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I was not out in college (in the early 80's), though I would have probably answered I was gay on an anonymous survey. I didn't have any of the advantages you l
by prirun 5y ago
I was not out in college (in the early 80's), though I would have probably answered I was gay on an anonymous survey.
I didn't have any of the advantages you list of being out. For me, work and school in my teens and 20's were ways to avoid having to deal with being gay. You have to spend your time doing something, and for me, not being out meant I didn't have gay friends, I didn't relate that well to straight friends who might try to fix me up with girls, talk about girls, etc., I wasn't interested in dating girls, and pursuing men was totally outside my realm of possibility. So what's left? Work, school, music. These allowed me to feel good about what I was doing with my life at a time when I wasn't ready to deal with my sexuality.
So yeah, I can totally relate to this. In fact, I'd say closeted gay guys are more focused on school than out guys because they mostly don't have a social life to distract them from academics.
In a similar way, I'd guess that by percentage of the respective populations, gay guys are more accomplished musicians than straight guys too. Why? Because music is a difficult, time-consuming activity that requires a lot of dedication and is highly respected by society. Its perfect for a young gay guy looking for something productive to do that doesn't involve dating and sexuality.
- DoreenMichele 5y agoThank you, especially for that last paragraph.
- ushtaritk421 5y agoWhat you describe in the last paragraph is, I think, the reason so many gay men join/ed the priesthood. Celibacy is less of a sacrifice / it is/was a highly respected thing a man who doesn't want to marry can do.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- vmception 5y agoand then many diverge from the celibacy part and for a subset of them sometimes that involved children. huh, never previously thought about it that way. I could never figure out how so many children get abused especially from religious authority figures of the same sex, and the depth of the normie conversation is that "its because their brain is messed up there is no explanation worth considering because this conversation makes us uncomfortable" and it just seemed to me that the distribution was too concentrated for the "power abusing pedophile seeks position of power" answer, because I couldn't reconcile the "yeah but the same-sex part?", very high concentration. Interesting to see there are other externalities that contribute to the concentration. For consensual things between adults I wonder if that is common amongst the priests/religious authority figures on the same-sex side.
- bavent 5y agogay != pedophile. I think a more reasonable explanation is that people who are sexually attracted to kids maybe seek out positions where they will have authority over them. Edit: looks like you edited your comment while I was typing my reply. I think the concentration can be explained by the larger amount of boys-only schools, etc., and priesthoods allowing only males. So naturally there is a filter - men who are attracted to young boys will go into the priesthood more than men who are attracted to young girls.
- vmception 5y agoyeah I figured someone would misread that no matter how many ways I tried to write it. hm yeah I can see that filter, and its also probably self-reinforcing across generations now as abused alumni take the same roles and continue the cycle
- edgyquant 5y agoThat’s true but a percentage of all people, gay or straight, are pedophiles. I think the reason the church is associated with boys in general as there was easier access to boys (this may not be the case and I could be speaking in ignorance.) I also read that the church itself doesn’t have a higher rate of sexual abuse than any other institution that works with kids (e.g. schools.)
- jhgb 5y ago> something productive to do that doesn't involve dating and sexuality. Ah, not popular music, then? ;)