Belatedly, thanks, Dana! Those were all really, really good. Lovely enough to burn the aftertaste of the horrid Potterverse crossover out of my brain.

>And, honestly, being abused by a guy as a kid isn't a guarantee for heterosexuality by a long shot.

I'm switching your quotes around because I don't think Kathy's saying that at all.

When he held Hotch after pulling him off of Foyet's body in "100," that was a huge thing for him, IMO. So, slashing him with another man just reads as wrong, to me at least.

I can't say I've ever noticed him being significantly more touch-averse than any of the other guys on the team when it comes to men. They aren't a touchy feely group by and large, when you take Morgan and Garcia out of the equation.

Here's where I see the conflict, and I'm not sure where I fall. Between A&E and ION my watching of CM has been so disjointed that it's hard for me to gauge this. But I think I will be looking for it (one way or the other) in rewatches.

Positing Morgan as straight, would affectionate or intimate touching from other men bother him more, given his background? If Morgan is other than straight, would that be different? Would he perhaps have had more impetus to work through/adapt/get over it? Or would it be even more challenging? I don't know at all, but it's an interesting question.

I feel like I should say here, I'm trying to think this through for Morgan the character we know, as much as we do. Not "does abuse fuck you up more or less depending on sexuality." Been spending too much time on other boards, I think.

I will say that Morgan pings me as straighter than Hotch does, but also possibly less worked up about it one way or the other. In a fic context, I can picture either with some fluidity, but with Hotch it would bring a lot more angsty introspection.

I think for me, a big part of my issue with slash fic as a whole is that, before I started hanging out here, I've never known anyone IRL who was out as being bisexual, and the gay people I've known never talked about having any interest in the opposite sex at all. So, when I see a character on tv/movies who is demonstrably het, such as Morgan and Hotch, I tend to put them into the solely-het category, and it would have to take them showing me something else in canon to convince me otherwise.

Criminal Minds gen at AO3:

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Hmm. I think of all the bisexual guys I know only a handful are openly so, and more than a few of the gay ones (including my ex) gave every appearance of being actively het at some point in their adult lives.

I've known enough gay guys that have a sexual history with women that it completely doesn't ping me. And I've known bisexual guys. It's really not an issue for me to imagine someone going from sleeping with women onscreen with sleeping with men offscreen if it's written well.

And I don't see any reason that Hotch or Morgan are inherently straighter than Reid. Butcher, yes, but that's not the same thing.

Both of the gay male friends I've had for a long time tried to "go straight" for a long time. One of them married a woman, and it wasn't until he got divorced that he came out. He admitted he'd suspected he was gay since high school, too.

My gay aunt married a gay man and they had two kids. It completely doesn't ping me.

Interestingly enough, my ex didn't consciously realize he was gay until he was pushing 30. I can't personally imagine what it feels like being that deep in denial (hey, I figured things out when the hormones hit at 13 and just made a pragmatic decision not to share), but apparently a lot of guys are.

Wait, so you mean he didn't just wake up gay? But I thought that happened all the time.

I don't think I met many guys who identified as gay at the time in university, but I sure knew a whole bunch by the time I graduated. Even the most apparently obvious were not willing to share for a while. And even after they shared, they still made out with chicks and copped the odd feel.

Most of my gay family members are lesbians, and most of them came out in their mid teens. So it's seemed to me that it's easier for women--but then again, all of them have slept with men anyway.