I think everyone would agree people fall in love with people, not genders. So why do people prefer one gender over another?
I can understand why there is heterosexuality: reproduction. But that obviously can’t be the only reaon why people date people from only one gender since there are gay people.
In puddleglum’s now-infamous thread, the idea of a continuum of bisexuality was discussed, which I think is really interesting. But even in that situation, there were still 10% of people who were heterosexuals and 10% gay.
Anyone have any thoughts?
Oh, and if I’m out of line in asking this, or if it’s a dumb question, deal with me as you see fit. It is really not meant to be offensive in any way and I hope no one finds it so.
People do fall in love with people. I love my parents. (doesn’t mean I want to screw em) I love my best friend, whom is male (doesn’t mean I want to screw em). Love should not be equated with sex. Though too often it is.
A good relationship for a sexual partner should have Love in it (though its not necessary ), But that does not mean that all relationships should ONLY have love.
I agree with you in theory, LaurAnge. I remember in my teenage years my best friend and I (both female) spotted a really hot looking guy - who on closer inspection turned out to be a girl (this was the eighties, mind). After having a laugh about it we wondered to each other why it mattered, I mean there was no question that this was a very attractive person, so why did we lose all interest upon finding out he was a she?
We couldn’t explain it then, and still can’t. It wasn’t because of sex, though - we’re both open-minded people, and at the time I would certainly have been willing to experiment with sex with girls had the situation arisen (I say “at the time” because when the situation actually did arise, many years later, I discovered very quickly that it’s not for me). If something happened to me where I could never have sex again, I would still seek out a male for other sorts of romantic companionship. That’s just the way I’m “wired”, for whatever reason. YMMV.
This doesn’t really answer your question, does it.
No, I don’t find your question to be offensive at all. You’re asking for information, not attacking anything. It’s refreshing. I’ll do what I can to help, but please keep in mind that all I can do is speak from personal experience.
People do fall in love with people. But gender is an enormous factor in personality. Women and men have discernibly different outlooks on life; there are more than just physical attributes associated with gender.
For reasons I can’t fathom, I find men much more attractive than I find women. I like women, I enjoy my female friends immensely, but they don’t turn me on like guys do. I don’t know why that is; if you find out, please let me know. In fact, let a lot of people know; it’s a hotly debated subject.
Your question is not dumb, but the more I think about it (and believe me, as a gay man I’ve thought about the origins of my homosexuality quite a bit), the more I realize that as of yet there is no answer. Researchers have been trying to narrow down the causes of gayness for a long time now, and the most recent results suggest a complex combination of heredity and genetic predisposition.
I know it’s not very helpful, but it’s a very complex issue. May I ask why you want to know? That may narrow down the scope of your question a bit.
My own idea, which is the result of no research or anything, is that animals have, for purposes of species propagation, certain genetic traits that cause them to be attracted to the opposite sex. Rather than a specific gay gene, there is probably a number of genes that play a role in determining sexual preference.
Differences from the norm, plus environmental factors spread everyone out along a spectrum, with a mean skewed, of course, way over near the 100% het side. It would seem that whatever controls there are that keep people narrow are even more common than the ones that keep them straight. That is, that people who differ from the common case of fully het are more likely to differ with the het part than the fully part.
As for love happening with any gender, I would stress the difference among types of love. I think that romantic love must contain an element of lust as well. And since we generally seem to prefer only one truly loving relationship at a time, we use romantic love as our guide in choosing a mate, as we do like the whole sex thing.
Well, that’s my random thoughts on the matter, at least.
I can understand why there is heterosexuality: reproduction. But that obviously can’t be the only reaon why people date people from only one gender since there are gay people.**
According to a few straight people, it’s the only reason: you marry to have children. Of course, one must wonder what goes thru their mind during the courtship:
Straight Guy: Hrm… good figure, plenty of body fat, wide hips, good for child-bearing. All her hair and teeth are there. No obvious genetic deformities. I’ve met her parents, their both alive and healthy. No signs of degenerative diseases yet. I’ll have to interview her grandparents soon and do a quick trace on her other relatives. God, I was lucky about that last girl. Both of her grandparents dead before 70! How could I even consider someone like that!?
Straight Girl: Hrm… good figure, no sign of a paunch yet. He’s not a smoker or a heavy drinker. He’s young enough I’ll get good milage out of him. His stock portfolio looks great. His savings and checking accounts are both in the 6 figure range. He’ll be a good provider. I’m sure, when I get tired of him in 5 years, I’ll be able to get a decent divorce settlement that’ll get the kids thru college and me living comfortably. Not like that last jerk! God! It took him 10 years to make it to Senior VP at his company! How could I ever consider anyone like that!?
Actually, I have known several people over the years where they seem to fill the “signifigant other” role in thier lives with a member of the same sex, and where the only place they are not married is in the bedroom. I have also known siblings who were effectivly married, except for the sex part. However, in cases like this one or both people often recognized that as long as this asexual relationship fufilled all there relationship needs except sex, then they were unlikely to form a sexual relationship–the human heart seems to have a finite amount of emotional energy to spend, and if one person is your partner, it dosen’t often settle on another as a potental partner (although it may settle on others for sex, obviously. And sometimes a person in love falls in love wiht someone else. But not as often). I have known several of these “platonic marriges” to break up becuase one or both members wants everything they have + sex. When this happens the people involved grieve as surely as people do in the aftermath of a divorce.
Though obviously it isn’t proven, I’ve always been predisposed (heh-heh, heh-heh) to the theory that homosexuality is genetic, and has overcome it’s obvious reproductive disadvantages because it gave a genetic advantage to a family/clan. A family/clan with extra hunters and foragers who are not required to expend their energies on their own offspring are able to aid in the raising and caring for the children of their kin, thus making it more likely for the genes (including the gene(s) for homosexuality) of the family/clan to survive and be passed on.
I don’t know… Though I may love my friends and my family, I don’t love them in the same way as I love my boyfriend, even minus lust.
Well, I don’t think it would. I just don’t understand the gender boundaries, that’s all.
I don’t deny (obviously) that homosexuality exists, for whatever reason. I don’t think that finding out if homosexuality is genetic or not would answer my question either. Since homosexuality disproves that love is for purely reproductive reasons, why are there -sexualities anyway?
Why does anyone fall in love with anyone? I’ll give you my personal take on it.
I prefer the same sex for two major reasons. First, I find it a lot easier to form an intimate relationship with someone of the same gender. Men and women (regardless if it’s cultural or genetic) -are- psychologically different at a basic level, and in my experience, that presents an obstacle at some level that just can’t be gotten around. If the difference is culturally-inspired, then it stands to reason that there has to be at least some women out there that I -could- mesh with, without that barrier, but I haven’t found any yet.
Second, there is a basic sexual preference for me, that’s really just a matter of taste. There’s no other way to explain it: female anatomy just doesn’t do much for me, but male anatomy does. It’s not that I can’t find women attractive, as it has been known to happen, it’s just that my tastes tend to run far from the average tastes (such as you’d find in Playboy, etc) and that much beyond basic vanilla intercourse grosses me out, whereas pretty much anything involving males turns me on I’m about a 9 on that scale of 1-10.
In my mind, both factors play a fairly substantial role in forming a relationship. I’m not the type that goes for unvinvolved flings -or- asexual relationships, so between the two, it pretty much settles it in favor of males for me. It’s not that I couldn’t be happy with a female, it’s just that my tastes are far more likely to be met by a male. Therefore, it’s not that I love someone because they’re male, it’s just that odds are that anyone I love will wind up being male.
Feel free to label this answer as a cop out if you want. I don’t think that there’s nessecarily a logical reason for this. It seems to me that it’s just the way human brains are wired.
I think Mekhazzio stated the point of my original post more succinctly than I managed to. I do find women attractive on a lot of levels, as individuals. However, that does not extend very far onto the sexual level.
To give you an example that may be TMI, I’ve slept with women, and while the erotic sensations were there, the sexual charge that I get from sleeping with a man just wasn’t. The magnetism, the frisson, the lust, the je ne sais quoi, just wasn’t there. It was fun, it was intimate, it was good exercise, but it wasn’t lust.
So, there is an element of the animal about it for me, an inexplicable basic urge that causes me to find men much more sexually attractive than women. I agree with Mekhazzio that there is a massive attraction involved in the level of understanding available between two men; you know what it feels like to be a gay man, having been one since adolescence.
But there is an additional level of sheer physical attraction, which I find myself completely at a loss to explain. Might as well ask me why I like licorice, or crystallized ginger, or garlic pistachios. Except much, much more, of course. I just don’t know, I’ve felt that way since I was eleven. Why do you love the things that you love? Don’t we all wish we knew that?
Marvin Harris, an anthropologist, suggested that it is not unusual for “normal” people to be bisexual. He then went on to drag up all kinds of examples of societies in which homosexuality was sociably acceptable, ranging from Africa to Ancient Greece. IF Doctor Harris is correct, “strict heterosexuality” might be a somewhat rare occurence in cultures, but one that exists for various reasons in the Judeo-Christian Western one most of us are a part of today. I’m not saying I advocate this theory, but I found it believable. Harris’s theory does manage to address some of the issues brought up in this thread that don’t have good answers coming from other schools of thought. If I’m not mistaken, the book in which he discussed this the most was, Our Kind. If anybody’s truly interested, I could dig up other books and articles by Marvin Harris that address this. BTW, this post wasn’t meant to argue with any of the ideas others here seem to have on the subject. And please forgive any errors in spelling or grammar I may have made–it’s really late. Peace.
Setting aside the “animal urges” idea for a spell, I think that societal views have a lot to do with what is acceptable in tems of homosexuality. America, despite the beginnings of openly gay characters on television, is still an incredibly homophobic country, especially when it comes to male homesexuality.
Gay men are still viewed as weak pansies who cannot be “real” men because for whatever reason, our society continues to believe in the negative stereotyping of gay men. Sure, some gay men are very “queenish”, but some are downright thugs who could stomp the crap out of 99.9% of all other men. Lesbians are viewed either as unattractive manly, bitter women or ‘lipstick’ lesbians who are really just a means to a hetero male’s fantasy in the end, not really gay women. So, I think that our society’s homophobia has a huge amount to do with same-sex attraction.
Pop culture, Christain morality groups and personalities, and parents to their children still maintain an overwhelming bitter hatred for homosexuality, when, in truth, it neither harms nor affects their lives adversely at all. Seen as a ‘horrible’ thing, young men and women will stiffle their sexual urges, possibly denying them altogether.
Now, I prefer women namely because I am way more physically attracted to them in that “animal” way. However, I have been with men a few times, and even that was sort of animalistic in a way, but I seemed more attracted to them as people (i.e. the whole package, not just the T & A)
Yet, this open attitude took me years to find. I am 30 now and just in the last few years was I able to begin to understand that homosexuality wasn’t evil. No, my parents weren’t hate mongers, but again, society is. I got into theater/acting and met a number of really great people, many of whom are openly gay. They taught me that ‘gayness’ has many facets, not the least of which is that “animal” thing. I don’t fear it anymore like many of my heterosexual counterparts do.
In closing, in order to “understand” homosexualty as you put it, hang out with some gay people, they can probably help.
This is about as succint as I could’ve put my own sexual preference.
I’m not really sure why it is either. I just rarely get all flustered over women (Okay, with the exception of Tori Amos… but she transcends lowly human sexuality issues)
I strongly believe that if we could completely strip away environmental conditioning that we would all be bi-sexual. There are alot of animals that have sexual interaction with both genders… really, if it feels good and theres someone there to do it, why split hairs over the whole gender issue?
Humans, on the other hand, are subject to the genetic faults of having a large forebrain that all too often interupts our limbic brain. We like to cloud our pleasures with morality and cloud a colored reality with strict black and white lines.
The gay community is not immune to this. One of my best friends is gay and I’ve noticed a general disdain in her mannerisms when discussing bi-sexuals or when someone she thinks is gay still insists of having sexual goings-on with members of the opposite sex. As a general rule, we feel the need to ostracize those displaying a marked difference from ourselves. I firmly believe that this is what gives us strict heterosexuals, raging homophobics, and extremist gay communities.
But, the fact remains… my upbringing has honed a desire for men that I cant replicate for women on anywhere near the same level.
How is it that some find prepubescents sexually attractive?
The only theory that fits is the Wired Theory.
Something within the chemical machine is wired that way.
I admire the beauty of the young just as I gasp at the beauty of find art;
but I don’t want to hump Venus de Milo (or David.)
I’m assuming that some men feel the twitch upon seeing another male but while I admire beauty in whatever form, the twitch is only felt for that which I am “wired.”
), But that does not mean that all relationships should ONLY have love.