Ok just the other day I saw a program on TLC about how humans make descisions on sex partners and how it all is really in relation to breeding. This was all boy/girl relationship stuff.
Now as a straight man, I found this program very interesting. However I know a few gay people and i thought… “well since they (homosexuals) OBVIOUSLY cannot ‘mate’ how do they make their desisions?”
Getting no decent answers from any of the gay people i know. I turn this question to the TSD community.
-x out
I don’t think science has figured that out yet. If it had, wouldn’t that mean that homosexuality would be explained? Is that what you are looking for, or are you looking for opinions?
well see, in TLC’s program they explain how we as humans choose our mates and know who would give good offspring and whatnot. It also explained why people “cheat” on their spouses and whatnot.
The program made TOTAL sense IMO and as we all know there is a scientific explination for EVERYTHING. Soooooo I was hoping perhaps a member of this forum (possibly a homosexual one) could explain why they are attracted to certain people and not others. I mean there must be SOME logic (quite possibly abstract logic but never the less…) to why gay people chose the partners they do.
isnt there?
-x out
I’d guess that culture has just as much to do with who we’re attracted to as biology does. A 100% straight guy can still look at Brad Pitt and realise immediately that women would be attracted to him. Now, either that’s just a biological ability to judge genetic flaws/highlights without feeling a sexual attraction (Useful, I imagine, for group dynamics, the way wolves and other pack animals form heirarchies based on fitness/strength/whatever) or that we simply know from past experiences what is considered attractive for men.
Either way, homosexuals are influenced into being attracted to that person. Either because they have that same ability to see genetic flaws/highlights regardless of sex, and since that’s their gender of choice, it’s a green light - Or, they’ve grown up knowing that men with Brad Pitt’s general features are attractive, thus, they become attracted to those features.
I think human sexuality and selection is a little more complex than that. Take a look at what turns people on, lots of it has nothing to do with breeding stock. Can you explain why some straight men (and a few gay ones) are attracted to Sophia Loren and others to Kate Moss?
I think homosexuals can also base their attractions on whether or not he/she would make a good mate/parent, etc. And that depends on YOU.
Doesn’t have to actually involve making kids. That’s pretty easy, in MHO.
I have kids. I’m gay. Who do I want to help raise the family? A big burly hairly chested alpha male man? A smooth kind nurturing thin guy? A woman with nice child bearing hips? A woman who can chuck, hit & kill prey from 50 ft?
Visually/chemically determining who would make a good mate doesn’t always equate to who’d squirt out genetically preferable kids. Humans are sluts that way.
Ok, wait. That didn’t make a lot of sense. If you’re going to mate to produce kids, I thing homosexuals are as good at picking a genetic mate as anyone else. A man might go for a woman with nice thick child bearing hips. A woman might go for a strong healthy alpha male type.
When it comes to raising & providing for your kids, I think homosexuals & heterosexuals are equally good at deciding who would be a good parent/provider, and that could also easily be based on body type, personality, etc. Do I want a sleep around slut for a parent, or someone who’s committed to raising our kids? If I want to stay at home, I’m going to go for someone who can “bring home the bacon.” Or vice versa. I don’t think gender matters so much as compatibility with your mate & what he/she can bring to the relationship.
It sounds as though you may have already discovered the difficulty. The “scientific” explanations are largely rationalizations based on the assumption that there must be adaptive reason for preferences in mate selection. This is not necessarily. And even if it is, it is very difficult to determine what they might be.
I’d guess it has something to do w/the ass, but that’s not scientific.
Do illuminate what you meant by that.
:rolleyes:
Watching another TLC progr- one second [mutes Blink182 crap and curses MTV2] - program covering gender changing, they had a bit about hormones affecting a small part at the bottom of the brain (biologist I ain’t) - bigger in men, smaller in women. The first study to find this was looking for the difference between “normals” and people changing gender, but later critique pointed out that they had done the study after hormone therapy.
Of course, stepping out on a limb and saying that there is a genetic homosexuality switch would be saying a lot. Also, defining an aesthetic effectively covering a large enough percentage of the population is saying a lot. There are a lot of issues in what is attractive and what isn’t. For instance, someone who looks like my ex makes me want to burnmurderslashdestroykill.
I’ve asked myself if I’m bi or gay - I’ve had close relationships with other guys, but I’ve never felt any physical attraction or interest in men whatsoever. I’m neither interested in nor repulsed by the thought of sex acts with other men. Dissapointing, in a way. Think of how much fun I can have with pissing off people. :-p Pretending has to be good enough sometimes.
I’m not going to be a wussy liar and say that it is all about personality, because it damn well isn’t all about personality. In the end, I’d think it would come down to pretty much exactly how straight people make their mating decisions. There are gay people why just sleep around, like straight people. There are gay people who look for a partner they are comfortable with, like straight people. It depends on emotional and mental needs (and/or disorders) more than anything else. Asking what scientifically makes them like one person or another is like asking what makes them think something is right or wrong, morally.
I agree with this. I am gay and share a house with another gay man. Sometimes we both think a particular guy is attractive, sometimes we disagree. Some of the men he fancies the socks off of make me shake my head and doubt his sanity. 
And vice versa, of course.
I could describe the “type” of guy I find attractive, but it would be pretty meaningless, I think. There is no logical reason behind it. And perhaps that’s the beauty of it all.
He was thinking with his:D
I did have a question, but I don’t want to side track the conversation and seeing as it’s somewhat on par with the discussion:
Are homosexuals, for the most part, not attracted to openly heterosexual men? (or women)
(a few response would be good, my guess is that it depends on the person)
You’re right, it depends on the person. Some of my gay friends are very much attracted to “obviously” straight men. Perhaps they like the challenge such men present, I don’t know.
For my part, I don’t need the hastle. 
The questions are great. Part of the problem in trying to answer them is that TLC is not a source of high-quality scientific information. They (like any other infotainment) make sweeping assertions that aren’t proven. “And how it all is really in relation to breeding” is a hypothesis, not an answer.
Hate to nitpick, but isn’t “like any other infotainment” a sweeping assertion?
I’m an openly gay man and have defined myself as such since I started to define anything at all.
Though it makes sense that there is an evolutionary, let’s-propagate component to the development of amatory aesthetics, it may only be the foundation of something very complex. Don’t forget that, even dealing only with evolutionary stuff, it’s not as if Ma Nature says “I’m gonna use lust for this purpose, hunger for that.” There may be branching-points in biohistory in which it was adaptively advantageous for an organism to do exactly the opposite of what we, with our limited information, might expect. Be VERY cautious about taking reductionist-type theories very literally.
There are a few statistical tendencies, verified by some number of experimental studies, that suggest a significant amount of cross-cultural commonality in the response to the appearance of another human. As I recall, the most important is degree of symmetry of the features. Below that, “gender cues” that are self-consistent–if it looks like (what you think of as) a female, it ought to have a female voice, a female gait, etc. Likewise, wide-hipped, narrow-shouldered men (compared to women) are viewed as at least mildly discomfitting.
Too much variance from the (statistical) norm in any area–height, weight, even, yes, penile or mammary proportions–is cross-culturally viewed as a disadvantage.
(These things are tendencies, remember, not absolute universals.)
But all of the above leaves about 95% to be customized to taste; and that’s the mysterious part.
I can only note that I found certain kinds of “looks” preferable even at, say, five years old; and those preferences have not radically changed.
It seems to me that the “typical” gay man has an aesthetic no different from the “typical” heterosexual woman with regard to identifying a lust-object. It is when we get beyond the immediate visceral responses that some differences begin to emerge, IMHO.
I’m not interested in openly heterosexual men. I’m also not really interested in married men who want gay sex on the side.
The phenomena of married men who go out for gay sex behind their wives’ backs is not uncommon.
In my area of Oregon, I have seen it be quite prolific.
My wag is that “rules” for attraction in homosexuals are like nipples on men. They don’t help in childraising but the genes are there anyway and still get expressed. I.e., we may have evolved certain behaviors for a particular reason but lacking that reason doesn’t make the behavior go away.
People don’t really consciously think “She has large hips, good for delivering babys.” And no one really believes that straight people who are knowingly sterile stop/change their attitudes on appearance of the opposite sex, right? A vasectomy doesn’t alter your brain wiring.