- May 1, 2020
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Obviously not having sex is always an option. I meant that having sex with each other was the only option for having sex. I have a friend who spent a year in jail who identifies as straight, but did sexual things with men in jail because it was that or nothing. Being in jail is a mind numbing, soul crushing experience. Sexuality is one of the few ways to experience your humanity in a dehumanizing environment.Dawg, what? There absolutely is the option of not having sex with each other. It feels like a case of internalized homophobia. "It's not gay because I said no homo" mentality. No entirely straight man is going to have the urge to have sex with another man, no matter how long of a dry spell he's been in. It sounds like Richard Rhodes and his friends had these feelings crop up, and did everything they could to avoid confronting them, because they'd grown up being so certain they were entirely straight. "We had no other options" was a way to absolve themselves of their feelings.
Edit - rereading this, I want to make it clear that this is not meant to be an attack on the idea you're implementing. On that front, I say hell yeah go for it - not my cup of tea, but I wholeheartedly support it. It's a criticism specifically of the idea that "they're straight, but they had no options". They aren't and they did, and that's okay.
Remember that everyone has the right to identify however they want. Sexual orientation is a spectrum, and I agree that "straight" people are somewhere in the middle if they do sexual things with each other. My point wasn't that they ARE straight despite doing these things, but that they identify as straight despite doing these things. They wouldn't have done sexual things with each other if they had been able to have sex with women. Sexual experimentation between same-sex friends who have sex exclusively with the opposite sex when they grow up isn't unusual. Having gone to a religious school that didn't teach sex ed, I learned about sex from my friends. It didn't cross the line from talking to doing for me, but I have male friends who masturbated with their male friends and then dated women exclusively. Same-sex experimentation was a product of lust and curiosity, not love.
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