g/Gay?

If you’ve ever read anything about Deaf people you may have noticed the distinction of d/Deaf. ‘Big D Deaf’ as it is sometimes called, signifies a person who is culturally Deaf whilst ‘Little d deaf’ is used to describe a person with hearing loss. This can make for some interesting case studies, Deaf hearing people (children of deaf adults in particular) and those profoundly deaf people who are culturally Hearing. Confused? Probably best to stop here then.

I was thinking about the dichotomy of culture and biology in terms of homosexuality. A friend in Aberdeen is in the beginnings of a relationship with a woman who has ‘never thought of herself as gay’ and I started to wonder if perhaps the d/Deaf distinction could be applied to being g/Gay.

In order for this to work we have to apply the lovely neat scientific notion of a double dissociation, which for d/Deaf people would look something like this:

	deaf	hearing
Deaf	X	X
Hearing	X	X

This table works pretty well. All combinations can and do exist. It might appear a little odd at first but it doesn’t take too much thought to figure out how each one could arise. The g/Gay table requires a little step outside of the box.

	gay	straight
Gay	X	?
Straight	?	X

Can you be a culturally gay heterosexual? Or a culturally straight homosexual?

I don’t really know where I’m going with this. I’ve been trying to finish this with a profound point for the last 2 weeks to no avail but due to the need to post something before the blog police come along and arrest me I’m simply going to say: Discuss.

Better late than dead.

I’m now officially on holiday until 5^th January so I can once again return to being a good little blogger! The most exciting thing to happen in the last few weeks was a visit by Helen and Dougal to Aberdeen. The weekend was just so crazy – that’s the real reason I haven’t blogged, I’ve only just recovered from the comedown….

…….Ok not really. It was quite a quiet weekend, we watched some films, went out for dinner and drank a lot of tea but, as middle aged as this may make me sound, it was very nice to just spend some time with friends I don’t get to see all that often.

Aside from that life has consisted of working and PhDing. I finally handed in my ethics application, I forsee no problems so all that’s left to do now is to design the stimuli, find some willing deaf people and start testing! Give me a couple of days and I’ll write another blog about what I’m actually going to be doing…

I’m off to Singapore on Monday for 3 weeks which I am immensely looking forward to. Not only do I get to spend Christmas with my dad for the first time I will be able to remember but I get to see a couple of very close friends who have relocated to the other side of the world. Oh and I get to fly there business class :D