"My measure seems to be closest to category 3, but if a man chooses to watch only straight porn, despite finding other men attractive or arousing he would be straight under my measure. But whatever, I don’t care."
Note that physiological studies tend to find that gay men find straight porn almost as arousing as they find gay porn to be. Probably because straight porn also contains a man that they can focus on, as gay men do not tend to find lesbian porn arousing while straight men do.
"Homosexuals are not reproducing and gay genes are surely ‘imploding’, suggesting any increase is likely caused by the environment."
"Gay genes" that only incidentally increase the chance of being gay can still be selected for by primarily doing other things. For example, genetic variants for "same-sex sexual behavior" are positively correlated with risk-taking and ADHD genetic variants, which in turn are positively correlated with number of children:
This question is very interesting to me also. I wonder what type of people just google "porn" or "gay porn." Could this be an odd subset of the population? Maybe. It would be interesting if websites like Porn Hub had available data about which categories are watched the most or something like that.
The low-moderate heritability means that there is environmental influence, it's just difficult to figure out what it is. I believe it might be something like early openness to the idea of homosexual behavior being okay and trying it. If you are scared to try it or entertain the idea because society is homophobic, then you might never become gay. Like with transgenderism, if the idea of being a different gender seems unfathomable or weird to you, maybe you are less likely to be trans.
Gay swedish person here. (Im also a furry, autistic and adhd)
This is anecdotal evidence but could be helpful:
So i was raised in a middle class suburban area in sweden. My family is mormons, and so were very critical of gayness. A lot of society was somewhat accepting at the time of my youth though
Technicly speaking i had access to a computer that i could privately use to find porn in secret, and i later had an ipad that could be used to find it. But i never dared to look up and search anything explicit or porny, as i was increadibly slstressed that:
-Someone would walk in
- Somehow find evidence of what i did even if i did everything. To delete the data and search history
- i would make a mistake and everyone would know
And so i never looked up porn basically ever.
Additionally, there are skills and resourced for looking up the stuff;
-what do you search?
-how do you know what your preference even is? (I didnt realize i was gay untill last year, and it had never crossed my mind as a teen to look at porn to explore myself because it was associated with heavy stress in my mind.)
I just assumed i was bi or straight because everyone else said so
- i didnt have a social or online network to discuss sexuality or gender with
- also cybersecurity as i was terrefied of a virus if i ever did look up porn.
All these worries and stresses kept me away from porn for a very long time, and made it hard for me to realize im gay. And this was in a country that was very accepting and tolerant, and on the uppet levels of being pro LGBTQ.
So the fact that porn searches vary a lot between states and how accepting they are, even when its just moderate/mild levels of stigma against homosexuality doesnt suprise me at all.
Some people are probably very brazen or selfaware even as kids and would look at the stuff any how (unless theres deathpenalty which scarws some people away)
Others are very sensetive to potential social mistakes or threats, like me, and so self censor and dont look it up at all.
Seems to me that countries where gay sex is illegal/frowned down upon have relatively small difference in gay population between one another (i.e. form a cluster) while those with high tolerance towards homosexuality are significantly higher. Wouldn't that just be simply explained by the existence of bisexuals?
In intolerant countries, people who are bisexual wouldn't even explore that part of their personality because there's no trigger (for lack of a better word) that could tell them "oh wow, I kinda like it". Whereas in tolerant countries, guys even on the more straight end of bisexuality would be more likely to explore.
Obviously late to the punch with my comment here but I am wondering whether bisexuality and identity exploration could be a significant confounder here. I would imagine that as societal attitudes change it's not only causing people to un-closet as such, but it's also causing a lot of people to explore their sexual identity a lot more. I haven't looked into this in depth but I've seen anecdotal cases where people first thought they were gay (and presumably watched same-sex porn) then realized they were either just bi or not gay at all. Could it be possible that a significant portion of the number of people self-identifying as gay may be a segment of the population that is "in flux" so to speak, simply trying things out, figuring out if they are or aren't gay? I'm not sure how you'd go about testing this but it's a thought.
Necessary disclaimer that I'm neither gay nor bi so this is an outsider view/opinion as such.
I think you would have to equate societies with long standing tolerance would also correlate with having a different way other than google to access porn. It is quite a poor measure with too many variables. Clearly we all have scope to have some attraction to the same sex whether it be a simple observation of a well sculpted man or all the way up to daydreaming for days about that guy you saw. Having observed the changing landscape of homosexuals over the years and how they were then and now, I certainly feel the environment has much to blame.
"My measure seems to be closest to category 3, but if a man chooses to watch only straight porn, despite finding other men attractive or arousing he would be straight under my measure. But whatever, I don’t care."
Note that physiological studies tend to find that gay men find straight porn almost as arousing as they find gay porn to be. Probably because straight porn also contains a man that they can focus on, as gay men do not tend to find lesbian porn arousing while straight men do.
"Homosexuals are not reproducing and gay genes are surely ‘imploding’, suggesting any increase is likely caused by the environment."
"Gay genes" that only incidentally increase the chance of being gay can still be selected for by primarily doing other things. For example, genetic variants for "same-sex sexual behavior" are positively correlated with risk-taking and ADHD genetic variants, which in turn are positively correlated with number of children:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E1RMN5sWUAIWYG3?format=jpg&name=4096x4096
That might be more of a "try anything" phenotype than a homosexual one though.
This question is very interesting to me also. I wonder what type of people just google "porn" or "gay porn." Could this be an odd subset of the population? Maybe. It would be interesting if websites like Porn Hub had available data about which categories are watched the most or something like that.
The low-moderate heritability means that there is environmental influence, it's just difficult to figure out what it is. I believe it might be something like early openness to the idea of homosexual behavior being okay and trying it. If you are scared to try it or entertain the idea because society is homophobic, then you might never become gay. Like with transgenderism, if the idea of being a different gender seems unfathomable or weird to you, maybe you are less likely to be trans.
Gay swedish person here. (Im also a furry, autistic and adhd)
This is anecdotal evidence but could be helpful:
So i was raised in a middle class suburban area in sweden. My family is mormons, and so were very critical of gayness. A lot of society was somewhat accepting at the time of my youth though
Technicly speaking i had access to a computer that i could privately use to find porn in secret, and i later had an ipad that could be used to find it. But i never dared to look up and search anything explicit or porny, as i was increadibly slstressed that:
-Someone would walk in
- Somehow find evidence of what i did even if i did everything. To delete the data and search history
- i would make a mistake and everyone would know
And so i never looked up porn basically ever.
Additionally, there are skills and resourced for looking up the stuff;
-what do you search?
-how do you know what your preference even is? (I didnt realize i was gay untill last year, and it had never crossed my mind as a teen to look at porn to explore myself because it was associated with heavy stress in my mind.)
I just assumed i was bi or straight because everyone else said so
- i didnt have a social or online network to discuss sexuality or gender with
- also cybersecurity as i was terrefied of a virus if i ever did look up porn.
All these worries and stresses kept me away from porn for a very long time, and made it hard for me to realize im gay. And this was in a country that was very accepting and tolerant, and on the uppet levels of being pro LGBTQ.
So the fact that porn searches vary a lot between states and how accepting they are, even when its just moderate/mild levels of stigma against homosexuality doesnt suprise me at all.
Some people are probably very brazen or selfaware even as kids and would look at the stuff any how (unless theres deathpenalty which scarws some people away)
Others are very sensetive to potential social mistakes or threats, like me, and so self censor and dont look it up at all.
Seems to me that countries where gay sex is illegal/frowned down upon have relatively small difference in gay population between one another (i.e. form a cluster) while those with high tolerance towards homosexuality are significantly higher. Wouldn't that just be simply explained by the existence of bisexuals?
In intolerant countries, people who are bisexual wouldn't even explore that part of their personality because there's no trigger (for lack of a better word) that could tell them "oh wow, I kinda like it". Whereas in tolerant countries, guys even on the more straight end of bisexuality would be more likely to explore.
Obviously late to the punch with my comment here but I am wondering whether bisexuality and identity exploration could be a significant confounder here. I would imagine that as societal attitudes change it's not only causing people to un-closet as such, but it's also causing a lot of people to explore their sexual identity a lot more. I haven't looked into this in depth but I've seen anecdotal cases where people first thought they were gay (and presumably watched same-sex porn) then realized they were either just bi or not gay at all. Could it be possible that a significant portion of the number of people self-identifying as gay may be a segment of the population that is "in flux" so to speak, simply trying things out, figuring out if they are or aren't gay? I'm not sure how you'd go about testing this but it's a thought.
Necessary disclaimer that I'm neither gay nor bi so this is an outsider view/opinion as such.
I think you would have to equate societies with long standing tolerance would also correlate with having a different way other than google to access porn. It is quite a poor measure with too many variables. Clearly we all have scope to have some attraction to the same sex whether it be a simple observation of a well sculpted man or all the way up to daydreaming for days about that guy you saw. Having observed the changing landscape of homosexuals over the years and how they were then and now, I certainly feel the environment has much to blame.