am a diviant, and that people like me belong in specialized clinics. But glory to psychology, which saved me from this horror of propaganda, and I didn’t do anything to myself, unlike the vast majority of my LGBT+ colleagues.

Orientation is first and foremost a person’s life. And throughout their life before coming out to themselves, everyone is faced with certain signals. A person cannot choose the structure of his body, his personality. And orientation is something between a person’s body and personality. Of course, if a child with an innate orientation towards homosexuality lives without knowing about it, or if he is impenetrably “protected” from all propaganda, etc. he will not reveal his orientation, since it will be extinguished and information about it will be scarce, but sooner or later a person will come to his orientation again, because a person cannot order himself not to love, cannot tell himself not to live.

In order to determine a person’s orientation - whether he is heterosexual or belongs to people with a non-traditional orientation - it is not at all necessary to interrogate him with bias, dig through his dirty laundry or track his adventures. Just look at his photo.

It turns out that gays and lesbians have a special structure and facial expression.

So, at least, scientists from Stanford University think Michal Kosinski(Michal Kosinski) and Yilong Wang(Yilun Wang).

And to prove their theory, they created a special program that is capable of assessing deep neural networks using just one photograph, and then using a special mathematical system to calculate a person’s sexual orientation.

With an accuracy of up to 80 percent!

HOW IS ORIENTATION DETERMINED?

The program developed by scientists contained the main visual evaluation parameters; they are the ones that make a person recognizable. Experts considered the shape of the nose, jaw, forehead, and even such “temporary” parameters as, for example, facial hair, to be key in this issue.

Then they tested it on volunteers - white men and women of both orientations, using their photos from an international dating site.

Having scanned 130,741 images of 36,630 men and 170,360 images of 38,593 women, the computer algorithm rendered a verdict: out of all the people considered 35 thousand turned out to be people of unconventional orientation.

After this, the results of the program were compared with real indicators.

It turned out that they were correct with an accuracy of 81% in the case of men and 74% when assessing women.

Moreover, if for the same person you run not one, but several photographs at once in the program, then the accuracy of the assessment increases to 91% for men and 83% for women (a lower rate of assessment accuracy for women can also confirm the idea that sexual women's orientation is more blurred).

« Broadly speaking, this suggests that faces contain much more information about an individual's sexual orientation than previously thought, and that this data is interpreted by the human brain.", the authors write in the summary of their study.

WHAT THE EXPERIMENT SPECIFICALLY SHOWED

The study showed that homosexual men and women are distinguished by a special structure and facial expression, have features atypical for their gender, as well as facial hair.

In general, gays and lesbians are prone to “gender-atypical” traits: that is, homosexual men tend to look more feminine, and women, on the contrary.

For example, such men are more likely to have long nose, high forehead and narrow jaws, and women - wider jaws and lower foreheads.

And moreover, a person’s orientation can sometimes be judged even by his character and behavior, so funny men, as a rule, are more likely to be “feminine.”

In general, scientists noticed that the program pays the greatest attention to eyes, eyebrows, cheeks, hair and chin to determine male sexuality. A the nose, corners of the mouth, hair and eye shape were more important for women.

WHAT DOES A PERSON’S ORIENTATION DEPEND ON?

The authors of the study claim that the created technology proves that the reason for a person’s orientation is not upbringing, not psychological trauma in childhood, and certainly not a matter of personal choice or fashion.

A person’s orientation is formed even before his birth, in the womb, and is associated with a lack or, conversely, an excess of certain hormones.

In other words, if orientation can be so accurately determined by a person’s face, then we can say unambiguously: they don’t become gay, they are born gay.

The Stanford study also noted that artificial intelligence could be used to study connections between facial features and a range of other phenomena, such as political views, psychological states or personality. One of the authors of this study, Dr. Kosinski, had previously invented a psychometric program using Facebook data that relies on a person's profile information to help model their personality.

Non-traditional orientation is a fact of human life that has existed at all times along with traditional orientation, which is quite clearly proven by historical documents from different places and eras.

Attraction to people of the opposite sex existed among people as if “by default”; it was obvious that this was the dominant type of sexual attraction. However, it turned out that not everyone is capable of experiencing attraction only to the opposite sex.

In different periods of history and in different cultures, different attitudes towards those whose sexual orientation was non-traditional were formed - from open persecution to the acceptance of this kind of contact as ritual practices, from disgust to the affirmation of equality before the law.

On the one hand, these people really found themselves and find themselves in the minority, while the majority continues to experience attraction to members of the opposite sex. On the other hand, this minority is quite stable. According to various estimates, it amounts to 3-7% of the total number of people.

Naturally, statistics are difficult to collect from past historical eras, but researchers tend to believe that this percentage remains almost constant at all times.

Sexual orientation in nature was not completely unambiguous: among animals, non-traditional sexual behavior occurs in many species, from worms to mammals, and in approximately the same percentage as in humans. And therefore, it is difficult to say that non-traditional orientation is something “unnatural”.

Sexual orientation: hypotheses about its origin

Why do some people have non-traditional sexual orientation?

The modern scientific community has not developed a single hypothesis about how sexual orientation is formed. They looked everywhere - in genes, studied various parts of the brain, hormonal factors, and, of course, the cultural, social context, early childhood experience and upbringing in general.

You can read about all this in any modern encyclopedia. But there is something on which most scientists clearly agree:

Sexual orientation and sexuality in general are something that is formed at least from early childhood, and the deep foundations of human sexuality are laid in the intrauterine environment.

If we look at the development of the fetus, it turns out that any person in the womb goes through the stage of hermaphroditism: the embryo has the rudiments of both male and female genital organs.

Under the influence of various biochemical factors, including hormones, the embryo eventually acquires the characteristics of one sex or the other. However, this does not happen to everyone - there are also those who, even at birth, do not have a completely definable anatomical sex. The existence of hermaphrodites has been known at all times - just look at some ancient Greek statues.

This phenomenon of intrauterine development allowed some researchers, in particular Freud, Kinsey, Weiniger, to conclude that a person is basically bisexual, even if his anatomical sex is formed without deviations at the time of birth.

However, later, with the development of sexual consciousness, one of the vectors - attraction to the opposite sex or to one’s own, a specific sexual orientation - begins to dominate, and bisexuality becomes latent, i.e. hidden, unconscious, remains in potential.

The formation of the fetus and the set of internal inclinations with which it will come into this world, not yet recognized by the person himself, are influenced by too many things: the biochemistry of the mother’s body, hereditary (genetic) factors, even the emotional background of the environment in which the pregnancy takes place can influence on the formation of the child’s future sexuality.

But we are not yet able to accurately trace the entire chain of formation of such a complex set of reactions as sexual orientation: after all, an infant cannot talk about how he is aware of himself, his gender, and his awakening desires. And he still realizes very little.

And much before gender and sexual orientation are generally recognized, the child begins to be influenced by social factors: the expectations of parents, norms of sexual behavior accepted in a given culture, ideas about the acceptability of manifestations of sexuality in a particular family.

By the time a person completes the period of sexual development and becomes, moreover, a full-fledged member of society, he, in fact, has already been formed and his sexual orientation too.

But it's not that simple. Only if sexual orientation is traditional, it does not raise questions. The teenager is supported in his awakening desires or, at a minimum, they do not attach importance to this.

But in the case when a non-traditional orientation manifests itself in one way or another, or a teenager cannot decide to whom he feels more attracted, development occurs with a large component of neurotic factors - emerging questions to oneself, fears, anxiety, self-rejection, or vice versa - open protest .

This is due to the fact that in societies of different cultures, non-traditional orientation is something negative, unacceptable, and pathological. And the child learns about this quite early, as a rule.

Despite the long history of attempts by scientists to prove that non-traditional orientation is a variant of the sexual norm, the philistine consciousness is afraid of such manifestations.

It would take a long time to delve into explanations of why non-traditional orientation was rejected by representatives of different cultures at different times.

I will only say that something different from the majority in one way or another frightens many, creates a feeling of insecurity, and then people think little about whether there are grounds for fear - for many it is easier to prohibit than to understand, and this is already a matter of limited intellectual resources.

In our modern society, most parents think that if a child lives his life according to patterns that are understandable and familiar to parents, he will live it more safely.

And by the time such a teenager comes of age, he can no longer fully distinguish what is truly true in his awakening sexuality, what is the fruit of his own faith in “what is right,” formed under the great influence of the opinions of parents and society, and what - protest behavior or defense mechanism.

By the time a person begins to understand this topic within himself, he is already fully formed, and his true core of desire has formed within him, but much of himself has been repressed into the unconscious, and therefore the search for what his true sexual orientation is can continue already in adulthood.

But let's talk about what generally happens to a person in this sense.

Types of sexual orientation

What types of sexual orientation do people have?

The main types of sexual orientation are heterosexual (attraction to people of the opposite sex), homosexual (attraction to people of the same sex) and bisexual (attraction to both sexes, but not necessarily to the same extent and at the same period of life).

In other words, a bisexual may experience attraction to women at one period of his life, and to men at another; it may be that the choice of a sexual object depends not so much on his gender as on human qualities, or it may be that in one period His life is fascinated by women and men equally.

However, the types of sexual orientation are not limited to this.

Asexuality is also considered one of the varieties of sexual orientation, when a person, in principle, does not experience sexual desire or experiences it to a very weak degree.

What causes this and whether this is considered a variant of the norm is a topic for a separate article, however, people themselves who identify themselves as asexuals can be fully realized in all other areas of life; research does not confirm the presence of any mental disorders or personality pathologies in most of them .

Types of sexual orientation may have a more complex structure. For example, I have had clients in my practice who were more focused on attraction not to a person's anatomy, but rather to their psychological gender.

For example, a man was attracted to young people, both anatomical men and anatomical transgender women, who were planning sex reassignment surgery or had partially transitioned.

What was important was not what anatomical features characterized this person, but that psychologically it was a man - this was the most important thing in the emergence and development of desire in my client.

This man considered himself homosexual, and in the case of contact with a woman who identified herself as a man and sought to take an appropriate social role, looked the part and was preparing for sex reassignment surgery, he believed that anatomy simply “did not prevent him” from receiving satisfaction from the relationship and sexual contact.

I also remember a woman who identified herself as heterosexual, and she had two episodes of relationships with masculine women in which she felt like the same woman being courted by a man. Psychology was also more important to her than anatomical features.

Or, for example, a man who considered himself bisexual, but clearly preferred either straight women or transsexual men who looked like women, wore women's clothes, and were not necessarily seeking to change their gender.

All this, theoretically, can be attributed to bisexuality, however, types of sexual orientation include the term "pansexuality", which emphasizes attraction to people with a certain set of qualities, regardless of their anatomy.

Scientists continue to argue about terminology, however, I gave these examples for only one purpose: to show that sexual orientation includes not only an anatomical factor. Just like gender does not consist only of the configuration of the genital organs, but also includes psychology, social role, and identification.

It is also worth mentioning the variant of the sexual norm. In sexological practice the following definition is accepted:

Sexual norm - sexual actions of capable subjects who have reached sexual and social maturity, carried out by mutual consent and not involving harm to health, and also not violating the boundaries of third parties.

Simply put, if these adults are responsible for their actions, are aware of them, do not commit violence, do not resort to sexual acts with a person who is not fully aware of themselves (a child, a mentally ill person), do not involve in the process those who did not give their consent to participation, and do not seriously injure each other - they have the right to everything that they can accomplish within these limits.

But in every society there are additional restrictions, which, as a rule, stem from many factors, mainly value-based, moral and sometimes, as a consequence, legislative, which can limit the right of people to have sex the way they want.

Considering all types of sexual actions from the perspective of “norm/pathology” is not the purpose of this article, but if we return to the topic of sexual orientation, then sexual contact between two adults of the same sex, carried out by mutual consent and without causing harm to health, is a variant of the sexual norm.

Gay or traditional? Developmental Facets and the Kinsey Scale

It would be simple and easy if the world was organized unambiguously. White or black, bad or good, up or down, right or left. “Pure” homosexuals and the same “pure” heterosexuals. But in reality, it is not possible to divide the world into such simple and understandable categories.

Zoologist and sexologist Alfred Kinsey, studying the sexual behavior of people and animals, came to the conclusion that “pure” unambiguity in this matter is rare. Look at this scale and you will understand everything yourself:

Kinsey confirmed his hypothesis with extensive statistical data, but another interesting fact emerged. Not only may a person not be a “pure” representative of his orientation, it is not possible to evaluate him on this scale once and for all, because different age periods may have different manifestations.

For example, in adolescence, when sexuality is just awakening, it is quite easy to confuse situational manifestations of homosexuality with true homosexuality. During those periods of life, girls and boys exist in their own, mostly same-sex, companies or pairs of friends.

Friendships at this age can be very important, they are truly intimate during this period, and many of my clients have admitted to feeling attracted to, for example, a girlfriend or boyfriend of the same sex.

Sometimes this even led to some kind of situational sexual contacts; curiosity about sexuality was strong, but it was still difficult and scary to decide on contacts with the opposite sex.

But then such impulses faded away, and with further growing up and with the emergence of wider access to the opposite sex, the development of communication and dating skills, and maintaining relationships, those “random adventures” began to be perceived as a game and were even forgotten for a long time.

Often, when working with teenagers, I was faced with the fact that enthusiastic adoration, for example, of an older teacher was mistaken for falling in love and the teenager began to ask himself the question: am I gay?

But, as a rule, for the majority, such loves do not carry any information about what the real sexual orientation of an adult will be in the future.

They serve a completely different purpose: to reveal to the teenager himself the power of his emotions, they allow him to show sexual curiosity, to study himself and his reactions. Mature feelings and real strong attractions come, as a rule, later.

It also happens exactly the opposite. A person who, in adolescence, was “unconscious” in relation to peers of the same sex, has matured, lives an ordinary heterosexual life, and suddenly, already in adulthood, begins to experience a strong attraction to the same sex.

How is this possible? As a rule, this is a consequence of harsh upbringing. If a child is actively instilled with horror of homosexuality from an early age, emphasizing that gayness is a shame and a nightmare, then even the latent manifestations of his own bisexuality (which - remember! - is inherent in everyone by nature) the child will try with all his might to suppress and repress.

As a result, his attraction will begin to form not as his nature requires, but as society requires. Moreover, this happens differently for girls and boys. For some time, boys, under the influence of strong youthful hormones, think that girls completely satisfy their desires.

In fact, it is the general indiscriminateness of male youthful desires that affects us, especially among those who have a strong sexual constitution.

At the moment of peak sexuality, instinct so powerfully demands an outlet that it gives rise to the ability to be satisfied with almost any more or less suitable object.

And taking into account the fact that the girl is awarded the label “the right object” by everyone around her, the universal approval of this step of the young man fuels his ardor. And only when the topic of self-affirmation in society recedes into the background can a person’s true sexual orientation emerge.

In my practice, there have been male clients who, on a wave of self-affirmation, managed to get married and even have children. But later, when other, deeper factors were needed for attraction, the attraction to his wife disappeared completely, and unconventional orientation “suddenly” announced itself with an unexpected, but passionate and irresistible love.

With women, it more often happened somewhat differently: many of them started relationships with men, not at all guided by sexual impulses, if only curiosity. For many, something else was important - spiritual friendship, security, support in a woman’s desire to become a mother.

“I thought that sex was not the most important thing,” one of my clients said about that period of life, “we got along great, we had a child. And only later did I realize that I really wanted to have fun in bed, I sincerely wanted sex, but at the same time I realized that I really wanted this sex not with my husband or even with a man in general...”

There have also been examples where a person realizes his orientation, develops a completely “ordinary” relationship, but at the same time suddenly experiences an impulse to “try something new” with a partner of the same sex. In general, there are a lot of development options.

I gave all these examples just to show: sexual orientation itself is formed early, but it manifests itself in different ways, at different periods of life, with different intensities, and most importantly, it may not be realized for a certain time, especially if it - homosexual.

Not many people fall on the extreme end of the scale as soon as they become aware of their sexuality at all. And there is nothing wrong with that: human nature is plastic for a reason, it is a certain resource that is given to man by nature.

For what? Well, at least so that in a situation where there are no sexual partners of the opposite sex, you can at least switch to your own partners for a while. Sex is a function that exists not only for procreation, and non-productive (not leading to conception) sex occurs among animals.

Sex helps the species survive in general because, among other things, it serves as a form of consolidation of the union between people, a source of creativity, a way of self-expression, etc. It has many important functions besides procreation.

As one interesting example, some fish change sex during life. This is how nature controls the balance of females and males in the population. And with regard to people, some scientists are inclined to assume that non-traditional orientation is a way of regulating population numbers.

At least before the advent of assisted reproductive technologies, these people were those who, in essence, refused to actively reproduce, while maintaining the ability to conceive, and could still take part in the reproductive process if necessary.

And in the next part of the article we will talk about whether it is possible to change sexual orientation, what things can interfere with this, and why this may be needed in general.

Today our organization appealed to the deputies of the Legislative Assembly of Karelia demanding the adoption of a law on same-sex marriage, as well as the introduction of legal liability for discrimination against gays, lesbians, and transsexuals.

Demographers identify a fairly large number of forms and types of marriage relations - group marriage, paired marriage, polygyny, polygamy, monogamy, etc. In his work “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State,” Friedrich Engels analyzes in detail the process of crystallization of a total culture that forms functionally suitable her institutions. Being a reflection of the increasing lack of freedom of choice, marriage is a necessary structural element of the state system.

In our opinion, it is necessary to reconsider the fundamental foundations of marital relations. After all, it is absolutely unfair that government agencies only recognize monogamous marriage between a man and a woman. Due to established tradition, society has difficulty recognizing other forms of relationships. Here we come to the thesis about the artificiality of the marriage union in the form in which it now exists. In the coming years, the institution of family will enter into another protracted crisis and will lose its undeniable attractiveness.

Same-sex marriage is an extrapolation of the legal framework on monogamous marriage to couples of men and couples of women. Gays and lesbians are marketed to this product brand with appropriate expectations. But if such expectations have already been formed, it is necessary to satisfy these needs: after all, everyone has the right to happiness. Recognition of same-sex marriage by the state and society gives same-sex couples several significant positions. The legalization of same-sex marriage takes it from the realm of the condemned to the zone of the acceptable and normal. A same-sex family becomes a family in the full sense of the word, since in this case they will be given the opportunity to adopt and raise children. There are a huge number of orphans in Russia, these disadvantaged children need parents, and it is not so important that these will be two dads or two mothers at once. Discrimination based on the sexual orientation of caregivers is simply unacceptable.

An important point is the legal protection of partners: they can inherit each other’s property, and in the event of a divorce, they divide it in half. After all, as a married couple they can take out loans, mortgages, etc. All these points are extremely important in everyday life, significant for ordinary people, and will require minor legislative changes: marriage should be reformulated from a “union of a man and a woman” to a “union of two citizens” and that’s it! This kind of innovation will not greatly change the legislative framework of the Russian Federation and will not require any additional financial investments. For millions of Russian citizens, this will be an important political and symbolic gesture, indicating the tolerance of government bodies towards the sexual orientation of the country's citizens.

I consider an important aspect of the protection of human rights to be the protection of the rights of sexual minorities and the recognition of the individual’s right to their own unique self in the sexual sphere. “There should be no person for me to whom I would feel disgust or hatred,” echoing the words of Nietzsche, I told myself. I sympathize with normal people who are forced to hide and be ashamed of their feelings for the reason that someone doesn’t like it. Sexual orientation is not a choice. Nature and society itself create people so different. Gays, lesbians, and transgender people are the same citizens. Unfortunately, in a society aggressively opposed to them, they are marginalized, outcasts, renegades. Our people are trained to look for enemies. We're good at this. Someone who is not like everyone else, who stands out from the crowd - hello! A prosperous society is characterized by inclusiveness, pluralism, and dialogism. It is in such a society that every element that makes it feels comfortable, because there is nothing worse than lack of freedom and unfair public censure. What’s crazy is not that men kiss each other, but that someone condemns them for it and calls for some kind of auto-da-fé. Karelian officials, among whom there are also homosexuals, do not take any measures against discrimination against sexual minorities, thereby contributing to the escalation of violence. Petrozavodsk, alas, has not yet become a territory of tolerance.

In addition to the legalization of same-sex marriage, we demand the introduction of criminal liability for discrimination against gays, lesbians, and transsexuals. In addition, we believe it is necessary to legislatively define the rights of transgender people.

Editorial opinion may not reflect the views of the author

Comments

2014-07-24 21:29:57

One respected Karelian writer said that Karelians like me should be hanged on lamp posts. Meanwhile, he lives in Suomi. He made this conclusion because of my statements about Karelian culture. I know Maxim, but I don’t read his article on principle. Why? This whole thing sucks! It’s better to hang you “blues” on poles than normal Karelians.

Alexandra Koshkarova

2008-01-19 16:30:38

The question is specific: I cannot love men. I'm interested in communicating with them, but I can't stand them in personal contact. I won't go into details. I belong to sexual minorities. I think this law would help me a lot. I really want not to hide my sexual orientation, I want to live without fear that I will be “repressed” or “they will agree to put me in a pre-trial detention center” for my orientation. I do not rape anyone, I do not persuade or preach my goals. However, I want to live and have personal happiness similar to what you have with the other sex. What am I adding? So what should I do? PS: I have been living with this for many years and, unfortunately, I cannot admit that this is nonsense! :(

Gezalov Alexander

2008-01-19 12:35:58

Alexandra!!! write personally: [email protected] Regarding your question, I don’t understand the question... what to discuss, where, by whom, at what level, on the forum, why... Efimov’s nonsense or what, is there time and energy, but what cannot be allowed to go ahead is fact! Otherwise it will go wild... it will become blue (from the word dove).. Happy Epiphany Day to you!

Alexandra Koshkarova

2008-01-18 23:44:48

Unfortunately, I didn’t find any specific help (the question about sexual orientation and SPECIFICALLY: what to do with it, if this happens - you can’t love men) in your answer. It's a pity! Then why all this conversation?!

Gezalov Alexander

2008-01-18 00:56:02

Alexandra Koshkarova

2008-01-17 23:10:39

And I don’t consider it necessary to discuss everything else here - this is not the place! I can offer the option of personal correspondence. But since I didn’t register as one of your “acquaintances,” I don’t have the honor of knowing your e-mail.

2008-01-17 00:10:01

Victor Paaso

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