I only became interested in lesbian sexuality incidentally. It began with the idea that if I could understand female sexuality, I could devise a better online dating system (I still haven't figured that one out). My research led me to a study by Chivers et al. (2007), titled Gender and Sexual Orientation Differences in Sexual Response to SexualActivities Versus Gender of Actors in Sexual Films, where genital response to arousing stimuli was monitored in heterosexual and homosexual men and women. The male results were as one might expect: heterosexual men were aroused by pornographic images involving women and homosexual men were aroused by pornographic images involving men. These results matched their self-reported sexual preferences. The female results shocked me: heterosexual and homosexual females responded nearly identically to pornographic images involving women and pornographic images involving men. There was a notable difference, where homosexual women responded more to nude female targets exercising and masturbating than to nude male targets, whereas heterosexual women responded about the same to both sexes at each activity level, but overall, female responses were very similar regardless of sexual orientation. The authors concluded that with men, the actor gender was more important, while with women, the level of sexual activity was more important. With this in mind, I became very curious as to what might be precluding some women from being sexually attracted to men. I wondered, why does lesbianism even exist if lesbians are just as aroused by men performing sexual acts as heterosexual women? Within the Chivers et al. (2007) study, I found a possible reason. They suggested that women’s romantic and sexual partner choices may be more influenced by their attachments, which seemed reasonable to me, but then what is precluding lesbians from forming an emotional attachment to men? This is what I decided to explore.
Prior to reading the Chivers et al. (2007) study, I became interested in feminism, and was visiting a number of feminist subreddits. While I found much of what they said reasonable, some users appeared hateful towards men; even genocidal. One particular comment that disturbed me was on the subreddit r/gendercritical, where one user proposed screening fetuses for their sex, and aborting the male ones. This comment should have been removed or downvoted, but to my dismay, it was upvoted by at least 10 users. Obviously I found this disturbing. I also began to notice that a disproportionate amount of users on feminist subreddits describe themselves as lesbians. I began to wonder if there was a relationship between hatred towards men, and the inability to form emotional bonds with them - with emotional bond formation as the factor determining female partner choice. I conducted two surveys to try to see if such a relationship existed.
My first survey was a bit deceptive. I tried to frame it in social justice warrior language, where I asked about toxic masculinity and toxic femininity. I'm skeptical about the value of both these terms. What I really wanted to compare was the degree at which toxic masculinity and toxic femininity were considered problematic. If one group found toxic masculinity to be a greater problem than other groups, it could indicate increased hatred towards men by that group. The most relevant results of this survey as follows:
Here we see that homosexual females disproportionately view toxic masculinity as a major problem, while they are also much more dismissive of toxic femininity. I believe this is indicative of a hatred towards men. However, the sample size in this survey was rather low. I decided to do a second study with a larger sample size to see if I could get similar results.
In my second study, I asked respondents how much they agree or disagree with statements relating to their feelings towards males and females. The most pertinent statements were related to finding males or females disgusting, even outside of a sexual context. The reason I used the term 'disgust' is because it has been shown that there is a relationship between racism and feelings of disgust. There is evidence to suggest that Hitler was disgusted by Jews, as seen in the language that he used to describe them. It is likely that Hitler's disgust was the key motivating factor in his desire to murder them. The results related to whether or not respondents found males or females disgusting, even outside of a sexual context, are as follows:
The results show that homosexual women find men much more disgusting than any other group. Homosexual men do not find women disgusting - disgust towards a gender to any significant degree is only manifested in homosexual women towards men. This is a prejudice men uniquely face. This may also be a cause of homosexuality in women, as this disgust would preclude them from forming emotional bonds with men. Men and homosexual women are both victims of this heightened disgust, as men have to face the social consequences of those who harbor negative feelings towards them simply for the way they were born, and homosexual women have to deal with the social consequences of being sexual minorities.
A major takeaway of these findings is to be skeptical of feminist claims, because they might be coming from a place of emotional irrationality - the same place racism derives from. Attacks on men and trans women, and claims of patriarchal dominance should be weighed with these finding in mind. Claims made by some feminists mirror those made by Nazis, namely those about men/Jews dominating society, and only possessing positions of power due to systematic privilege rather than competence.
Let boys be boys and girls be girls. Value men and women. Accept LGBT people. Let tolerance prevail.
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