Hypothetical question: Say you got a bunch of guys and, from birth, raised them utterly without contact of any kind with women. Would you get a normal distribution of sexual preferences?
Are they at any time exposed to show tunes?
I seem to remember a Konrad Lorenz book mentioing that mammals, even raised without seeing any members of their own species (let alone any members of the opposite sex), will develop the same sexual attraction they would if raised in their species’ normal social order. He does not mention whether this applies to humans or not.
At some point you’d have to expose them to women, to find out their sexual orientations. And I’m betting at that point you’d get a normal distribution of sexual preferences. If they were never exposed to women, though, I think they’d all be gay by default. Or asexual.
Sex is sex. Does homosexual sex really make you homosexual? I don’t think so. So when all these guys from birth not having known women, I’d imagine they’d have sex, being horny men with no alternatives. But I don’t imagine the straight ones would “romantically love” the other guys in the same sense normal people romantically love people of the opposite sex. I suppose we’d have the let them all have sex/masturbate/whatever first, then see what happens when we let women enter into the picture.
If anyone’s pregnant and known to be carry boys, let us know. We’ll set up an experiment. While we’re waiting, how big of a pool do you think we’ll need?
Sexuality lies along the bell curve. In cultures where homosexuality was normal (e.g. Ancient Greece) pretty much everyone did it until it was time to have kids, then some stopped and some didn’t. In monosex prisons many (not all) heterosexuals convert to what is available (i.e. homosex).
You wouldn’t get the normal (I guess you mean contemporary Western) distribution because that isn’t available. You would get most of the range of pure homosexuality (i.e. top, bottom, versatile, celebate) with some exotics (e.g. fetishists). Introducing women into the enclosure would result in some instant sexual conversions (and romantic ones) but I think that most guys would be happy with their current romantic lives and not be interested in the women other than as a novelty factor.
“Orientated”? Don’t think so.
“Oriented,” perhaps.