June 7, 2010
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As a decades-long fan of The Golden Girls, I was saddened to learn of the death of Rue McClanahan last week. In fact, I think I genuinely shed a palpable, detectable tear, which is something I can’t remember ever doing on the death of a celebrity, with the exception perhaps of Bea Arthur and Estelle Getty. It sounds rather homosexually cliché, I know, but my partner, Juan, and I have gotten into the habit of watching an episode of The Golden Girls every night before bed. And along with the other “girls,” as we call them, Rue’s character Blanche Devereaux—the libidinous southern belle with an insatiable appetite for rich cheesecake and rich men—has become something of an imaginary, smile-inducing friend in our home. Fortunately, Blanche’s carnal spirit is burned forever on our DVDs. But the news of McClanahan’s death inspired me to read more about her in real life—well, at least to expend enough finger energy to flitter over to her Wikipedia entry. I knew she’d been an outspoken advocate of gays and lesbians, as well as animals, but I didn’t realize that her support for the former went all the way back to 1971. Just a few short years after the Stonewall Riots, she co-starred in a movie set in a Greenwich gay bar called Some of My Best Friends Are … as a “vicious fag hag".
And then my mind switched gears, leaving the inimitable Rue and the issue of gay rights behind and instead focusing my attention on this term, “fag hag”. Now I’ve never seen myself as a “fag”—although I’m sure many other people do see me this way and unfortunately nothing more—but more importantly I’ve certainly never regarded my many close female friends as “hags.” So I was curious to learn more about the unflattering stereotypes lying at the etymological root of this moniker, which describes straight women who tend to gravitate toward gay men. Enter Mount Saint Vincent University psychologist Nancy Bartlett and her colleagues, who just last year published the first quantitative study of fag hags in the journal Body Image.
These researchers, too, found the term “fag hag” intriguing. There are plenty of other colorful expressions that capture this distinct demographic rather vividly, some less insultingly so than others, including:
• Fruit fly
• Queen bee
• Queer dear
• Fairy godmother
• Fag shagger
• Queen magnet
• Hag along
• Swish dish
• Faggotina
• Homo honey
• Fairy collector
• Fairy princess
• Fagnet
But it’s “fag hag” that resonates in the public consciousness. The researchers note that both in popular media and everyday expression, the term conjures up the image of an unattractive, overweight, desperate woman who seeks out the company of gay men to compensate for her lack of romantic attention from straight guys. Sorting through anecdotes from previous interview studies, television depictions and cheap romance novels, the authors find that other common stereotypes paint the fag hag as being notoriously camp, overly emotional, unstable and as craving attention (e.g., Megan Mullally’s character Karen Walker from Will & Grace). What’s especially fascinating is the authors’ observation that this social category of women who like men who like men may be “cross-culturally robust.” The French refer to such women as soeurettes (“Little Sisters”), the German brand them as Schwulen-Muttis (“Gay Moms”), and the Mexicans know them as joteras (“jota” is commonly used for “fag”). In Japan, these women are called okoge, translated literally as “the burnt rice that sticks to the bottom of the pot.”
According to the investigators, the “hag” component is essentially the common belief that these women “do not feel good about their bodies, and as a result, take refuge in the ‘gay world’ to avoid the harsher judgment and emphasis on female physical attractiveness inherent in the heterosexual social scene.” The comedienne Margaret Cho, a well-known and self-proclaimed fag hag, states:
The gay man in your life is not concerned with your youth and beauty. He wants to know your soul. He loves you for your courage and intellect. Whether you are lovely or plain, you are beautiful to him for these qualities—and many more.
As “the gay man” in many women’s lives, I’m not sure Cho’s got it entirely right about us—she seems to be idealizing gay men. Trust me, there’s no shortage of superficial gay men out there. She’s also apparently never heard of biologist John Maynard Smith’s “sneaky f*cker” evolutionary hypothesis for male homosexuality, which posits that gay men in the ancestral past had unique access to the reproductive niche because females let their guards down around them and other males didn’t view them as sexual competitors. We’re not infertile, after all, just gay. (By the way, another aside: Is it my imagination, or are lesbians and bisexuals strangely overrepresented at the top-most rungs of the female comedy ladder? In addition to bisexual Cho, there are also lesbians Wanda Sykes, Ellen DeGeneres, Lilly Tomlin, Rosie O’Donnell, Sandra Bernhard and—one of my favorites—Jane Lynch.)
But what Bartlett and her co-authors were especially interested in with their 2009 study was if there’s any truth to the negative stereotypes surrounding fag hags.
So, they invited 154 heterosexual women to participate in an Internet-based survey on fag-haggery (my term, not theirs). These women ranged from 17 to 65 years of age (with an average of 28 years) and had a varied history of romantic relationships. Some were married, some single, still others divorced, widowed, currently dating and so on—and most were reasonably well-educated, having at least some college education. Each woman was asked to provide certain quantifiable information that would allow the authors to test several key hypotheses about the myth of the fag hag. First, women simply gave the total numbers of gay male, straight male and female friends they had. Also, on a scale of 1 (not that close) to 5 (extremely close) they were asked to rate their degree of “closeness” with their closest gay male, straight male and female friend. Next, the women completed a commonly used instrument called the Body Esteem Scale (BES), a 24-item questionnaire measuring a woman’s self-perceived sexual attractiveness and her weight concerns. Finally, each of the participants provided information about their romantic history over the past two years, including whether they’d been the “dumper” or the “dumpee” in recent failed relationships.
The results were analyzed to test the common assumption that women befriend gay men because they have poor body esteem and feel unattractive to straight men. If this were true, the authors reason, then there should be a meaningful statistical association between a woman’s number of gay male friends and her body esteem and relationship success—in other words, the more pathetic a woman’s romantic life and the more she sees herself as being undesirable to straight men, the more she should seek out gay men as friends. But the data revealed otherwise. In fact, with this sample at least, there was absolutely no link between a woman’s relationship status, the number of times she’d been on the receiving end of a breakup, or her body esteem and the number of gay male friends in her life.
Debunking common assumptions in science is nothing new, and that goes for the myth of the fag hag too. But there were also some unexpected findings in this study. For example, the more gay male friends that a woman had, the more sexually attractive she found herself. Now, obviously, this is a correlation, so we can only speculate on causality. It could be—as the authors suggest—that women with gay male friends actually are physically more attractive than those with fewer gay male friends. Perhaps being around gay men offers these women some relief from the constant sexual overtures of straight men. (Bartlett’s study only measured perceived self-attractiveness, not actual attractiveness, so this is an open question.) This may be more plausible a causal explanation than simply noting that a woman’s body esteem is enhanced the more that she’s around flattering gay men. On the other hand, interestingly enough, the longer that a woman has been friends with her closest gay male friend, the lower her perceived sexual attractiveness. On interpreting this unexpected finding, the authors suggest that this may actually reflect some core, but nuanced truth of the “fag hag” stereotype: “Perhaps women who perceive themselves as less sexually attractive develop closer relationships with gay men.” The others just go for superficial attachments.
To my own favorite fairy princess, Ginger: This one’s for you. I love you. For the rest of you, here’s a final thought to scratch your head over. It occurred to me while writing this article that the social category of straight men that like to socialize with lesbians is astonishingly vacant in our society. Sure, you may hear about some random “dyke tyke” or “lesbro” (two terms that, unlike fag hag, are hardly part of the popular slang vocabulary and actually required me to do some intensive googling), but their existence is clearly minimal. Do you have any good guesses on why there’s such a discrepancy in frequency between the two cases?
In this column presented by Scientific American Mind magazine, research psychologist Jesse Bering of Queen’s University Belfast ponders some of the more obscure aspects of everyday human behavior. Sign up for the RSS feed, visit www.JesseBering.com, friend Dr. Bering on Facebook or follow @JesseBering on Twitter and never miss an installment again. For articles published prior to September 29, 2009, click here: older Bering in Mind columns.
Image ©iStockphoto.com/Galina Barskaya
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Women often talk about stuff that puts most guys to sleep in about ten seconds and fags are able to stay awake and even join in. It’s as simple as that.
Link to thisAs a woman who liked guys, all kinds of guys, I did find it a great relief to hang out with guys who appreciated my style & wit with no further agenda. At least I could trust that the flattering things they said might have been sincere & not just calculated to get me into bed! It was a welcome relief. We weren’t competing for the same guys & we shared a solidarity due to both of our kinds being widely held in contempt by "real men." Those were the bad old days, & I hope times have improved.
Link to thisThe “hag” component is a word that distinctly refers to a female, and rymes nicely with "fag," but thanks anyway.
Link to this@niells: huh? who said it refers to a male?
Link to thisWhere do I sign up to be a "dyke tyke?"
Link to thisI have a wonderfully close relationship with my own special ‘hag’, but it certainly couldn’t be described with the stereotypes that were debunked by the study discussed above. It seems that she is most often friends with gay men as opposed to women (who she would say she finds too bitchy to bear most of the time), and she is certainly self-confident and tends to take on the dominant role in her relationships.
It made me think about perceived gender roles and inherent sexual characteristics because I too often read comments about how gay men are essentially ‘women in male bodies’ (because of this, it’s always intriguing to read about the idea of a ‘third sex’), but, my friend and I always joke that, if anything, she is a gay man in a female body.
Link to thisI wonder how many men are friends with women whom they have no sexual interest, wheather those women are gay or not? From my experience, the closer a guy is to the cave-man end of the spectrum, the less likely he is interested in putting energy into a relationship for which he isn’t going to garner some type of obvious gain.
Link to thisOk, I’m probably going to get in trouble with this comment, but it’s pure honesty. Honesty from myself and honesty that I’ve gotten from my other male friends: The reason why men aren’t anywhere near as drawn to "dykes" as women are to "fags" is because…well…we find dykes creepy. There is a distinct difference between a lipstick lesbian and a dyke. One you can fantasize about. The other gives off the impression that she’d like to do nothing more than permanently emasculate you so that she can take your place…and your gonads. And while this probably sounds counterintuitive, I think most straight guys would rather befriend a gay guy (especially one who wasn’t flamboyant) as opposed to a butch lesbian.
Link to thisOmega,
Link to thisIs your explanation that straight men are incapable of maintaining interest in women that they can’t fantasize about, or that straight male sexuality is so vulnerable that butch lesbians are too much competition? Or both? Either way, I think a lot of the straight men I know would find your theory somewhat insulting.
Speaking as fag hag…
I enjoy people who are more dramatic and interesting to talk to. As a result (except for one) I gravitate toward the flamboyant gay man because he’s entertaining.
However, my female friends and my straight males friends also tend to have something more entertaining than just "I took the kids to soccer practice this weekend" to talk about.
On the subject of why the coorelation between lower self esteem and the longer friendship – I think that is a subconscious thing. As a straight woman, subconsciously you are seeking male attention ultimately for genetic reproduction. This is enhanced by the closeness of the relationship with the gay man. But it is never realized. I wonder if that doesn’t start to impact on your body image. Entirely subconsciously.
Link to thisOr…and this is more likely. Longer relationships mean older women. Women’s body image always gets worse when the boobs sag and belly grows.
I feel the opposite dude. I like dykes more than fags.
Link to thisOdd it is this description of fag-hag. I happen to know that many lesbians call themselves someone’s fag-hag. Perhaps someone is not keeping up with the current culture. That is, a fag-hag is not necessarily straight.
Link to thisSoccerdad doesn’t like global warming. He just wanted to let you all know.
Back to whatever inane human-interest thing they tossed on Berings desk this week.
This is some real bottom of the barrel stuff, Jesse.
Link to this@mamram & omega,
I find it intruiging that there are few males with lesbian friends. But while omega thinks it’s men’s innate insecurity that prevents the development of relationships, I have always thought that it was the female side of the group that prevented it’s growth. My friends and I (both male and female, and all heterosexual) frequent a lesbian bar that is close to one of their houses. I have found that in my repeated visits that the women of our group always receieve a warm reception…but the men tend to get the cold shoulder. Normally I find it extremely easy to make chit-chat or small talk with almost anyone, but when I’m at that bar, I find myself receiving one word anwsers and little return on my conversational investments. I don’t know…they just don’t seem interested in talking to guys. Maybe it’s the setting, or maybe it’s a part of a larger paradigm, but there it is nonetheless.
This theroy of mine tends to get cancelled out by other personal experiences however, as I lived next to a lesbian couple for a year, and they treated me wonderfully right from the start. It’s tough to understand why two groups (men and lesbians) who have the same interests (women) can’t seem to get along more famously. Oh well. Cheers anyway.
Link to thisMamram,
You’re looking into it too deeply. I have plenty of female friends that I have no sexual interest in. One of my three best friends is female. I gather from your attempted assault at "vulnerable male sexuality" that you’re probably a lesbian. If that is the case, I apologize that you feel insulted. But back to your questions: neither of the answers you suggest are the case…at least not for me. For one, while most men find lipstick lesbians to be a form of sexual fantasy I do not; they do absolutely nothing for me, personally. They’re lesbians for a reason; however, I know plenty of men for which that is the ultimate fantasy. As earth-shatteringly shocking as this may seem, I don’t make a habit of sexually objectifying every female I lay eyes on.
Secondly, I hardly think any heterosexual male out there is threatened by "dykes" as "too much competition." Women aren’t leaving their male partners in droves for lesbianism. The creep-factor I spoke of is not so much sexually based as it is culturally. The common perception of lesbians is that they have a major grudge against masculinity in general and try to prove that they are equal and/or superior by "outdoing" males to such an extent that it seems obsessive and unwarranted. Then there is the whole pop culture acceptance of gay males to consider. Unfortunately for lesbian equality, in today’s culture being a gay male is somewhat in. Not so for being a gay female…well, except for the aforementioned lipstick lesbians and trite male fantasies.
Link to thisSpeaking from anecdotes, I think it’s clear that lesbians and gays are not "two sides of the same coin."
One study, A Sex Difference in the Specificity of Sexual Arousal (M. Chivers, G. Reiger et al) found that heterosexual men are more aroused by females than male sexual stimuli, whereas homosexual men were more aroused by male than female stimuli. However, both homosexual and heterosexual females showed little specificity, experiencing arousal from both male and female stimuli.
The "sneaky f*cker" hypothesis is another example that would suggest male and female homosexuality have different evolutionary origins. Many lesbians self report that their own reasons for being are related to social conditioning making it difficult to have a successful relationship with men, women being better lovers, or being more emotionally satisfying.
I can’t find the study at the moment, but another study showed that if a woman has multiple male children, the later born males are more likely to be gay. The authors hypothesized it could be the mother’s slowly strengthening immune reaction to the Y chromosome. No similar finding was shown for lesbians.
Lesbians self-report being lesbians for reasons such as rejecting the male-female social construct, finding men juvenile, wanting independence from men, finding women to be better lovers, or finding women to be more emotionally available.(H
Un-PC as it may be, I would hypothesize that for most lesbians, homosexuality actually is a choice, whereas for most gay men, it seems to be more genetically preordained.
Thus, where lesbians have decided that they actually don’t like men, and prefer women, they are conflicted because at the same time, lesbians are still sexually attracted to men. This would create a situation where homosexual women would want to avoid men, to whom they are attracted sexually but who they reject as companions.
On the other hand, gay men don’t seem to have a rejection of social constructs as a reason for their homosexuality. They report being gay from a young age, long before they were able to find women to be less fulfilling partners. They simply have a stronger attraction to men. Gay men aren’t attracted to women, and also haven’t rejected their gender as inferior relationship partners.
Thus, my answer to your question is not that there is a lack of straight men who want to socialize with lesbians, but that the choice of becoming a lesbian is predicated on a rejection of straight men. Straight men, aware of this animosity, likewise avoid lesbians.
Link to thisI don’t believe the columnist posed a theory, but a question and you answered it with a supposition that straight men are "incapable of maintaining interest in women that they can’t fantasize about, or [are] so vulnerable that butch lesbians are too much competition". Is this your explanation, Mamram?
Link to thisI am straight, 74 years old, and have never been homophobic. Back in 1962 I lived in St. Louis with my girlfriend and a guy friend of ours needed shelter after being evicted so we took him in. All of us were like minded toward gay people and eventually rescued a gay friend from an abusive "straight" lover. Sandy, my girlfriend, adored gay men and she was svelte and gorgeous. She ran around with a group of screaming drag queens and they were great friends. Sandy was addicted to shocking people and her gay friends provided her with an endless foray into the straight world of St. Louis at the time. Eventually, I knew many straight women who hung out with gays and in gay bars and coffee-houses which all of us frequented. None of the "fag hags" that I was acquainted with fit any sort of stereotype. I am a retired social-psychologist and have thought about this matter from a professional perspective for years. People seldom fit a mold or stereotype. Hence, I knew "fag hags" who were closet lesbians and eventually ended up in lesbian relationships. Others were unconsciously victims looking for Mister Goodbar in what appeared to them to be a seamier side of life. I think that, quite often, straight men are unaware of what utter boors they usually are and, because of this, many so-called fag hags are desperate to spend time with men who are capable of using their right hemisphere.
Link to thisOmega,
Link to thisThe reason you think most guys would rather befriend a gay guy vs. a butch girl is only human nature. We are attracted to the attractive, regardless of sexual orientation..
I should know better than to read the comments on a topic like this.
The Velvet Rage by Alan Downs is a very insightful read that anyone interested in the psychology of popular queer culture should read. While it doesn’t deal extensively with fag hags – it does talk extensively about the trust issues and relationships formed during puberty and how they lead to the fag hag phenomenon in a very interesting way.
http://www.amazon.com/Velvet-Rage-Overcoming-Growing-Straight/dp/0738210617
Link to thisWow. There’s actually a national fag hag organization called SWISH (Straight Women in Support of Homos). http://www.swishpride.org/
Link to thisI think that it’s not a question of why more straight men don’t select lesbian friends but of why lesbians don’t select straight friends. I think the answer is that all women, including gay women, expect the approach of a man to contain a sexual overture. That means that friendships must develop slowly while trust is attained.
Link to thisWhat is more interesting than the content of the article is the methods used to do research.
We see simple Sunday newspaper supplement "surveys" of only 24 questions used as a "research tool".
Far too often these lightweight amusements are touted as if they were some valid research tool in intuiting the inner mind of others.
It speaks more to the intellectual deficits of the "researchers" than to anything else.
While such trivial amusements might inspire the questionees to contemplate aspects of their own inner mind, they are perilously close to worthless as a legitimate research tool.
These silly questionaires inevitably embody the researchers’ prejudices as to what results they want to report.
Link to thisLeadorbled,
I certainly didn’t mean to imply that gay males are inherently more aesthetically pleasing than butch females…but I guess that kind of makes sense. I’m speaking anecdotally again and from my own observation, but most gay guys I’m aware of look like they’re trying to cultivate the "catalog model look" (to wildly varying degrees of success/failure) whereas most butch girls I’ve observed try their hardest to look like the most intimidating dude-with-boobs that they possibly can.
And while part of me cringes at the backlash of pointing this out, I think it’s worth noting that there’s a racial factor to all this. Again, this is all from my own observations but I’ve noticed that white and black gays usually have a similar style that is a combo of sporty and preppy with bright colors and overdone accessories and hair. However, lesbians make a distinct divide in fashion, racially speaking. Butch lesbians that are black seem to overwhelmingly favor the "thugged-out-I-just-killed-your-mom" look…but their white counterparts seem to favor the "modern day lumber jack" or "college jock" look. Increasingly, though, both black and white lesbians are displaying the "boi" look….wherein they dress just like the black and white gay guys who fancy themselves Abercrombie models.
Link to thisI think the analyses should have included some dimension of "personality" (an amorphous term, to be sure, but I’m sure the psychologists out there can figure it out). I know women who love to hang around gay bars and to party with gay men because they say they’re more "fun", but their friendships with these men are superficial (as the above study suggests). These women (albeit a small sample size) tend to be "Type As"; novelty seekers, love attention, flashy and often have an over-inflated sense of their attractiveness. They like to tell everyone how many gay friends they have and how fun gay nightclubs are – party bragging, really, to their "straight" (in more than one sense) friends. The real "fag hags" that I know are, as the study suggests, less likely to exhibit such personality traits.
Link to thisAs for why we men don’t hang with lesbians, well, I personally have never felt that welcome to. There is often a defensive "edge" to many lesbians that precludes getting to know them any better. Maybe we men see lesbians as some kind of competition (and/or vice versa), even though we’re not unless the object of our competing affections happens to be bisexual.
I thought straight men who had a lot of lesbian friends were called "Dyke Daddies".
Link to thisDomid,
Link to thisNo, OmegaCerebro answered it. I was trying to explain to him (OmegaCerebro) why I thought his explanation was insulting to straight men.
I am not sure the term "Dyke-Tyke" applies, but I have notice that there are several lesbians who play in the senior men’s golf blitz at my club and the guys seem to like them all.
Link to thisMy wife thinks the reason for the asymmetry in "dyke tykes" vs. "fag hags" is that heterosexual men are uninterested in women who are not potential sexual partners. She also thinks talking to gay men means getting a male perspective from "human beings" (as distinct from heterosexual males who, in her view, represent some other phylum ).
Link to thisI am a proud fag hag of long standing, having been raised as a child by drag queens in the wild. I find this an interesting article, because it both confirms my own desires to hang out with gay men, as well as debunks some myths surrounding why I do.
I think another interesting issue to explore, however, is the flip side of this—why are gay men almost always attracted to *me*? I can be walking down the street with my husband, and out of the blue an obviously gay man will come up to me and gush; "Sweetie, I ADORE your hair! You look so fabulous! We have to hang out." I’m not wearing my "Betch" or Madonna shirt or any rainbow accessories when this happens–he’s spotted me and recognized me for what I am. I think gay men have a "fagdar" in much the same way I have my "gaydar"; we’re able to spot like as like and feel comfortable approaching each other to signify that.
I’ve always been more comfortable in the company of men, both straight and gay. The added bonus with gay men is that I know that trying to get me into bed is not an ulterior motive for them. Trying to get my husband or straight male friend into bed might be, but that’s a refreshing change from the "Hey baby hey baby hey baby" that straight women put up with, sometimes on a daily basis.
And to reply to mamram—my theory on why there are so few dyke tykes as opposed to fag hags has the same basis as why men and women differ in their preferences for yaoi and yuri in anime and manga (yaoi is boys’ love, yuri is girls’ love). I’ve had discussions with yaoi fangirls, and almost all of us agree that we enjoy reading and watching it, but we never insert ourselves into this fantasy; that would ruin the boy-on-boy action going on. We’re apples, they’re oranges, and it’s better if we don’t mingle but just watch the emotional and physical action unfold. My experience with (almost exclusively) straight men that like yuri, however, is that they are watching or reading the girl-on-girl action and imagining themselves in the middle of it. I’ve not done any sort of formal polling around this, but these are the observations that have come up during conversations and discussions; they’re very broad generalisations based on my own experience. To put it succinctly, the men are there for us to watch and enjoy the show; the women are there for the men to eventually join in with and show a good time.
Anyway, I’d be interested to hear on why gay men love fag hags—I have the suspicion that it’s a mutually beneficial relationship for all involved.
Link to thisDear Mr Bering, thank you for your most entertaining article. In England and Australia senior lawyers are known as QC’s – Queens Counsels (or KC’s – Kings Counsels if there is a male monarch on the English throne). In Australia we have taken to using QC instead of "fag hag". I was a tad mystified by your characterization of QC’s as plain, overweight etc. Now I don’t know him personally but I’d bet London to a brick John Galliano is a trouser bandit and he has the world’s most gorgeous women fawning all over him. Perhaps I should start mincing about and become a "fruit fly f*cker" Will Keyes-Byrne
Link to thisMy best guess: Gay men and straight women are oppressed for similar reasons, in large part for their "femininity," but lesbians and straight men share no such solidarity.
Link to thisMany years ago I was poor, living in a walkup hotel in the Tenderloin of San Francisco, rooming with a gay friend. Most of the residents there were homosexual men. I would be greeted most evenings as I came home from work by the sight of a man in drag weeping on the stairs, or hear some screaming cat-fight in the hallway.
On just one of those nights there was a "fag-hag" there as a friend of mine dismissively called her. She was really quite beautiful, standing on the stairs with her obviously very uncomfortable early teenage daughter (perhaps 12) who looked like she wanted to sink right into the floor. The woman was talking to a young drag queen sitting on the stairs who was quite irritated looking. Most of the time she said things like, "Why didn’t you tell me? We can work this out! I love you!" etc. I found it quite curious, and more than a little disappointing that such a beautiful woman would be chasing this guy who was obviously not interested in her in the least.
I expressed some wonderment to my roommate who told me that there were women who would incessantly chase after homosexual men for some reason. He didn’t understand it, and didn’t like it much. He found them an irritation, although sometimes amusing.
So the classic type does exist. There are women that fall for the qualities that a gay man has, and go head over heels for them. It’s not just a matter of women having good friends who are homosexuals. Some women get fixated on homosexual men as their preferred sexual partner.
Link to thisI have often wondered why men find two women kissing to be arousing. My only guess is that we are either hard-wired or conditioned to respond in a heterosexual manner. So the sight of two women kissing means there is no male with which to compete therefore there are two women available. This would be a subconscious instinctual response since obviously if they are interested in each other they would not have the slightest interest in a male.
Link to thisI’ve wondered do women find two men kissing to be arousing?
Perhaps for those women who incessantly try to get gay men into bed with them it is sometimes a matter of proving how attractive they are. The woman I saw importuning the drag queen to please accept her certainly was very, very pretty. Perhaps if she succeeds with a gay man it is a kind of ultimate proof that she is so sexy that even gay men can’t keep away from her.
Perhaps not. Too bad I didn’t ask her out, pretending I was gay.
Link to thisCerebral, as I mentioned in my post, a lot of women *do* find two men kissing very arousing. But we don’t think of it in terms of arousing and including us. We’re just enjoying it for what it is. We don’t think the two men are "available". We just think it’s hot that two guys are kissing.
Sexuality is a weird thing sometimes, and often inexplicable.
Link to thisA lot of us.. a personal experience…like to hang with
Link to thisgals who might in some French Salon be seen as simply tough.
But capable, hardy & resilient are other nice attributes.
Sports guys love to have <i>e.g.</i> fellow skate-boarders be girls.
Movies…’Josie and the PussyCats ‘..Rachel Leigh Cook
Mary Stuart Masterson in ‘Some Kind of Wonderful’
That these gals were perhaps interested in something more than <i>pal</i>hood doesn’t affect how good or bad they are to ‘hang’ with and may be extraneous.
IF HORMONES DIDN’T COMPLETELY OCCLUDE REASON, THE ACT OF PROCREATION WOULD NOT BE A NORMAL ACTIVITY BUT A PERVERTED ,NON-DISCUSSED ACTIVITY. THEREFORE, CONSIDER THE ‘FAG HAG’ PHENOM JUST A SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT OFFSHOOT OF THE INABILITY OF MALES AND FEMALES TO TRULY COMMUNICATE.
Link to thisThe author misinterprets Maynard Smith’s "sneaky f**ker" theory…it’s about effeminate straight men having a secret advantage over thuggish straight men. It has nothing to do with gay men. At all.
Link to this"the authors suggest that women with gay male friends actually are physically more attractive than those with fewer gay male friends."
This is supposed to be science?? A suggestion like that instantly dismisses the whole research.
This article totally ignores the option that fag hags may simply find gay men erotic: threesome fantasies, conversion fantasies, etc. I’ve had a number of fag hags as girlfriends and most of them like gay porn. This may explain the absence of men that like to socialize with lesbians. The girl-on-girl fantasies of straight men have very little to do with real life lesbians.
Link to thisI don’t think the author implied that men don’t have gay women friends – only that there isn’t a name for it when they do. I can only offer my experience, but my circle of friends has both gay and lesbian couples in long term relationships.
I also find it unlikely that heterosexual men are uninterested in women who are not potential sexual partners. This would mean that younger men don’t form relationships with older ladies (60+ say), but once again, this hasn’t been my experience.
Link to thisI know several men (my husband included) who have had long term relationship with lesbians. I think they find lesbian charmingly devoid of mixed sexual signals and deviousness. As a result, they can enjoy an intellectual relationship which transcends the bounds of the sexual, not unlike the relationship that many women (myself included) have with gay males. Removing the sexual element enhances the potential for a deep friendship.
Link to thisJesse,
Regarding your unexpected findings:
1) "For example, the more gay male friends that a woman had, the more sexually attractive she found herself."
2) "the longer that a woman has been friends with her closest gay male friend, the lower her perceived sexual attractiveness"
Could it possibly be that 1) is not so much due to "more sexually attractive" as "less sexually unattractive"? You see, around gay men she may not feel the need to be as self-conscious because she doesn’t have to "preen" in order to win a mate. Considering preening is based on finding fault (you don’t need to fix something up if it’s already good) then less preening equals less self-criticism equals a less deflated image of sexual attractiveness that is being read as "more sexually attractive".
In time, however, the longer she is close to gay men the longer she goes without receiving advances from these men (who are obviously interested in other men, not women). As such, the initial absence of deflation regarding perceived sexual attractiveness disappears and is replaced by an actual deflation due to the fact that the women is receiving no advances/offers/etc from the males around her.
In my mind, at least, it seems as if these two "unexpected findings" are natural results of both short term and long term association with gay men.
John
Link to thisHmmm, I think the general public thinks lesbians are man haters and gay men as wanna be women.
As a fag hag myself, I see gay men more often reflect a higher level of sexual tolerance that straight men don’t always display in public. Straight men might be just as tolerant but not as public about it (in terms of sexuality). For example: woman can almost always state how sexually attractive either gender appears to them. Gay men will also talk about the sexual attractiveness quotient of either gender. Straight men seem to only talk about the sexual attractiveness of women and respond with a statement about other guys of: "I don’t know, he’s a GUY!"
Link to thisThe sample is way too small to debunk any perceptions that the public might have. Self reporting on "attractiveness" is uncontrolled and has no value in making conclusions as a result of this study.
Link to thisI think Geoffrion has it right. It seems reasonable to consider that there is a spectrum among men in the ability to maintain a non-sexual relationship with a woman over time. That spectrum is found among women as well, but perhaps less wide-ranging and skewed towards the more-capable end.
*shrugs* Seems simple enough to me.
Link to thisGirls and boys don’t get along, never did, never will. Maybe, I said maybe, people might get over it. Girls want to change boys, boys want to change girls, but none of us are going to change. Our interactions are post-puberty, and all about survival of the species, whether we like it or not, is irrelevant. This is my response to friendship comments.
Now about the article, it’s flawed from the start, because homosexuals are a diverse bunch like heterosexuals. Read my first comment again, and my question is, has anybody ever seen a gay couple composed of two drama queens or two masculine girls? Because while the sex might be gay, the gay relationship itself is anything but gay, with its masculine and feminine features. Meditate this.
Link to thisMy guess is that a man’s motivation to interact with a woman is overwhelmingly driven by ‘reproductive considerations’
Link to thisHey all
Am writing an article on fag hags and wondered if you knew any with interesting/funny/sad stories in the UK? Be great if you do – there’s a drink in it for you!
Many thanks
Guy
Link to this