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[Nabubrush]

It's really funny to hear heterosexual men pontificating about gay culture and Kinsey's continuum.

Uhhhhh? It's a continuum! There's no such thing as a heterosexual.

[Drastic Action]

Uhhhhh? It's a continuum! There's no such thing as a heterosexual.

How is it more acceptable for a gay/bi dude to say that about heterosexuality, but if a straight dude said the same of homosexuality, everyone would be all over him about it?  Not that I would condone the latter -- rather, I don't condone either.  Meanwhile, I'm reading about kinsey's scale to see what you all are on about, and in the process, I discovered that he briefly attended my college, Stevens, and quite disliked his time there.  Random facts.

[Nabubrush]

How is it more acceptable for a gay/bi dude to say that about heterosexuality, but if a straight dude said the same of homosexuality, everyone would be all over him about it?  Not that I would condone the latter -- rather, I don't condone either.  Meanwhile, I'm reading about kinsey's scale to see what you all are on about, and in the process, I discovered that he briefly attended my college, Stevens, and quite disliked his time there.  Random facts.

Interesting. Get the boot.

[Ben-San]

Would our hypothetical Moominporn involve the Hobgoblin's Hat?  That could get interesting.  Or should we go for a different approach, with BDSM Hattifattener sex and the Groke sitting on things?

c&

also terrified

[Nabubrush]

c&

also terrified

No no - don't be frightened, Ben. We're here for yooooouuuuuu!

[linnea]

How is it more acceptable for a gay/bi dude to say that about heterosexuality, but if a straight dude said the same of homosexuality, everyone would be all over him about it? 

Because it's about cultural imperialism. It's like a bunch of white dudes thinking that they have the right to explain blackness and the validity of the black culture.  However, that being said...just because someone is a member of said minority does not necessarily make them an authority on the history and struggle of whichever group to which they happen to belong.

What all this means is that basically, I took a "queer studies" class in college and we spent a lot of time talking about Fouc*ult.

[Ruta Bagas]

However, that being said...just because someone is a member of said minority does not necessarily make them an authority on the history and struggle of whichever group to which they happen to belong.

I think that works both ways. I don't see why a bunch of white dudes necessarily can't explain blackness and the validity of black culture, even if in practice the vast majority are unlikely to be able to do so effectively or fairly. Surely to suggest otherwise just strengthens the notions of separateness that cause so very, very much fucked-upness wherever they appear?

[littlefallsmets]

Well, I mean, this is the problem isn't it?

The assumption by each person within a minority (or even an oppressed minority) that their experience within that group IS that group's experience.

One of my closest friends in Los Angeles is a 6'8" musclebound black man with a shaved head who looks like he could basically kill your grandmother by punching you. Like retroactively. He could punch you and you would suddenly remember your gramma's funeral two years ago and start crying. He looks like he can punch through time.

And yet he is the first American-born member of a family of Nigerian immigrants who grew up in the 'burbs of St. Louis and has less connection with the "African American experience" than I do, even though I am a hayseed of Southern and Eastern European extraction.

His job is as an assistant web designer for a television network and his dream is to be a science-fiction novelist. He has severe difficulties with his dating life because... culturally, he wants to be dating a wispy thoughtful librarian type who in our culture are usually white girls in thick-rimmed glasses. And generally, those kind of girls are raised to be afraid of dudes who look like him.

Moreover, the kind of women... in Los Angeles, especially, but basically all of America... who will usually be comfortable dating a huge adonis of a dude of African descent tend to be very outgoing boisterous ladies and... those women scare the hell out of HIM.

Am I to arbitrate the... Catholic experience? The left-handed experience? The son-of-the-blue-collar-trying-to-make-it-in-entertainment experience? I don't know that I have any right to speak to any of those experiences, even though I am those things.

I fear that I am just as able to speak about any experience because no one can talk to any "experience"... except for their own personal experience. All else is vanity.

This is at least how I feel sometimes.

[ack-47]

From the gays and straights I have known, the only ones who are exclusively attracted to one sex are messed in the head. They are gay men who have extremely severe issues with women, or women who view other women as contemptible objects, or astoundingly misogynist straight men who consider being on the wrong end of penetration shameful Ancient Greek-style.

The average sports fan, Savage Love reports, has an erection 8 to 11 times over the course of a football game. This is, unless my meager knowledge of football fails me, almost (or more than) a boner every ten minutes. We are talking almost as much hole as cheese here. But talk to straight football fans about the man-sex they subconsciously want to have with the sculpted adonises on the field and they will have all kinds of nasty things to say because they are messed in the head.

I am pretty straight, but 'pretty' is the operative word here. I have known men who I find vaguely attractive. There's a tall redheaded dude I knew in high school who I would totally have made out with if the chicks I was more attracted to hadn't panned out. There's nothing exceptional about this; there is something to like about everybody. Sometimes the way you were brought up just prevents you from recognizing that.

If you got beat by your mother whenever you popped wood and you associate that with having an erection, chances are you're gonna have serious issues finding women attractive and will be gay by default. Or if you get molested by a relative, you could well have issues with that sex and wind up attracted to the other one. This is not to say that being one sexuality or the other hinges on being abused; hell no. But most gays you meet have been vaguely attracted to the opposite sex in the way I've been vaguely attracted to the same sex. Most gay women and straight men who do not have serious man issues have at least one male celebrity they would get it on with. (For me, it is Edward Norton.) It would be kind of awkward because tight asses and dicks and muscles aren't usually their thing, but there's something about them either aesthetically or as a person that clicks. Most gay men and straight women have at least one woman they can say the same of.

If someone is 100% absolutely attracted to one sex or the other, chances are it means they're lying to themselves at some level - maybe not even a level they're conscious of - and have issues with the other sex. I have never met anyone who is unattracted to anyone who their orientation can't explain who doesn't have Problems. The Problems don't even have to be serious damage - it could be something as small as being bullied as a kid at just the right time. Whatever it is, there's some monkey on their back making them feel bad whenever they're attracted to the 'wrong' person. It's the same as someone finding one race or nationality or religion or whatever universally unattractive. People are people, and letting one arbitrary thing get in the way of finding someone sexy is usually the result of deep-seated issues.

This is all my experience talking. I could go on theory for why all of this is, but I think my experience and the experience of those I know speaks for itself.

[littlefallsmets]

Oh... I dunno, I'm open to the idea that there might be something off-kilter about my never having being attracted to a dude. Basically all of my major male role models were dead, insane or variously disgraced by the time I was twelve.

I could well have some kind of complex about maleness being flawed and corrupted and wrong. I am open to this idea.

Nearly everyone I've ever known is not pinning the needle to either end of the ol' Kinsey and... back home growing up, I was friends with pretty much all the people courageous enough to self-identify as bisexual or gay... to the point where I have found out later that there were girls who were gonna ask me out but assumed I was closeted gay because I hung out with all the gay and bi kids.

As opposed to the fact that gravitating toward the arts is just gonna get you in social circles with a lot of people of alternate sexual persuasions. I was head of the school newspaper, an actor in the drama club and volunteering up at the community college's radio station because our high school didn't have any kind of an AV club. I was singing parody songs at coffee houses.

In the perception of people in rural upstate New York, that is the opposite of owning a pair of boxer shorts with "exit only" printed on the butt. And it actually caused ladies to not date me. It boggles.

So I guess I could have a complex that is surpressing whatever little bit of swing for the dudes might be inside my genes, out of deeply ingrained problems about... having to be hyper-straight as a dude who liked ladies AND the arts in a small town or... about my grandfathers and uncles and cousins and stuff all being in really bad places.

I'm open to it but I must say, it doesn't resonate a true to me, consciously.

It feels like dudes are just ugly and animal-looking to me. But I'll admit that all minds are onions.

[jaydub]

The average sports fan, Savage Love reports, has an erection 8 to 11 times over the course of a football game. This is, unless my meager knowledge of football fails me, almost (or more than) a boner every ten minutes. We are talking almost as much hole as cheese here.

I'm trying to picture how this assertion was made.  Self reporting (seems unlikely)?  Observation of nude dudes watching The Game?  That has a subtext to it that seems comical.  Some sort of electronic cuff the researchers talked average sports watching fellows into wearing while chilling at home that was later downloaded and compared to time-stamped journals of activity?  That would seem most objective, if not for the fact that erections seem to be self perpetuating once you're aware of any action going on down there, which (I would think) a cuff would sort of accentuate.



Sculpted Adonises at play

[ack-47]

It feels like dudes are just ugly and animal-looking to me. But I'll admit that all minds are onions.

This is definitely a part of it. See, I couldn't find a woman (or a man, for that matter) physically attractive if I knew she was seriously ugly on the inside - like, a hardcore racist or a homophobe or a Jews for Jesus canvasser. On the one hand, she'd still look the same to me, but seeing what made me find her hot in the first place would just further remind me how horrible she is deep down.

Edward Norton isn't the best specimen, but he's by all accounts a pretty decent guy and I like him as an actor; he's got this weird soft-spokenness about him that prevents him from being himself on camera for lots of money like 90% of actors (and 99% of actresses). He's big on the environment and human rights and taught English in Japan before he was famous, which says something about his intelligence outside of acting.

I guess for me part of it is that most of attraction is personality-based, which makes judging who is cute to me based on looks a mug's game. But I think this is true for most people at least to some extent. Most men could not have sex with Ann Coulter without feeling dirty afterwards, just like most men could not have sex with a normal man without feeling dirty afterwards.

Basically looks aren't everything. They're important, which is why I find women attractive who have a lot less going on upstairs than it'd take for me to find a man attractive - I'm aesthetically attracted to the female form - but personality can trump them.

If it absolutely can't, if some part of looks are so important that you absolutely can't find someone attractive without them, there are usually some issues at play there. At the very least, upbringing takes some part in this: after all, the ancient Greeks considered you weird as a grown man if you didn't mostly prefer pubescent boys, and thought that men who exclusively went for women (whose purpose was to keep the house and produce more boys) were weird, almost the modern/Western equivalent of 'fruity'.

I'm trying to picture how this assertion was made.  Self reporting (seems unlikely)?  Observation of nude dudes watching The Game?  That has a subtext to it that seems comical.  Some sort of electronic cuff the researchers talked average sports watching fellows into wearing while chilling at home that was later downloaded and compared to time-stamped journals of activity?  That would seem most objective, if not for the fact that erections seem to be self perpetuating once you're aware of any action going on down there, which (I would think) a cuff would sort of accentuate.



Sculpted Adonises at play

I'll admit it's a little dubious, but I still find it pretty interesting - and based on how hard a lot of sports enthusiasts I've met overcompensate with the straight thing, it rings sort of true. I'll look for the link; I don't recall their methodology either.

But it makes a sort of sense: they're basically watching dudes who are the best at one of their favorite things do it as hard as possible, adrenaline and all. It's pretty easy to get your 'excited' wires crossed - we are animals, after all - and if you add an upbringing that encourages you to take that man-lust and bury it real deep instead of expressing it and leaving it well enough alone, well, you usually wind up with a situation.

[jaydub]

... to the point where I have found out later that there were girls who were gonna ask me out but assumed I was closeted gay because I hung out with all the gay and bi kids.

Doesn't that just kill you?  I had a semi-similar thing happen when (years later) a lady I had once fancied told me she would have asked me out but she thought I was with a girl who was "just friends" with me.  I felt like it was life-imitating-pathetic-sitcom. 

[ack-47]

Doesn't that just kill you?  I had a semi-similar thing happen when (years later) a lady I had once fancied told me she would have asked me out but she thought I was with a girl who was "just friends" with me.  I felt like it was life-imitating-pathetic-sitcom. 

The worst thing is that as soon as you wind up in your first relationship, people who liked you come out of the woodwork. In retrospect, I should have recognized that I was bored with my first relationship two weeks in and pursued all the trim I had been missing throughout high school.

There were readily a dozen or so women who had things of varying degrees for me, and yet I was so obsessed with my own crappiness as a person that I thought nobody could like me at all. Of course, I also got to thinking that the first girl who asked me out was the only girl who could like me at all, so I hung onto that longer than was healthy.

Live and learn, I guess.

Also, let this be a lesson to any lurkers: try and find a lull in Onstad's latent man-on-man issues to pop in, otherwise people are gonna think you are like a character in a bad sitcom who has wacky misunderstandings in relationships. People will read your posts and think you are a dude from a show whose writers looked at Friends and thought it threw too many curve balls. You will be like the version of Chandler who gets his hair done at Supercuts to these people.

[Golfhaus]

Most gay women and straight men who do not have serious man issues have at least one male celebrity they would get it on with. (For me, it is Edward Norton.)

The first time I read that, I parsed it as GRAHAM Norton.