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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.
For anyone arriving here from the Quality Contributions thread, please know that a lot of this post is wrong.
The writer has distilled three different concepts into just two, and incorrectly described those two. The three concepts are:
Position (top/bottom/vers/side)
Activeness/Passiveness
Dom/Sub
Position describes only the non-literal position when having sex: the insertive partner, the receptive partner, either, or neither. Note that it does not describe who is physically on top or physically on the bottom. I acknowledge that this is an American-centric view; I will address this below.
Activeness/Passiveness describes who is really doing the work when having sex. It's almost definitely the person who is physically on top just due to physical constraints.
Dom/Sub describes power play. This is a kink which is not particularly abnormal but still not common in gay sex, just like straight sex. Dom/Sub play may not involve actual sex but rather other acts.
There is some shorthand lingo that you have probably heard that hits more than one of these categories. "Power bottom" is one such word: a bottom who likes being the active partner.
The three categories described above are separate for a reason. Power bottoms exist (and are common!). Subby tops exist. The reality is that some people just really like or really dislike receiving anal sex and that is apparently very separate from how active they like to be in the bedroom. It is also different from how much control they like to have in a dom/sub scenario.
Specific things that the parent commenter got wrong:
The fact that some languages do not have enough nuance to accurately describe sexual relations does not imply that sexual relations lack that nuance. It is inevitable that those languages will eventually develop that nuance if they haven't already.
The disorientation described here is not universal. In countries where gay people are well accepted like the United States, Canada, and the U.K., big masculine bottoms are very common as are tiny twinky tops. There is almost no correlation between sex position and body type. As a result, no one assumes position based on the size of the person. You have to ask. This is why "position" is a field most people fill in on Grindr and a defacto behavior has developed on Hinge where many men set their gender on Hinge to (for example) "Man↗️" to let people know they're a vers/top (in this example).
This sentence alone should pique everyone's BS-meter.
This is absurd. Gay relationships succeed or fail for the same reasons as straight relationships: communication, trust, mutual respect, mutual interests, ect. Tops don't get to be tops because they are "worthy", they get to be tops because they enjoy topping, the same as for straight people. The rare case of two tops dating is trivially solved by having an open relationship.
Ultimately this sentence is the perfect encapsulation of the problem with the post. The writer feels that bottoming is degrading. In gay-accepting society, it isn't degrading at all. A person with the mindset that bottoming is degrading is not going to have an open mind toward accepting that people fall outside of this framing. If we want to have a discussion about culture in predominantly Muslim countries then we can do that but it is inevitable that gay relations there will trend toward using the nuance with the three categories I described above. People used to not know that homosexuality was a separate concept from transgenderism. But now we do. Societies tend toward more nuance.
We're teetering on the edge of an impolite discussion about mental health so I'm just going to stop here; I don't think it would be necessary or helpful to keep piling on.
Please just be careful about who you trust and what you believe on the Internet. The parent post sounds insightful but it's really just deep insecurity colored by experiences specific to one moment in time in one geographic region. I hope that the pseudo-insight isn't what led to this being listed as a Quality Contribution.
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