The question is a bit long for a catchy title, here’s what I’ve been wondering:
If we hope and assume that the current climate of increased tolerance and acceptance for homosexual men and women is going to continue to grow, it stands to reason that within a reasonable timeframe (20 to 50 years, say) no one will care whether you are gay or straight, just like no one cares today if your ancestors were Irish or Italian (I assume, I’m not an American), or if you have brown or green eyes. If we further stipulate that there are professions that have a disproportionately high number of gay members - hairdressers, people in fashion, people in musical theater, you get the idea - this leads me to my question:
Why do so many gay men work in these professions? Is it because they are more inclined to work in an artistic career? Somehow I don’t buy that, because I don’t really see the connection. Why should your sexual orientation have anything to do with whether you’re artistically talented? I would assume that this pattern developed because of a higher culture of diversity and acceptance in these fields, which could create some sort of a positive feedback loop. Conversely, it could be very damaging (today) for a professional football player or similar to come out as gay, but like I said, I see that changing as we speak. Were there successful openly gay actors or musicians 50 years ago?
So, once we get to the point of complete acceptance (one can dream, right?), is there a reason why these stereotypes should persist? Why would there be more gay make-up artists than gay lumberjacks, without external pressures?
Sorry if this seems confusing and rambling, it was just something I was wondering about and wanted some input from you guys. So, my TL,DR question: will there be an equal amount of homosexual people in every field of work 50 years from now?
I would not be surprised if it is there is a connection. We still have a lot to learn about our genetics, the determinants of our sexuality, the interplay between genetics+environment on personality, and neuroscience.
There is evidence pointing to the importance of prenatal hormones on everything from handedness to the risk of developing arthritis in adulthood. Why wouldn’t there be a connection between sexuality and preferences, abilities, and personality? I mean, I wouldn’t be shocked if this explains why you don’t see a whole bunch of heterosexual men lining up to become nursery school teachers. I think some of the reason is social, but not all of it.
While they will certainly change after decades of time, I doubt gender behavior stereotypes will cease to exist. There are jobs and activities thought of as masculine and feminine which puts pressure on people, I don’t see that changing.
Or are you saying that gays in professions where being out isn’t so common will feel free to be open about who they are?
I’m saying both, but you’re kind of making my point here: I don’t really see being gay as less masculine than being straight, but maybe I’m in the minority here.
If you subscribe to sexuality being genetic or at least innate, it doesn’t follow that there wouldn’t be any gay football players, just like it would be strange if there weren’t any left-handed football players. Speaking of which, you sometimes hear that there is a correlation between left-handedness and increased artistic ability, though, but I’m not sure if there’s anything to it.
It doesn’t automatically “follow”, but it could potentially follow. If the gene(s) connected to male homosexuality is also linked to, say, right-brain dominance, then it would naturally follow that there would be an over-representation of gays in the arts. And I don’t see why this couldn’t be the case.
As far as the arts in the stricter sense are concerned, I think you have to keep in mind that until fairly recently even artists whose work was appreciated (e.g. classically trained actors, dancers, painters etc.) were not really considered fully respectable members of society. There are still traces of those attitudes, but back in the day to many it was just one step above running away and joining the circus.
In a situation where decent church-going folks with proper jobs have already given up on you but on the other hand respect for the art provides you with a viable niche, you can develop an outsider subculture with its own freedoms and values.
And of course once it gets going feedback loops play an important part.
While an actual genetic predisposition could play a link, I think it’s pretty easy to explain why gay cliche careers are gay cliches without that assumption.
The stereotypically gay jobs (dancers, hairdressers, decorators, actors) have some pretty obvious appeals to gays. They’re jobs where a gay man is less likely to be accosted or hounded by homophobic men. Artsy careers are around artsy people, who often tend to be socially progressive and eccentric in their own ways.
The more “domestic” careers are ones where a gay man would be more likely to be working with and for women.
And both of these broad fields are going to possibly select against straight men as well, since they could be seen as being less masculine. So not only are they appealing to gay men, they’re less appealing to straight men. And that makes them, in turn, more appealing to gay men.
So, to the OP, I think increased gay acceptance will decrease this division, but I don’t expect the change to be total or quick.
I’m American, and this is basically true. Irish and Italian Americans have assimilated almost completely into the general “White American” crowd and although you might encounter a random person who for some reason is prejudiced, it generally doesn’t happen because the vast majority of people in the US today are not prejudiced against Italian-Americans or Irish-Americans and even if they were, it’s not so easy to tell if a random person is Irish or Italian due to the assimilation.
Q : What do you get when you cross an Irishman from New York with a Pennsylvania Dutch girl from Philly?
One of the things I’ve heard is that the so-called “gay gene” is passed along indirectly through the influence of gay uncles. A guy ends up inheriting a gene that makes him gay, his sister gets the same gene but it doesn’t do much, if anything to her other than make her a carrier. Sis (being hetero) gets married and has kids, her gay brother doesn’t, but becomes especially keen on helping to raise his nieces and nephews, and ends up being such a positive influence in their lives that sis’s daughters grow up very healthy and have lots of kids that they raise with the help of their gay brothers.
I don’t believe that people are blank slates or that gender roles are wholly or even mostly social constructions. So, I think that just as straight men and straight women continue to be disproportionately represented in certain career tracks and college majors, so will gay men and gay women (and very often, they are drawn to things which are more normally the domain of the opposite [straight] sex, and their gender expression is in accordance with this).
Anectodally, none of them gay guys or straight women I know have been dissuaded from pursuing their interests in college and in the workforce, out of fear of harassment, homophobia or gender discrimination. These things do still happen but it’s completely different than it was just a generation ago. There is a lot of freedom and encouragement to pursue your ‘dreams’, and that doesn’t seem to change the fact that most flamboyant/‘feminine’ gay guys are simply more interested in working with people, ideas, or in the arts. They dreamed of being a psychiatrist or a performer, etc since they were little children, not of being a fire marshal or engineer. I know (mostly butch) straight girls and lesbians successfully working in trades, STEM, labor (femme girls as a group just seem less interested in these career tracks, even with exposure, encouragement, and ‘equal opportunity’ incentives’). I know butch gay guys working in typically straight-male dominated professions, no problems. But they’re an exception among their statistical group because their interests are naturally quite different than the majority.
It does sort of make think of the question, “Which came first - the chicken or the egg?”
To a certain extent, most Gay guys I know who are in the arts of some kind sort of knew they liked that particular field at an early age.
I would imagine that most non-Gay guys might have shunned, or been uninterested in certain fields of the arts - although I think if you put Video Games into the mix now, this is where a lot of non-Gay guys suddenly are interested in the “art” of creating characters, animation and programming. Once again, an appreciation of that “art” form at an early age leads them off to create their own.
There is always at least that 25% or more of Gay guys who never were interested in any form of the arts whatsoever and rarely see movies, or go to any Broadway shows, etc. and would far rather watch a sports game on TV with guys at the local bar or whatever.
So yeah, there might be some long term changes, but at least in the group of people I have met along the way, interest in, or lack of interest, in many of those art forms started at a very early age.
I think some of it is because they can - since most gay people until recently could not have children, they didn’t have anyone else depending on them, so they could take a job with low, unreliable pay more safely than a man with a family could.
There is some truth for that amongst lesbians too.
When you look at the stereotypically gay male professions, one thing that they all have in common is that they pay less than the traditionally (heterosexual ) male professions. This is also one of the reasons these same careers were open to women.
Many times, back in the days when one income households were the rule rather than the exception, gay men usually didn’t have a family to support, thus requiring less income to live. Women in the workforce’s income was usually considered supplemental and were paid similarly.
Unacceptable to our twenty-first century western sensibilities, but the truth of the workforce for many years.
As a straight guy, I await the day when there are more heterosexual women’s fashion designers. I, for one, am sick to death of designers creating for models who are shaped like boys.
