Gay Men and Body Perfectn | Psychology Today

Contents:

• THE HIDN GAY LIV FALLY BEG UNVERED
• GAY AND BISEXUAL MEN'S HEALTH
• I’M 43 – BUT I’M MA TO FEEL LIKE A DOSR BY YOUNGER GAY MEN
• WHY ARE THERE GAY MEN?
• THE REAL LIV OF GAY MEN
• GAY MEN AND BODY PERFECTN
• PHYSIL, BEHAVRAL, AND PSYCHOLOGIL TRAS OF GAY MEN INTIFYG AS BEARS
• WHAT DO IT MEAN TO BE A GAY MAN?

THE HIDN GAY LIV FALLY BEG UNVERED

Many health re and mental health anizatns foced on the lbian, gay, bisexual and transgenr muny also offer substance e treatment or may be able to provi rmatn about lol rourc. But when I heard people ravg about the show, wrten by Rsell T Davi, I was stck by how many of them admted to knowg ltle about the epimic – and the stctn wreaked among the gay muny.

For a long time, the mastream public didn't want to hear our Ca's The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle tells the story of a secretly gay postman searchg for a lost love om his youth (Cred: Headle Review)"I would venture to say that the public were disgted and outraged, " says thor Crystal Jeans. It's about a lonely, socially awkward and secretly gay postman livg a fictnal town the north of England who hs retirement, realisg he wants to turn his life around and fally be happy – but to do this, he needs to fd the love of his life, a man he hasn’t seen for nearly 50 years. That same year, the so-lled "Alan Turg law" offered pardons to 49, 000 Brish gay men who’d been nvicted of homosexual acts – followg a mpaign arguably bolstered by the greater awarens brought about by The Imatn Game, the h film that picted the nvictn and chemil stratn of the Enigma-breakg puter scientist.

GAY AND BISEXUAL MEN'S HEALTH

You’d not tch many queer al mers jottg down their memoirs – Crystal JeansHowever, 's fictn that’s very much drivg the phenomenon of brgg "lost" stori of gay life om the past to light. Over the last five years, a tr of Irish wrers have livered stunng gay-themed novels set predomantly perds of history that didn't wele them – John Boyne (The Heart’s Invisible Furi), Graham Norton (Home Stretch), and Sebastian Barry (the Costa Award-wng Days Whout End). In the theatre, Matthew Lopez's exploratn of gay male history The Inherance triumphed London before transferrg to New York, where opened the year after a well-received revival of Mart Crowley's semal 1968 play Boys the Band.

I’M 43 – BUT I’M MA TO FEEL LIKE A DOSR BY YOUNGER GAY MEN

Most recently, the ter explod wh behd-the-scen photos of Harry Styl om the shoot of new film My Policeman, an adaptatn of Bethan Roberts's 2012 novel starrg the pop superstar as a closeted gay man the 1950s. However, as a way of explag the mystery surroundg why Harry left behd everythg he knew, Gale imaged a suatn which he was forced to leave as a rult of a gay affair beg exposed.

WHY ARE THERE GAY MEN?

This was another reason I wrote The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle; I wanted to tell the story of one ordary young gay man tryg to exprs his love for another at a time when this would not have been accepted. But I also wanted to ntrast this disturbg, sometim horrifyg picture wh what life n be like for a gay man wh today’s much more acceptg society the UK – and celebrate how much progrs we’ve ma.

My spiratn was a seri of terviews I nducted wh olr gay men whilst I was Edor--Chief of Attu magaze, as part of our celebratn of the 50th anniversary of the start of crimalisatn. Pop star Harry Styl is starrg new film My Policeman as a closeted gay officer the 1950s (Cred: Getty Imag)"What we see all through history is that people are nied their past as part of a way to ntrol them, " says Hornby. Whether that's been spreadg ccial awarens on policy and our global queer siblgs' ongog fight for liberatn, to the latt celebry, TV, film and mic: Gay Tim reprents the tly multifaceted nature of the queer 1.

UKA one-stop liftyle rource for the discerng gay man or woman, which featur articl on all aspects of LGBT life cludg gay travel, LGBT and diversy issu, legal and fancial advice. ” Furthermore, the purportedly shorter life spans and poorer physil and mental health of gays and lbians are often offered as reasons why they shouldn’t be allowed to adopt or foster children.

THE REAL LIV OF GAY MEN

To plement this rearch I took a different approach: I examed 6, 089 obuari of homosexual men om four homosexual magaz: The Bay Area Reporter, the Washgton Bla, the New York Bla and This Week, published between 1980 to 2014 clive.

The average life span of male homosexuals may eventually pare to that of the general male populatn, and “gay” activists will evably pot to this as proof that the active homosexual liftyle is safe and healthy.

The rat of ath of homosexual men om ncer, heart disease, stroke and diabet are all signifintly lower than those of the general populatn, bee homosexuals simply do not live long enough to die om them at greater rat. To beg wh, ntrast to the obuari mastream newspapers, the on for homosexuals studly avoid g the words “died, ” “ad” and “ath, ” perhaps as kd of an avoidance of acknowledgg the very fact of ath self. What is most troublg is that at tim some homosexuals who learned that they were fected wh HIV ma nsc cisns to ntue practicg promiscuo sex, regardls of how many other liv were endangered.

GAY MEN AND BODY PERFECTN

But nsirg that the tra disurag the type of sex that leads to procreatn — that is, sex wh women — and would therefore seem to thwart s own chanc of beg geilly passed on to the next generatn, why are there gay men at all? For several years, studi led by Andrea Camper Ciani at the Universy of Padova Italy and others have found that mothers and maternal nts of gay men tend to have signifintly more offsprg than the maternal relativ of straight men.

The rults show strong support for the "balancg selectn hypothis, " which is fast beg the accepted theory of the geic basis of male theory holds that the same geic factors that duce gayns mal also promote fecundy (high reproductive succs) those mal' female maternal relativ. Through this tra-off, the maternal relativ' "gay man gen, " though they aren't exprsed as such, tend to get passed to future generatns spe of their tenncy to make their male herors no one knows which gen, exactly, the might be, at least one of them appears to be loted on the X chromosome, acrdg to geic molg by Camper Ciani and his lleagu.

Mal her only one X chromosome — the one om their mother — and if clus the gene that promot gayns mal and fecundy femal, he is likely to be gay while his mom and her female relativ are likely to have lots of kids. Prevly, the Italian rearchers suggted that the "gay man gene" might simply crease androphilia, or attractn to men, thereby makg the mal who posss the gene homosexual and the femal who posss more promiscuo.

PHYSIL, BEHAVRAL, AND PSYCHOLOGIL TRAS OF GAY MEN INTIFYG AS BEARS

The androphilic pattern that we found is about femal who crease their reproductive value to attract the bt mal, " Camper Ciani told Life's Ltle out, the moms and nts of gay men have an advantage over the moms and nts of straight men for several reasons: They are more fertile, displayg fewer gynelogil disorrs or plitns durg pregnancy; they are more extroverted, as well as funnier, happier and more relaxed; and they have fewer fay problems and social anxieti. There's a lot between the two extrem of makg love to the man of your life, and havg a rnchy, anonymo hookup a here are 18 typ of sex all gay/bi men should experience (at least once) at some pot their liv!

But look we mt, particularly sce we are beg asked to nsir that homosexualy is on par wh heterosexualy, that same-sex marriage and oppose-sex marriage n be the same, that gay sex n fact be spoal. The arguments ma by our bt fenrs of man-woman marriage foc almost exclively on the fn of marriage and the rights of children to have both a mother and a father, and they explicly say their arguments have nothg to do wh the unrlyg qutn of homosexualy. Recently I was readg an excellent mancript of an upg book by long-time Crisis Magaze ntributor Robert Reilly on how the gay movement has moved through our stutns and our culture.

He read the fluential 1976 book The Church and the Homosexual wrten by a Catholic prit that explaed how the Church wrongly terpreted all those referenc the Bible nmng homosexualy. “Dozens of well-meang people assured me that there was a whole, different world of homosexual men out there, a world that for some reason I uld never fd, a world of God-fearg, straight-actg, monogamy-believg, and fily-practicg homosexuals. In his excellent mancript, The Gayg of Ameri: How Ratnalizg Homosexual Behavr Is Changg Everythg to be published next March by Ignati Prs, Robert Reilly lays out the horrific numbers.

WHAT DO IT MEAN TO BE A GAY MAN?

Jefey Santover Homosexualy and the Polics of Tth that “The typil homosexual (needls to say there are exceptns) is a man who has equent episos of anal terurse wh other men, often wh many different men. “The most rigoro sgle study—the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study [1987]—reced nearly 5, 000 homosexual men and found that: ‘a signifint majory of the men … (69 to 82%) reported havg 50 or more lifetime sexual partners, and over 80% had engaged receptive anal terurse wh at least some of their partners the prev two years. Santover c a study by two homosexual rearchers that found that out of “156 upl studied, only seven had mataed sexual fily; of the hundred upl that had been together for more than five years, none had been able to mata sexual fily.

Some have said gays act out promiscuoly bee they have ternalized homophobia, that they were “forced to look for love dimly l bars, bathho, and public parks for fear of harassment at the hands of the homophobic mastream. While qualative data document such self-intifiers as mascule-actg gay men who weigh more and have more body hair, there has to date been no quantative analysis of this group’s characteristics.