Responding to your thread title more than the content of your original post, I would say that no one "turns gay." We all have erotic desires throughout our lives over which we have no control. May I elaborate?
Bottom line: What makes you hard and wet?* That's your erotic desire.
At each point of our lives, certain erotic desires will be stronger than others and we make decisions about which erotic desires to act on and which to repress or place on the back burner. Sometimes the conditions of our lives are such that we are not feeling much erotic desire. Work, love, family, health, babies, stress, aging, religious beliefs and community laws - all play a role in shaping and regulating the intensity and expression of our erotic desires. If we couldn't do this, we might spend all day and every day having sex, reveling in "polymorphously perverse" pleasure.
Sometimes, erotic desires that we have repressed in the past demand their way off the back burner and onto the front burner. Sometimes there aren't enough front burners to accommodate all of them at one time. Whatever is up front at a given time is pressed into a cultural mold of sexual identity; that is, our society has created categories (little boxes) for people who desire and practice specific erotic acts: gay, straight, bisexual, pedophiles, celibates, etc.
None of the above categories exist in nature or biology; they are all social constructs (the product of collective social agreement). Some are valued highly in our culture, e.g., heterosexual identities, and especially a reproductive, monogamous, legally married, gender-polarized heterosexual identity. Some sexual identities are devalued, e.g. gay male sexual identity, and especially a hedonistic, nonmonogamous, gender-subversive gay identity.
Our modern society and culture (unlike past societies and cultures) demand that every individual's erotic desires and sexual activities get squeezed (or will be forcibly squeezed) into one of the above categories. We give individuals a grace period of childhood and early adolescence before they must assume a sexual identity or be presumed heterosexual. That is why teens who express same-sex erotic desire are said to be "experimenting" rather than "gay." There is cultural agreement that children and early teens are heterosexual until proven otherwise when they reach late adolescence or adulthood. Heterosexuality is our culture's default sexual identity.
Given the difficulty of negotiating any same-sex erotic feelings in a heterosexist society, many individuals of every age first try to follow the socially valued path of dating, marriage, and reproductive heterosexuality. Most also try to stay in the "vanilla" zone and feel guilty (even tormented) by their desires for what we call "kinky" sex. How can we blame people for trying to take the only socially acceptable path? Yet if you are aware that your strongest erotic desires are for the same sex today, you should know that this is unlikely to change significantly in the next few years and possibly the rest of your life.
How you manage to fit your erotic desires felt at different times in your life into culturally manufactured little boxes is complex. So you can't "turn gay," you can only push your erotic desires into a sexual identity box labeled "gay." Or have others do it for you with or without your consent. Or you can stay in a box that feels more comfortable for you than dealing with contradictory erotic desires. (That box is usually called a "closet" if you have same-sex desires but claim a heterosexual identity, openly or by default.)
Hope this helps, even a little.
*Hard and wet: For males, this means an erection and preseminal lubricant (precum). For females, this means clitoral erection and vaginal lubrication.
BTDTWoman
Posted: 30 Sep 07:09
