heterosexuality is a product of mass indoctrination into sexual ideology

my grandpa liked to caution me about queers: he was passing down an educational tradition going back for many centuries

my grandpa loved to tell me a supposedly scary story: he was at the movies with his girlfriend when a man sat down beside him and rested a hand on my grandpa’s knee. my grandpa would make a disgusted face implying that it wasn’t just a lack of consent which troubled him: and he told the story not like a funny story, but like a scary story about queerness lurking in the shadows, like the gays could be anywhere, dressed like us but ready to slide their fingers onto our knees.

so many men these days think it’s nasty to have sex with other men! but is this because their heterosexuality is “natural” or is this because society was gradually indoctrinated into heterosexuality by the schemes of moral puritans? are straight people “straight” because they are straight, or were they taught to be straight?

in ancient greece a man was a person who left his wife and assigned-female-at-birth children locked up at home while he went butt naked to the gym to leer at boys and have sex with other men. the streets were lined with colorful statues of naked men with perfectly sculpted bodies and genitalia out. the city of thebes raised an entire army battalion composed of homosexual lovers: the sacred band. assigned-male-at-birth students were inseminated by their teachers. athletes met at the olympics where they had sex with other ripped men before then going to war with those same men over ideas like democracy and oligarchy, monarchy and citizenship. these were the ways of cis men back then. but this was long before people invented the concept of “heterosexual” and began indoctrinating children into new sexual ideologies.

even as greek men boyishly lived out their cock-rock dreams while brutally oppressing assigned-female-at-birth people on the basis of quick glances at their birth genitalia, many women were no more aware of “heterosexuality” as a concept than were the men who controlled their lives. take the great festivals of dionysus in the forests: the god of orgies and wine, synonymous with the roman god bacchus, a god of sorcery and hedonism, flanked by the most sensual panthers and presiding over frenzied witchy gatherings in the woods. the romantic imagery of naked women gathering in the forest for magical rituals stretches back very far: these practices are far more ancient than the cis heteronormativity of christianity teaches us to think (they are not inventions of the devil: these practices precede the devil’s invention).

and at least in the “west,” whatever that means, the people we really have to thank for our indoctrination into incredibly repressive cis heternormative heterosexuality are the sects of christians who took over the roman empire and soon began imposing the strictest guidelines about so-called “sexual immorality” (a made up concept).

christian men thought differently about sex than pagan greek men had, and as men living in a patriarchy they were of course able to impose this new view upon society, from the moment “saint” paul wrote his first diatribe against sexual hedonism to the day the emperor theodosius banned all pagan festivals including the sexy ones.

look at st. origin: so removed from the greek concept of manhood that he is alleged to have castrated himself in order to avoid the many sexual temptations around him;

look at st. augustine: a man who was so tormented by his sexual yearnings that he wrote numerous pages confessing to what a wicked man he was for these desires;

look at jesus, a man so concerned about sexual impurity that he believed in an equivalency between looking at a woman with lust and actual fornication (matthew 5:28)… although i grant that this could have a deeper meaning but what counts is how chistians have interpeted and applied it;

and look at the bigoted wanderer and apostle “saint” paul, whose writing some crusty ancient christians included in the canon. he took the view that certain forms of sex were “unnatural,” particularly the homosexual kinds

for the wrath of god is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men who by their wickedness suppress the truth. for what can be known about god is plain to them, because god has shown it to them. ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. so they are without excuse; for although they knew god they did not honor him as god or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened. claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal god for images resembling mortal man or birds or animals or reptiles.

Therefore god gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about god for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator, who is blessed for ever! amen.

For this reason god gave them up to dishonorable passions. their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error. (romans 1:18-26)

for paul, same-sex relationships were a symptom of humanity’s rebellion against the natural order which god has made plain to them: by giving into these “dishonorable” and “unnatural” passions, humans are supposedly defying god’s moral codes and vision of the world.

also note an early form of the current conservative thinking about gender and sexuality: thinking which insists on maintaining the two great boxes. st. paul is so convinced that these passions are “wicked” and “unnatural” that he suggests anyone who disagrees with his interpretation of the eternal god’s moral codes is simply denying basic tenants of reality, which has been made “plain” to them in nature. this kind of thinking is also part of how we go from greek men having sex with each other with abandon to the modern idea that “heterosexuality” is genetically “natural” and that anyone who simply looks at the plain reality will admit there are only two genders. but if you refuse to accept that all the concepts you were ever taught were made up by someone else, then you will of course accept them as the natural reality.

anyway, imagine showing paul’s diatribe to a member of the sacred band, that great thebian battallion of homosexual lovers that made one final stand against alexander the great before he destroyed greek democracy.

“heterosexuality” as a “natural” and “default” orientation is a concept which we were taught and brainwashed into believing. if we had grown up in different societies and different cultures at different times, we would have had extremely different notions about our sexuality, if we even labeled it at all: we may have been automated pansexuals, we may have had harems, we may have gone into the woods for secretive orgiastic rights. we say “i am straight,” and we are told “you are straight,” and we are even told sometimes that only “genetics” or “sin” could make you “gay,” but if children aren’t given the tools from an early age to analyze whether they really are “straight,” if children aren’t made to understand that ultimately “heterosexual” is a made up concept, then they are robbed of a chance to discover the true authentic self that lingers beneath the bulls#$%^ we are taught to believe about ourselves.

end the indoctrination of children into heterosexuality please and thank you!

thanks so much for reading my diary!!! love you!

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