6 ms·

As a non-straight, the notion that men and women are driven by slightly different interests, that result in different sexual and dating behaviours, is so obviou

by retrac 6y ago

As a non-straight, the notion that men and women are driven by slightly different interests, that result in different sexual and dating behaviours, is so obvious that I am amazed it would be a revelation to any straight person. Just look at the relationship patterns of gay men vs. lesbian women. About 40% of gay men in America are in an open relationship. The practice is basically unknown among lesbians. Infidelity is reported as slightly more common among gay men than among heterosexuals. Nearly unknown for lesbians. Pornography, sex clubs and hookup apps are close to ubiquitous among gay men. To the point some have sardonically argued these things are gay culture. They exist for lesbians too, but comparatively speaking they're niche; lesbian culture is, arguably, centred on poetry. Left to their own devices without the other sex to mess things up, the pattern is clear enough.

Hackbraten 6y ago
> lesbian culture is, arguably, centred on poetry. Pardon?
- retrac 6y ago
  Sorry, I should not have left a half-baked half-joke idea hanging on a sensitive topic like that. In the 1990s, back when we had physical bookstores, and when such things were even segregated sometimes, this was pretty in your face. If you went into a lesbian bookstore you would find a great preponderance of poetry. A gay men's bookstore would, by contrast, be relatively overloaded with how-to manuals and erotic novels of the more descriptively explicit kind. To this day, there are simply far more lesbian literature periodicals, especially poetry ones. This shouldn't be too surprising; straight women also read a lot more poetry than straight men in the USA today. When I look at typical lists of prominent gay men and lesbians in the American arts, I see a pattern. The men tend towards film, photography, dance and musical theatre. The women towards poetry, modernist theatre, and perhaps in conflict with my hypothesis, comic novels. There is no gay male equivalent of similar status to Audre Lorde. It's hard to imagine, really, what that might even be like. And there is no lesbian equivalent of John Waters. Even within their genres, I find the likes of Bechdal and Baldwin have different... natures? I admit it's a little hard to articulate without sounding like some sex-essentialist mouthbreather. I figure one perspective is a bit more emotionally introspective than the other, and one perspective is a bit more embodied than the other. And it tends to be reflected in the kind of arts and the nature of the arts produced. If this is more than just an observation bias on my part it is of course only a slight tendency and it should not be taken too seriously; Alan Ginsberg was not a lesbian.
  - horatiocain 6y ago
    You read the most thoughtful things sometimes, thanks
  - morelisp 6y ago
    > There is no gay male equivalent of similar status to Audre Lorde. "Similar status" is frustratingly vague if someone wants to argue this. Fame? Whitman. Canonical? Wilde. Political? Gunn. > And there is no lesbian equivalent of John Waters. You're implying the difference must be something quite fundamental, but every time I read a statement like this I'm reminded of Gregory Corso's comments when someone asked him why there were so few women among the beat writers. There were women, they were there, I knew them, their families put them in institutions, they were given electric shock. In the 50s if you were male you could be a rebel, but if you were female your families had you locked up. There were cases, I knew them, someday someone will write about them.
techdragon 6y ago
This sure takes a left turn at the end, down a very questionable alley. Care to elaborate?
- retrac 6y ago
  Sorry, it was a half-baked idea that mostly just communicates my questionable sense of humour. I expanded on a bit on what I was thinking in another reply in this thread.
xyzzy21 6y ago
The feminist left is convinced that humans are PURE Tabula Rasa and that NOTHING is biological - everything is either a choice or it's a social construct. Far too many straight people have bought into this nonsense - thinking that men and women are 100% identical, which is not based in science (at all) but in ideology via indoctrination and bullying. You have to become "red-pilled" (which is primarily a rediscover that there are biological sex differences and they affect behavior) to realize this today as a straight male. Women only have an incentive to think about it otherwise when they hit the fertility wall and it's (often) too late.
- okareaman 6y ago
  Is that really true or is it a "straw woman" argument? Can you recommend a feminist left person who can explain this position, because it seems outlandish to me that someone could think there weren't biological differences. What about testosterone and estrogen?
  - AndrewKemendo 6y ago
    Ti-Grace Atkinson, Kathie Sarachild, Lierre Keith and Michele Wallace. These are a few names of Radical Feminist thinkers who ascribe to the view that gender is a "fashionable concept" or the concept of femininity is "ritualized submission." http://meetinggroundonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/GENDER-Statement-InterActive-930.pdf http://meetinggroundonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/GE...
    - maxerickson 6y ago
      Are a few 'Radical Feminist thinkers' the same thing as 'the feminist left'?
      - retrac 6y ago
        No, not really. If anything the opposite view (uncharitably, that men are all doomed by their biology) is not uncommon either. And of course most feminists (FWIW I consider myself one) are not tabula rasa types. Very few people worth taking seriously believe that literally, these days. The evidence is overwhelmingly against the idea. More often you'll hear something like that the slight male tendency towards asserting dominance and impulsive behaviour compared to women is just that, slight. And that it is greatly amplified by culture and socialization. (And well, this is probably true to some degree?) One can, of course, believe the sexes are somewhat different on average, while believing in their equal value, ability and merit in all the things that are actually important.
fwip 6y ago
> The practice is basically unknown among lesbians You must be traveling in some weird circles, because more than half the lesbians I know are in open or poly relationships. (Me, my wife, and most of my social circles are wow, so it's not like I'm basing this off of knowing four lesbians.) > lesbian culture is, arguably, centred on poetry. Okay, yeah, I'm not sure you really have met any lesbians.
- retrac 6y ago
  > You must be traveling in some weird circles I was being too hyperbolic in my writing and it did a disservice to the ideas I was trying to communicate. I am sorry. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5958351/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5958351/ > 32% of gay participants, 5% of lesbian participants, 22% of bisexual participants, and 14% of those who described their sexualities as “other” reported being in open relationships; approximately 8% of heterosexual participants, 14% of gay participants, 6% of lesbian participants, 18% of bisexual participants, and 6% of those who selected “other” for sexuality reported nonconsensual non-monogamy Those numbers surprised me too, in many ways. > Okay, yeah, I'm not sure you really have met any lesbians. Again, I am sorry. I was being a bit tongue in cheek and failed to pull it off. Obviously sex clubs do not define gay male culture. either. I explained what I was thinking there elsewhere in a reply in this thread.
  - morelisp 6y ago
    A sample size of 83 (open relationships) and 58 (gay/lesbian people) seems awfully low to draw any serious conclusions. It also does not break down sexuality by sex as far as I can see, so even if we take the data at face value it could say only that queer women are more likely to use a term other than "lesbian" than queer men are to use one other than "gay" (an effect that's also been noted on other studies). With that sample size I would also have expected at least a couple non-binary responses.
    - retrac 6y ago
      The NHSSB has its flaws; one being that, given it was sampled from the US population at large, when you try to look at small minorities (and minorities within minorities) the data starts to dry up. It does have the breakdown by sex data you mention, though. There are other signs that point the same way. In 2019 a Canadian survey on open relationships (which did not look directly at sexual orientation) they found a remarkable gap between the % of men and women who report such a relationship would be ideal: 18% of men and 6% of women. -- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30932711/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30932711/ The data on number of sex partners is telling too. From a recent US population survey, the percent who report 3 or more sex partners in the last 12 months: 35% of gay/bisexual men, 15% of straight men, 6% of straight women, 17% of lesbians. -- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7293001/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7293001/ A slightly older Australian study from the early 2000s is a bit more dramatic. Asking the number of partners in the previous five years, it found that for men who identified as homosexual, the mean was 32 and the median 7 partners, with the max capped at >2000 to stop skewing the numbers. For women identified as homosexual, it found a mean of 3 and a median of 1 partner with a maximum of 54. -- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14696706/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14696706/ Unfortunately all such studies tend to suffer from at least some of the same flaws you mention, with either sample size, reliability of sampling, or issues of identity confusing the situation. (In the Australian study, it seems women who reported multiple same-sex partners identified as heterosexual relatively more often, for example, which follows the pattern of what you noted.) The particular numbers vary from study to study, but this general pattern is almost always there. While the median number of partners among gay men tends to only be a bit higher than among straight men, the mean is always outright hilarious. A large minority of gay men are quite promiscuous, and there just is not an equivalently-sized phenomenon with women who have same-sex relationships.
globular-toast 6y ago
Very, very few other mammals are monogamous. Most birds are monogamous, but even in birds, about half of them mate for life and the others mate seasonally, meaning they find a new mate even season. It would be truly bizarre if we were not only one of the only monogamous mammals, but also mate for life! Monogamy is, more or less, a female fantasy. All women love the fact that birds mate for life. Meanwhile males fantasise about polygamy. That's why porn exists. It's no surprise that the original "tinder" was Grindr, a gay app. It's perfect for gay men. Tinder, on the other hand, doesn't change the game at all. If anything it concentrates even more attention on the top men as men swipe right on about 80% of women and women swipe left on 80% of men.
- Hiopl 6y ago
  > Monogamy is, more or less, a female fantasy. All women love the fact that birds mate for life. Meanwhile males fantasise about polygamy Maybe there is a kernel of truth to it deep in our evolutionary/reproductive drive, but every guy I know, without exception, wants a monogamous relationship.
  - AndrewDucker 6y ago
    As a guy, can confirm.
  - globular-toast 6y ago
    Don't mistake mate guarding for monogamy. Mate guarding is completely compatible with polygamy and is seen in other great apes. When men say they want monogamy, what they mean is they want exclusive access to their female. That doesn't mean they don't want other females in addition. Monogamy is something males trade to get exclusivity. It doesn't mean this is what they want. If you truly believe men want monogamy then how do you explain porn? It's a huge industry and more an accepted part of life than ever. Do you think it's all being consumed by a few guys you don't know?
    - Hiopl 6y ago
      No, every guy I know, including myself, consumes porn. But it's not because I or they want polygamy. I'm not even sure how you're making that connection, since that's quite the leap.
deaddodo 6y ago
> Just look at the relationship patterns of gay men vs. lesbian women. About 40% of gay men in America are in an open relationship. The practice is basically unknown among lesbians. Infidelity is reported as slightly more common among gay men than among heterosexuals. Nearly unknown for lesbians. On the flip side though, homosexual men tend to have the highest relationship satisfaction levels nationwide: https://www.advocate.com/people/2020/2/13/study-gay-people-have-happier-marriages-straight-people https://www.advocate.com/people/2020/2/13/study-gay-people-h... While female homosexual relationships tend to have the lowest satisfaction and heterosexual relationships fall right in the middle for both sexes. There’s probably a lot to do with that (biological imperatives, DINC, etc); but it’s telling that people always point to high incidents of open relationships or promiscuity despite the evidence of happiness. * Also worth pointing out that this only focuses on binary relationships and not alternative situations (translesbian/transgay, fluid, poly, etc).

by retrac 6y ago

Hackbraten 6y ago

> lesbian culture is, arguably, centred on poetry. Pardon?

retrac 6y ago
Sorry, I should not have left a half-baked half-joke idea hanging on a sensitive topic like that. In the 1990s, back when we had physical bookstores, and when such things were even segregated sometimes, this was pretty in your face. If you went into a lesbian bookstore you would find a great preponderance of poetry. A gay men's bookstore would, by contrast, be relatively overloaded with how-to manuals and erotic novels of the more descriptively explicit kind. To this day, there are simply far more lesbian literature periodicals, especially poetry ones. This shouldn't be too surprising; straight women also read a lot more poetry than straight men in the USA today. When I look at typical lists of prominent gay men and lesbians in the American arts, I see a pattern. The men tend towards film, photography, dance and musical theatre. The women towards poetry, modernist theatre, and perhaps in conflict with my hypothesis, comic novels. There is no gay male equivalent of similar status to Audre Lorde. It's hard to imagine, really, what that might even be like. And there is no lesbian equivalent of John Waters. Even within their genres, I find the likes of Bechdal and Baldwin have different... natures? I admit it's a little hard to articulate without sounding like some sex-essentialist mouthbreather. I figure one perspective is a bit more emotionally introspective than the other, and one perspective is a bit more embodied than the other. And it tends to be reflected in the kind of arts and the nature of the arts produced. If this is more than just an observation bias on my part it is of course only a slight tendency and it should not be taken too seriously; Alan Ginsberg was not a lesbian.
- horatiocain 6y ago
  You read the most thoughtful things sometimes, thanks
- morelisp 6y ago
  > There is no gay male equivalent of similar status to Audre Lorde. "Similar status" is frustratingly vague if someone wants to argue this. Fame? Whitman. Canonical? Wilde. Political? Gunn. > And there is no lesbian equivalent of John Waters. You're implying the difference must be something quite fundamental, but every time I read a statement like this I'm reminded of Gregory Corso's comments when someone asked him why there were so few women among the beat writers. There were women, they were there, I knew them, their families put them in institutions, they were given electric shock. In the 50s if you were male you could be a rebel, but if you were female your families had you locked up. There were cases, I knew them, someday someone will write about them.

techdragon 6y ago

This sure takes a left turn at the end, down a very questionable alley. Care to elaborate?

retrac 6y ago
Sorry, it was a half-baked idea that mostly just communicates my questionable sense of humour. I expanded on a bit on what I was thinking in another reply in this thread.

xyzzy21 6y ago

The feminist left is convinced that humans are PURE Tabula Rasa and that NOTHING is biological - everything is either a choice or it's a social construct. Far too many straight people have bought into this nonsense - thinking that men and women are 100% identical, which is not based in science (at all) but in ideology via indoctrination and bullying. You have to become "red-pilled" (which is primarily a rediscover that there are biological sex differences and they affect behavior) to realize this today as a straight male. Women only have an incentive to think about it otherwise when they hit the fertility wall and it's (often) too late.

okareaman 6y ago
Is that really true or is it a "straw woman" argument? Can you recommend a feminist left person who can explain this position, because it seems outlandish to me that someone could think there weren't biological differences. What about testosterone and estrogen?
- AndrewKemendo 6y ago
  Ti-Grace Atkinson, Kathie Sarachild, Lierre Keith and Michele Wallace. These are a few names of Radical Feminist thinkers who ascribe to the view that gender is a "fashionable concept" or the concept of femininity is "ritualized submission." http://meetinggroundonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/GENDER-Statement-InterActive-930.pdf http://meetinggroundonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/GE...
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    Are a few 'Radical Feminist thinkers' the same thing as 'the feminist left'?
    - retrac 6y ago
      No, not really. If anything the opposite view (uncharitably, that men are all doomed by their biology) is not uncommon either. And of course most feminists (FWIW I consider myself one) are not tabula rasa types. Very few people worth taking seriously believe that literally, these days. The evidence is overwhelmingly against the idea. More often you'll hear something like that the slight male tendency towards asserting dominance and impulsive behaviour compared to women is just that, slight. And that it is greatly amplified by culture and socialization. (And well, this is probably true to some degree?) One can, of course, believe the sexes are somewhat different on average, while believing in their equal value, ability and merit in all the things that are actually important.

fwip 6y ago

> The practice is basically unknown among lesbians You must be traveling in some weird circles, because more than half the lesbians I know are in open or poly relationships. (Me, my wife, and most of my social circles are wow, so it's not like I'm basing this off of knowing four lesbians.) > lesbian culture is, arguably, centred on poetry. Okay, yeah, I'm not sure you really have met any lesbians.

retrac 6y ago
> You must be traveling in some weird circles I was being too hyperbolic in my writing and it did a disservice to the ideas I was trying to communicate. I am sorry. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5958351/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5958351/ > 32% of gay participants, 5% of lesbian participants, 22% of bisexual participants, and 14% of those who described their sexualities as “other” reported being in open relationships; approximately 8% of heterosexual participants, 14% of gay participants, 6% of lesbian participants, 18% of bisexual participants, and 6% of those who selected “other” for sexuality reported nonconsensual non-monogamy Those numbers surprised me too, in many ways. > Okay, yeah, I'm not sure you really have met any lesbians. Again, I am sorry. I was being a bit tongue in cheek and failed to pull it off. Obviously sex clubs do not define gay male culture. either. I explained what I was thinking there elsewhere in a reply in this thread.
- morelisp 6y ago
  A sample size of 83 (open relationships) and 58 (gay/lesbian people) seems awfully low to draw any serious conclusions. It also does not break down sexuality by sex as far as I can see, so even if we take the data at face value it could say only that queer women are more likely to use a term other than "lesbian" than queer men are to use one other than "gay" (an effect that's also been noted on other studies). With that sample size I would also have expected at least a couple non-binary responses.
  - retrac 6y ago
    The NHSSB has its flaws; one being that, given it was sampled from the US population at large, when you try to look at small minorities (and minorities within minorities) the data starts to dry up. It does have the breakdown by sex data you mention, though. There are other signs that point the same way. In 2019 a Canadian survey on open relationships (which did not look directly at sexual orientation) they found a remarkable gap between the % of men and women who report such a relationship would be ideal: 18% of men and 6% of women. -- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30932711/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30932711/ The data on number of sex partners is telling too. From a recent US population survey, the percent who report 3 or more sex partners in the last 12 months: 35% of gay/bisexual men, 15% of straight men, 6% of straight women, 17% of lesbians. -- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7293001/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7293001/ A slightly older Australian study from the early 2000s is a bit more dramatic. Asking the number of partners in the previous five years, it found that for men who identified as homosexual, the mean was 32 and the median 7 partners, with the max capped at >2000 to stop skewing the numbers. For women identified as homosexual, it found a mean of 3 and a median of 1 partner with a maximum of 54. -- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14696706/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14696706/ Unfortunately all such studies tend to suffer from at least some of the same flaws you mention, with either sample size, reliability of sampling, or issues of identity confusing the situation. (In the Australian study, it seems women who reported multiple same-sex partners identified as heterosexual relatively more often, for example, which follows the pattern of what you noted.) The particular numbers vary from study to study, but this general pattern is almost always there. While the median number of partners among gay men tends to only be a bit higher than among straight men, the mean is always outright hilarious. A large minority of gay men are quite promiscuous, and there just is not an equivalently-sized phenomenon with women who have same-sex relationships.

globular-toast 6y ago

Very, very few other mammals are monogamous. Most birds are monogamous, but even in birds, about half of them mate for life and the others mate seasonally, meaning they find a new mate even season. It would be truly bizarre if we were not only one of the only monogamous mammals, but also mate for life! Monogamy is, more or less, a female fantasy. All women love the fact that birds mate for life. Meanwhile males fantasise about polygamy. That's why porn exists. It's no surprise that the original "tinder" was Grindr, a gay app. It's perfect for gay men. Tinder, on the other hand, doesn't change the game at all. If anything it concentrates even more attention on the top men as men swipe right on about 80% of women and women swipe left on 80% of men.

Hiopl 6y ago
> Monogamy is, more or less, a female fantasy. All women love the fact that birds mate for life. Meanwhile males fantasise about polygamy Maybe there is a kernel of truth to it deep in our evolutionary/reproductive drive, but every guy I know, without exception, wants a monogamous relationship.
- AndrewDucker 6y ago
  As a guy, can confirm.
- globular-toast 6y ago
  Don't mistake mate guarding for monogamy. Mate guarding is completely compatible with polygamy and is seen in other great apes. When men say they want monogamy, what they mean is they want exclusive access to their female. That doesn't mean they don't want other females in addition. Monogamy is something males trade to get exclusivity. It doesn't mean this is what they want. If you truly believe men want monogamy then how do you explain porn? It's a huge industry and more an accepted part of life than ever. Do you think it's all being consumed by a few guys you don't know?
  - Hiopl 6y ago
    No, every guy I know, including myself, consumes porn. But it's not because I or they want polygamy. I'm not even sure how you're making that connection, since that's quite the leap.

deaddodo 6y ago

> Just look at the relationship patterns of gay men vs. lesbian women. About 40% of gay men in America are in an open relationship. The practice is basically unknown among lesbians. Infidelity is reported as slightly more common among gay men than among heterosexuals. Nearly unknown for lesbians. On the flip side though, homosexual men tend to have the highest relationship satisfaction levels nationwide: https://www.advocate.com/people/2020/2/13/study-gay-people-have-happier-marriages-straight-people https://www.advocate.com/people/2020/2/13/study-gay-people-h... While female homosexual relationships tend to have the lowest satisfaction and heterosexual relationships fall right in the middle for both sexes. There’s probably a lot to do with that (biological imperatives, DINC, etc); but it’s telling that people always point to high incidents of open relationships or promiscuity despite the evidence of happiness. * Also worth pointing out that this only focuses on binary relationships and not alternative situations (translesbian/transgay, fluid, poly, etc).