I found "Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality” by Hanne Blank very interesting and eye-opening. In the reading, the ways that culture develops and influences the society’s thinking about relationships between men and women were pointed out by Blank. Sexual attraction between two opposite genders is called heterosexual. The concept of Heterosexual was created in 1860, even though that heterosexuality existed for a long time before that but people didn’t think of themselves as a heterosexual. Men and women had sexual relations, formed families and etc but they didn’t have a name for this until 1860’s. And after a while it became a good example for “normal” and a standard for an individual experience. I personally think it doesn’t matter if you are a heterosexual, homosexual or etc but what matters is that you should be yourself without worrying about what society is going to think about you. First of all you should accept yourself, if you want to be accepted by others. And unfortunately in our society there are a lot of people who are ashamed of their identity for different kind of reasons.
I agree with you that an individual should feel comfortable and not ashamed of who they are no matter what. Even if an idea is not strongly accepted in society, if an individual believes that he/she identifies with it, he/she shouldn't be ashamed, but rather open up to the world. The confidence you go out with will not only show others but yourself how comfortable you are with your own identity and that you TRULY believe what your standing for and are proud of it.
ReplyDeleteI agree with both of you that people need to feel comfortable as themselves, regardless of their sexuality. At the same time, I think that society is the structure that needs to change, even more than people need to work on their self-confidence. Society is constricting people and making it harder to be completely at peace with yourself. Social constructs force us to feel lower about being a certain way, and that is what is really the issue.
ReplyDeleteI think its also important to note that self-confidence can also lead to openness and acceptance of other people's preferences. We need to not only become more confident in ourselves, but also more accepting of other people's confidence. How can we change social constructs unless we first change ourselves?
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