An Unpopular Thought on Homosexuality

So here’s a question:

If men being attracted to men, or women being attracted to women, is “normal” and distinct from heterosexuality, then why does at least one of the partners in a gay pair have pronounced characteristics of the opposite sex? (one of the men is the “girl”, one of the women is the “boy”, etc.)

I believe the answer is that it’s not “normal” or distinct.

I don’t think there’s any such thing as “gay” attraction. There is only “sexual attraction” between men and women, and this simply gets confused, complicated, distorted, or maligned (depending on your perspective) by the grayscale nature of sexual physiology, culture, and identity.

If being gay were an actual distinct option from heterosexual desire rather than a blending or distortion of it, we would see many couples where both partners were highly typical of their own gender, i.e. men with few feminine characteristics and women with few masculine characteristics.

But we don’t.

To put this another way, why are “bottom” (girl) lesbians attracted to “top” (boy) lesbians? The answer is that it’s natural for bottoms to be attracted to tops, and for girls to be attracted to boys. And that’s the point: it’s no different in gay couples. Their attraction patterns are essentially mimicking the natural pattern seen in “regular” couples.

In short, gay couples aren’t being “gay”; they’re being heterosexual in a non-standard way.

And there’s good reason for this. A number of studies have shown that on tests in which results are predictable based on gender, homosexual subjects score more like the opposite gender. In addition, brain studies have shown that gender is significantly physiological.

So is it really unexpected to have a man who appears to science much like a woman be attracted to a man? Or to have a woman who appears to science much like a man be attracted to women? No. In fact, it would be more interesting if that weren’t the case.

This doesn’t have any bearing, of course, on how public policy should be shaped. I remain in support of gay rights as I always have been. But as always I think it’s harmful to promote a false concept–in this case the notion of a second “type” of sexuality where men like men and women like women.

There isn’t any such distinct type. There’s just boys liking girls, and girls liking boys. With homosexuality you simply have people who embody (more than usual) a blend of both genders, and this results in the behavior we see. ::

Notes

[1] I use the words “normal” and “regular” in this essay. I don’t technically believe in such things with respect to humans; I use them because are quickly understood by readers.

[2] I use “natural” as “typical” here, as anything that occurs in nature can arguably be called natural.

Links

[ Gay Men Share Womens' Talents for Map Reading | telegraph.co.uk ]
[ Symmetry of Homosexual Brain Resembles That of Opposite Sex | sciencedaily.com ]