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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Are gay men actually gay?
What portion of gay men are completely uninterested in women? If there was a highly attractive women who wanted to have sex, what portion of gay men would say no?
Maybe it is my autistic inability to see things from other's perspective but I have a sneaking suspicion that many gay men are gay because grindr is tinder on tutorial mode. I can understand if some of them feel attraction to men but honestly if they had the ability to easily attract high quality women would they really say no?
Anecdata, but the experience gay men have reported to me has ranged from ‘I can recognize when a woman is pretty, but don’t feel attracted to her anymore than to a beautiful sunset’ to ‘I don’t understand what people mean when they refer to an attractive woman’. It has seemed like gay men have tastes in men reasonably close to heterosexual women.
The latter seems very strange to me considering how boy-ish some women can (and sometimes try) to look, and how attractive that boyish look seems to be to gay people.
Femboys get a lot of outsized attention in public awareness, but statistically gay men tend to prefer masculinity, and anecdote suggests that this applies even beyond sex roles (eg, a lot of tops still want a masculine bottom or verse). I think this contradiction arises because a lot of gay men want to themselves been seen as (weakly) feminine more than the general sex role disparity, but that's just a hunch.
On the flip side, even tomboyish women that intentionally bulk up on muscles are pretty fey compared even moderately in-shape men. Often much stronger! But even the bodybuilders are a lot
Beyond that, it's not just (or even mostly) visual appearance. Breasts tend to be a turn-off for gay men, to be fair. But there's differences in texture of skin, of how people sound, and of smell and even warmth. Men are almost always going to be more physically active, even when bottoming, and they're often more vocal. It's... not a small difference.
Sure, statistically, but I'm inclined to believe (based on the femboy meme etc.) that gay men are much more likely to be interested in very feminine men than women are.
I'm not sure about that. In the study you linked, it was the more feminine guys who had a weaker preference for masculine men.
Sure, but that's why I was talking about boy-ish women, not manly women. Boys don't have much muscle, they're just not feminine.
TBH your study goes against my expectations so I might have to revisit those.
It’s probably partly just that gay men are inherently a tail population while heterosexual women aren’t.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link