Straight Women & Lesbian Sex

In My Humble Opinion
21

Mrs. ShibbOleth, amusingly, finds female homosexuality “normal” and male homosexuality abnormal. She has an illogical basis for this, something like “two positives together don’t make sense”. I’ve tried to explain to her that perhaps these are false positives, but to no effect. Ironically, though she finds female homosexuality natural she thinks that cunnilingus is dirty and at least a bit unnatural. :: shrug :: Note: this all pertains to the sexual acts themselves, she’s very openminded about other people’s rights to these acts and relationships

As far as guys noticing when other guys are attractive: I can, and I think most other men can, tell when a guy is attractive when it’s blatantly obvious. This is because we are following a societal norm (although some men’s appeal, i.e., Leonardo DiCaprio still throws me for a loop). But I can tell you that most women would find George Clooney or thinksnow attractive. Yet I don’t find them attractive, personally (sorry ts) in a physical or sexual kind of way. Some men are attracted to other men in a more same-sex crush (a la Seinfeld) kind of way, e.g., he’s the kind of guy I’d like to hang out with. This is where we normally find our friends. But for me it’s a stretch to go from that to a physical relationship. And often these men are not the same. In fact I’ve known men (and women) who were physically attractive yet had loathsome personality traits that would keep me far from any type of relationship, physical or platonic. I’ve had gay men make passes at me and while I found the attention flattering there was never any kind of physical spark that would have tempted me to be receptive to the overture.

Sorry, there’s no point or deep insight here, just personal observations on the subject.

22

I’m with Philo on this. Accusations of “latency” are dumb. Can’t a person kick the crap out of homos just because he enjoys it? Do you have to ruin it for him?

Note: Do not attempt. Professional satirist on closed course.

By the way, I’m so straight, yardstick manufacturers hire me as a consultant. I once came across a gay porn magazine and flipped through it to kill time. Aside from being impressed (from a strictly engineering point of view) with the dimensions of some of the models, I was neither aroused nor disgusted. I’ll take a 1 on Kinsey’s scale, thankyouverymuch.

23

Do any of you think that outside of a sexual context that women are just more likely to notice and comment on a person’s appearance than a man is? If you accept that women are more attuned to appearances because they themselves are judged more on their own appearance, and I do.

It just seems like a big leap from saying that some person is attractive or cute to having homosexual thoughts about them. Well, unless you’re gay. But you see what I mean.

-fh

24

As this pertains to a paper I wrote last semester, I’ll quote some bits for you guys. It’s on the psychology of homophobia.

I can give the specifics of the articles used if anyone actually cares.

25

LaurAnge, out of curiosity, have there been efforts to quantify the reverse, e.g., if women who are homophobic (and this presumes that some exist) could have latent tendencies?

One of the things that triggered this is what would you measure in women to judge arousal? I’d guess you’d have to go for heart rate, blood pressure, perspiration, pupil dialation or something. Then the second difficulty is that women might not anyway respond to pornography in the same way which women would, so you’d need a different stimulus, maybe sexy stories involving women with women, men with men, women with men, etc.

26

That’s actually a really good question. I never came across any of that in my research, maily because women really aren’t as homophobic as men. Cosequently, there is one study about homophobic women out there to every 30 about homophobic men.

From what I found, the biggest predictor of homophobia in women was belief in traditional gender roles (ie, men as head of the family, women in the home etc.). While the social factors that cause latent homosexuality to become homophobia are more prevalent in men, I’d say that latent homosexuality would exist in some homophobic women, although I’d say not anywhere near the proportion in which it’s found in homophobic men. I have no cites for this though, it’s just my not-so WAG.

27

Is there any information (unless I missed it) on this topic for other cultures? I can only base my opinion on Western society.

I remember learning something in sociology class (since this was back in the early 80’s this could be inaccurate information) that no matter how permissive or restrictive a society is on homosexuality, the rates of homosexuality are about 5-10%. I’m assuming the range comes from including those who are bisexual or those are at the higher end of the Kinsey scale.

This statistic could lead one to believe that there is a genetic component present, since it doesn’t seem to matter if the society is anti-homosexuality or not.

I do tend to agree that within at least American culture, female bisexuality/homosexuality is considered to be ok or at least tolerated.

28

“It is widely recognised that males, on average, are more homophobic than females. (cite: this thread)This causes many men to overcompensate and use homophobic defences (cite: “I’m so straight, I’m a yardstick” and “I’m straight as an arrow”. etc) Men who, deep down, are not sure that they are “men” as society wants them to be need to prove their
masculinity by rejecting non-traditional gender roles, which in many cases applies to homosexuality…” <— changes made by Trishdish

Seriously, just look at this thread and the number of men who’ve felt the need to clarify that they are straight. I don’t see a lot of women on this thread feeling the need to boast of their hetero status.

My personal theory is that women’s bodies are just more attractive and for the most part, much less hairy and smelly. What is there not to love? I also chock it up to some sort of latent Freudian infantilism manifesting itself in our adulthood. I mean, we (women and men) at one point should’ve been interested in the breast and well, we all started out in the vagina, didn’t we?

29

Actually, it might be a perception thing. See, me, I honestly can’t tell if a man is handsome or not. I think Nicolas Cage is kind of goofy-looking, but he’s a sex symbol. I’ve sort of trained myself to recognize a certain stereotype – the J.C. Penney underwear model – and I associate that with being generically handsome. But then why is Jon Stewart considered a hottie by so many chicks?

It’s gotten so when my wife and I are watching movies or TV, I’ll ask her, “Is he hot?” and she’ll say, “No, not really,” or, “Yeah, in a generic way,” or, “What, are you kidding me? I’d jump him in a nanosecond,” as the case may be. I then add that individual – e.g., the Croatian doctor guy on “E.R.” – to my internal “my wife thinks this guy is hot” database.

But as far as my ability to judge a new example, I’m out of luck. I mean, yeah, I can make rough generalizations based on my wife’s preferences; I know she thinks Kid Rock is kind of sleazy and unappealing. And yet, he must turn somebody’s cranks, or he wouldn’t be a rock star.

So I can recognize certain types as matching the criteria, especially when taken to the extreme (say, all the Eurotrash male models who played the terrorists in Die Hard, or our brief exposure to the hardbody hotties in gay-male porn), but as far as unconventionally handsome (e.g., David Schwimmer comes to mind, since he was on the cover of People Magazine that one time), I’m SOL.

Seriously, I just can’t tell. And believe me, I’ve tried.

30

I always hear people say this, and I always disagree. Female bisexuality in the wild, sexy, porno three-some sense is certainly approved of by many American men, but there is little mainstream respect for (or even recognition of) real bisexual women – and the situation is even worse for lesbians.

31

Obviously this is a very broad topic that requires very broad answer. It would be impossible to give an answer that would be applicable to all people. That being said, here’s my $.02 -

I think LaurAnge is on the right tract to finding an answer the OP. One simply has to think of the vastly different views of a man who reads Martha Stewart Living verses a woman who reads Motor Trends. When a man deviates from the ‘norm’ of the male stereotype, his character is called into question in greater degree than a woman.

The other possibility is that boobs are just cool and women know this as well or better than guys. Look to the boobs, my friends. Look to the boobs.

~t

32

But is that a valid representation of a real sexual encournter (much less a real relationship with a person)? Probably not, but it sells. Those types of situations probably play more to the fantasy of what many men THINK (wish?) a homosexual experience between two women would be like, and how they (men) would like to be in the middle of the fun (which, while fun for a little while, isn’t something I’d like to make a steady diet of).

Do any of the women here who have seen a male homosexual porn movie ever think “Boy, I’d like to be in the middle of that!”?

This from a heterosexual male, who wouldn’t take much prodding (no pun intended) to switch teams for a few innings with Henry Simmons froom NY PD Blue.

33

Hamish and I were talking about this. He’s a K6 and I’m about a K5.8 on the 0-6 scale. He reports he’s completely unable to tell if a woman is beautiful or not, à la Cervaise. This doesn’t happen to me - I can tell if a woman is beautiful or not (according to my own criteria), even though there’s no sexual component to it.

He further notes that when straight men work on cartoons and whatnot, their difficulty with aesthetic decisions about other men is reflected in the artwork. In general, a male character who is supposed to be very handsome has a 1950esque Charles Atlas body but not much in the way of a face.

If a gay man or straight woman is working on it, the face, in particular, will have much more attention paid to it, and the body will often be shapelier rather than strictly bulky and muscular (although this is not the case in some gay porn). Compare the men in shounen (“boy”) vs. shoujo (“girl”) animé, affected both by the target audience and the usual gender of the writers.

(Of course, there are exceptions particularly in animé, such as Kaworu and Shinji from Evangelion, who were drawn by a straight man, Yoshiyuki Sadamoto. Of course, Sadamoto has a long history of work in shoujo, and Shinji’s appearance was based on a female character, Nadia from the series of the same name.)

34

I´m always looking. :smiley:

BTW. I´ve wondered about your username. Does Polish refer to the country or to the activity of making something shiny?

35

Well, of course fantasy is different from reality. Remember the SNL of a couple of years ago where the frat boys got their wish to see a lesbian encounter, and the women turned out to be motorcycle-ridin’ dykes of the decidedly non-lipstick variety? I think it goes without saying that there’s very little overlap between what appeals to horny het men and lesbian reality, let alone what generally straight women might think they’d be willing to do in an open-minded moment.

And as far as fantasies go, one need look no further than jarbaby’s welder story to see that what turns some women’s cranks, in the privacy of their own minds, is very different from what “girl-on-girl”-obsessed men would like to imagine.

36

Yup. Female here, despite the gender of the username. Sure, sex is just, you know, sexy. It doesn’t matter much to me who’s doing it, as long as everyone seems to be having a good time, it’s fun to watch. And I think some number of women fantasize about two (or more!) men the way some number of men fantasize about two women. I’ve read that most slash is written by women, which is interesting when you’re thinking about how common such fantasies are in women.

I read some years ago about an experiment that measured female arousal, and they used a thing that was inserted into the subject’s vagina, and it measured…I don’t recall. Temperature? Moisture? Something like that.

Also, I personally don’t buy the “women aren’t turned on visually” thing. I think this is another case of cultural expectations. Good girls don’t enjoy dirty pictures or porn movies. But a nice romance is perfectly okay for good girls, and you can tell yourself you’re enjoying the wonderful, romantic relationship, see. Also, I have yet to see the porn movie that was made with women’s preferences in mind. (I’ve heard some have been made, but never seen them). Most porn flicks I’ve seen, the men are butt ugly, for instance.

37

I have a question about this study or any other study that has measured ‘arousal’ levels as an indicator of latency. Was part of the experiment showing the subjects (homophobic and otherwise) films that would disturb them in some way, or arouse them in a non-sexual sense. This could be something that makes them sad or angry or happy or excited.

I don’t know what the result would be, but I’m interested to know whether the possibility that ‘arousal’ is not the result of sexual feelings, but from other emotions, has been investigated. Not to draw any comparisons with homosexuality, but an analogy I could think of is to show somebody who hates people of a particular race a film showing people of that background going about doing their own thing. They might well get aroused by it, but this doesn’t suggest they’re sexually attracted to the people in the film (necessarily).

I apologise if this is too much of a hijack or is verging on GD territory.

38

Coil ~ the Polish refers to the nationality. It wouldn’t have the other meaning because I find my sausage to be quite shiny to begin with. :smiley: Sorry TMI!

39

Bren_Cameron, I think you hit the nail on the head. I agree completely with everything you stated.

40

I absolutely get turned on by homosexual male (and female) porn. I think just because sex is fun, and people having fun sex makes me want to have fun sex too.