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Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 22, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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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.

It's an interesting theory, but I have to question how many gay men you know and thought hard about in the process of writing this. Or rather, probably, how many hot, upper class gay men who live in urban centers. Homosexuality is not experienced as fleeing from competition, but as a constant state of competition. If one becomes gay to escape heterosexual competition, it is out of the frying pan and into the grindr. Anecdotally and stereotypically, it is gay men who put more effort into their appearance, gay men who are in better shape and less likely to be obese, gay men who are more likely to choose hobbies that partners might like over vagina-drying hobbies like vidya games or arguing on obscure internet forums.

I would also point out that entertainment fields that gay men dominate, fashion and theater, are as or more competitive than fields straight men dominate, athletics and video games. The win conditions may seem less legible to you, but that makes them no less real to those participating. But materially, economically, there is only so much room at the top, and the bottom gets nothing out of it in fashion.

But more importantly, sexually, the vast majority of heterosexual men are monogamists, while gay men are much more likely to be open see also, all studies put it at 4-5% in straight couples and 30-50% in gay male couples. Moreover, two thirds of men are married, while only one out of every ten homosexuals jumped the broom. Monogamy is sexual socialism, polygamy is sexual capitalism. In a monogamous relationship, competition may be fierce initially to get a partner, but after that you have a secure long term partner. If you let yourself go, if you stop romancing your spouse, if you form unattractive habits; then social shame and government policies act to keep the couple together, or at least to make it inconvenient to exit. In a polygamous relationship, you are an at-will employee. You never stop competing, if you ever lose your edge, you'll lose your spot to a fresh applicant. The rewards scale differently. In a monogamous relationship, however hot I get the reward is the same. In a polygamous relationship, the hotter I am the more sexual partners I can have.

So I guess I just don't see it, in terms of how gay and straight men actually live their lives and fuck. As I get older and I interact with more people I actually find that homosexuality confuses me more and more. When I was a kid and it was just a political issue, and I knew perhaps a half dozen gay men, it was easy to buy into simple explanations like genetics or "helper-in-the-nest" or hormone wash (or, for that matter, sin). Now, with experience, no explanation on offer really satisfies me. The epicycles-type mental explanation I'm working through is that what we bunch under the heading "homosexuality" is actually a big pile of different phenomena from diverse causes, but that's probably just a lack of understanding rather than a sophisticated understanding.

The epicycles-type mental explanation I'm working through is that what we bunch under the heading "homosexuality" is actually a big pile of different phenomena from diverse causes, but that's probably just a lack of understanding rather than a sophisticated understanding.

Where can I read more about this?

I wrote a prior comment in an SSS here. In general, just read all the comments on here, and think of all the different activities we put under the heading "homosexuality" and figure that maybe the act of men having sex with men might have multiple causes. Dudes might fuck dudes for different reasons at different times in different places. Trying to come up with a single cause of all those things is like conflating wage theft, embezzlement of corporate funds, armed robbery, burglary, running a ponzi scheme, shoplifting at self checkout, lying on your tax return, and creating a false will for a relative, and selling used cars with bullshit "warranties" that don't cover anything; and then looking for a "theft" gene that unites all those disparate kinds of thieves.