What Do It Mean to Be a Gay Man? | Psychology Today

Contents:

• WHY ARE PEOPLE GAY? GAY BY CHOICE OR IS BEG GAY GEIC?
• HOW TO LOOK GREAT AS A GAY MAN
• WHAT DO IT MEAN TO BE A GAY MAN?
• HOW TO BE BETIFUL (FOR GAY MEN)
• WHAT SCIENCE KNOWS ABOUT WHY PEOPLE ARE GAY
• ROW OVER AI THAT 'INTIFI GAY FAC'
• WHY ARE THERE GAY MEN?
• PHYSIL, BEHAVRAL, AND PSYCHOLOGIL TRAS OF GAY MEN INTIFYG AS BEARS
• WHAT DO GAY LOOK LIKE? SCIENCE KEEPS TRYG TO FIGURE THAT OUT

WHY ARE PEOPLE GAY? GAY BY CHOICE OR IS BEG GAY GEIC?

Scientists may have fally solved the puzzle of what mak a person gay, and how is passed om parents to their children.A group of scientists suggted Tuday that homosexuals get that tra om their oppose-sex parents: A lbian will almost always get the tra om her father, while a gay man will get the tra om his mother.The heredary lk of homosexualy has long been tablished, but scientists knew was not a strictly geic lk, bee there are many pairs of intil tws who have differg sexuali. Scientists om the Natnal Instute for Mathematil and Blogil Synthis say homosexualy seems to have an epigeic, not a geic lk.Long thought to have some sort of heredary lk, a group of scientists suggted Tuday that homosexualy is lked to epi-marks — extra layers of rmatn that ntrol how certa gen are exprsed. In homosexuals, the epi-marks aren't erased — they're passed om father-to-dghter or mother-to-son, explas William Rice, an evolutnary blogist at the Universy of California Santa Barbara and lead thor of the study."There is pellg evince that epi-marks ntribute to both the siary and dissiary of fay members, and n therefore feasibly ntribute to the observed faial herance of homosexualy and s low nrdance between [intil] tws," Rice not.Rice and his team created a mathematil mol that explas why homosexualy is passed through epi-marks, not geics.

Evolutnarily speakg, if homosexualy was solely a geic tra, scientists would expect the tra to eventually disappear bee homosexuals wouldn't be expected to reproduce. But bee the epi-marks provi an evolutnary advantage for the parents of homosexuals: They protect fathers of homosexuals om unrexposure to ttosterone and mothers of homosexuals om overexposure to ttosterone while they are gtatn."The epi-marks protect fathers and mothers om excs or unrexposure to ttosterone — when they rry over to oppose-sex offsprg, n e the masculizatn of femal or the femizatn of mal," Rice says, which n lead to a child beg gay. Rice not that the markers are "highly variable" and that only strong epi-marks will rult a homosexual offsprg.Though scientists have long spected some sort of geic lk, Rice says studi attemptg to expla why people are gay have been few and far between."Most mastream blogists have shied away om studyg bee of the social stigma," he says.

Well there are many exampl of homosexualy nature, 's very mon." Homosexual behavr has been observed black swans, pengus, sheep, and other animals, he says.Rice's mol still needs to be tted on real-life parent-offsprg pairs, but he says this epigeic lk mak more sense than any other explanatn, and that his team has mapped out a way for other scientists to tt their work."We've found a story that looks really good," he says. Whout beg aware of , most people n accurately intify gay men by face aloneAlthough I've always wanted this particular superhuman power, I've never been very good at tectg other men's sexual orientatn.

HOW TO LOOK GREAT AS A GAY MAN

The 90 fac were then shown to 90 participants random orr, who were asked simply to judge the target's "probable sexual orientatn" (gay or straight) by prsg a button.

WHAT DO IT MEAN TO BE A GAY MAN?

"Th, " the thors wrote, "by g photos of gay and straight dividuals that they themselv did not post, we were able to remove the fluence of self-prentatn and much of the potential selectn bias that may be prent photos om personal advertisements. And even wh the more strgent ntrols, the participants were able to intify the gay fac at levels greater than chance—aga even on those trials where the fac were flickered on the screen for a mere 50 lisends.

For example, when shown only the eye regn ("whout brows and cropped to the outer nthi so that not even "crow's-feet" were visible"), perceivers were amazgly still able to accurately intify a man as beg gay.

I was cur enough about Rule's fdgs to look up "gay face" the Urban Dictnary, a popular Web se that offers rmal, er-ntributed fns of everyday (often crass) saygs.

HOW TO BE BETIFUL (FOR GAY MEN)

"A man, ually homosexual, wh a distctly effete facial stcture wh some very specific featur; a strong jawle [sic] that lacks promence, space between the ey that rell people wh down syndrome [sic], and a slopg, long forehead. Now, that one's rather silly and sensatnalized—even polilly spect—and there's certaly no scientific evince support of the claims about the "mongoloid" featur of homosexual men's fac. It very much appears that same-sex sexual attractn is not a choice but actg on is; so if you fe gay as the mere prence of same-sex attractn, then om everythg we unrstand, beg gay is not a choice.

That means, for example, that you n be transgenr but also straight (for stance, you might intify as a woman and feel attracted to men) or gay (e.g., if you intify as a woman and are attracted to other women). If you have had romantic experienc or fantasi volvg people who are the same genr as you, then there is a good chance you are gay or bisexual, but 's okay if you're a ltle nfed.

WHAT SCIENCE KNOWS ABOUT WHY PEOPLE ARE GAY

As every gay man knows who has been sulted or asslted for his actual or perceived sexual orientatn, there are steep penalti for vlatg the Boy Co as there are for anyone who is “different” om the prumed (typilly whe, heterosexual, middle-class) standard. How do a gay kid survive the trma he suffers for beg different a culture that still nmns his difference as somethg bad or “ls-than” and wants to mold him to the same shape tri to mold every boy?

Robert Pollack says the most important thg a fay n do to support their gay son is to keep lovg him, “to nvey to him, as soon as he shar his feelgs, that he is still loved through and through, that his sexual orientatn will not any way dimish how much he is admired and rpected. Fortunately there is a long history of gay men who bucked the accepted fns of masculy and created liv that exprsed their unrstandg of themselv and how they choose to exprs their inty as men who don’t necsarily f tradnal molds. The late Harry Hay often lled "the father of the morn gay movement, " found the Mattache Society Los Angel the fall of 1950 for gay men to gather and ponr the qutns Hay had long been askg: Who are gay people?

Hay didn’t tend the Mattach to be a polil anizatn per se, but a group that would e together to enhance their self-unrstandg and explore the ntributns gay people had ma to the human race through the ag. In a 1987 say tled “A Separate People Whose Time Has Come, ” Hay scribed homosexuals as “spir people, ” who, throughout the ag, had served society their rol as “msengers and tercers, shamans of both genrs, prits and prits, imagemakers and prophets, mim and rhapsos, poets and playwrights, healers and nurturers, teachers and preachers, tkers and tkerers, searchers and rearchers. Hay believed that gay people had somethg special to teach nongay people about human life, and for that reason should be nurtured, rather than reviled, by society.

ROW OVER AI THAT 'INTIFI GAY FAC'

He said gay men look at the world differently, are uniquely nonaggrsive, nonpetive, oriented toward sharg and cled to velop what Hay lled “subject-subject” love relatnships of equals. Article SummaryXIf you're a gay man and you want to feel betiful, start by embracg the stereotypilly "gay" aspects of your posure or personaly, like your tone of voice or particular mannerisms.

WHY ARE THERE GAY MEN?

Recently, scientists announced that they found some gen that might be associated wh sexual orientatn and a blogil explanatn for the reason gay men tend to have olr the field of sexual orientatn rearch is far broar and more plited than two studi—and Lisa Diamond, a psychologist and sexual orientatn rearcher at the Universy of Utah, knows that better than most. I n't guarantee you that at age 18, if you child hasn't exprsed same-sex attractns that they won't the future—and ankly ma'am, I n't guarantee you that you are not gog to end up gay eher.

Image source, Stanford UniversyImage ptn, The study created pose fac judged most and least likely to belong to homosexualsA facial regnn experiment that claims to be able to distguish between gay and heterosexual people has sparked a row between s creators and two leadg LGBT rights Stanford Universy study claims s software regnis facial featur relatg to sexual orientatn that are not perceived by human work has been acced of beg "dangero" and "junk science" the scientists volved say the are "knee-jerk" reactns.

Details of the peer-reviewed project are due to be published the Journal of Personaly and Social jawsFor their study, the rearchers traed an algorhm g the photos of more than 14, 000 whe Amerins taken om a datg ed between one and five of each person's pictur and took people's sexualy as self-reported on the datg rearchers said the rultg software appeared to be able to distguish between gay and heterosexual men and women. In one tt, when the algorhm was prented wh two photos where one picture was fely of a gay man and the other heterosexual, was able to terme which was which 81% of the women, the figure was 71%. "But their software did not perform as well other suatns, cludg a tt which was given photos of 70 gay men and 930 heterosexual asked to pick 100 men "most likely to be gay" missed 23 of s summary of the study, the Enomist - which was first to report the rearch - poted to several "limatns" cludg a ncentratn on whe Amerins and the e of datg se pictur, which were "likely to be particularly revealg of sexual orientatn".

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

"This rearch isn't science or news, but 's a scriptn of bety standards on datg s that ignor huge segments of the LGBTQ (lbian, gay, bisexual, transgenr and queer/qutng) muny, cludg people of lour, transgenr people, olr dividuals, and other LGBTQ people who don't want to post photos on datg s, " said Jim Halloran, chief digal officer of Glaad, a media-monorg body. "The reckls fdgs uld serve as a weapon to harm both heterosexuals who are accurately outed, as well as gay and lbian people who are suatns where g out is dangero. "The 'subtle' differenc uld be a nsequence of gay and straight people choosg to portray themselv systematilly different ways, rather than differenc facial appearance self, " said Prof Benedict Jon, who ns the Face Rearch Lab at the Universy of was also important, he said, for the technil tails of the analysis algorhm to be published to see if they stood up to rmed cricism.

WHAT DO GAY LOOK LIKE? SCIENCE KEEPS TRYG TO FIGURE THAT OUT

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.