Cultural Stories - Impact of Cultural Beliefs on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender People's Experience

Life is incredibly complicated. Human beings are constantly bombarded with
millions of bits of information about what is going on around us. Culture can
be understood as a short cut tool that our brain develops to deal with
complexity.

Humans create stories that connect up key bits of
information we need to know to live, to give us a simple
story about how the world works.

We rely on our story for most of our day to day
decision making.

The cultural story shapes our sense of reality. Our brains use the stories to
work out which information to pay attention to and which bits to ignore. Our
brains filter out most of the information that does not fit the story. The result
is that the stories become our reality.

Cultural stories are found everywhere there are explanations about how the
world works - in science, religion, political ideology, novels, movies, TV and
music.

Culture can shape people's sense of reality in really profound ways.

Western culture thinks of time as linear. We
are moving from the past to the future.
Some cultures think time is cyclical. Like
the cycles of the days, seasons, and years,
we are going around and around the same
circle.

In the 1800s women were believed to
have no sexual desire. Women who did
were considered to be suffering
illnesses. These days, women are
diagnosed as having ‘sexual
dysfunction’ if they do not want sex
enough.