Content of Imagination of the Term "Gay" (analogous: Lesbian)

I have been thinking a lot about why I should place my homepage at WestHollywood and not to another neighborhood, because
(1) "being gay" is just a tiny but important facet of/in my life and identity and
(2) I do have problems with the "social sense and meaning" of words like "gay" (in German "schwul") or similar terms, because a term just comprises the picture of a social construction of its real appearence. It's a social construction, but each individual has his/her own point of view on things in his/her sphere with minimal or big differences to the social construction, which I would define as the summary of these individual constructions.
(3) In my opinion "gay" is rather a description of a certain kind of culture concerning lifestyle than a description of a certain kind of personal attitude concerning individual self-determination. I can't wholly identify myself with any kind of "gay" culture and its values as well as I cannot identify with any "straight" culture and its values. The term "gay" contents a lot of different values, (gay) cultures, meanings, imaginations, etc. - but a human being usually just identifies with a small part of this content, even can disagree in its identity with large parts of "gay" values/culture/etc.
On the other hand somebody can have an "gay" identity and nevertheless identify with lots of so called "straight" (which means "non-gay") values. That means that there actually doesn't need to be a gap between these differences, the difference is only made by society, because of traditions, religion, etc.
And these differences will remain as long as there are no full equal rights of men and women and equality of their kind of living, and as long as there is no full freedom in choosing the partner(s) and in the kind of living you want to have with him/her/them.
Nonetheless I will use the terms "gay" and "non-gay" because of these terms everybody has an idea of what I could mean! ;-)
To me "non-gay" means a rather conventional, conformist way of living, "gay" a rather unconventional, non-conformist way of living - to live rather self-determinated and free of social shackles.
Obviously at first glance this has not much to do with sexuality but at second glance it has much to do with individual self-determination of one's personal life and identity concerning social, emotional and sexual matters. These matters usually don't dawn on "non-gay" people (in such a way) as on "gay" people, because institutions like marriage (and others like commercials, which are usually straight-focussed and not gay-focussed) are embedding individuals in their social sphere to influence and determine social identity and therefore behavior of individuals in a certain (straight) way.
"Gay" people (must) become aware of themselves more considerably, because there are no traditional institutions nor culture which "is caring for" the satisfaction of their individual needs. They (must) become much more self-conscious than "straight people" (sorry - these are examples of ultra-straight people) to make themselves aware of their feelings, needs and their social situation (because traditional culture doesn't fit).
On the one hand this means more freedom, on the other hand this means more problems and confrontation with culture, traditions and society (the scale of gay problems, gay freedom and gay "extra-chances" depends highly on the culture/society/country you are living in).
Meanwhile (June 1997) some months have passed since I wrote the lines above (April 1997) and I thought a lot about the "meaning of GAY"! I think the meaning depends highly on the concept of human nature someone has and I started to ask myself what kind of concept would describe best the term "gay" for me.
My concept of human nature concerning gender has different dimensions and each dimension has an inner and an outer point of view (a social and an individual point of reference):

1) the psychological dimension (what one oneself is convinced to be - the identity to be a man or a woman, independent from the gender someone possesses - a possibility to understand transsexuality? [In Germany we have only one word for gender/sex, so I will use the word gender here, because sex has more different meanings.])
2) the emotional dimension (concerning the gender someone loves, i.e. the feeling of happiness, trust, security and more in connection to another [male or female] person - some people feel this feeling to an imaginary [genderless?] person/power called God - and love is a source of power [btw: I don't believe in God in the traditional way])
3) the social dimension (concerning the gender someone prefers to communicate with in a verbally and/or non-verbally way or concerning the gender one wants to share his/her time with, e.g. is in that view playing games a certain kind of communication - the inner part of that dimension describes one's individual wish of gender-preference, the outer part describes one's real behaviour because of the social/cultural pressure somebody has to behave) and
4) the sexual dimension (concerning the gender someone prefers to make sex with).
I would describe the inner point of view of these dimensions as the concious and non-concious needs/desires/preferences of a person, the outer point of view as the really lived behaviour of somebody in reality.
Each of these dimensions has different importance for different people (the respective inner or outer point of view can have varying importance for different people as well) and can have different strength of influence and character on behavior and scale of enjoyed satisfaction because of that.
Example: According to that somebody could have a desire for homosexual activity, but prefer to be hetero-married without living up his/her needs, because social (long-term) disadvantages would be larger than individual (short-term) advantages (and nevertheless this person could have a homosexual sex-life secretly!).
Maybe you just try to analyze yourself?
I don't know in what case somebody would defined as gay and in which case not!
In my point of view somebody with individual homosexual desire I would call "homosexually orientated", with hetero-emotional preference I would call "hetero-emotionally orientated" and so on...
When would YOU somebody call gay according to my concept of human nature?
I think you will find only few persons which are only homo-oriented or only hetero-oriented in all dimensions (individually AND socially). However, I think humans usually naturally bi-oriented - and homo- or hetero-orientation emerges out of one's social and cultural environment in relation to the individual oneself! Of course I am convinced that in principle orientation in each dimension can change over time - I mean that orientation is not fixed or determined, but especially outer orientation can change after "outing" ones inner orientation to the environment and then the person can live in harmony with ones own feelings and attitudes...
But I am also convinced that you cannot plan and determine the change of the inner orientation - you can't determine orientation conciously! (For example someone can love only emotionally, not rationally, but someone can become concious about his/her feelings - but one cannot "love rationally".) But sometimes these inner orientations may change as well - unplanned!
When a baby is born it starts orientating itself in its environment by perceiving stimuli out of it. The process of perception is accompanied with different emotional impressions, feelings of satisfaction and feelings of dissatisfaction. Most of the impressions are unconscious.
These impressions are subdividable in different categories, I call them dimensions. The most important categories concerning gender I listed above is just a try of myself for a better comprehension of human nature. According to that a human starts his life without special orientation, but hormons and social and natural stimuli out of the environment (social rules and physical conditions) are the base for shaping ones identity and the inner individual construction of ones reality.
I would say that somebody will become hetero-oriented by having satisfying feelings with hetero-related experiences in the concerning dimension, and homo-oriented by having satisfying feelings with homo-related experiences.
Because somebody usually doesn't divide (mentally) into these dimensions but perceive them as a whole, non-divided complex, one has to take the society-generated divisions, e.g. "gay" and "straight" (and "bi") and try to find ones own identity in these compartments for orientating in the human world. I don't put myself in either compartment but you can put me in your "gay"-compartment if sexual homo-orientation is your only mark for that compartment. I prefer my own created comparments (categories) explained above.
I would like to write much more about that, because I think it might be quite interesting to analyze human behaviour with the dimensions of this view. In some months I will write more about it - after I will have had some (negative or positive) response by the readers of my homepage.

Please keep in mind that's just my opinion! You may have a different opinion or idea what it means to be gay! Like I briefly mentioned, way of thinking depends on the society you are living in - the way how you think and what you think (and what you don't think) and what you are allowed to think (and to do!)!

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