Accent Changes, Gay Changes.

Jul 252008

While watching John Barrowman’s fascinating documentary on BBC TV last night (“The Making of Me”, BBC One), I noticed the remarkable change in his accent when he talked to his parents and was reminded of my own Geordie twang and how it becomes stronger when I occasionally return to my cultural roots in pitmatic Ashington!

Barrowman is proudly gay and references are made to this during the Dr Who & Torchwood shows with his Captain Jack character.

Last night’s show was interesting as both he and it struggled to find the answer to some gay questions, such as nature or nurture.. You know, whether being gay is inherited, or acquired somehow, or is all in the mind.

The answer, if that’s the word, is that there are several answers, all of which are out of the gay person’s control. Some reasons are gene inheritance, womb conditions, the number of previous males that a gay man’s mother might have had, parental infuences, cultural environment during childhood.

A lot of the answer(s) seemed to hang on the presence or otherwise of testosterone in various places.

So from a man’s point of view, the show was very good and severely challenged the catholic, muslim and other weirdly homophobic religions attitudes which basically state that a gay man is possessed by a devil and should be tortured until he becomes straight.

However, notable by omission was any investigation into lesbian, creation, if you like. The general result for a man was that being gay meant that you have a lot of feminine tendencies, fuelled by testosterone or testosterone rejection effects in the womb. Maybe there’s a gene, but not always, or one that’s been found, yet.

Being lesbian could be seen to be trending to male tendancies but no investigation was done to research this, because if the same testosterone-type arguments were used, the results would be pointing the wrong way. The causal relationship if applied that way would imply that all women are gay. But this can’t be true so therefore a shed load of extra work needs to be done before dogmatic statements are bandied about. Maybe there’s a gene….. etc etc.

What is important, is that these people are just people. They do not need help, they do not need persecuting. Actually, they do not need to be researched and should be let alone…..

….but on the other hand, we humans have an insatiable curiosity, especially about anything to do with sex, so maybe it’s just tough. That’s why in this country we also have laws that protect the individual.