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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.

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.

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.

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.

I feel like non-gay men like the back and forth between opponents ALMOST as much as winning.

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.

It would explain why gay men are found in careers that don't necessarily have the strictest of win conditions. (Fashion).

I have a degree in fashion design and I don’t know what you mean by this. The fashion industry is extremely competitive.

"Competition is for losers"

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.

Since this has gotten AAQC'd, I'd caution that while it's a very fun kink, it's not universal, and even for the people with the kink it's not constant. There definitely are people who see top/bottom solely through dominance hierarchies (and, I'll admit that 'dude who wins bet/wrestling/game/has a bigger dick tops today' has an appeal personally), but there's also vers pairs where people trade off who 'has' to top this time, and power bottoms, and ultra masc tops with role reversal kinks, and other kinks that don't really fit into it (eg, I've also got a liking the punchline 'this ain't a rollercoaster), and I know of some of those sets who are pretty happy with their relationships and sex lives. And there's other people who just prefer frottage, exchanging oral, whatever.

((And then there's people who'd prefer to sub but can't bottom for anal over medical reasons or just don't get as much stimulus from it; prostate and anal stimulation doesn't work the same for everybody.))

It's certainly common, and in some demographics and environments a wide majority. And there's some physical reasons (not that dissimilar from the straight version!) that make it more tiring and more difficult to do all the moving while bottoming. But at the same time, it's not so universal a law of nature that you should be surprised by examples outside of its case.

I think your later comments go into this a bit, but

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.

It's probably the majority take among fujoshi; I don't think it takes a lot of cynicism or age.

In the furry fandom, Maririn's probably the best-known (out, cis) female artist that focuses on M/M stuff and has a lot of comics available, but Rukis Croax does a lot of (good) writing, both porny and otherwise, and it's not accidental there. In fandom circles, it's common enough that when tvtropes talks about modifying character heights to fit the stereotypes, they're really not exaggerating. For more 'conventional' gay-porn-by-women, Iron Spike's Smut Peddler stuff favors it at length, though I don't think exclusively. Sometimes that reflects the sorta gay guys that they're working with (or selling to), but there's a not-entirely-unfair criticism that it's often a way for the bottom to feel more resonant to a lady who's reading or writing along with Mr. Hitachi.

Which probably says a bit about what extent het relationships have some overlap. The "girl looks for guy at least six inches taller than her, who's a breadwinner and physically strong and sexually forward and who she feels is worth letting dominate her" is absolutely a trope. I'd give the same caveats -- it's not the only approach -- but it's very much the mass market fantasy.

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.

To an extent, but "submissive and breedable" as an joking-not-joking insult is pretty common, and 'everyone' knows what it's implying. There's nothing about losing a fair competition that has to be degrading. And there's a lot of people find being pleasantly beaten as part of the point, in ways where 'bottom-as-breedable' would be a lot more fun than... uh, a lot of the prep work.

I think it's more that it is useful to distinguish between someone that wants to get dominated, and those who want a 'free prostate example', even if in practice there's a pretty wide amount of overlap. But there's a lot of reasons to not want to air that laundry in front of the hets.