Are all men gay
Is 10% of the population really gay?
For a available statistic to be the primary propaganda weapon for a radical political movement is unusual. Back in 1977, the US National Gay Task Force (NGTF) was invited into the White House to join President Jimmy Carter’s representatives – a first for gay and lesbian groups. The NGTF’s most prominent campaigning slogan was “we are everywhere”, backed up by the memorable statistical claim that one in 10 of the US population was gay – this figure was deeply and passionately contested.
So where did Bruce Voeller, a scientist who was a founder and first director of the NGTF, receive this nice round 10% from? To find out, we have to delve back into Alfred Kinsey’s surveys in 1940s America, which were groundbreaking at the time but are now seen as archaic in their methods: he sought out respondents in prisons and the lgbtq+ underworld, made friends with them and, over a cigarette, noted down their behaviours using an obscure code. Kinsey did not believe that sexual self was fixed and simply categorised, and perhaps his most lasting contribution was his scale, still used today, in which individuals are rated from exclusively heterosexual to exclusive
Massive Study Finds No Single Genetic Result in of Same-Sex Sexual Behavior
Few aspects of human biology are as complex—or politically fraught—as sexual orientation. A clear genetic link would recommend that gay people are “born this way,” as opposed to having made a lifestyle preference. Yet some shrink from that such a finding could be misused to “cure” homosexuality, and most research teams contain shied away from tackling the topic.
Now a new learn claims to dispel the notion that a single gene or handful of genes make a person prone to same-sex behavior. The analysis, which examined the genomes of nearly half a million men and women, found that although genetics are certainly involved in who people pick to have sex with, there are no specific genetic predictors. Yet some researchers question whether the analysis, which looked at genes associated with sexual activity rather than attraction, can outline any real conclusions about sexual orientation.
“The message should persist the same that this is a complex behavior that genetics definitely plays a part in,” said study co-author Fah Sathirapongsasuti, a computational biologist at genetic testin
Why do some straight men hold sex with other men?
According to nationally-representative surveys in the Combined States, hundreds of thousands of straight-identified men have had sex with other men.
In the novel book Still Straight: Sexual Flexibility among White Men in Rural America released today, UBC sociologist Dr. Tony Silva argues that these men – many of whom enjoy hunting, fishing and shooting guns – are not closeted, bisexual or just experimenting.
After interviewing 60 of these men over three years, Dr. Silva found that they enjoy a range of relationships with other men, from hookups to sexual friendships to secretive loving partnerships, all while strongly identifying with straight culture.
We spoke with Dr. Silva about his book.
Why undertake straight-identified men have sex with other men?
The majority of the men I interviewed reported that they are primarily attracted to women, not men. Most of these men are also married to women and prefer to have sex with women. They explained that although they loved their wives, their marital sex lives were not as active as they wanted. Sex with men allowed them to contain more sex. They don’t think about sex with men cheating and s
The evolutionary puzzle of homosexuality
These figures may not be upper enough to sustain genetic traits specific to this team, but the evolutionary biologist Jeremy Yoder points out in a blog announce, external that for much of new history gay people haven't been living openly gay lives. Compelled by community to enter marriages and have children, their reproduction rates may have been higher than they are now.
How many gay people have children also depends on how you define existence "gay". Many of the "straight" men who have sex with fa'afafine in Samoa go on to get married and have children.
"The category of lgbtq+ sexuality becomes very diffuse when you take a multicultural perspective," says Joan Roughgarden, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Hawaii. "If you travel to India, you'll find that if someone says they are 'gay' or 'homosexual' then that immediately identifies them as Western. But that doesn't imply there's no homosexuality there."
Similarly in the West, there is evidence that many people travel through a phase of homosexual outing. In the 1940s, US sex researcher Alfred K