serpent.antonchanning.com

Well it seems some researchers have found that in some ways lesbians think like heterosexual men, and gay men think like heterosexual women.

Well there is a surprise. Yawn.

Still no mention of where bisexuals and intersex people fit in with this sort of stereotyping. I am highly sceptical of models of sexuality that present a binary either-or cause, for obvious reasons. I still believe that everyone starts off potentially bisexual, although perhaps with some degree of natural bias, probably towards heterosexual relationships in most cases.

It is important to remember that corrolation does not equal causation. Nor does a similarity of hard wiring in the preconditioned brain mean that that similarity is the direct cause of sexuality without social conditioning. For example, that gay men have a similar hardwiring in their brains to women may simply predispose them to finding it difficult to relate to typical manly modes of behaviour and thinking, and thus more identify with feminine. That girls are also conditioned (in general) to be attracted to more manly boys could cause early rejection scenarios that push the individual more towards the homosexual side of their sexuality.

I think this would be an alternative interpretation of these studies. I’m not saying its a true interpretation, just that differences in brain gender do not necessarilly exclude all factors of social conditioning. However, I realise that my interpretation won’t be well loved by those seeking a social explanation (ie those that reject the idea that homosexuality might be ‘natural’), because it suggests that a prime cause of homosexuality is heterosexuality. The more heterosexuality is pushed for as a social ‘norm’, the more those that don’t naturally fit it will be pushed into homosexuality. Conversely, I predict the less heterosexuality is promoted as the only acceptable social norm, the more heterosexual and homosexual people will find that they are actually just at extreme ends of a bisexual spectrum, and that they aren’t quite as polarised as they thought they were.

Of course, I realise my own views are radically bisexual, but for this I make no apology, except in that the term may exclude those that see themselves as intersex in some way.

Other studies have included bisexuals and have apparently shown gradiated transitions between the sexes and sexualities, which don’t corrolate exactly with the results shown above, with gay men closer to straight men than gay women were, hinting that the true pattern is a lot more complex than the recent study suggests.