So accepting that she married two of them! 
(And like mother, like daughter, at that…)
It’s not that obvious actually. The thing is; blacks and whites have brains that work the same; gays and straights don’t. That’s why they ARE homosexual in the first place. It’s at least possible that some quirk of the homosexual brain predisposes them on average to prefer a particular sort of music more than the non-homosexual population.
Even though she fits many of the stereotypes, I don’t think Michelle Shocked is a lesbian. She’s been married to a male at least once (as an adult- NOT as a teen in denial).
My goodness Der Trihs, I wouldn’t have taken you for such a determinist! Do you think men and women are predisposed to prefer a particular sort of music?
A lot of our musical preferences are context-driven; certain female figures–and Garland is one of them–are icons in gay male culture. I somehow doubt it has anything to do with “some quirk of the homosexual brain.”
I wonder if there’s an element of emotional openness that’s at play. Gay guys often seem more willing to express strongly-held emotion than straight guys, and showtunes often exhibit more emotional range and vulnerability than rock or country, for example.
Judas Priest’s Locked In - a touching video about a gay man’s escape from the chains of heterosexuality (personified by a tribe of stereotypical bimbos) by his leather wearing bandmates. I can’t imagine many other genres of music producing something quite so gay, yet quite so appealing to straight, horny teenage boys at the same time.
Quite possibly; I don’t know of any studies on it. There are such things as gender based preferences; women like sweets more than men, prefer written erotica more than visual compared to men, etc. And I do recall studies showing that at least when it comes to erotica, gays/lesbians statistically lean more towards the opposite sex’s tastes than do heterosexuals. There’s no reason why such preferences couldn’t extend to areas less sexual.
And yes; people’s tastes are clearly heavily determined. Despite post modernist ranting about Western cultural imperialism, people all over the world still like things such as landscapes and baby animals more than they like abstract art or piles of scrap metal. Culture can influence us, but only so far. Which all in all I consider a good thing, since it makes people more intractable to manipulation than they would otherwise be.
I’m not suggesting that human beings have no biologically given proclivities, nor denying that sometimes these vary according sex (i.e., male or female). But I do think it’s important to be cautious and use common sense.
You say that women like sweets more than men (which I’m hoping you’re saying based on evidence gleaned from very young children) and yet I’m willing to bet that I like sweets much less than you do (because I do not like them at all–in part because I’ve spent years cultivating very healthy eating habits).
You say that women like written erotica more than visual–is that true for the ones who don’t know how to read? And for those women who do read can you be certain the cause is some biologically given determinant?
Bottom line: the idea that gays (or rather gay men of a certain age in the US) like Judy Garland because of some “quirk of the homosexual brain” does not strike me as one of your sounder pronouncements.
Just curious, Der Trihs, would this be the study you were referring to as evidence that women like sweets more than men?
I’ll see your “Locked In” and raise you (heh heh heh) "Hot Rockin’ ":
I was speaking statistically. Women on average like sweets more and written erotica more; that doesn’t mean all do.
It’s just a speculation; there hasn’t been even an attempt to study the question scientifically as far as I know. It is one of the classic arguments given for evolutionary psychology; women were gatherers, and like sweets - like fruit or berries. And men were hunters, and like meat more than women ( as pointed out in your linked article ). And really; it’s quite clear that our tastes in food are heavily hardwired, or it would be a whole lot easier to change our diets.
Music at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival tends to run to the acoustic folksy indie singer-songwriter variety.
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)
Well then, explain this to me:
I’m old enough to have come of age before there was such a thing as a “gay community.” Back in the 50s and early 60s, to be a gay teenager was to be isolated. There was no such thing as being “out,” Having feelings for other boys wasn’t something that anyone ever communicated. So there was nothing in the way of peer pressure to expose oneself to certain artists.
And yet . . . I loved Judy Garland. And Bette Davis. And Joan Crawford. And Marilyn Monroe. And a little later, Barbra Streisand. And yes, show tunes. So where did these preferences come from? There was obviously something within me that was responding to particular things, that had nothing to do with peer pressure or any other external influence.
And the leap from a statistical argument on average to a biological explanation makes sense why?
Right, evolutionary psychology–which I bolded for you. The pseudo-science of our times. And the article I linked to was about rats, not people, and offered nothing but anecdotes, sweeping generalizations and, as you say, speculation. It was a classic example of just how bogus and overreaching this “science” generally is.
Oh yes–we are as a species (not the rat species, btw, but the human species) hardwired to like sweet and salt and fatty flavors. But as men and women? Would you also leap to conclude that Japanese people are “heavily hardwired” to a low fat and vegetable rich diet whereas Americans to eat Big Macs?
Not trying to give you a hard time about this Der Trihs but to suggest that you exercise the same caution toward bogus biological explanations as you would toward, say, bogus economic ones.
My grandmother liked all of those things too! Perhaps she had the brain of a homosexual man. But, wait, I don’t particularly like them–and without any anti-show tunes peer pressure that I’m aware of. So perhaps if the homosexual male brain is like the female brain you and my grandmother are normal but I’ve got a freak brain?
More seriously panache: maybe like many gay men, closeted or not, you liked strong, glamorous women with whom you felt you could identify as someone struggling to deal with your own isolated identity.
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.
Seriously, how did people not know Rob Halford was gay until he came out?
Because what do they have in common? Gender.
No; the elephant in the living room of our times. With no evidence - and plenty against - we insist that we humans are special; that we and we alone violate the normal principles of evolution and biology and have no instincts, no built in drives left to us from our evolutionary history.
A silly comparison, considering that the Japanese are mere thousands of years old, and the division between genders hundreds of millions of years old. All the evidence shows that the genders are more, not less different than we appear.
And I suggest you show some skepticism towards the ideologically driven denial of biological reality. And that’s what the idea that we are just blank slates shaped by culture is; pure fantasy, dreamed up to serve ideologies that find the fact that we are just another animal species distasteful. Or which find the idea of humans being infinitely malleable appealing.
Well we clearly disagree about quite a lot and would need to go way off topic to discuss further. But a few short replies…
Obviously–but the point is not to leap to the biological explanation first and paper over the questions that never get asked along the way.
Really? Who is the “we” in that sentence? People have been making observations about human instincts and human biology for centuries.
Who says I have not? My previous post did not at all deny biological reality–and I don’t think you’ll find my doing so in any post I’ve made on this board.
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?