Apprentice Boy

Looking back at the past twenty-two years, I have lived a happy life. As a pure Chinese, I was born in Macao, a small city on the south east coastline of the country. My parents love me and I have a little sister who is six years younger than I. Among my friends I was the lucky one because seldom of them would have a chance to study far abroad like I. A few months after my sixteenth birthday, I flew to London alone. Since then I have lived in the capital for six years, now not long until I finish my bachelor in Graphic Design. I thank God for everything I have.

Inspite of the cheerful scenes, I suffer from an inadequacy which has stemmed in my life since early childhood. I am a homosexual. Around the age of four or five, I have sensed an attraction towards the mature male torso. A child probably wouldn’t worry too much. However towards the age of nine or ten I started to fear that it is the so-called ‘gay‘. In a society where this word is one of the most despised, the young boy faced an anxious truth. Why is this all happening? Why don‘t I have a choice? What has gone wrong?

Did Biology determine sexual orientation?

Back in the early 20th century, attempts have been made to explain the determination of sexual orientation by Biology. Magnus Hirschfeld, the German sexologist and gay-rights pioneer, was the innovator of these earliest theories. Researches have been conducted in the areas of brain studies, anatomy, hormones and genes ever since (Steakly 1975).

Among these areas, the theory promoted by Günter Dörner the German neuroendocrinologist on prenatal hormone is believed to the dominant idea. Based on experiments on animals, this theory suggests that if the sexual differentiation of the brain in a human fetus proceeds in an abnormal direction, the baby is destined to be gay. The cause could be unusual levels of sex hormones present in the brain that affects it or there is an intrinsic peculiarity in how the brain responds to the hormones (Dörner...