Newspapers are discussing the Court decisions in the case of Sec 377 of Indian Penal Code that declares homosexual relationship illegal. I must confess that I never understood homosexual behaviour till I read this write up of Colin Wilson in ‘Mysteries’ which provided a different perspective.
I quote:

Plato observes in the Symposium that men and women were originally halves of a single creature, which was divided into two by the Gods; now we all wander around searching for the other half. As a man holds a woman in his arms, he experiences a desire to blend with her, and the actual penetration of her body is only a token union. If we assume that sexual attraction is based on a desire of male to become female, and vice versa, then various perversions suddenly begin to fit into a neatly symmetrical pattern.

Men and women can react to this pull towards opposite sex in two ways, either by resisting it or affirming it. Charlotte Bach labelled the resisters ‘denialists’; and the affirmers ‘asseverationists’. This means that we have four basic types. But then, a man can be anatomically male while psychologically female, and he can react to this situation in two possible ways. He might want to deny the pull towards becoming the opposite sex [which in this case is male – for he is psychologically a woman, and that is what counts] by dressing up in female clothes or generally behaving in a female manner. He might be a ‘drag queen’, or the femininity might emerge in subtler ways: in being obsessively tidy, a stickler for etiquette, etc. On the other hand, he might decide to affirm the desire to become the opposite sex by dressing up in excessively masculine clothes and behaving with exaggerated aggressiveness, like the leather-jacketed rowdy. Charlotte Bach labelled the drag queen a ‘male negative denialist’ [read: physically male, psychologically the opposite, denying maleness], while the leather-jacketed type is a male negative asseverationist [physically male, psychologically the opposite, asserting maleness].

It can be easily seen that there are eight possible types: male and female negative asseverationists and denialists. Obviously the normal male is a male positive denialist, physically and psychologically male, and denying the tendency to become feminine. A normal female is a female positive denialist, physically and psychologically female, denying the pull to become male. The counter part of the leather-jacket type is the excessively feminine female. She is, of course, basically lesbian [femme, not butch], just as leather-jacket type is basically homosexual. She is a female negative asseverationist. Oddly enough butch lesbian is psychologically female as well as physically, but she asserts the desire to become a member of the opposite sex, dressing in tweeds, wearing riding boots……Clearly, the usual distinction between a ‘normal’ person and a ‘pervert’ is superficial.

Bach observed that none of this type is permanent; they all tend to change. [unquote].

I am not an advocate of homosexual preference; I just have a curiosity to understand the world around me and this write up seems to provide a good explanation.

Vivek