- Joined
- Jul 11, 2020
This was a pretty common idea in the Before Times, back when homosexuality was still considered a sin by default, and the only question was whether gays should be thrown in jail, or should be left to make their disco music in peace (as long as they stayed far away from children).There are some people who believe overbearing mothers (especially paired with enabling fathers if not outright no father in the picture) does have this issue. I was first introduced to the idea by the Disaffected podcast. I do not know how true it is but he is himself a gay man and says that it was his experience a lot of them do have mothers that tend to fit this stereotype (I don't know about trans specifically, no one talks about it in those terms), which is why he believes it to have some truth. Or perhaps it's something to do with dysfunctional families growing up generally and everything else that comes with that, of which the mother being a cunt is just one symptom of all the chaos that goes with those. To say nothing of Munchhausen by proxy. Or the nature of celebrities being fucked up attention whores and what that would mean for their kids and how the industry treats children, even if those children are only in those circles due to their parents and aren't "working" themselves.
Basically, the idea was that homosexuality stemmed from young boys growing up with over-bearing mothers and little or no access to masculine role models and outlets. Such boys would grow up yearning for masculinity, which if allowed to fester would cause the boy to sexualize and fetishize his pursuit of masculinity. Rather than spending his childhood just being a bro and then, when hormones kick in, moving on to pursue hot chicks, the poor boy never has access to his bro phase to begin with, so then when the hormones kick in, pursues being a bro.
Nowadays you're not really supposed to think about this, let alone TALK about this; not since the rise of the LGBTQ lobby, which pushed hard to make "we were born this way!" the default normative belief in Millennials and younger folks. This despite the fact that
1. in virtually all other areas, leftwing orthodoxy is strictly "nurture" when it comes to nature vs nurture debates, and
2. there is no scientific evidence to support the "Born This Way" theory
It was advanced not on the basis of evidence, but as a rhetorical tactic, meant to both deflect personal responsibility for gay behavior ("it's not my fault! I didn't CHOOSE to be this way!") and to counter claims that homosexuality was contrary to the laws of nature ("this is something that happens by design; it's natural").
Anecdotally, though, it seems like the Born This Way hypothesis is falling out of favour again, even (or especially?) amongst queers. So who knows? Maybe we'll see Western society come back around to the older, more Freudian, domineering mother/chasing masculinity theory?
(personally, I think the domineering mother theory has problems of its own. While I'm sure there are many factors going into what makes a kid turn gay or troon out, I think the evidence points to this being a social contagion, and that the biggest contributing factor is simply early sexual exposure: if the first sexual experience you had was getting jerked off by a Cub Scout leader, or I guess nowadays, getting groomed into crossdressing as Astolfo by a pedophile furry necrophiliac running your favorite Roblox server on Discord, then chances are good you'll be messed up for life.)