Answered on Quora. It’s getting upvoted to Hell by all sorts of non-straights and non-binary folks. I was terrified that they would report me over this post, so it’s nice to see that they like it. I would like to think these good folks for upvoting my post.
I asked my mother this before because she used to really dislike gay men, but she had no issues with lesbians. She told me it was the extreme promiscuity that so many gay men practiced and the diseases that often result from this. I think she may have also mentioned anal sex, and yes, most gay men (70%) do engage in this act, which a lot of people find disgusting. She had a look of disgust on her face when she said this. So my Mom’s attitude was, “The behavior of gay men is disgusting.”
She is totally turned around now, and she’s pro-gay men, but this is how she felt for many decades. And I am sure a lot of folks still feel this way.
Straight men, at least those I have been running with my whole life, mostly have a profound revulsion for gay sex. And in most of the crowds I have run with, if anyone found out that a guy was having gay sex, he would be run right out of that crowd and told to never come back. The rule of most straight groups that I have been a member of is that homosexual behavior is absolutely unacceptable in any man in the group. If you want to be part of that group, you can’t be doing things like that.
Of course this is all wrapped up in masculinity. I think a lot of masculinity is simply denial or rejection of male homosexuality. The most masculine men are the most virulently homophobic, contrary to the fake studies you read. When I see a man strutting around with an almost comically exaggerated masculinity, I now think it is as if he is screaming as loud as he can, “I’m not gay, dammit!” I think that is one of the messages that hypermasculinity is trying to convey to others.
If you have read this far, you can see that living life as a straight man at least in my generation (I am 60) meant extreme revulsion and taboos against homosexual sex. Engaging in such behavior would mean all or almost all of your friends would never speak to you again. So don’t even think about it. You can see how straight men growing up like this develop some rather strong attitudes about male homosexuals.
It just hits too close to home, and it is all wrapped up in masculinity, one of our dearest things. Many straight men will fight or even kill to protect their masculinity. And there are gay men, seeming to thumb their noses at the thing we hold most dear. How do you expect us to react? A lot of straight men regard the flagrant rejection of masculinity by so many gay men to be an outrageous affront to one of their most profound values.
In contrast, most straight men could care less about lesbians, and bisexuality in women is considered to be a turn-on by most straight men.
Most straight women don’t seem to have very strong attitudes about lesbians or lesbianism. They mostly just shrug their shoulders. Lesbians do not arouse strong emotions in straights of either gender.
I can tell you right now that many straight women are wildly homophobic. Sure, they have their gay friends, but most of them will not tolerate .00001% of homosexual behavior among their boyfriends, husbands, or the men they date. A recent casual survey found that most young straight women would refuse to date a bisexual man.
There is something about male homosexuality and gay male sex that seems to arouse pretty strong emotions among straights, mostly men but also women.
In contrast, most straights are simply indifferent to lesbians.
I am not trying to justify any of the attitudes above. I am simply telling you why so many straight men think the way they do.
