To Gay , or Not To Gay ?

This work examines the structure of discourses on homosexuality, taking the nature-versus-nurture question as a case study, in order to display the incoherency that results from taking such questions for granted. This paper critically explores the alleged neutrality and objectivity of discourses on sexuality, and within this exploration, a breakdown of the categories of sexuality, sex, gender, and nature occurs. What is shown is that the breakdown of these categories renders the nature-versus-nurture Question itself quite questionable. Ever since sexuality became an object of discourse, the issue of homosexuality has spurred a plethora of inquiry and debate. One of the main questions of this inquiry into “the homosexual,” the Question perhaps, is the following: is homosexuality the result of nature (“they” are born that way) or nurture (external factors make “them” that way)? Both across and within various disciplines (i.e. medicine, biology, psychology, sociology, philosophy, etc.), serious debate has ensued over which answer adequately represents “the homosexual.” However, rather than attempt to answer this question in either direction, what this essay intends to do is problematize the Question as a whole, by showing the flaws of its fundamental suppositions. The legitimacy of this Question relies on the intelligibility of its terms (homosexuality and nature) and the categories to which these terms refer, and so it is these very categories that this paper shall challenge. Furthermore, there are certain implicit assumptions that this Question presupposes whose obviousness and accuracy shall also be contested here. As this Question is put into question, alternative inquiries that serve to further problematize this Question’s coherency