Then why were you bringing up obvious evolutionary reasons, centuries old practices and obesity? If something persists for millennia, it’s not a “status marker” that’s amenable to change in a lifetime, is it? If it presents a disadvantage to the survival of the genes to the person displaying that status, it won’t survive for millennia.
Here is a good primer on the causes of homosexuality.
Greg Charles:
I think the reason for this is because the Biblical definition of sex only includes penetrative acts. Other genital activities done for pleasure fall under the category of masturbation (even when another human being is an accessory to it).
Is this really true of most societies? My impression is that classical cultures were explicitly fine with at least some forms of man-on-man sexuality whereas I don’t know of any that sanctioned woman-on-woman sexuality. And my understanding is that male-male sex nowadays is socially accepted in some forms in much of the Middle East, including in places with much more heavily patriarchal cultures than the West (areas where publicly identifying as “gay” would probably be very dangerous).
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If I had to bet, I’d bet throughout history the men killed, tortured, bullied, or whatever because of their homosexuality greatly outnumber the women killed, tortured, bullied, or whatever because of their homosexuality. Not very scientific I suppose, hence no citation, but I’d be willing to bet the farm on it nonetheless.
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That strikes me as pretty doubtful, unless you disregard sexual violence motivated by homophobia. “Corrective rape” of lesbians is common in many parts of the world, including the West.
It could be true – as a general rule, violent crime is mostly perpetrated by men on other men (although this statistical difference would probably be smaller if rape and domestic violence weren’t underreported). But if gay men are more likely to be the targets of homophobic violence than gay women, I doubt you need to leap to concluding that male-male sex is scarier than female-female sex to homophobes. The tendency for men to be victims of violent crime is probably enough to explain this difference – assuming it actually exists.
Because patriarchal societies (i.e. all of them) have never been concerned with the wants of women or acknowledged them as equal members of society or having any rights over their own body or being anything more than children. It’s not like a woman is going to not get married to a man and have children just because she doesn’t like men, who gives a shit what she likes or doesn’t like? They can be dealt with the same way we deal with women who like men but not the men that we pick out for her.
So you’re a girl and you like girls? Well that’s nice dear, why don’t you lay back and think of England when I force myself upon you and assert my god given right over my chattel?
But a MAN who doesn’t like women? Well what’s this then? :dubious:
Well, the number of incidents of violence against gay men because of their homosexuality is either less than, exactly equal to, or greater than the number of incidents of violence against gay women because of their homosexuality. It’d be remarkable beyond belief were the numbers exactly equal. So, either it has happened more to gay men, or more to gay women. I’m betting on “gay men”, based on my admittedly limited experience (e.g., reading newspapers, hearing from the gay men and gay women I’ve known). The opinion that it’s gay women is open to the same objection.
That doesn’t help any, sorry. You still don’t have any evidence that it’s true, and I don’t think that we can assume a priori that it’s likely true, based on my knowledge. But even if gay men are more likely to be subject to violence, for the reasons I’ve already explained, that wouldn’t be evidence that people are more “afraid” of man-on-man sex than of woman-on-woman sex.
In other words, you’re arguing a point based on a “fact” which is just an unproven assumption, and the fact wouldn’t even really be evidence for your point if it were true.
A few facts for the Straight Dope.
Cite: in the US, lesbians are much less likely to be victims of a recorded hate crime than gay men in absolute numbers. Now in relative numbers, that’s very difficult to judge because it’s very difficult to get statistics about the number of gays and lesbians in the US. I often see a wide range of numbers. This recent study puts the numbers of lesbians and female bisexuals, and gays and male bisexuals, at about equal.
This study:
Chandra, Anjani et al. “Sexual Behavior, Sexual Attraction, and Sexual Identity in the United States: Data From the 2006–2008 National Survey of Family Growth” National Health Statistics Reports 36 (March 3, 2011).
has on Table 11 a value of 1.4% of women from age 15-44 being “mostly” or “only” attracted to the same sex. Whereas Table 12 says 1.1% identify as lesbian. Table 11 also gives a value of 1.9% of men from age 15-44 being “mostly” or “only” attracted to the same sex, whereas Table 13 gives 1.7% of men as identifying as gay.
With that in mind, we can still conclude that gay men are disproportionately subject to hate crimes due to being gay, than lesbians are due to being lesbian.
Now I suppose one can quibble with definitions and assumptions, and “unreported, secret” abuse, so if folks want to submit their own evidence to rebut, by all means do so.
Again, no, we really can’t, until we can figure out a way to control for the general effect of men being more likely to be the victims of violent crimes in general, across the board. If those figures don’t show that gay men are even more disproportionately likely to be the victims of anti-gay violent crime than the general tendency for men to be more likely the victims of violent crime, than they don’t go to demonstrate the OP’s assumption that male homosexual behavior is more “dangerous” than female homosexual behavior.
In general, since the numbers you cite are so low, I also have to question whether they really reflect the proportions accurately. Presumably they’re based on convictions, which could well introduce a lot of inaccuracy into the numbers.
I assume I don’t need to prove the existence of “corrective rape”, or that rape often goes unreported.
You present no evidence that gay men need to be lumped into the same statistics as males in general. And I don’t need a sarcastic comment about proving “corrective rape” which is again backed up by no statistics (let alone the fact that that crime could already be included in the FBI data I already cited).
At least I did the legwork and dug up cites. You have not, only restated your personal opinion. You can disagree with me all you want but at least I took the time and made an effort and found citations from the FBI, the CDC, and others. Until I see cites of equivalent quality and level which support your opinions, I see no reason to change my conclusions.
And I’m sure unserious people will take your numbers as given without attempting to understand the actual phenomenon under question, or even evaluating the numbers you cite for basic plausibility. And everything about “Great Debates” has made it clear that unserious argument is the norm here – hence all the people prior to my post who accepted the OP’s assumptions without even trying to verify them. Good job, you made the vaguest possible effort to prove them right and exercised no ability to discern the quality of the numbers you got, even when they were facially ridiculous. And then you blustered at me for questioning your absurd statistics, which – if nothing else – obviously understate the OP’s “killed, tortured, bullied, or whatever” by an order of magnitude at least.
I have no doubt that your numbers will be treated as gospel, because it has been my observation that around here, unserious arguments like the OP’s are de rigueur. That doesn’t mean that your unstated “conclusions” are valid, or even that they’re worthy of a moment’s consideration. Again, this is a small enough pond that I’m sure your nonsense will be treated seriously, but that says nothing about your conclusions – but it says a lot about the people evaluating them.
ETA: I notice you can’t even begin to respond to this: “If those figures don’t show that gay men are even more disproportionately likely to be the victims of anti-gay violent crime than the general tendency for men to be more likely the victims of violent crime, than they don’t go to demonstrate the OP’s assumption that male homosexual behavior is more “dangerous” than female homosexual behavior.” That’s okay, it’s just more reason to ignore your conclusions in this matter.
Female homosexuality bores me to tears. I mean, I’m not going to try to stop lesbianism, but I have no interest in it.
MALE homosexuality is teh hawt, for me.
In other words, you either can find no hard citations to back up your opinion, or you’re just too just lazy to do any looking yourself. How unfortunate! 
You’re right! I totally take your non-serious research seriously, including the numerous problems I pointed out before you even joined the thread relating to gathering statistics about this topic! I’m sorry I had standards, I should have judged my audience better and concluded that having standards for correctness wasn’t acceptable! You’re right, having standards for data and expecting someone starting a discussion to rely on them is bad and wrong! I’ll pretend that the data you cited are meaningful, even though they obviously aren’t, and I’ll also pretend that the person who started this thread gathered them rather than openly admitting to making up his information (as he did)! Because that is how real debates are conducted! With fakey data that is gathered after the arguments are made! That’s how real debate works! 
…and more bluster.
You made the claim. You back it up. That’s been a foundation of Great Debates for the 12 years I’ve been here.
My stats may be wrong or off-base, or applied incorrectly. Sure, why not? As a scientist I recognize that. But you haven’t convinced anyone because all we have is you repeating your opinion and ducking and weaving any way you can to avoid doing any iota of actual work to back up your opinion with any sort of reputable citations. In the time it’s taken you to find ways to avoid doing actual work, you could have easily found all the reputable citations you need - because since you’re so right and all, they must be trivially easy to find, right? :dubious:
Show me with some reputable citations how my conclusions are so wrong. Or, if you want to keep the dodge then just don’t bother posting, because I won’t be reading.
So the person who made the claim – the original poster of the thread – has no responsibility to find any evidence! SDMB-style debate is interesting! And when someone points out reasons why those invented “statistics” are perhaps not plausible, well, it’s the responsibility of someone else to disprove the claim! There’s no responsibility on the person who made the claim to come up with any evidence for it! This is a unique and interesting style of debate you folks have here! One doesn’t have to supply evidence for one’s claims, but if someone disagrees with the citation-free claims, they have to prove them wrong! What a novel and unique approach to debate you folks have come up with!
Neat!
Poisoning the well.
It’s undisprovable. The fact that males are viewed as more dangerous than females is likely to be the causative variable in the discrimination males face, but you claim evidence that males are disproportionately more likely to be victims of hate crimes as irrelevant due to that very contention.
Of the six people listed here, only one is a woman.
In the UK, male homosexuality was recriminalised in the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act, with a Labouchere amendment added to criminalise acts other than sodomy.
Sodomy itself was rarely prosecuted in US history and when women began to be prosecuted, it was for crimes like fellatio, prostitution and adultery.
I tried looking up statistics for rape and I found this website which claims that there are 520 corrective rapes a year in Cape Town alone. I couldn’t find any data relating to other countries or historical justifications though. This website claims 4000 executions for homosexuality in Iran, but not whether any lesbians were executed. Men are responsible for more rapes, which may compound the issue. More info on the spread of victims of hate crime here.
I don’t know of any society where male homosexuality is tolerated to a greater degree than female homosexuality.
Clearly you’re missing the point. If men are generally more likely to be victims of violent crimes, then even if it’s true that men are more likely than women to be the victims of hate crimes relating to being gay or bi, it doesn’t demonstrate anything about other people’s comparative attitudes towards male and female homosexuality. Just about their likelihood to attack a man rather than a woman.
. . . bit of a small sample size, wouldn’t you say?
Then you don’t know of many societies. Off the top of my head, male-on-male sexual activity was normative in classical Greece, ancient Rome, imperial China, and still is in modern-day Afghanistan. In fact, male-male sexual activity is tolerated to varying degrees in a lot of the Middle East, including in countries where ostensibly it’s a capital offense.
njtt already pointed this out, and of course was ignored, but it is likely more accurate to suppose that to whatever extent male homosexuality is disproportionately disapproved of in Western Europe and North America, our society may be the one outside of the norm, not all the other societies that exist and have existed in which male-male sexuality is or was perfectly normal.
As a gay man, I couldn’t agree more.
I know of those examples and also of the Azande in Congo and two-spirits in Native America from wiki. However, I don’t know of any records of a society tolerating male homosexuality and reviling female homosexuality. I’d also contend that there may be a class distinction too (hope that’s the right link, think Kenneth Williams describes the tolerance of homosexuality in one of the Oxbridge universities). Hitchens also talks about homosexuality in boarding schools.
If men are more violent, less likely to empathise and more likely to be rapists, it’d be pretty hard to ignore the reason why male homosexuality would be perceived as more of a threat by men (and historically, society has been patriarchal, so male attitudes influence norms). It’s not the fact that they are male homosexuals (while female homosexuals are fine), it is that they are more dangerous because they are homosexuals as well as being male.
I’m not sure that “two-spirits” necessarily count, since the descriptions I’ve read of them (which I don’t trust much because they never seem to spend much time discussing which Indian societies had this practice) make it sound more like a cultural acceptance of transgenderism, which isn’t exactly the same as accepting male-male sexuality. And surely there are differences relating to social class; societies aren’t homogeneous and there are plenty of examples of subcultures accepting homosexuality while the broader culture didn’t. For instance, plenty of straight people in Golden Age Hollywood were perfectly aware that some major actors were gay, long before that was at all socially accepted in the broader culture.
I also don’t know of any culture in which female homosexuality is particularly reviled while male homosexuality isn’t, but I think it’s safe to say that in male-dominated cultures like a lot of the ones we’re looking at, women had a whole lot less opportunity to have sexual relationships with each other (hence it seeming to be unnoticed in, for instance, the Jewish scriptures). But either way, it doesn’t go to support the idea that generally, overall that male-male sexual activity is considered “more dangerous”. To whatever extent that’s true in our culture, and arguments could definitely be made, our culture may be the peculiar outlier.
It could be that men tend to fear male homosexuality because they worry about the possibility of being raped. That’s a plausible explanation, but I’m still not entirely convinced that there’s a phenomenon here to be explained.