Introduction
As time goes by, people's attitudes to homosexuals are getting more and more open, and the society got higher inclusiveness. But not for all the people or countries in the world. Most of developed countries are legalised the act of being homosexual, for the most of development countries or the developing countries, it is still unprotected by the law or even illegal. It is either because of the culture or the historical reasons. Still, the percentages of homosexual increasing in the whole world and it is happening in daily life. Some of teenagers claimed that themselves as homosexual, which causes problems; are they really homosexual or just infected by the peer groups?
The association of psychologists American Psychological Association (APA) has stated that "Homosexuality is not a mental disorder and the APA opposes all portrayals of lesbian, gay and bisexual people as mentally ill and in need of treatment due to their sexuality." Human society constructs heterosexuality as the norm, homosexual goes against the norm, but this was not always so clearly. Since the 1970s, homosexuality has become the topic of an interdisciplinary specialisation variously called gay and lesbian, queer or LGBT. However, in the mainstream society, people still treat homosexual as abnormal. That's why there has a belief that heterosexuality is the main and only acceptable sexuality, sexual and marital relations are always suitable between opposite sexes.
Hypothesis
The hypothesis is that the percentage of homosexual people in globe is increasing, and it could causes by their own genes or just the lifestyle/surroundings triggered.
Research
Judith Butler (American philosopher and gender theorist) against the idea that identification amongst lesbian females in her article “Imitation and Gender Insubordination.” She states that “lesbian” as an identification for women that is because this whole term is one product of a heteronormative society, it is used by the heterosexuals rather than the homosexuals themselves. The definition of lesbian is closely combined to the heterosexual ideals of traditional male and female roles. This means that lesbians are accepted and known in some aspect of a heterosexual relationship for most people.
The field of studying homosexual was removed from traditional sexology that has been based in psychology or biology, it is more closely linked to gender studies, which based in sociology. Some of sociologists has contributed to or supported the study of genders, for example Pierre Bourdieu (French, 1998), Michel Maffesoli (French, 1982) and Steven Seidman (American, 1998). (Source: Wikipedia)
But some of strongly religion believe that homosexuality is an awful act and full of sins to do, it has been claimed that being a homosexual person is violating the gods’ will, and the gods created human to being heterosexual. Some non-religionists in society believe homosexuality is an illness, it is violating the human nature and it could be cured. (For some areas, the psychological therapies expect to change homosexual sexuality to heterosexual. And if the psychological way is not helping then they will use physical way to change one man’s sexuality, such as electric shock therapy.) They think male was supposed to have relationship with female instead of another male, so does female. The causes of this could be their religion, or the historical reasons so that they kept the misunderstanding of the homosexual. As the BBC documentary (Stephen Fry: Out there 2013) shown, there are some people are still having prejudices and misconstrue. Because of these misunderstandings, causing crimes and discriminates. There is an interesting phenomenon in the modern society, is people are getting much easier to admit or identify themselves as homosexual. Which is unbelievable. In an open-ended format, to estimate the percentage of American men and the percentage of American women who are homosexual. The average estimates were that 21% of men are gay and 22% of women are lesbians. In fact, roughly a quarter of the public thinks more than 25% of men and 25% of women are homosexual. (Source: The Guardian)
For some of the young generations, they are not exacting their own sexuality. Another appearance in China is that girls getting hurt from a boy then claiming that they don't love boys anymore, they are homosexual. But actually they are not. Some of them didn't get any hurt from boys but still identifying themselves as homosexual because of the influences from the peer group, they were trying to get the reorganization from their friends or just simply to impress the others. Which is exactly the same as teenager smoking. They think that being different with others is a good way to show how cool they are.
Based on all of those phenomenons, we could hypothesis that ‘choosing’ to be homosexual is becoming a fashion trend. No matter it's because of the peer groups or it's just because of an impulse decide. And this might cause big differences in the society, such as changing the political rights (Homosexual marriage law), changing the right that gay people given a blood donation, also probably increasing the infection probability of AIDS and so on.
Alfred Kinsey was an American biologist, sexologist professor who founded the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University in 1947, now known as the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction. His created a scale that is still using today, in which individuals are rated from exclusively heterosexual to exclusively homosexual on a scale of 0 to 6, 0 means that this person is absolutely heterosexual, 6 is the meaning of the absolutely homosexual;
He claimed that 13% of males were predominately homosexual for at least three years between the ages of 16 and 55 (scoring at least 4) and that 4% of males were exclusively homosexual all their lives (scoring at least 6). For 30-year-old US men, he estimated that 83% would score 0 (totally heterosexual), 8% would be 1 or 2 on the scale, and 9% would be at least a 3. He acknowledged that people could move on the scale during their lifetime, and indeed Kinsey himself is said to have moved from a 1 or 2 when younger to a 3 or 4 in middle age. In 1953, Kinsey estimated that 20% of women had had some same-sex experience and 13% to orgasm. In unmarried females between the ages of 20 and 35, he claimed there was at least some homosexual experience in 11%-20%, and 1%-3% were exclusively homosexual (Source: The guardian).
For sexualities, there are two beliefs, the first one is that homosexuality is natural, it come with our genes and it is not changeable. The second view is homosexual could be triggered by the environment after birth. The most famous people that supported and studied the ‘gay genes’ was Dr. Dean Hamer. He is known for his research on the role of genetics in sexual orientation. His published research paper in Science in 1993, suggested that there is a possibility that people’s sexuality could influenced by the genes that we born with. The DNA linkage analysis of a selected group of 40 families in which there were two gay brothers and no indication of non-maternal transmission revealed a correlation between homosexual orientation and the inheritance of polymorphic markers on the X chromosome in approximately 64% of the sib-pairs tested, indicating a statistical confidence level of more than 99% that at least one subtype of male sexual orientation is genetically influenced. (Source: ncbi)
Not everyone was convinced by Dr. Dean’s work, that our sexuality effected by the genes born with us, according to the research of University of California, homosexuality could be triggered by the surroundings instead of just effecting by the genes. The finding of them was highly controversial because it suggests that some men made the choice of their sexuality rather than not getting any choices. They have changed their sexuality simply because of their lifestyle or the surrounding environment. They decided not to be as most of people in society, which is pretty strange and not easily to acceptable. It also raises privacy concerns that medical records could reveal sexuality. The Scientists in University of California has studied 37 sets of identical male twins, who were born with the same genetic blueprint, to tease out which genes were associated with homosexuality. In each pair, one of the twins was gay. Only 20 percent of identical twins are both gay leading researchers to believe that there must be causes which are not inherited. (Source: Telegraph)
Theories and Perspectives
Based on the sociology, there are several types of feminisms, mainly Liberal feminism, Radical feminism, Cultural feminism and Marxist feminism. Most feminists’ view on the sexualities are actually connected in their individual personal experiences. More and more feminists have viewed the sexuality as a political issue instead of individual sexual choice. Feminist theory has becoming a major theory in sociology, but some people still believe that feminist theory is focusing on the girls and women, however, it is not true at all. In the modern society, feminist theories were created by people of all genders, by changing the focus, feminist theories have become more creative than assumes the social actors to be men. Feminist theories have provided a framework to help people understand the differences between men on the locations, experience and social situations. Part from those differences, feminist theories also focused on the gender inequality.
Because feminist theories not only concerned about females but also all genders, so the LGBT rights has become a feminist issue. One of feminism concern is the gender, and the society is trying to put a particular gender role to everyone, which it should not happen. The LGBT groups’ relationship has been harmed by this kind of enforcement of gender role.
(A Lesbian-Feminism symbol, The Labrys)
Evaluation
The culture diversities has brought us more angles to view about our sexuality, and it’s showing that human society got high social inclusiveness. More and more younger generation are brave enough to admit their sexuality and able to being their own self. Which is a huge progress for human civilization. Still there are groups of people are not willing to accept the LGBT relationship, they believe that no matter what is the reason, all of the animals should have an opposite sex relationship. But as time changes, culture develops, more and more people are willing to accept and able to understand that homosexual is just a sexuality, it is not a sinful act or against human nature. Which is a brilliant phenomenon. Public has gained the idea that to respect others’ rights and personal choices, this is reducing the crime rate caused by homosexual. Also the education has treated sex educate as an important part, this has been really helpful to reducing the illness, such as AIDS etc. That is one reason that homosexuals are getting more acceptable to publics, and the most significant phenomenon is gay people are allowed to give a blood domination under the conditions.
Conclusion
The hypothesis ‘the percentage of homosexual people in globe is increasing, and it could causes by their own genes or just the lifestyle/surroundings triggered’ has proved in our findings, and according to the studies by Dr Dean Hamer and the University of California, the homosexual could be in our genes and also could trigger by the environment after birth. Teenagers might being confused by their own sexuality, that is one of the reason that they claimed they are homosexual. It is not a really important question to figure out while they are teenagers, no matter their sexuality, the society has becoming more inclusive, publics are getting higher acceptability. But either way, the sexuality shouldn’t be a way to judge a person good or not. Sexuality is just a biological phenomenon.