# Difference between heterosexual and homosexual attraction (other than the obvious) **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 10, 2016, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/difference-between-heterosexual-and-homosexual-attraction-other-than-the-obvious/748498 "2016-03-10T01:30:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2016, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/difference-between-heterosexual-and-homosexual-attraction-other-than-the-obvious/748498/21 "2016-03-10T18:01:45Z")
Not directly on topic, but something that didn’t really make a dent in my skull until just a few years ago is the difference in distribution of potential mates for people seeking a same sex relationship and how much it can affect their lives. I have nearly half the human population as potential mates with an overlapping sexual orientation, but someone looking for a mate of the same sex has far fewer possibilities. I don’t know how, but in some way I think this must have some influence on attraction. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2016, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/difference-between-heterosexual-and-homosexual-attraction-other-than-the-obvious/748498/22 "2016-03-10T18:19:12Z")
OK… I think a good place to start would be: Is there any way to meaningfully generalise the attraction heterosexual men feel toward women? If so, is that different to the generalised attraction that heterosexual women feel toward men? If there is a difference, is the typical homosexual attraction of one man for another similar to one of the above? or neither? or either in assorted cases? ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2016, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/difference-between-heterosexual-and-homosexual-attraction-other-than-the-obvious/748498/23 "2016-03-10T18:55:21Z")
This thread seems like a fine place for a kind of oddball question I’ve been wanting to ask for ages. So we’re all familiar with the stereotype of “hey, look at that picture of a hot woman. I can’t see the face, but man she has a smoking body, I’d like to hit that… OH MY GOD IT’S MY SISTER ACK ACK ACK ACK BRAIN BLEACH BRAIN BLEACH!!!” (or of course the other way around with the genders swapped). It occurs to me that for someone who is homosexual or bisexual, the same thing could happen, but with a picture of you yourself. It would take a slightly contrived situation for there to be a moderately revealing picture of you that you didn’t immediately recognize due to the wardrobe and stuff. But if it did happen, and you realized you had been ogling a picture of yourself, would you get that same sibling-y incest-y ookiness? Has anyone heard of that actually happening? ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2016, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/difference-between-heterosexual-and-homosexual-attraction-other-than-the-obvious/748498/24 "2016-03-10T20:50:57Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Not directly on topic, but something that didn’t really make a dent in my skull until just a few years ago is the difference in distribution of potential mates for people seeking a same sex relationship and how much it can affect their lives. I have nearly half the human population as potential mates with an overlapping sexual orientation, but someone looking for a mate of the same sex has far fewer possibilities. I don’t know how, but in some way I think this must have some influence on attraction. I wondered this too - do gays and lesbians have much less opportunity to be “picky,” so to speak, due to scarcity? ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2016, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/difference-between-heterosexual-and-homosexual-attraction-other-than-the-obvious/748498/25 "2016-03-10T22:16:20Z")
Same sex sexual attraction does not invoke a hard-wired set of “who plays what role” expectations. Admittedly, heterosexual attraction does not _intrinsically_ do so, but it tends to for deeply ingrained cultural reasons. If two lesbians, or two gay guys, are in a situation where they’re evaluating each other as possibilities, they may conceivably end up with one person “being the girl” and the other “being the boy”, or (probably more often) they may not, but whether they do or don’t, _the assignment of roles isn’t bolted on to what sex they are_. That this affects actual interaction and coupling behavior is a given, but even before that it plays a role in sexual attraction and how we interpret it and the lens through which we perceive it. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2016, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/difference-between-heterosexual-and-homosexual-attraction-other-than-the-obvious/748498/26 "2016-03-11T05:33:28Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > This thread seems like a fine place for a kind of oddball question I’ve been wanting to ask for ages. So we’re all familiar with the stereotype of “hey, look at that picture of a hot woman. I can’t see the face, but man she has a smoking body, I’d like to hit that… OH MY GOD IT’S MY SISTER ACK ACK ACK ACK BRAIN BLEACH BRAIN BLEACH!!!” (or of course the other way around with the genders swapped). > > It occurs to me that for someone who is homosexual or bisexual, the same thing could happen, but with a picture of you yourself. It would take a slightly contrived situation for there to be a moderately revealing picture of you that you didn’t immediately recognize due to the wardrobe and stuff. But if it did happen, and you realized you had been ogling a picture of yourself, would you get that same sibling-y incest-y ookiness? > > Has anyone heard of that actually happening? The Greeks had a story about that, but the guy drowns before realizing it’s himself. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2016, 5:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/difference-between-heterosexual-and-homosexual-attraction-other-than-the-obvious/748498/27 "2016-03-11T05:42:00Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Not directly on topic, but something that didn’t really make a dent in my skull until just a few years ago is the difference in distribution of potential mates for people seeking a same sex relationship and how much it can affect their lives. I have nearly half the human population as potential mates with an overlapping sexual orientation, but someone looking for a mate of the same sex has far fewer possibilities. I don’t know how, but in some way I think this must have some influence on attraction. I’ve never understood this argument. You have 3.5 billion people to choose from, and I have a mere couple hundred million. For god’s sake, how many men do I need, that a couple hundred million doesn’t give me enough to choose from? You can only meet a certain number of people in your life; all the people you’ll never meet don’t enter into the equation. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2016, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/difference-between-heterosexual-and-homosexual-attraction-other-than-the-obvious/748498/28 "2016-03-11T05:49:21Z")
But within the people you’ll meet, there’s less which are mutually eligible for you than who are eligible for someone who’s heterosexual so long as one only considers that detail. Nobody considers only that detail in reality, though, and like any other taste, one can move within and to populations which increase the odds. Going to gay bars increases the odds of meeting gay people, going to comicons increases the odds of meeting people who are into cosplay. It’s not rocket science… that would involve going to aeronautics conventions or dropping by the cafeteria of the physics college. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2016, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/difference-between-heterosexual-and-homosexual-attraction-other-than-the-obvious/748498/29 "2016-03-11T14:26:57Z")
As **Nava** is saying, it’s about your chance of meeting someone with the same sexual orientation at random, but there’s more than that. Within the 3.5 billion straight women that could potentially be a mate for me based on sexual orientation there are going to be far fewer that I am attracted to enough to form a lifelong relationship, and that reduces the prospects for a gay person much more. Attraction isn’t some simplistic concept, I don’t think we’re talking about a calculated approach, but I do think the number of people you meet who fit your qualifications, and their distribution among the population must have at least some sub-conscious effect on attraction for many individuals. These subtleties of human behavior aren’t the kind of thing I’m good at, I don’t want to say how much of a factor this is, how extensively it affects people, but it’s certainly part of the mix. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/difference-between-heterosexual-and-homosexual-attraction-other-than-the-obvious/748498.md?page=1)