A major misconception that normal people have about gays is that they're more sophisticated, dashing or stylish, and relatively wealthy. Most of these images come from propaganda shown on TV and movies, and would be quickly corrected if you lived in a city where they congregate. What a rude awakening to discover that in reality queers have campy taste, dress like 13 year-olds, and want for disposable income (especially after paying for all the drugs, and for young bodies if they're middle-aged AIDS mummies).
The same goes for the blue-collar, manual-labor lesbo. I've only ever seen one who was like that -- shaved head, cargo shorts, wife-beater, and barbed wire tattoo around each bicep. You're far more likely to find lesbian professors, for example, and other middle-class and professional types as well, I'd assume.
(One of the few heart-warming facts about the make-up of university faculty is that there tend to be very few fags. Most gay agitation on campus comes from full-time activist groups and students, not so much from professors. But there's always a good number of lesbian faculty who show up to support the cause.)
But for the benefit of those who don't live around many homosexuals, let's turn to the General Social Survey. (Only whites are studied.) First consider education level. Among males, straights average 13.8 years of education and gays 14.5. Despite their mild advantage in education, though, gays' average annual income is much lower. Among high school graduates, gays earn about $49,000 vs. $61,000 for straights (adjusted for inflation to the year 2011).
This fits with the infantilization theory of male homosexuality, since they earn less not because they are dumber or less educated, but simply because they're underachievers and don't want adult responsibilities. The feminization theory does not account for this pattern because when women earn less than men, it's because they don't go to school for as long, work fewer hours, or don't work at all, mostly to take up the duties of being a wife and mother. Gays have no nurturing instinct, let alone nurturing behavior, and so do not have that excuse to fall back on for their lower earnings.
As for non-heterosexual females, straights average 13.7 years of education, bisexuals 13.6, and lesbians 14.5. (I break out bisexual vs. lesbian here because there does seem to be a distinct bisexual type in women, whereas most "bisexual" males are homos deep down.) Unlike the gay case, though, lesbian high school grads earn more on average than straight women -- about $52,000 compared to $36,000. Bisexuals earn the least, at $28,000.
I don't have a simple grand theory of lesbians and bisexuals, but those figures match with other patterns, where lesbians are more adult-like, generally blending in in everyday life (unlike freakish faggots), and bisexuals have a neurotic, pissed-off, wild-child profile. At any rate, clearly the causes and outcomes of deviant sexuality are very different between males and females.
The old stereotypes of the gay ghetto and the careerist lesbian are much closer to the truth than the newly invented propaganda about cultured, wealthy gays and Rosie the Riveter lesbians. Actually, most of the smokescreen is devoted to obscuring the reality of gay life, since it would be too depressing, and too damning of the pro-gay crusade, to show a drug addict free-loading at some friend's house, before going out to a Lady Gaga nightclub to suck 10 different dicks.
Instead we must be presented with the impeccably dressed sophisticate who lavishes his disposable income on taking out his fag hag friends to exotic dinners. Back on planet Earth, it's the chick friend who plays the mothering role to the down-and-out fuck-up of a son played by her gay BFF.
GSS variables used: sex, race, educ, sexsex5, conrinc
I think the lesbian demographics reflect a chicken and egg problem. Which comes first, the success or the lesbianism?
ReplyDeleteI think success often leads to lesbianism because of female hypergamy. Successful women find slim pickings among similarly successful men, because the men have many options.
For women, romance is not nearly as much about the physical as men, and lesbianism is not gross and disease-prone in the way that male homosexually is.
So when it gets lonely at the top for those careerist women, as the statistics show that it does, a certain percentage no doubt choose same sex relationships over loneliness.
This happens plenty among men at the other end of the spectrum (prison populations). The love market is 100% unfavorable and many adopt gay activity.
Who has the most favorable love-market dynamics among men? Sports stars and movie stars come to mind. The number of gay men among these is roughly zero, because there is no need. For female athletes and movie stars, given female hypergamy the choices are much less, and a significant percentage are lesbian.
The question asks about the sex of your partners from the last 5 years, so lesbians here means no men for at least 5 years. That must exclude opportunistic lesbians, since any career woman can jump in bed with a man if she wants.
ReplyDeleteHooking him into a long-term relationship is another thing, but the hetero/homo question used only asks about who they've slept with.
I think it to have been quite common for gay men in the 40s, 50s, 60s and even now to have acted much as frat brothers did, not because of infantilization but because gay men consider other gays "family."
ReplyDeleteJust as the fraternity is family for straight young men in one stage of their lives, gay men, often estranged from their families, have clung to one another as family during their adult years. Thus, the term "family" is common among them.
As a result, it was common for gay men w/ little or no money in their pockets to crash for a time at the home of other gays. The favor was returned down the road when the other guy was down and out.
As for "down and out"? In the past, at least, it was common. Gay men spend money like water, a result, I suppose, of their not having a reason to save--no wife or kids.
Of course, maybe one day we'll discover that whatever biological trigger causes the homosexuality also causes some measure of compulsive behaviors as well.
Stay tuned to the studies.
"For women, romance is not nearly as much about the physical as men"
ReplyDeleteyes it is. The blog author even made a post on this. "Looks matter most to young girls, even in a long-term relationship"
http://akinokure.blogspot.com/2011/02/looks-matter-most-to-young-girls-even.html
"Going in reverse order, most academics and their audience -- people who read Thinking Books -- were total losers in high school and college. Being plain or ugly, the guys never got much attention and are still bitter and resentful about being overlooked or rejected by "the superficial cheerleader" type -- in reality, any girl he ever had an interest in. If he can just block that part of his life out, then he'll see only the part where wealth and status do matter, namely when looking for women much beyond their peak reproductive value. And since these guys make a decent buck and aren't at the bottom of the status totem pole, it boosts their own self-esteem to think that wealth-and-status is what drives women crazy."
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I posted this before, but the best theory I've seen, by Andrew Lehman, is that mothers give birth to sons with opposite levels of sex hormones.
Assuming that the "homosexuality gene" tends to run in families, we can assume that lesbians would have opposite sex hormonal levels to gay men.
Gay men are neotenous - meaning they have low levels of both testosterone and estrogen.
The female relatives of gays would then have high levels of estrogen and testosterone. And since homosexuality runs in families, lesbians would have hormone combinations and personalities similar to the female relatives of gay men.
Lehman claims that estrogen gives people a heightened aesthetic sense, which in turn makes high-estrogen humans more discriminating when judging the facial attractiveness of others.
This, in turn, makes high-estrogen men and women choosier when picking sex partners - their heightened aesthetic sense requires a higher level of physical beauty for arousal.
(Yeah, it works the exact opposite of the way PUAs say it does. This is because most PUAs are nerds).
Estrogen, then, determines the level of promiscuous behavior - *not* testosterone. This is why gay men, being low in testosterone, are still highly promiscuous.
Testosterone is associated with social dominance.
Lesbians have high testosterone, so they want to be successful in life. They are dominant. However, they also have high estrogen, which makes them more sexually selective, and less promiscuous. Because they are not easily turned on, lesbians will probably be somewhat less social, giving them more free time to work towards social dominance. This creates the stereotype of the sexually frigid feminist woman who is obsessed with her career.
Gay men have low testosterone and low estrogen. Low testosterone makes them not particularly care about becoming socially dominant, so they're unlikely to bust ass for money and power. Low estrogen gives them low sexual standards. A gay man with low standards can easily find another man with low standards wherever he goes, which is why they are known to troll for partners in all manner of places. And thus, the stereotype of the gay man who spends most of his time looking for sex or having sex, working just to get by.
I expect that correlations between homosexuality and sex hormones can vary somewhat, so there probably are mature gay men, neotenous lesbians, etc. They are, however, the minority.
Anonymous 3:33 PM,
ReplyDeleteDo you have any data to back up your assertions?
There is some correlation between male homosexual activity and being raised by a single mother. Not a strong one, but not a weak one either.
ReplyDeleteBoys raised by single mothers are more likely to end up in prison and criminal activity so I'm thinking this leads to more homosexual activity.
Gender, sexual orientation, and occupational interests: Evidence of their interrelatedness - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886912000773
ReplyDeleteThe students rated their interests in 26 different occupations.
Seventeen of the occupations were of greater interest to males and the remaining nine appealed more to females.
Regarding sexual orientation, male homosexuals expressed significantly more interest in all nine female-preferred occupations than did heterosexual males; and, in most cases, bisexual males expressed preferences that were intermediate in this regard.
For females, sexual orientation was related to interests in eight occupations. Six of these were in the direction of female homosexuals (or bisexuals) preferring more male-typical occupations. The remaining two occupations – those of accountant and head of a corporation – were actually of greater interest to heterosexual females than to homosexual (or bisexual) females.".
Perhaps this might help solve some of the questions over whether gays have any particular interest in nurturing occupations?
I can't see the table data, so I don't know if the female occupations including nurturing occupations (medicine, childcare, teaching and so forth) or if they are just the flighty, fanciful aesthetic type interests normally associated with gay men.
If you have journal access agnostic, perhaps you could check this out?
nurturing occupations (medicine, childcare, teaching
ReplyDeleteNot all medical specialties can be described as nurturing, e.g. surgery (and subspecialties), radiology, pathology and anesthesiology. In practice, even internal medicine and pediatrics are arguably less nurturing than nursing. The docs have to see loads of patients and can only spend a few minutes with each one.
Note to commentors: always be wary of any sort of parenting study. Unless they're using adopted children, they are pretty much worthless, thanks to heredity (and even then they are confounded by child-to-parent effects):
ReplyDeleteTaming the “Tiger Mom” and Tackling the Parenting Myth « JayMan's Blog
Male bisexuality does indeed appear to be real.
The roots of female same-sex attraction do appear to be different than male same-sex attraction. And indeed, female bisexuality does appear to be distinct from lesbianism, and perhaps has different causes. Same-sex attraction is heritable in women, more so than men (around 0.33):
The Evolution of Female Bisexuality « JayMan's Blog