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So the root cause and "purpose" of homosexuality is still something that is debated all over the Internet on various forums. Some think it's parasites while others think it's to do with the genetic birth order.
Allow me to ramble thoughts that have nlgone through no epistemic rigor whatsoever.
I feel like homosexuality is correlated with a lack of thirst of competition. Homosexuals like to win but they want to win without a struggle. It seems to me that non-gay men LOVE to be engaged in competition.
Whether it's them participating themselves or choosing a side of people who are participating. I feel like non-gay men like the back and forth between opponents ALMOST as much as winning. When I say "like" I don't mean with a smile on their face but they have a somewhat weird tolerance for the ups and downs that come with rigid competition rather than trying to figure out a way to end the whole thing once and for all.
It would explain why gay men are found in careers that don't necessarily have the strictest of win conditions. (Fashion). This rigid competition only appeals to non gay men. Would also explain the gay men's lack of interest in sports.
I'm aware there is quite a correlation between testosterone and how competitive a man is, but there are gay men with extremely high testosterone (thick beards, thick body hair, lots of muscle mass, aggressivell, violent) but still don't necessarily enjoy competition the way non gay men do. I wonder if the thirst for competition is asomewhat separate variable by itself.
Interestingly enough the most prominent gay business man in the world (Peter Thiel) wrote a book called "Competition is for losers".
Sorry for bad English I'm not a native speaker.
All right, reading this feels like you're kind of pointing to some interesting observations but have come to different conclusions than I have. As a gay man I have complicated feelings about the matter but let me try to unpack some of your points from my perspective. This is going to be really long and informed by a ton of personal anecdotes combined with pop psychology that I literally just made up from my own experiences, so if anyone objects they can feel free to share their experiences instead, but otherwise here goes:
First of all I want premise this with a certain framing that I don't think many people are privy to, even among gay men and certainly not more broadly understood outside of gay circles*. That is to illuminate the dynamic of being a "top" or "bottom." Now, I was misled by this premise for years, believing it only referred to the sexual position of each partner during anal sex: The top puts his penis in the bottom's rectum. This is the broadly accepted and understood meaning in American mainstream society today. And according to your shiny mainstream LGBTQIA image, the top/bottom dynamic basically ends there.** But outside of that narrow American perspective on homosexuality, these terms are more loosely interpreted: In many languages, the terms for top and bottom are more translatable to "active" vs "passive," (aktiv vs passiv in German) for example. And indeed, at the end of the day, what determines who is the top and who is the bottom in a homosexual relationship has literally nothing to do with self identification as a top or a bottom: this sorts itself out naturally. There will always be one partner who is more dominant and one who is less dominant. Any third party can see this. It is strange and disorienting to see a bigger, stronger, taller guy be bottom to a smaller, weaker, shorter guy. It happens but it is weird. It is basically against the way of nature. Homosexual relationships that last are nearly always ones where the top has legitimate, physical, material claims to being the top over his partner. Gay relationships always fail when the bottom is sick of being the bottom, or he believes the top isn't worthy of being the top anymore, or the top starts doubting his ability to be the top.
From my experience, what I've outlined above is exactly how things play out, constantly, even though no one parses it into plain english the way I have. Basically, all gay men exist on some hierarchy or spectrum, that is sort of opaque to each of us at first, but that always sorts itself out in the realm of sexual play. The more dominant man will always become the top to the more submissive man, regardless of who's trying to put what body part where. Bad gay sex is when a submissive man tries to top a more dominant man. You can put up with being a bottom for a man who deserves it, but to be made a bottom of a man who doesn't deserve it, is horrible and degrading beyond the regular degredation of bottoming for a man who you do respect.
I'm rambling a bit so let me get on to some direct responses to what you've written now that I've gotten my own framing out of the way.
Here I get to talk about my observations of straight men, which have really enlightened me greatly about myself and about other gay men. Straight men are motivated to reproduce. But evolution has complicated things: It wants the most fit males to reproduce. So straight men must compete for the right to reproduce with women. It is not that straight men "LOVE" to engage in competition, it is that straight men WANT to engage in the competition, and believe themselves worthy of doing so. Now, an anecdote. When I was about 8 or 9 years old, I saw a pornographic film of a man having sex with a woman for the first time, and this video really shocked me. I saw how huge his penis was, compared to my 8 or 9 year old penis, and how his body was so much more mature and fit than mine, and at that moment I was sort of "cucked" out of ever wanting to compete in the sexual arena with women. I thought, there's no way, this dude is obviously way more fit than I am to reproduce so I better just not even try. Having sexual energy in abundance, and mortified that I'd never be able to compete in sexual competition, I began rather to see myself as an object of sexual desire and tried to repress my masculine urges as I was so unconfident with my own ability to compete with them that my ego couldn't bear being rejected as a male. So I was drawn to conceiving of myself as a bottom, to be used as the sexual gratification of other men- because at least then my ego wouldn't be damaged when I tried to compete with other men.
Near the end of my 20s this role began to really grate on me. I was frustrated in love and sex; I would date many older men, who I was drawn to because it was easier for me to respect someone with more experience than my peers. But I didn't respect them particularly at the end of the day because I didn't see them as good enough to satisfyingly top me. So none of those relationships ever went anywhere. But I also dated a handful of men who were my age or a bit younger, and I always dragged them out, never going anywhere with them, and I never understood why until I realized that at the end of the day I wanted to be a top but was worried about rejection from these guys. In these relationships I was basically their top but too scared to actually make a pass at them because I was afraid of being rejected by them. I spent a few years at the end of my 20s not dating anyone, because I was tired of playing the bottom role and hadn't yet realized my desire to play the top role. Finally I did some self reflection and came to the realization that what I wanted was to be respected and play a top role in a relationship and once I got over my fear of being rejected, and accepted that I'm actually valuable and worthy of being someone's top, I've had much much more fulfilling relationships with men and dating is much more gratifying.
In summary, I'm trying to say that straight men perceive themselves as being a good fit for reproduction. They are driven to compete with other men to reproduce. In a way, my ego was too fragile to risk the rejection of women so I decided not to compete with other men for sex with women. It's as though part of my brain thought I should instead, seek the role of the female, and become the object of men's desires.
More directly:
Gay men are afraid of losing more than straight men. Our egos can't bear to be rejected by women so we create a new game within our own minds where we can become the object of affection of other men, who we know are horny so it seems impossible to lose.
Actually, the most gratifying gay sex you can have, in my experience, is when the bottom is trying to do his best to be the top but the top is always secure in his position and brings up the bottom to his level but they both know who's in charge. Which echoes the back and forth you are describing here. But is this type of gay sex super common? Not really, in my experience. Usually it's the sort of safe sex where the top and bottom agree beforehand which position they're taking, and then they just do that, without any play or experimentation. It's better when the bottom can try to push the limits of the top, and the top is secure enough to be like, yeah dude you like that and play into it, while maintaining his status as a top. If a bottom tries to top the top and wins, it's gross and bad because the top has been degraded and the bottom feels bad about it too.
The point I'm trying to make here is that gay men probably aren't really predisposed to this sort of back and forth competition, but it is very gratifying when it happens in a good way where both partners are secure and enjoying themselves. Does straight sex have a similar dynamic? I'm curious to know.
I have a degree in fashion design and I don’t know what you mean by this. The fashion industry is extremely competitive.
At the end of the day, the barrier for gay sex is so insanely low that any “competition” that happens is purely elective. Like, as long as you aren’t aiming to top a guy way above you on the totem pole, i.e. your expectations aren’t totally unrealistic, you can get laid with little to no pushback from your partner. So if you’re competing as a gay man, it’s either because you’ve realized that it can be fun, or it’s because you’re a loser trying to top someone way out of your league. So I can see where Peter Thiel is coming from with that book title, but the underlying logic isn’t the same for straight men.
*Though sometimes I wonder if some Ayn Randian type cynical old women could sus out the top-bottom dynamic as I've laid it out in this post. I'd love to hear more straight people's takes on homosexuality as the echo chamber of gays talking about gays can really leave me feeling insane.
**I believe this is meant to empower people who play the bottom role in homosexual relationships. I personally find this role degrading for long term situations but pointing that out is extremely unpopular politically and risks the entire scheme of homosexuality imploding on itself, if every bottom decided to see their role as degrading, so I guess it's really best if all the tops just shut up and act like it's not degrading to be playing second fiddle to a fellow full grown man, but I digress.
Power dynamics are weird. Or at least they are to me.
For the longest time I'd assumed that gay men engaged in a pragmatic and egalitarian division of the passive and active roles so that both people get a fair turn. Because in my mind a kind of intuitive equalising game-theoretical situation would develop where neither would be content to get the short end of the stick over and over and would simply leave. I was surprised to find out that the model is wrong, and that, as you confirm, the active and passive roles rarely swap over. I was more surprised to learn that apparently the passive role is predominant among gays. They're not struggling to find someone to fuck, if anything there's a surplus of those, they're struggling to find someone who'll fuck them. (Apparently a similar situation is common in BDSM communities). As a straight man this is an unfamiliar dynamic. The active and passive roles tend to play out naturally in straight sex. I'm often left wondering why a partner is out of breath afterwards when she's put in about 80% less exertion. If I was holding out for a woman who took a physically dynamic role in sex I'd be setting myself up for disappointment. Women's sexual passivity is such a commonly shared assumption that they frequently criticise men for not knowing where the clitoris is while also neglecting that they've got both hands free should they care to look for it themselves. Men however have to be reminded not to touch themselves in situations that aren't even sexual.
I'm not sure that I expected it to be greatly different on account of the inherently active-passive roles but it's still a disappointment when you grow up fantasising about something vaguely "lady in the streets, freak between the sheets" where the woman can match your sexual dynamism and you find out it's more like "passive in the streets and between the sheets". (And then you look around and notice women pathologically attributing their passivity to men, and that this itself is a manifestation of passivity....)
To formative childhood experiences, even when I was very young there was an intuitive specialness to attractive women. Men were background noise. Big powerful man? I suppose it would be good to be someone like that. Small wimpy man? I suppose it would be worse - unless he has an attractive wife. Image of a woman in a flattering outfit? Entrancing. A naked woman? That felt like discovering magic. If I'd seen a full on porno I would have thought the male lead was incredibly enviable rather than psychologically threatening, you know, if I'd thought of him at all. Reframing the social dynamic as one where you give up and compete with the woman to win the man is incomprehensibly gay. Horny straight men know that horny gay men exist. We know that Grindr exists. Some of us even know that the gay men who exist are keener to get dicked than do the dicking, and that there's a common gay fantasy for seducing straight men. We prefer getting rejected by women.
Getting back to competition informing orientation, the flip side of competition isn't limited to withdrawal. There's also cooperation. I lost 90% of interest in competition just as I hit puberty because that age was when sports stopped being a cooperative activity to generate the most fun and became a narrow contest solely to make number go higher than opponent, which as I saw it sucked all the fun out. And to be clear this wasn't a rationalisation to deal with being bad at sport, I was consistently among the first picks for any team sports and chose to drop out of playing for the school team. While I lost interest in conscious competition I still developed a typical pubescent boy's interest in women. I went and found the fun in drugs and music instead, and the sexual interest was (un?)satisfied with porn. I would have been better served if I'd had it explained to me that I could have competed against myself to achieve objective improvements and crucially that those improvements would in turn have afforded me better opportunities in the realm of sex and dating. Sadly/gladly I was in my late 20s when PUA evo-psych gave me a model that explained the world in a way that better mapped to reality than the blend of romantic stories and latent cultural feminism I'd been brought up with (women don't like arseholes, The One exists, be a modern man, it will happen if it's meant to be, etc).
There are gay relationships where they trade roles sometimes, but it's kind of just a nice thing for the top to do, or something to add excitement to the relationship, but you have to maintain the power dynamic at the end of the day or the relationship is going to fall apart.
I would say it depends on who you are and where you are. If you're 6'2 and 300 lb of muscle, everyone's going to look like a bottom to you, and you're going to look like a top to them. It would be degrading to you to be topped by 95% of the guys you meet. But if you're 5'2 120 lb and fem, trying to top, 95% of the guys you meet will be unwilling to be topped by you. Most guys fall in the middle, and younger guys tend to be more bottom and older guys tend to be more top. I don't think it's true that there are always more bottoms than tops, but it may be true that there are more men who see themselves as bottoms or are afraid to top.
This made me laugh. Yeah, I know, I guess I'm trying to elucidate the more base situation that informs my homosexuality versus any straight man, and the best I can do is point to the fact that I'm afraid to compete with men for female attention so I want to compete with women for male attention instead
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