OK I have been wondering this for quite a while. I have got in many a great debate with my wife and with friends and family about this…But why is it when some straight women think about sex with another woman they are repulsed and grossed out, and others are kind of turned on a little, and actually give the idea some merit.
Whereas most straight men NEVER think sex with another man is ok or even remotely appealing. Why is this? Are women just *that * cute and coy that other women, straight women, feel that it wouldn’t be that bad having sex with another woman? What are other peoples opinions on this???
Cultural influences, IMHO. I think absent religious and cultural prohibitions most people would be bisexual, with either het or homo leanings.
Or maybe because of societal pressures and prejudice many straight men who do fantasise about other men would never dare admit the fact?
Or maybe many straight women confess to fantasies about other women because it’s seen as right-on or fashionable?
The point is (as you point out) there are both straight women and men who are grossed out by the thought of sex with the same gender, and there are both straight men and women who find it a turn on.
But given deep-rooted prejudices etc you are never going to get accurate statistics on people admitting their true feelings. So I would say it is really impossible to work out the proportions.
I agree. I see sexuality as existing along a giant spectrum. Say, Red equals “Straighter than an arrow” and Violet equals “Queerer than a 17-dollar bill.”
(OK, I’ll admit it–that was just an excuse for me to use the color function.)
I think most people would fall at some point in between. I’m probably an orange, probably with a hint of yellow, but not too mustardy.
The difference between men and women in this arena, then, is largely societal. Women can hug and kiss and cuddle and hang out naked with each other without anyone questioning their sexuality. Men, on the other hand, have to resort to tackle football and smacking each other’s asses in the locker room in order to achieve any sort of touching without the risk of being judged.
Likewise, a woman can say, “Woo-wee! Angelina Jolie is one hot tamale!” Not only can a man who wishes to be perceived as straight NOT make the same comment about Denzel Washington, he has to pretend he can’t even TELL a hot guy from The Hunchback (which nobody buys, by the way).
Sort of a related topic: SaxFace and I were sitting around once at Lincoln Center, when a dazzlingly pretty girl walked by. We both noticed her, and commented to each other how pretty she was. Then it occured to us that we don’t know any straight men who would notice a really good-looking guy walk by and say to a straight male friend, “Wow—he is one great-looking guy!”
I suapect it’s pretty much a cultural upbringing thing.
While I agree on the importance of cultural influences, this statement it silly. Why do you think the culture evolved they way it did? Because most people prefer to have sex with the opposite gender.
WAIT HOLD ON…While I would most likely never say to a guy friend “wow that guy is really good looking” I would say to my wife that a man is handsome…I have before. But I never ever thought the act of sex with another man was at all appealing. My wife would say that a woman is pretty or something like that to her friends…however she can not imagine…you know…sex down there… 
with another woman…she is quite repulsed.
I do agree to some extent about societal impacts with American cuture that is. People are raised here for the most part to be heterosexual. Rarely if ever, have I seen a child being raised to be homosexual…topic for a different time…
I wonder if the repulsivity men feel towards having sex with other men is not evolutionistic in nature. Or if it is a dominence issue.
A lot of it has to do with the cultural construction of sexuality by gender. God, was THAT a pretentious-sounding sentence or what?? :o Sorry…
Suppose either a woman or a man thinks, briefly, of lesbian sex. It is, fundamentally, female sexuality, feminine sexuality, even if it is geared towards other women as object (or some would say especially insofar as it is geared towards other women as object).
Suppose the same person or people think instead of gay male sex. Now it is fundamentally male, i.e., masculine sexuality even if (or particularly because) it is geared towards other men as object).
Well, in this culture, female sexuality is conceptualized and portrayed as being “cuddlier”, more mutual, more friendly, more affectionate; whle male sexuality is perceived and represented as being pushier, more subject-object, more “me fuck you”, less mutual, far less friendly, even as an act of hostility and contempt.
So, to, umm, finally get to the point, a lot of straight guys find gay sex revolting to even think about because they think of it in “me fuck you” mode and they would find it unmanly and humiliating to be on the receiving end of that.
Yeah, but what, (you might be wondering), about being on the “me” end of the “me fuck you” equation?
That’s more complicated, and hard to explain because I have made my observations but they don’t make a lot of sense when I try to recount them, but here goes: there is a widespread straight-guy culture response to gay guys (or guys that they consider to be gay, which is sometimes the same thing and sometimes not), which is to state that such guys want to be fucked, in the most subject-object “me fuck you” hostile contemptuous way possible, and deserve to be fucked, and they (the straight guys) oughta do exactly that, bang ‘em so hard they bleed, and then beat them up for good measure – but the lust for this even, the desire that it happen, is not on their (the straight ones’) part, oh no, it’s those fucking sissy faggots who want it to happen.
Anyway, lots of straight guys think only of the recipients of subject-object violent conteptuously-performed sex when they think of gay men and gay sex, and for some reason don’t consider the ones who are, umm, performing the subject role upon them, if you will, to be gay…and there’s this weird kind of mental block against acknowledging that the active “subject” person in this model is feeling any attraction, lust, or sexual interest, or anything but hate and contempt.
Sorry AHunter3, but I have to disagree with you on this. When I think about sex with another man I am just not interested and a bit repulsed. I don’t think that it has anything to do with your “pitcher/catcher” hypothesis. I don’t care what end of the situation I would be on, I’m just not interested. I like girls and that’s the bottom line.
Social pressure is also not an issue. I have several openly gay friends and that doesn’t bother me. I don’t see that they are having any specific hardships related to liking men. Sure, I suppose there is some social stigma…but I don’t see it.
–==the sax man==–
Well, I’m straight, and I don’t have a problem admitting that George Clooney is a handsome man.
Uhhh, now I feel kinda dirty. I have to, uh… go watch some lesbian porn.
I don’t think it’s possible to conclude with any accuracy what percentage of men or women are repulsed, interested, or in-between about sex with the same gender.
Personally, I’m as straight as an arrow; I find the thought of sex with toher men totally uninteresting and kind of gross. Yet I don’t feel any societal pressure to demonstrate masculinity in any overt way; I don’t have much interests in displaying overt phallic symbols like a shiny new SUV or doing “masculine” activities to prove what a big man I am, or not showing sensitivity and being tough or any of that stupid crap. Maybe I’m weird.
Auntie Em, I’ll have to disagree with you that women are more comfortable in being naked around other women than are men around men.
All women’s locker rooms, gym showers, etc… that I have seen have been built with privacy in mind. Women do not want women seeing their naked bodies, though I don’t think it has anything to do with sexual feelings.
In one scene in the movie “Road Trip” Tom Green is telling a story and the scene shows what he is describing, and it has all these girls walking around naked in a locker room. Both my wife and I said “women don’t do that!” about the same time as a female character interrupted the story to say the same thing.
Guys on the other hand, pretty much have to get used to it at an early age. All our school gym showers were just nozzle clusters around poles, even in college our dorms had group showers. I also think it is some kind of macho thing to demonstrate that you aren’t queer because you can stand there naked talking to another naked guy that you may or may not know and carry on a conversation and keep your eyes above neck level. I’ve known guys who were shy about being in such conditions and I think most guys at least on some level look down on them. It is almost like an admission of being a beta male or something, I don’t know.
We have a gym here at work. What I think is funny is when after showering, some guy you work with starts talking business with you while you are both naked. It really is funny when you think about it. Usually you are discussing things over a conference table with a tie on, and here you are standing around like a couple of wet hairy apes talking about quarterly projections or something.
On the other hand, more than once my wife has come back to our table when we are out for the evening and told me that some woman in the ladies room was discussing her new boob job with her friend, and ended up offering to let all the other women see and touch them so they could see how real they felt.
After the second time, I pointed out to her that it wasnt fair that she had felt of more tits than I had since we had been married. It was funny, but it didn’t get me a pass to go exploring though.
Really? I wouldnt be. Most animals arent.
me and my so were JUST talking about this the other night. i noticed too that women overall were more comfortable with expireimenting with homosexuality than men overall are. i dunno why though? maybe scantilly clad women are more prevelent in media and thats why, or most sex symbols are women.
oh yeah, and my so’s theory: women are hot, men are ugly
Some of our closest cousins are: chimps, bonobos
Bisexual behavior was commonplace in ancient Greek and Roman culture.
This is certainly the popular conception, but I don’t know if it’s actually true. I have seen some studies (sorry, no cite) that suggest that a fair number of young men engage in some sort of homosexual experimentation, but this does not seem to be something that many young men are actually willing to talk about. On the other hand, while young women may be more likely to feel comforable saying “Oh yeah, she’s cute!” or even “I’d totally do her if I were a guy!”, this doesn’t mean that they would really be comfortable engaging in any sort of physical activity with that cute girl.
While women tend to be very aware of other women’s beauty, this awareness is often completely divorced from any sort of sexual feeling. Female beauty is culturally very important, and many women spend a lot of time thinking about how good looking they are, and how they compare to other women. I have plenty of straight female friends who spend far more time “checking out” other women than I do (“She’s got a really cute haircut. Ugh, those shoes! She is too fat to wear that. Oh, if I had her legs I’d wear miniskirts all the time…”), but without feeling any attraction to them at all.
I think it’s a combination between the Kinsey Scale and gender roles. According to the scale, sexuality goes from 1 to 10. 1 = hetero with NO homo thoughts, fantasies or tendencies. 10 = homo with NO hetero thoughts, fantasies or tendencies. 90 % of people fall somewhere in between, whether they’d admit to it or not.
Gender roles make it VERY hard for males to admit to any homo thoughts or fantasies. A lot of males have them but would rather have their eyes gouged out then admit to it.
It’s a common male fantasy to see two women together, therefore it’s accepted in society and women feel more comforatable sharing.
I’ve discovered that the more adamatly a male or female denies ANY homo thoughts, and the more “disgusted” they act about it, the more they really do have those thoughts and the more insecure they are about their own sexuality. Falls into the same catagory as the person who talks about how great their sex life is constantly, because in reality, it’s lacking.
:rolleyes: Any cites or sights for that?