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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   27454 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023

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This Reddit thread that I saw linked over on rDrama made me wonder if any studies have ever been done about the relative intelligence of straight people and gay people.

Just like there is reason to believe that some ethnic groups are more intelligent than others on average, is it possible that some sexual orientations are more intelligent than others on average? I have not tried to crunch the numbers, but it seems to me that gay people are overrepresented compared to their population size among the ranks of prominent intellectuals and artists. Not just recently, but also hundreds of years ago. Them living in high cost of living areas would add evidence to this theory.

Of course there are many possible other explanations, and the thread mentions some of them: gays have more money because they usually have no kids, gays in poor areas stay closeted out of fear of persecution and are drawn to liberal and usually also expensive cities, gays move in to poor areas and make them fashionable and then those areas become rich. Etc.

One other possible explanation that comes to my mind that I did not see in the thread is that maybe because it is easier for gay men to get laid than straight men on average, they don't have to devote as much of their minds as straights to getting laid and are thus free to focus on other things. I'm not sure about that theory, though - after all, just because getting laid is easy for you does not necessarily mean that you will spend less of your mental energy thinking about getting laid. And being a sexual minority could tend to add some level of stress that partly counterbalances the benefits of being able to easily get laid, especially in the olden days.

I suppose it is also possible that intelligent, creative gays are more likely to come out than intellectually mediocre gays, but I have no idea if there is any truth to that.

I do wonder, though, if maybe part of the reason for gay affluence and prominence is an actual intelligence difference of some sort.

Since @FD4280 has already quoted Pushkin, I'll do the usual with Galkosvky (he has a somewhat humorous quote for every occasion):

The event that took place in Plato's Athens was far from innocuous

And in general, the emergence of philosophy is simply and fully against nature. What prompted people to such a useless, fruitless and destructive endeavour? What manner of cause? – Sexual perversion. Ancient Greek society is a homosexual society, homosexual in a deep, committed sense. One need only read the works of Aristophanes. They were written by a convinced pederast, and a pederast living in an appropriately arranged, congruous pederastic world at that. Socrates, too, was a pederast; Plato was a pederast as well. The Greek youth gathered around the learned men and formed philosophical unions of homosexual kind. Herein lies the precondition for the birth of philosophy. A young man, unlike a girl, has intellect, which creates the opportunity of intellectual courtship. After all, what can be more attractive and tempting for a man than a wonderful conversation on lofty topics? The most mediocre, pathetic male's eyes light up should you start talking to him about eternal issues. And Socrates, so absorbed in Eros, but, alas, unshapely, threw all his energies into the creation of the palace of reason; and as a result – what a catch! – the handsome Alcibiades fell in love with him. It was Eros that begat the revolution, otherwise it is utterly incomprehensible why the shell of naive everyday consciousness would have burst.

But the nascent fire of the Logos was so bright, so dazzling, that not only some dirty homosexuality (which even among the Greeks was seen as somewhat sinful), but the whole world, and life itself, began to seem a dirty and dark cave. Socrates refused the love of Alcibiades and then drank hemlock. Aphrodite the Vulgar turned into Aphrodite Urania. Love for woman, the inferior being, into love for the perfect being, man; carnal love – into perfect, Platonic love, into male intellectual friendship – into the brotherhood of philosophers. Then into love for the idea of Love, and love for the world of ideas, identified by Plato with the realm of Hades, the god of the dead and the netherworld.

The fire of philosophy since then was passed among people as something given, cleansed of its original filth. After asexualisation, there even came the time for heterosexualisation of philosophy. Having become a social phenomenon, it was mirrored in the world of women. A woman cannot comprehend the worth of a philosopher, but she can see that in the male intellectual world her chosen one is deeply respected for some reason. And that turns out to be enough. Philosophy has become a much more normal phenomenon, more adapted to real life. After all, this adaptation has been going on for two and a half millennia. And yet, we should not forget the rather rakish history of the birth of self-consciousness.

Also:

You see how complicated it all is, how contradictory. Paradox atop a paradox. A young man goes to a literary club, is fond of weightlifting, wanders around city parks at night in a woman's dress, writes abstruse poetry, and has cut his arms with a razor. Who would have ever expected it! What a complex young man! And yet he's not complex. He's a pederast. A pederast is always busy, his eyes are always restless, a young man is ceaselessly in search. Homosexuals, after all, don't and can't have love. Only partners. Partners are exchanged quickly, sought by the lavatories at night. That's why you have to hustle day and night, "look for a dose".
There is such a profession - spies. They are complicated, contradictory…

(Galkovsky has a wife and three children, lives a very «boring» life, and generally despises people in unconventional relationships).

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