# Does sexual orientation affect the liking for a certain type of music? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 6, 2009, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-sexual-orientation-affect-the-liking-for-a-certain-type-of-music/516574 "2009-11-06T15:12:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Edward\_The\_Head](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ce73a5/32.png) [@Edward\_The\_Head](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Edward_The_Head)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2009, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-sexual-orientation-affect-the-liking-for-a-certain-type-of-music/516574/41 "2009-11-09T14:05:16Z")
> [@Tengu](#): > > Seriously, how did people not know Rob Halford was gay until he came out? Because some people just don’t give a shit. The number of times that I’ve wondered if Halford was gay when not actually talking about it with someone else is between 0 and 1. Almost every metal video of the time was laughable so pointing out he looked gay in those videos is pretty silly, I’m sure lots of other guys did too. Honestly I still wouldn’t think about it seeing those videos and I know he’s gay. ---
**Author:** ![Dorothea\_Book](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/da6949/32.png) [@Dorothea\_Book](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dorothea_Book)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2009, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-sexual-orientation-affect-the-liking-for-a-certain-type-of-music/516574/42 "2009-11-09T14:36:44Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > There’s been no “leap to the biological explanation first”. There’s an awful lot of denial that such an explanation can even exist. > > Much of modern Western culture. > > When you start talking about evolutionary psychology as being a pseudoscience. And by doing so, deny that evolution applies to us, handwave all the common elements that all humans have, and the repeated and massive failure of people who tried to implement that sort of humans-are-a-blank-slate theory in the real world, only to run into the intractable existence of a biologically determined human nature that no amount of propaganda or culture can change. > > You say that there’s no such thing as evolutionary psychology? What’s your evidence for such an extraordinary claim? What’s your handwave to dismiss all the evidence for our built in drives and instincts? Where’s your explanation for why we violate the normal rules of evolution? You are putting an awful lot of words into my mouth **Der Trihs**! If you want to start a debate about this in Great Debates I’d be happy to take part. To clarify, I didn’t say that there was no such thing as evolutionary psychology. What I meant by what I _did_ say is that the discipline that calls itself by that name is dubious and pseudo-scientific. A bunch of people citing their own articles. (Now to be sure that’s true of any academic discipline but in this case it’s a demonstrably narrow group.) I don’t of course mean that human beings don’t have psychologies nor that these psychologies were not subject to evolutionary processes as we understand them. I would also dispute that the majority of Western culture reflects a blank slate attitude (even Locke himself actually thought that a lot of things were pre-given by nature and natural laws). The idea of the blank slate emerged relatively late in Western culture, was contested all along, and has been fighting a mostly rearguard battle against various kinds of “natural” and biological assumptions since around the mid nineteenth century. One could easily argue that much of Western culture is markedly deterministic in its outlook. ---
**Author:** ![Icerigger](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/icerigger/32/432_2.png) [@Icerigger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icerigger)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2009, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-sexual-orientation-affect-the-liking-for-a-certain-type-of-music/516574/43 "2009-11-09T15:24:13Z")
> [@](#): > > Perhaps a better SOMEWHERE: gay icon Streisand and openly gay superstar Johnny Mathis. My mom is a huge Johnny Mathis fan since his beginning and absolutley refuses to believe he is gay. He can’t be! She has been in love with him for 40 years. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2009, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-sexual-orientation-affect-the-liking-for-a-certain-type-of-music/516574/44 "2009-11-09T15:50:14Z")
> [@Tengu](#): > > Seriously, how did people not know Rob Halford was gay until he came out? I owned a few Judas Priest albums, and didn’t know until the early Nineties. LOTS of heavy metal bands have worn fashions and hairdos that looked vaguely gay, and it never meant anything. I’d heard Rob Halford interviewed, and he always sounded polite, soft-spoken and gentlemanly… but to me, that just meant that the band’s whole image was a put-on, rather than that he was gay. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2009, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-sexual-orientation-affect-the-liking-for-a-certain-type-of-music/516574/45 "2009-11-09T15:56:19Z")
> [@elmwood](#): > > Music at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival tends to run to the acoustic folksy indie singer-songwriter variety. True enough, but many (probably most) of the female folk performers who play at all-female festivals AREN’T lesbians. So many of their fans ARE, however, that the straight ones often prefer to stay in the closet, so to speak. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2009, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-sexual-orientation-affect-the-liking-for-a-certain-type-of-music/516574/46 "2009-11-09T16:11:06Z")
> [@Tengu](#): > > Seriously, how did people not know Rob Halford was gay until he came out? Most people were probably not all that familiar with the standard attire of gay S&M club attendees in 1981 (when _British Steel_ came out and made Judas Priest superstars). I know I certainly wasn’t, and not only because I wouldn’t be born for another year. Anyway, by the time that look became familiar to the mainstream, the Priest-based “heavy metal look” was more or less set, so most people probably just assumed that the two were unconnected. Heavy metal is weird like that. The strangest thing of all is that the less masculine a band is, the more likely it is to have adoring female fans. The most effeminate bands (Poison, Ratt, Motley Crue, Cinderella) got the most ass. ---
**Author:** ![happycamper\_5](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/cab0a1/32.png) [@happycamper\_5](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/happycamper_5)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2009, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-sexual-orientation-affect-the-liking-for-a-certain-type-of-music/516574/47 "2009-11-09T16:41:04Z")
> [@Kylede](#): > > Just putting in my 2 cents, as a gay man. > > The “mild peer pressure” should not be overlooked. As a gay man in a major metropolitian area (NYC), the pressure to like a certain type of music and artist is OVERWHELMING. Personally, I cannot stand “Club/Dance Music”. I routinely get harrased by friends when I share my opinion of Lady Gaga (which boils down to this "good lord, this is loud and annoying), or any of the DJ’s in club culture (and a DJ is NOT an artist…Singers, musicians songwriters; they are the artists. DJ take the original work sand “enhance” or “mix”, not inherently creating anything new. Like a nuclear engineer might build a nuclear reactor, but we don’t say he discovered E=mc(2) I’m gonna second this from my experience as a gay woman. Depending on which flavor of lesbianocity you choose, there can be a lot of pressure to define yourself by your music/reading material/movies, etc., and, if you’re looking to your subset of the gay community for acceptance and identity, that can go a long way to determining your taste in music. The lesbians in my small circle of friends are the stereotypical man-hating, edgy, riot grrl types and they all listen to the same kind of music. Now, granted, you can make the ‘chicken or the egg’ argument about their taste, but I know one woman in particular who, after coming out, asked the question “Ok, so tell me what bands I should be listening to?” I also remember a conversation I had with the ‘leader’ of the clique (this is sounding more and more like high school) about band recommendations. When I suggested she listen to a particular cd that I was loving at that moment, she asked if the singer was a man. When I said yes, I was told that she really only liked bands with female leads. Fair enough, but when I pointed out that her current favorite band also had a male lead, she said “Yes, but he used to be a woman and that makes all the difference in the world!” Thinking about that now, I’m still puzzled at the logic. In my own limited experience, I’d have to say yes - depending on how an individual views their sexual orientation, it definitely affects their liking for a certain type of music. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2009, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-sexual-orientation-affect-the-liking-for-a-certain-type-of-music/516574/48 "2009-11-09T18:52:42Z")
> [@Dorothea\_Book](#): > > As for loving show tunes, I’m not sure that men and women don’t like them pretty much equally–at least when there was a mainstream vogue for such things. Question then becomes: Are out-groups - say gays - more likely to enjoy music (or art) that’s socially obsolete (ie: no longer popular)? Why? There’s a [book](http://books.google.com/books?id=i0aEvfH5dfYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=a+passion+to+preserve&ei=wWT4SreCMY2yMPjytbUF#v=onepage&q=&f=false) about historic preservation that tries to posit gay men as “keepers of culture” (without very solid reasoning; basically it relies on the “everybody just knows” trope). Could the same thing be at work with music? How might it work? ---
**Author:** ![JR\_Brown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d6d6ee/32.png) [@JR\_Brown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JR_Brown)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2009, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-sexual-orientation-affect-the-liking-for-a-certain-type-of-music/516574/49 "2009-11-09T21:00:46Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > women like sweets more than men, prefer written erotica more than visual compared to men, etc. As a woman who reads and views porn and semi-regularly talks to other women who do the same, I wouldn’t put it like that. Women also like visual erotica quite a lot; I think the main difference, in fact, is that women are more likely to identify with the characters in whatever material they’re consuming, and therefore like more narrative and personality in their porn. The historical preference for written erotica is probably mainly due to ease of access on the consumer’s end and the low barriers to writing a book (versus making a film or even taking pictures) on the production end. ---
**Author:** ![Valgard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/7feea3/32.png) [@Valgard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Valgard)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2009, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-sexual-orientation-affect-the-liking-for-a-certain-type-of-music/516574/50 "2009-11-09T21:57:32Z")
> [@Tengu](#): > > Seriously, how did people not know Rob Halford was gay until he came out? Couple of reasons, I’m sure: 1. Some people knew (or were pretty sure) that he was gay but they just didn’t give a hoot. In an interview with Halford he says that early on his partner would go on tour with the band (like the other guys’ wives would); he didn’t hide being gay but he didn’t make a big deal about it either. 2. Teenage boys were totally oblivious. Heavy metal is cool. Spikes are cool. Motorcycle jackets are cool. Giant robots and a Harley as part of the stage show are cool. Female fans are dressing provocatively and flashing their breasts at the shows and that’s way cool. It’s like a fantasy straight out of “Heavy Metal” magazine and comic books. Their look is frankly not that different from KISS aside from the face paint. 3. A lot of exposure was purely audio - music on the radio, your friend has their new album, etc - so a lot less people saw Rob dancing around in tight leather pants and suspenders (or wearing his sister’s clothes in an early video on British TV). I was (2) - whether Halford was gay or straight was simply not on my mind. When I saw the little interview on MTV where he “officially” came out my first thought was “Wow, that’s interesting but it makes no difference, they still kick ass”. When I bought the “Electric Eye” DVD a few years ago and first saw the video for “Hot Rockin’” I got the giggles for ten minutes. ---
**Author:** ![Dorothea\_Book](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/da6949/32.png) [@Dorothea\_Book](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dorothea_Book)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2009, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-sexual-orientation-affect-the-liking-for-a-certain-type-of-music/516574/51 "2009-11-09T22:24:34Z")
> [@Beware\_of\_Doug](#): > > Question then becomes: Are out-groups - say gays - more likely to enjoy music (or art) that’s socially obsolete (ie: no longer popular)? Why? > > There’s a [book](http://books.google.com/books?id=i0aEvfH5dfYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=a+passion+to+preserve&ei=wWT4SreCMY2yMPjytbUF#v=onepage&q=&f=false) about historic preservation that tries to posit gay men as “keepers of culture” (without very solid reasoning; basically it relies on the “everybody just knows” trope). Could the same thing be at work with music? How might it work? That sounds like an interesting explanation. ---
**Author:** ![Shakester](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shakester/32/437_2.png) [@Shakester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shakester)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2009, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-sexual-orientation-affect-the-liking-for-a-certain-type-of-music/516574/52 "2009-11-09T22:54:19Z")
Oddly enough, I was talking to a couple of (straight, male) friends in my age group (40s) the other day about Rob Halford. We were all teenage boys in the late 70s/early 80s, two of us in Australia and one in England at the time, and all 3 of us recognised Halford as gay. Very _very_ gay. It was freaking _obvious_ to me at age 14 or so, and the two guys I was talking to both said the exact same thing. All 3 of us are straight, and we all liked Judas Priest. Two of us are white, one black (African-born, UK-raised.) I have gay friends who are into hard rock/metal and who couldn’t care less about show tunes. And who doesn’t love Freddy Mercury, another obviously gay rock singer? Just goes to show: stereotypes aren’t usually very accurate when it comes to individuals. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-sexual-orientation-affect-the-liking-for-a-certain-type-of-music/516574/53 "2009-11-10T01:23:33Z")
> [@Dorothea\_Book](#): > > That sounds like an interesting explanation. It was, except that it fell back on stereotypes (of _both_ orientations). The closest he got to a defensible thesis was that hetero males prefer tearing down old houses and such, because they have to “make their mark” and be all original and modernist and shit. Not great cultural theory; the rest was interviews and wink-wink, nudge-nudge. ---
**Author:** ![Dorothea\_Book](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/da6949/32.png) [@Dorothea\_Book](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dorothea_Book)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-sexual-orientation-affect-the-liking-for-a-certain-type-of-music/516574/54 "2009-11-10T02:00:26Z")
> [@Beware\_of\_Doug](#): > > It was, except that it fell back on stereotypes (of _both_ orientations). The closest he got to a defensible thesis was that hetero males prefer tearing down old houses and such, because they have to “make their mark” and be all original and modernist and shit. Not great cultural theory; the rest was interviews and wink-wink, nudge-nudge. Oh dear–that does sound kind of lame. Like no gay man has ever wanted to make his mark? Hello??? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-sexual-orientation-affect-the-liking-for-a-certain-type-of-music/516574.md?page=2)