Internalised Homophobia.

[Zen]

Following up from what [MENTION=24253]Zen[/MENTION] had to say about education and the social classes, I wonder if the fact of being gay actually increases our natural curiosity, and by that increases our will to try things out and learn about the world. This would be a propensity to learn and get educated. Of course it might be the easy way out just to leave it to the establishment to teach us a curriculum, but would we ever have found out what our sexual orientation was if we hadn't tried to look elsewhere, where the institution didn't have us look? I wonder if that is also why there is this creativity. Isn't it a sort of inbred / ingrowing sense of ''what if....?'' Of course, I realise it is by no means a purely gay trait, but is it more prevalent in a population that isn't finding its answers in the run of the mill core of common knowledge? Common knowledge is also the source of many stereotypes, something else that needs to be (occasionally) challenged.

I think you have made some very good points Prince Albert. I've always felt quite 'gay' in my family in that, and maybe this will not make the sense that I hope that it will, that I have always felt apart from them and thus sought further answers- my particular studies have been in psychology (particularly I'm interested in 'individual differences'), Sociology (particularly social class and life course), Health and Fitness ( what appealed to me here was individual choices beyond genetics- in the sense that positive lifestyle choices can have benefits on an individual), and also Philosophy (although hard going, Metaphysics have always been of appeal to me). This kind of puts me at odds with my family background, and institutionally, I'm now more educated than many of the teachers that wrote me off!! I can't put it all into a nice package of words but somehow, I think it has always been linked to my sexuality.