[T]oday the Government launched a public consultation on what relationships and sex education should look like in England’s schools. While that might not be the first thing on your Christmas list, it’s been hanging around at the top of ours for a while, and is a vitally important step forward for all young people.
So why is it something we should all care about? Earlier this year, the Government committed to making age-appropriate relationships and sex education compulsory in all of England’s schools in 2019.
Currently, only certain secondary schools are required to teach this subject, and the guidance for teachers has sat untouched since 2000. To say that plenty has changed in those 17 years would be an understatement. Back then, Bob the Builder was Christmas number one, Facebook was just a twinkle in Mark Zuckerberg’s eye, and Section 28 – the law which banned the so-called ‘promotion’ of homosexuality – was still in force.
It was a different world – and the guidance reads that way. It makes little mention of online safety, and no mention at all of LGBT young people and their needs. We have, however, made progress. At primary level we work with hundreds of schools to help them celebrate difference. This includes talking about different families, including LGBT parents and relatives.
Teaching about the diversity that exists in the world means that children from all families feel included and helps all young people understand that LGBT people are part of everyday life. Lots of schools, including faith schools, have been doing this work for years. Different families, same love. Simple.
At secondary level, a growing number of schools are meeting the needs of their LGBT pupils. But Stonewall’s research shows that these schools are in the minority: just one in six LGBT young people have been taught about healthy same-sex relationships, and many teachers still aren’t sure whether they are allowed to talk about LGBT issues in the classroom.
Too many LGBT pupils still tell us that relationships and sex education simply doesn’t include them. As LGBT young people are left unequipped to make safe, informed decisions, most go online to find information instead. It will come as no surprise that information online can be unreliable, and sometimes unsafe.
In schools that teach about LGBT issues, LGBT young people are more likely to feel welcomed, included and accepted. When young people see themselves reflected in what they learn, it doesn’t just equip them to make safe, informed decisions, it helps them feel like they belong and that who they are isn’t wrong or defective. Providing all young people with inclusive relationships and sex education as part of PSHE is a key way to do this.
Every young person needs to feel accepted, understood and included. The Government has recognised that, and is clear that future relationships and sex education will be LGBT-inclusive. Now is our chance to have a say on what that should look like. Now is our chance to give all young people the information and support they need to be safe, happy and healthy, now and in the future.
[S]cientists are reporting what could amount to be the firmest evidence yet of genetic links to male sexual orientation, in the first published genome-wide association study (GWAS) examining the trait.
Researchers recruited more than 2,000 men of both homosexual and heterosexual orientation and analysed their DNA, identifying two genetic regions that appear to be linked to whether individuals are gay or straight.
“Because sexuality is an essential part of human life – for individuals and society – it is important to understand the development and expression of human sexual orientation,” says psychiatrist Alan Sanders from NorthShore University HealthSystem in Evanston, Illinois.
“The goal of this study was to search for genetic underpinnings of male sexual orientation, and thus ultimately increase our knowledge of biological mechanisms underlying sexual orientation.”
To do so, Sanders’ team studied 1,077 homosexual men and 1,231 heterosexual men of primarily European ancestry, who were respectively recruited from community festivals and a nationwide survey.
For the purposes of the study, the men’s sexual orientation was based on their self-reported sexual identity and sexual feelings. Each individual taking part provided a sample of their DNA in the form of blood or saliva samples, which were genotyped and analysed.
When the researchers sifted through the data, they isolated several genetic regions where variations called single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) signalled single-letter changes in the DNA, with two of the most prominent congregations located near chromosomes 13 and 14.
“The genes nearest to these peaks have functions plausibly relevant to the development of sexual orientation,” the researchers explain in their paper.
On chromosome 13, the variants were located next to a gene called SLITRK6, which is expressed in the diencephalon – a part of the brain that’s previously been shown to differ in size depending on men’s sexual orientation.
While the mechanisms here aren’t fully understood, the researchers explain the SLITRK gene family is important for neurodevelopment and could be of relevance for a range of behavioural phenotypes, not just sexual orientation.
On chromosome 14, the strongest associations were centred around the thyroid stimulating hormone receptor (TSHR) gene, and it’s thought the cluster of SNP variants here could conceivably affect sexual orientation due to altered expression in the hippocampus – in addition to producing atypical thyroid function.
It’s not the first time scientists have examined our genetic code looking for hints as to predictors of sexual persuasion.
While there are numerous environmental factors to consider, previous research – that has not yet been replicated – linked a genetic marker in the X chromosome called Xq28 to male sexual orientation back in the 1990s.
This gave rise to the idea of the so-called ‘gay gene’, even though that’s technically a misnomer, since the Xq28 band actually contains several genes, and the science on the region remains unclear.
More recently, a controversial study presented in 2015 by UCLA researchers suggested an algorithm analysing epigenetic markers that affect gene expression could predict male sexual orientation with up to 70 percent accuracy, but the findings were never published.
Similarly controversial – but in a completely different field of science – researchers from Stanford University made headlines in September when they claimed an AI they had developed could correctly distinguish between gay and heterosexual men and women (81 percent of the time and 74 percent of the time respectively).
While those findings produced an uproar, the claims – if true – serve as another illustration that our biology may contain innumerable clues about things like our sexual orientation that science is only beginning to reveal.
In terms of the new results, there’s bound to be a lot of interest in the study, but the researchers are eager to emphasise their findings are largely speculative for now, since there’s still a lot we don’t know about what these genetic variations really mean.
There’s also the relatively small size and skewed European basis of the sample – not to mention the fact that it’s all men – which limit what it can tell us about genetic underpinnings to sexual orientation more broadly across race and sex lines.
Despite those shortcomings, there’s a lot for other researchers to consider here, and the team hopes this could lay the groundwork for future investigations that could more deeply penetrate the genetic factors that help influence our sexual identities.
“What we have accomplished is a first step for GWAS on the trait, and we hope that subsequent larger studies will further illuminate its genetic contributions,” says Sanders.
“Understanding the origins of sexual orientation enables us to learn a great deal about sexual motivation, sexual identity, gender identity, and sex differences, and this and subsequent work may take us further down that path of discovery.”
[I]n 2013, Hunger Games actor Josh Hutcherson told an interviewer for Out magazine that he was, in his own words, “mostly straight.” “Maybe I could say right now I’m 100 percent straight. But who knows? In a fucking year, I could meet a guy and be like, ‘Whoa, I’m attracted to this person’ … I’ve met guys all the time that I’m like, ‘Damn, that’s a good-looking guy,’ you know? I’ve never been, like, ‘Oh, I want to kiss that guy.’ I really love women. But I think defining yourself as 100% anything is kind of near-sighted and close-minded.”
At the time, the actor’s comments attracted considerable attention from the media, and the interview caught my eye, too. Hutcherson typifies the young men (he’s 25 years old) I’ve interviewed over the years in my work as a research psychologist: those who embrace sexual ambiguity over neat and simple identity boxes. I even borrowed his words as the title for my new book, Mostly Straight: Sexual Fluidity Among Men. In it, I draw from the experiences of young men to make the case that an increasing number say they’re straight, but feel a slight but enduring sexual or romantic desire for men.
When I tell people about my work, they often assume these men are joking, or that they are really closeted gays. They’re not. Perhaps if a young woman were to make the same claims as these men, we wouldn’t be surprised: Women, not men, are supposedly fluid in their sexual and romantic lives. The 40 young men I interviewed for my book would disagree. Here’s a small sampling of what they’ve told me.
“I’m not completely heterosexual. I like to think of myself as fluid. I have man crushes when a male is so cool … I like the idea of male fluidity.” — Leo, age 21
“If I were to meet a man who I was attracted to, I would not be afraid to be attracted to them.” — Demetri, age 19
“He opened my eyes that it is not wrong for a straight guy to have attractions or crushes on other guys.” — Brady, age 18
“I wrestled with this guy, my drill partner, and we got very close. We never kissed, but emotionally we kissed.” — Kevin, age 19
“I’ve had bromances, I guess you could say. And man crushes … I would say I’m 99 percent straight with my 1 percent being those moments where noticing or thinking what would it be like to have sex with a guy.” — Ben, age 22
These men challenge existing assumptions that a man is necessarily straight, gay, or, perhaps, bisexual, and that his sexual arousals and romantic desires are stable, categorical, and, therefore, predictable. But what if he doesn’t fit into existing sexual categories or acknowledges that sometimes he desires sex or romance with his “nonpreferred” sex (men)? Is he simply fooling himself — or might he be illustrating a hidden and poorly understood dimension of male sexuality?
The short answer is that we simply don’t know, because research on male sexuality frequently combines him with straight or bisexual men, or deletes him altogether because researchers aren’t sure what to make of him. But so far, the difference seems to be this: Mostly straight men are more attracted to women and less attracted to men than are bisexual men, suggesting that they are neither exclusively straight, nor are they bisexual.
We like male sexuality to be simplistic and straightforward, but this can only be achieved by ignoring complexity. In so doing, however, we discount insights uncovered 70 years ago, when Kinsey demonstrated that sexuality is a continuum for both sexes. And, perhaps more critically, we negate young men who proclaim that their sexual and romantic desires and attachments are on a spectrum, not forever fixed in time or permanently housed in gay or straight identity boxes. We fail to recognize that they are “something else” — not exclusively straight, not bisexual, but mostly straight.
During the past decade, researchers in my sex and gender lab have reviewed the scientific literature about these young men — including youth who in a previous generation had described themselves as “straight but not narrow,” “heteroflexible,” or “bicurious.” We also surveyed and interviewed hundreds of young men about their sexual and romantic histories and measured their pupil and genital responses while they watched videos of naked men and women. In brief, here’s what we’ve found.
More men than you think identify as mostly straight. When given the option to identify as mostly straight, approximately 5 to 10 percent of men do so. This is especially true among millennials, who tend to possess greater sexual knowledge, freedom, curiosity, and exploration than earlier generations. This percentage is, by the way, higher than the percentage of men who self-identify as gay or bisexual combined. And yet these numbers are likely conservative, underrepresenting the true proportion of men who are mostly straight.
Perhaps this is because these men believe they don’t have the similar leeway to choose alternative sexualities. Or, perhaps, they fail to recognize that their bromances, “bud sex” activities, and man crushes imply something important about their sexual or romantic orientation. Also suppressing the number of men willing to identify as mostly straight is the widespread belief in previous generations that any amount of same-sex attractions or crushes makes one at least bisexual and, likely, gay.
“Mostly straight” doesn’t mean “secretly gay.” Our research has found that a mostly straight identity remains moderately stable over time. If a mostly straight individual drifts, the movement is usually between a straight and a mostly straight identity — almost never toward a bisexual or gay identity. This finding challenges the widespread belief that a mostly straight man is in reality someone who is gay but is afraid to emerge from his closet. (Indeed, mostly straight men tend to be exceptionally pro-gay.)
Guy sex and man crushes should be considered an addition, not a subtraction. A mostly straight man exhibits patterns of sexual and romantic attraction, fantasy, and infatuation that are distinctly unique from other men, though, to be clear, he leans closer to the straight. He has about as many female sex partners and romances as a straight man but, as you might expect, he is also more likely to have sex with another guy. His sexual behavior tends to involve genital touching, mutual masturbation, or receptive oral sex, but not anal sex. Although he might develop an intense man crush and cuddle with a best friend, he is considerably less likely to fall passionately in love or want to date this friend. However, he might also agree with interviewee Dillon, age 20: “If the guy is attractive enough … You just never know.” Guy sex and man crushes can be thought of as an addition, not a subtraction, to his heterosexuality.
There is even (some) physiological evidence to support this theory. My lab has found that physiological measures of sexual orientation which are relatively free of conscious control confirm the existence of mostly straight men. These individuals had arousal patterns — penis enlargement and pupil dilation — to pornographic videos of women masturbating that were identical to those of straight men. In contrast to straight men (who had almost zero arousal), they were also slightly aroused by men masturbating, though less so than were bisexual men. Thus, we observed that whereas a mostly straight man didn’t differ from a straight man in his physiological responses to women, he did in his heightened arousal to men. This suggests that he wasn’t lying about his self-reported mostly straightness.
Historically, the social ramifications for owning any degree of homoeroticism prompted many men to minimize or disown their same-sex desires. However, increased tolerance for diverse sexual and gender expression among millennials has given permission to this formerly unrecognized group to embrace the breadth of their sexual and emotional lives. Some we’ve interviewed have maintained this identity and orientation for many years, perhaps even a lifetime, even as they live traditional heterosexual lives.They’re not closeted gays who over time gravitate toward same-sex encounters. They’re mostly straight.
[A]s the marriage equality vote draws toward its close, a comprehensive study published in the Medical Journal of Australia shows children raised in same-sex-parented families do as well as children raised by heterosexual couple parents.
The review of three decades of peer-reviewed research by Melbourne Children’s found children raised in same-sex-parented families did as well emotionally, socially and educationally as their peers.
The study’s findings will undercut one of the arguments that have been used by the No campaign: that children need both a mother and a father to flourish.
The study’s authors said their work aimed to put an end to the misinformation about children of same-sex couples and pointed out that the results had been replicated across independent studies in Australia and internationally.
Titled The Kids are OK: it is Discrimination Not Same-Sex Parents that Harms Children, the report comes as the postal survey voting period enters its final days. Votes must be received by the Australian Bureau of Statistics by November 7 and outcome will be announced on November 15. So far polling has indicated that the Yes campaign is headed for a convincing win.
Among the studies reviewed were the 2017 public policy research portal at Columbia Law School, which reviewed 79 studies investigating the wellbeing of children raised by gay or lesbian parents; a 2014 American Sociological Association review of more than 40 studies, which concluded that children raised by same-sex couples fared as well as other children across a number of wellbeing measures; and the Australian Institute of Family Studies’ 2013 review of the Australian and international research, which showed there was no evidence of harm.
“The findings of these reviews reflect a broader consensus within the fields of family studies and psychology. It is family processes – parenting quality, parental wellbeing, the quality of and satisfaction with relationships within the family) – rather than family structures that make a more meaningful difference to children’s wellbeing and positive development,” the researchers said.
The researchers said that studies reporting poor outcomes had been widely criticised for their methodological limitations. For example the widely quoted Regnerus study compared adults raised by a gay or lesbian parent in any family configuration with adults who were raised in stable, heterosexual, two-parent family environments, which may have distorted the outcomes.
However, the study did find that young people who expressed diversity in their sexual orientation or gender identity experienced some of the highest rates of psychological distress in Australia, said the study’s senior author, Prof Frank Oberklaid.
“Young LGBTIQ+ people are much more likely to experience poor mental health, self-harm and suicide than other young people, “ he said.
“Sadly, this is largely attributed to the harassment, stigma and discrimination they and other LGBTIQ+ individuals and communities face in our society,” Oberklaid said.
He warned that the debate itself had been harmful.
“The negative and discriminatory rhetoric of the current marriage equality debate is damaging the most vulnerable members of our community – children and adolescents. It’s essential that we recognise the potential for the debate about marriage equality to cause harm for our children and young people,” Oberklaid said.
He said there was solid evidence in countries that had legalised same-sex marriage that it had a positive impact on the mental health and wellbeing of same-sex-parented families and LGBTIQ+ young people.
“As part of the medical community we feel a duty of care to all groups in our society, particularly to those who are vulnerable. Our duty extends to making sure that accurate, objective interpretations of the best available evidence are available and inaccuracies are corrected in an effort to reduce the destructiveness of public debate,” Oberklaid said.
He called for an end to the negative messages that could harm children in the final weeks of the voting period.
[I]n a decidedly male take on the BFF, new research shows that the emotional safety of a bromance might beat romance for some men.
A series of in-depth interviews with a small group of young, straight men revealed that the guys felt more comfortable sharing feelings and resolving conflicts with their male best friend than with their lover.
“The key differences we found is that romances are the sexual partner, and the bromance is the emotional partner,” said study author Adam White.
The men his team interviewed said they “could be more emotionally open, without fear of being judged or policed, with their bromances, whereas they often were fearful of being their true selves with their romances through worry that sex may be withheld, they may end up arguing, or they may be judged negatively,” he explained.
That could mean that romance is starting to lose some of its privileged status, White noted.
“In fact, some may consider the bromance a better option, as many of the emotional benefits are superior in a bromance,” he said.
White is currently a Ph.D. candidate and lecturer of sport and physical education at the University of Bedfordshire in Luton, England.
The research team pointed out that the notion of “bromance” appeared to gain cultural currency around 2005, as a way to describe the increasing intimacy of straight male-male relationships as depicted in movies and on television.
To explore the phenomenon’s impact, the British investigators conducted interviews with 30 men over a three-month period in 2014.
All were enrolled in the second year of their undergraduate studies. Most were white and described themselves as middle-class.
While all of the men voiced generally positive views of homosexuality, all were straight and had been involved in at least one romance with a girl, as well as at least one bromance with a guy.
Most participants said that — sex aside — they saw very little difference between the two types of relationships.
But nearly all (28 of 30) said they preferred sharing personal concerns and secrets with their bromance, the study found.
Why? Bromances appeared to offer a safe space that was presumed to be free of the kind of ridicule, judgment or embarrassment they associated with romantic intimacy.
What’s more, nearly all the men (29 of 30) said they had cuddled with their bromance partner, without either sexual desire or shame. Most said their girlfriends were aware of — and seemingly at ease about — such physical contact. And some men indicated that they even kissed one another as a non-sexual sign of affection.
Nearly all the men also said that the arguments they got into with their girlfriends were far more intense, silly and enduring than bromantic conflicts. In the same vein, resolving differences seemed to be easier between men than between lovers, they said.
As to whether the rise of bromance inevitably comes at the expense of romance, White said the jury is still out.
“There is a real possibility that bromances and romances can co-exist harmoniously,” he noted. “Likewise, the bromance may well challenge the construct of monogamy, and either the bromance or romance partner may feel jealous and threatened by the other.”
White and his colleagues reported their findings in the Oct. 12 issue of Men and Masculinities.
Cassandra Alexopoulos, an assistant professor of communication with the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, said she viewed the advent of bromances as “a benefit for society, especially during a time in which we want to promote inclusive masculinity and allow men to feel comfortable expressing themselves emotionally.”
Still, she cautioned that the “no judgment” nature of bromance may end up “leading men to see their romantic partner as a burden,” giving rise to an “us versus them” view of women.
“For many people,” Alexopoulos explained, “communicating in cross-sex relationships takes work, and requires a great deal of empathy and perspective-taking. It’s important to remember that even though cross-sex communication can sometimes be more effortful, the social rewards that come with a cross-sex friendship or a romantic relationship are unique and emotionally fulfilling as well.”
Whereas just seven percent of baby boomers are equally attracted to both sexes or “mostly” attracted to the opposite sex — marking a stark generational shift.
About 14 percent of those aged 16 to 22 say they are mostly attracted to the opposite sex, while nine percent say they are equally attracted to both sexes.
And just one percent of baby boomers said they were attracted to both sexes.
The generational shift in sexuality was shown in research carried out for the BBC by polling company Ipsos Mori.
They asked 1,000 young people aged 16 to 22 and 672 baby boomers — people in their 50s and 60s — about their sexual preferences.
About 66 percent of young people said they were only heterosexual, compared to 88 percent of baby boomers.
The pollsters also asked samples of Gen Z (1990s to mid-2000s,) millennials and Gen X (1961-1981) about their sexual orientation.
Among Gen Z 24 percent said they were equally attracted to both sexes or mostly attracted to the opposite sex.
Some 18 percent of Gen Y said they were equally attracted to both sexes or mostly attracted to the opposite sex with 71 percent saying they were only attracted to the opposite sex.
And in Gen X eight percent said they were mostly attracted to the opposite sex or equally attracted to both, with 85 percent saying they were only heterosexual.
Some 85 percent of Gen X, the generation that came after the baby boomers, said they were only heterosexual.
The number of people saying they are only heterosexual has gradually reduced through the generations.
But the “boxes” of heterosexual or homosexual simply “don’t fit human sexuality,” according to sex therapist Louise Mazanti.
She said: “Yes, we’re seeing a trend of questioning the norms of sexual orientation. Young people are increasingly resisting the confinement of being defined as either hetero or homosexual.”
“These boxes simply don’t fit human sexuality and never did.”
“In my opinion, they are entirely man-made.”
“It’s time to admit that we might have sexual gender preferences, but if we gave ourselves permission it’s never the genitals that define who we are attracted to.”
[I]n 2017, it’s weird to think that straight men are still asking the question, “Does having sex with a man make me gay?” Our friends at GQ recently investigated a bit deeper into the subject.
GQ interviewed a few guys who identify as straight who’ve all had same-sex sex with other men (gay or straight). Even after having sex with men, they still lean towards the straight side of the spectrum and identify as heterosexual.
So, what makes someone gay? According to GQ, it depends on how you define the “label.” In this day and age, everything has a label — too many if you ask me. Regardless of social labeling, it’s important to recognize how people associate that label within their self-identities — “if we remove the label of ‘gay’ from sex acts we traditionally assume are only the domain of gay men, does this mean you can take part in them and still be straight?”
James, a 28-year-old man who participated in the study, said he used to get regular blowjobs from a gay pal when he was a teenager. As a 17-year old, blowjobs weren’t exactly hidden around every corner, but for a coming of age teen with raging hormones, it seemed like the perfect deal for both him and his straight counterpart.
Another participant named Mark, also 28, said that his colleague’s boyfriend once went down on him in a club bathroom. Another time, he got a blowjob from a stranger in front of his girlfriend at a sex party. Even now, he says he knows he’s straight.
GQ asserts that at the end of the day, having sex with a man isn’t a sign of queerness — just as imagining pushing your evil boss under a truck means you’re a homicidal maniac. When people find themselves in sexually charged situations, primal instinct takes over, and shit happens.
Is sex just sex? If you ask me, the answer is yes.
There’s a difference between sexuality and orientation. Sexuality exists within us all; sometimes, we have sex with people we don’t necessarily find physically attractive; at times we do it to pass the time, and other times we have it because we crave sex. This is normal human sexuality — gay, straight, male, female; we can get off on all of it any given time.
Having sex with a man doesn’t mean you’re gay, but don’t forget the sacrifices your gay brothers make so you can have that freedom to choose.
However, orientation is the sexual compass we use to navigate the sensual universe; it’s who we are in our hearts. It’s how our spirits identify itself in life, and that affects whom we love, how we love and how we live. It’s larger than just sex.
“Gay sex acts aren’t something to be ashamed of,” GQ suggests. “If you’re man enough to do it and still call yourself straight, be man enough to talk about it. Don’t let it be a dirty little secret; own your sexuality — whatever that may by — with pride.”
Men are sexual people. Why have we created this stupid notion that getting off diminishes our manhood? Trust me; it’s an ideology crafted by religion, cultural norms and, most importantly, habit.
[W]here society once only recognized homosexuality and heterosexuality, there’s a growing awareness of — and terms for — a much larger, ever-expanding galaxy of sexual orientations. The same can be said for genders: While many only recognized male and female, and masculinity and femininity, we are witnessing an explosion of terms and identities, often coined by those who find “LGBT” too narrow. Many of these other labels have been around for decades or longer, but are only gaining broader attention now. Here’s a short guide to our fabulous new world.
SEXUALITY:
Beyond gay, lesbian, or straight.
Androsexual: Someone attracted to masculinity, whether in men, women, or others.
Asexuality: An orientation characterized by an absence of sexual attraction or desire for partnered sex. Asexuality is different from celibacy. Some asexual people do have sex and/or masturbate. There are many ways of being asexual.
Bisexual: Someone attracted, romantically and/or sexually, to people of more than one sex or gender. Their identity remains bisexual no matter who they are in a relationship with — their orientation does not vacillate from gay to straight based on the gender of their current partner.
Demisexual: Someone who can only experience sexual attraction after forming an emotional bond.
Graysexual: Someone whose sexuality is between absolute asexual and sexual.
Gynesexual: An attraction to females or femininity, the latter in women, men, or others.
Heteromantic: A person with a romantic, but not necessarily sexual, attraction to members of another sex or gender.
Panromantic: A person who has romantic, but not necessarily sexual, attractions to people of all genders and sexes.
Pansexual/Omnisexual: Those who have or are open to having romantic, sexual, or affectional desire for people of all genders and sexes, including those who are trans or intersex. (Many bi people identify with this definition as well.)
Polyamory (or Poly): Being in or being open to having romantic relationships with more than one person at a time, generally with the knowledge and consent of their partners.
Polysexual: Attraction to multiple genders or forms of gender expression, but not all.
Queer: Nonconforming sexual attraction, may include to those who are trans or gender variant.
GENDERS:
Beyond male/female and masculine/feminine.
Agender: Having no gender identity, or having a gender identity that is neutral.
Androgynous or androgyne: Having a gender identity or expression that includes both masculine and feminine elements, often to the point where one’s gender isn’t readily apparent to others.
Bigender: Having two gender identities, which may be experienced simultaneously or at separate times. According to the Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health, which runs an “Identity a Day” online education series, “The two genders may be male and female, but they might also include other nonbinary gender identities.”
Gender Fluid: When one’s gender identification or presentation shifts between two or more genders.
Gender Nonconforming: Gender expressions or roles that are outside those expected by society. They’re not confined by conventional definitions of male and female, and can include people who identify as trans or genderqueer.
Genderqueer: A person whose gender identity or gender expression falls outside of the dominant societal expectation for their assigned sex, is beyond genders, or is some combination of them.
Gender Variant: Varying from the expected characteristics of one’s assigned gender or sex.
Intersex: Those who have a variety of conditions in which a person is born with a reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn’t fit medical definitions of female or male. This happens in around one in every 1,500 to 2,000 births, according to the Intersex Society of North America, making it about as common as red hair. An intersex person might be born appearing female but with male chromosomes or internal anatomy, or born with genitals that seem outside defined male and female types. Many who are intersex have been forced, as children, to undergo surgeries that attempt to make their sexual organs conform to medical expectations. They may identify as intersex, male or female, or any of the other gender IDs here.
Neutrois: Similar to agender — a neutral or even genderless identity.
Trans or Transgender: This has become somewhat of an umbrella term for anyone with any type of gender variance. But for some it is more specific, representing those who identify or express a gender at opposition with the gender they were assigned at birth. While some trans people merely alter their identification or external expression, others pursue medical interventions like hormone treatment and gender affirmation surgeries. People who are trans often identify as either male or female, but may not do so.
Transsexual: A gender identity that is generally specific to those who are trans and undergo medical intervention to transition from the sex (male or female) they were assigned at birth to the sex they identify as being authentically. Transsexuals often view gender as binary, identify as male or female, and may accept more traditional gender roles.
Two-Spirit: A person of Native American descent whose body simultaneously houses both a masculine spirit and a feminine spirit. As an umbrella term, it may encompass same-sex attraction and a wide variety of gender variance, including people who might be described as queer, gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, genderqueer, or having multiple gender identities.
Of course there are also dozens of micro-identities too, like subcategories of gay men (bears, twinks) or lesbians (AGGs, femmes — and others detailed at bit.ly/20LezIDs).
I’d been dreading this question since losing my virginity to a female friend a few weeks earlier, not long after my 16th birthday. Somehow, the harsh fluorescent lights in my doctor’s examination room made this query seem even more menacing.
“Yes,” I said, but there was an ellipsis in my voice. A hesitation. An unspoken “but . . . ”
“You’re using condoms, right? So you don’t get pregnant?” she prompted, and I didn’t know what to say, because we weren’t. We didn’t need to. It was the wrong question.
“Uh, I’m not having sex with a guy,” I managed to stammer.
My doctor peered at me over her wire-rim glasses, “Oh,” she replied.
There are a lot of things a teenager might be nervous to disclose to their doctor — a marijuana habit, some worrying mental health symptoms, a secret relationship their parents don’t know about. While we should all feel free to tell our doctors what’s really going on with us, it’s particularly egregious that so many of them are still in the dark about something so basic as sexual orientation, making these already-difficult situations even more challenging.
The day of my first difficult conversation about my sexual health, my doctor didn’t give me any medical advice on the sex I was having. She didn’t suggest my partner and I use dental dams or latex gloves. She didn’t suggest we get tested for sexually transmitted infections (STIs). She didn’t ask whether my partner was cis or trans. She didn’t ask what sexual orientation I identified as (bisexual, for the record). She didn’t even ask me if I had any questions for her. She just moved on to the next part of our checkup.
I didn’t recognize these as problems at the time; I was too young and nervous to question the approach of my all-knowing doctor. Everything I later learned about safer sex — with the other cis girl I was seeing at that time, and with other partners later on — I learned from the internet. And while the internet can be a great resource for such information, doctors should be a better one.
Bisexuals are told all the time — both implicitly and explicitly — that we’re not queer enough to align ourselves with queerness, or that we’re too queer to align ourselves with straightness. I still find it hard to push back against these stereotypes today, at 25.
These presumptions are particularly upsetting in medical situations, where many of us already feel nervous and unempowered and, for many queers, apprehensive. The medical system has oftentimes failed us and our queer foreparents: inequitable health care access due to poverty, doctors’ lack of knowledge about LGBT identities and sexuality and the pathologization of queerness are just a few examples.
Two years later, in a different relationship with a person of a different gender, I returned to my doctor. I was a girl on a mission.
“I’m seeing someone new and I’d like to get an IUD,” I told my doc, with all the bravery and resolve I could muster as a meek 18-year-old still coming to terms with her sexuality.
“I thought you were a lesbian?” she replied coolly, barely looking up from her computer screen.
“No, I’m bisexual,” I clarified, my voice only shaking a little.
Medically speaking, it shouldn’t actually matter what word(s) I use to define my sexual orientation; my doctor should want to know, instead, what sexual activities I am participating in. I could’ve been a lesbian having sex with a man (they do exist!). I could’ve been having sex with a trans woman or a nonbinary person who had the ability to get me pregnant. There was no reason for my doctor to assume I was a lesbian in the first place, nor that a risk of pregnancy during sex meant my existing sexual orientation was being challenged.
I was reminded of a story I had read online. An American photographer I followed, Brigid Marz, wrote on Flickr that she and her girlfriend went to a hospital to get treatment for her flu symptoms. A staff member asked Brigid if there was any chance she might be pregnant, and she laughed, indicated her girlfriend, and said no. She’d dated and had sex with men before, but not recently enough that she could be pregnant. Months later, she received a $700 medical bill, $300 of which was for a pregnancy test she’d neither authorized nor needed.
“I am so sick of being treated differently just because I have boobs,” she wrote, but I would argue she was treated differently because she is non-monosexual – she is neither completely straight nor completely gay. Our medical system seems to assume everyone is one or the other, sometimes even when we’re loudly asserting otherwise.
In the end, my doctor refused to prescribe me an IUD on the basis that I was “just casually dating” and should wait until I was “in a serious relationship” before committing to a long-term birth control method that reflected my relationship status. She prescribed me the pill instead — the hormonal content of which exacerbated my mental health conditions for years, something the non-hormonal copper IUD may not have done.
What rankled me was that I was in a serious relationship at the time. My doctor may have assumed my relationship was casual because I was now with a man and I was previously with a woman, or she may have simply thought I was too young for the IUD — but I think it was because of negative stereotypes about bisexual people.
Bi folks’ relationships and attractions are often written off as “just a phase” or “just for fun.” We’re told we don’t know what we really want or who we really like — or, worse, that we’re intentionally playing with partners’ hearts, never intending to pursue commitment or depth in our relationships.
In my experience, this is about as true for bisexual people as it is for straight or gay people — some folks are looking for serious relationships and some just aren’t — but this assumption weighs most heavily on bisexuals. Whether or not my doctor was consciously aware of the stereotypes she was affirming that day, it’s clear to me that my relationship would not have been written off as “casual” if I identified as straight or gay.
If I could go back and talk to myself when I was a shy and shaking 16-year-old in my doctor’s office, I’d tell her to advocate for herself. I’d tell her to ask the questions she wanted answered, and double-check the answers on Scarleteen later. I’d tell her it was okay if she didn’t even know what questions to ask.
I’d tell her to be unashamed of her burgeoning bisexual identity, because it’s nothing to feel shifty about. But mostly, I’d wish I didn’t have to tell her all these things. Her doctor shouldn’t have made her doubt all this in the first place.
Can a straight man hook up with a guy and still be straight? Girls can.
By Nikki Goldstein
[I]F A man is sexual with another man, is he gay? You can kiss a girl and like it and be straight, but man on man sex is quickly put in the category of homosexuality.
It’s a subject that has always fascinated me because I have many gay friends who bed these so-called straight (and often married) men with excitement, enthusiasm and frequency.
I’d heard of the term “men who have sex with men” (msm), but was confused as to why these straight men/gay men hook-ups were occurring so commonly, and what it was all about.
Are these men secretly gay and in hiding?
As it turns out, not all of them are. After investigating the issue and speaking to some of the men involved, I was surprised to find out that as well as some of these men being in the closet, there is also a population of guys out there who are hooking up with other guys just for the pure ease at which a hook up can occur.
It is not necessarily about sexual attraction to a gender, but sexual pleasure.
Finding a gay man who has experience in this was not difficult at all. Max* informed me that finding straight men to hook up with is not that hard. “It’s pretty easy to find if you know where you are looking. Probably any toilet you go to is a beat,” he said.
He also informed me of a recent encounter he had with a straight man at a sex on premises club who he thought was gay.
Towards the end of the encounter, his phone rang displaying a photo of the man he was hooking up with and his wife on their wedding day. This was later reconfirmed by a text message which said, “You give head as good as my wife does.”
I also spoke to another man who has a glory hole (a sheet in his apartment that has a hole in it which sexual acts can be anonymously carried out through) and puts out ads to have encounters with straight men only.
These men will walk in and walk away without knowing who the person is on the other side but understand that it is another man.
While some men might be experimenting with their sexuality and desires, Max explains that the glory hole encounters between men where one might not identify as gay could be more to do with the ease at which men can get off.
“The majority of straight men who are going to a glory hole are going because they don’t want to see who is on the other side. It is about just getting off.
“Is it that easy to find another girl who is just willing to give a blow job and say nothing more? Guys know what other guys are like. Guys just want to (get off). It sounds harsh, but it’s true.”
As much as gay men are willing to boast about their encounters with straight men, finding a straight man who engages in these same sex experiences to talk openly was like the hunt for Bin Laden.
After a call out I received a message from a man name Paul who identified as straight but admitted, “he had an occasional urge to have a different sexual experience, one you can have with a guy”.
His overall advice: “Try to understand it and embrace it. I think there are so many more men out than the world realises, than woman realise, that enjoy a different type of stimulation.”
Paul continues, “I would think that society would be amused by the number of men that are out there that seek a slightly different adventure and it doesn’t necessarily mean in any way shape or form that they are gay or bi. They are just wanting to experiment and have a bit of fun just like we see girls out there on the dance floor.”
And by girls on the dance floor, Paul is referring to the hypersexual behaviour of women towards each other, sometimes even sexual encounters, that don’t require any labels. The idea that two women together is hot but two men together is gay.
Paul wants to experience different sexual encounters and not be restricted by a label. He describes it as “going to a theme park and saying I haven’t tired that ride before, this looks like fun.”
Which begs the question: If you are a straight man who has sex with men, why identify as straight? If you enjoy it, why not call yourself bi or fluid?
It seems there are many issues when it comes to homosexuality that many men are not comfortable with, and these might stem from lifestyle, masculinity to cultural or religion.
“If you are attracted to sex with men and you are straight, do we have to put a label on it?” agrees Max. “There isn’t a straight forward answer, it’s a complex issue about sexual identity, labels, mixed with cultural expectations.”
The issue with many labels is they come attached with set assumptions and even some negative associations about how someone who identities with that label must be and live their life.
It can also be very confusing when someone doesn’t stick to stereotypically what that label says. We all have a right to change our minds and go with the flow. Isn’t that what being true to ourselves is all about? Why should we correct someone’s label if they are comfortable with it?
As the number of sexual labels increases and the complexity of how we identify grows, maybe the answer is to understand how someone lives their life, not try change or correct them if we don’t agree.
‘Damenkneipe,’ or ‘Ladies’ Saloon,’ painted by Rudolf Schlichter in 1923. In 1937, many of his paintings were destroyed by the Nazis as ‘degenerate art.’
[V]ery recently, Germany’s Cabinet approved a bill that will expunge the convictions of tens of thousands of German men for “homosexual acts” under that country’s anti-gay law known as “Paragraph 175.” That law dates back to 1871, when modern Germany’s first legal code was created.
It was repealed in 1994. But there was a serious movement to repeal the law in 1929 as part of a wider LGBTQ rights movement. That was just before the Nazis came to power, magnified the anti-gay law, then sought to annihilate gay and transgender Europeans.
The story of how close Germany – and much of Europe – came to liberating its LGBTQ people before violently reversing that trend under new authoritarian regimes is an object lesson showing that the history of LGBTQ rights is not a record of constant progress.
The first LGBTQ liberation movement
In the 1920s, Berlin had nearly 100 gay and lesbian bars or cafes. Vienna had about a dozen gay cafes, clubs and bookstores. In Paris, certain quarters were renowned for open displays of gay and trans nightlife. Even Florence, Italy, had its own gay district, as did many smaller European cities.
Filmsbegan depicting sympathetic gay characters. Protests were organized against offensive depictions of LGBTQ people in print or on stage. And media entrepreneurs realized there was a middle-class gay and trans readership to whom they could cater.
Partly driving this new era of tolerance were the doctors and scientists who started looking at homosexuality and “transvestism” (a word of that era that encompassed transgender people) as a natural characteristic with which some were born, and not a “derangement.” The story of Lili Elbe and the first modern sex change, made famous in the recent film “The Danish Girl,” reflected these trends.
For example, Berlin opened its Institute for Sexual Research in 1919, the place where the word “transsexual” was coined, and where people could receive counseling and other services. Its lead doctor, Magnus Hirschfeld, also consulted on the Lili Elbe sex change.
Connected to this institute was an organization called the “Scientific-Humanitarian Committee.” With the motto “justice through science,” this group of scientists and LGBTQ people promoted equal rights, arguing that LGBTQ people were not aberrations of nature.
Most European capitals hosted a branch of the group, which sponsored talks and sought the repeal of Germany’s “Paragraph 175.” Combining with other liberal groups and politicians, it succeeded in influencing a German parliamentary committee to recommend the repeal to the wider government in 1929.
The backlash
While these developments didn’t mean the end of centuries of intolerance, the 1920s and early ‘30s certainly looked like the beginning of the end. On the other hand, the greater “out-ness” of gay and trans people provoked their opponents.
A French reporter, bemoaning the sight of uncloseted LGBTQ people in public, complained, “the contagion … is corrupting every milieu.” The Berlin police grumbled that magazines aimed at gay men – which they called “obscene press materials” – were proliferating. In Vienna, lectures of the “Scientific Humanitarian Committee” might be packed with supporters, but one was attacked by young men hurling stink bombs. A Parisian town councilor in 1933 called it “a moral crisis” that gay people, known as “inverts” at that time, could be seen in public.
“Far be it from me to want to turn to fascism,” the councilor said, “but all the same, we have to agree that in some things those regimes have sometimes done good… One day Hitler and Mussolini woke up and said, ‘Honestly, the scandal has gone on long enough’ … And … the inverts … were chased out of Germany and Italy the very next day.”
The ascent of Fascism
It’s this willingness to make a blood sacrifice of minorities in exchange for “normalcy” or prosperity that has observers drawing uncomfortable comparisons between then and now.
In the 1930s, the Depression spread economic anxiety, while political fights in European parliaments tended to spill outside into actual street fights between Left and Right. Fascist parties offered Europeans a choice of stability at the price of democracy. Tolerance of minorities was destabilizing, they said. Expanding liberties gave “undesirable” people the liberty to undermine security and threaten traditional “moral” culture. Gay and trans people were an obvious target.
What happened next shows the whiplash speed with which the progress of a generation can be thrown into reverse.
The nightmare
One day in May 1933, pristine white-shirted students marched in front of Berlin’s Institute for Sexual Research – that safe haven for LGBTQ people – calling it “Un-German.” Later, a mob hauled out its library to be burned. Later still, its acting head was arrested.
When Nazi leader Adolph Hitler needed to justify arresting and murdering former political allies in 1934, he said they were gay. This fanned anti-gay zealotry by the Gestapo, which opened a special anti-gay branch. During the following year alone, the Gestapo arrested more than 8,500 gay men, quite possibly using a list of names and addresses seized at the Institute for Sexual Research. Not only was Paragraph 175 not erased, as a parliamentary committee had recommended just a few years before, it was amended to be more expansive and punitive.
As the Gestapo spread throughout Europe, it expanded the hunt. In Vienna, it hauled in every gay man on police lists and questioned them, trying to get them to name others. The fortunate ones went to jail. The less fortunate went to Buchenwald and Dachau. In conquered France, Alsace police worked with the Gestapo to arrest at least 200 men and send them to concentration camps. Italy, with a fascist regime obsessed with virility, sent at least 300 gay men to brutal camps during the war period, declaring them “dangerous for the integrity of the race.”
The total number of Europeans arrested for being LGBTQ under fascism is impossible to know because of the lack of reliable records. But a conservative estimate is that there were many tens of thousands to one hundred thousand arrests during the war period alone.
Under these nightmare conditions, far more LGBTQ people in Europe painstakingly hid their genuine sexuality to avoid suspicion, marrying members of the opposite sex, for example. Still, if they had been prominent members of the gay and trans community before the fascists came to power, as Berlin lesbian club owner Lotte Hahm was, it was too late to hide. She was sent to a concentration camp.
In those camps, gay men were marked with a pink triangle. In these places of horror, men with pink triangles were singled out for particular abuse. They were mechanically raped, castrated, favored for medical experiments and murdered for guards’ sadistic pleasure even when they were not sentenced for “liquidation.” One gay man attributed his survival to swapping his pink triangle for a red one – indicating he was merely a Communist. They were ostracized and tormented by their fellow inmates, too.
The looming danger of a backslide
This isn’t 1930s Europe. And making superficial comparisons between then and now can only yield superficial conclusions.
But with new forms of authoritarianism entrenched and seeking to expand in Europe and beyond, it’s worth thinking about the fate of Europe’s LGBTQ community in the 1930s and ‘40s – a timely note from history as Germany approves same-sex marriage and on this first anniversary of Obergefell v. Hodges.
In 1929, Germany came close to erasing its anti-gay law, only to see it strengthened soon thereafter. Only now, after a gap of 88 years, are convictions under that law being annulled.
[M]illions of Americans identify as LGBTQ, and like any group, they have their own language to talk about both who they are and the challenges they face in a society that doesn’t fully accept or protect them.
If you want to be an ally, these terms might help — but be aware that many have been used derogatorily by straight, white, cisgender (defined below!) people, and were reclaimed over time by the LGBTQ community.
This list is by no means exhaustive, and some of these terms — because they are so personal — likely mean slightly different things to different people. If you’re puzzled by a term and feel like you can ask someone you love in the LGBTQ community to help you make sense of it, do it. But also be careful not to put the burden of your education on other people when there’s a whole wide world of resources out there.
Let’s get started
LGBTQ: The acronym for “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer.” Some people also use the Q to stand for “questioning,” meaning people who are figuring out their sexual orientation or gender identity. You may also see LGBT+, LGBT*, LGBTx, or LGBTQIA. I stands for intersex and A for asexual/aromantic/agender. The “A” has also been used by some to refer to “ally.”
Speaking of intersex: Born with sex characteristics such as genitals or chromosomes that do not fit the typical definitions of male or female. About 1.7% of the population is intersex, according to the United Nations.
Sex: The biological differences between male and female.
Gender: The societal constructions we assign to male and female. When you hear someone say “gender stereotypes,” they’re referring to the ways we expect men/boys and women/girls to act and behave.
Queer: Originally used as a pejorative slur, queer has now become an umbrella term to describe the myriad ways people reject binary categories of gender and sexual orientation to express who they are. People who identify as queer embrace identities and sexual orientations outside of mainstream heterosexual and gender norms.
Sexual orientation
Sexual orientation: How a person characterizes their sexuality. “There are three distinct components of sexual orientation,” said Ryan Watson, a professor of Human Development & Family Studies at the University of Connecticut. “It’s comprised of identity (I’m gay), behavior (I have sex with the same gender) and attraction (I’m sexually attracted to the same gender), and all three might not line up for all people.” (Don’t say “sexual preference,” which implies it’s a choice and easily changed.)
Gay: A sexual orientation that describes a person who is emotionally or sexually attracted to people of their own gender; commonly used to describe men.
Lesbian: A woman who is emotionally or sexually attracted to other women.
Bisexual: A person who is emotionally or sexually attracted to more than one sex or gender.
Pansexual: A person who can be attracted to all different kinds of people, regardless of their biological sex or gender identity. Miley Cyrus opened up last year about identifying as pansexual.
Asexual: A person who experiences no sexual attraction to other people.
Demisexual: Someone who doesn’t develop sexual attraction to anyone until they have a strong emotional connection.
Same-gender loving: A term some in the African-American community use instead of lesbian, gay or bisexual to express sexual attraction to people of the same gender.
Aromantic: A person who experiences little or no romantic attraction to others.
Gender identity and expression
Gender identity: One’s concept of self as male, female or neither (see “genderqueer”). A person’s gender identity may not align with their sex at birth; not the same as sexual orientation.
Gender role: The social behaviors that culture assigns to each sex. Examples: Girls play with dolls, boys play with trucks; women are nurturing, men are stoic.
Gender expression: How we express our gender identity. It can refer to our hair, the clothes we wear, the way we speak. It’s all the ways we do and don’t conform to the socially defined behaviors of masculine or feminine.
Transgender: A person whose gender identity differs from the sex they were assigned at birth.
Cisgender: A person whose gender identity aligns with the sex they were assigned at birth.
Binary: The concept of dividing sex or gender into two clear categories. Sex is male or female, gender is masculine or feminine.
Non-binary: Someone who doesn’t identify exclusively as female/male.
Genderqueer: People who reject static, conventional categories of gender and embrace fluid ideas of gender (and often sexual orientation). They are people whose gender identity can be both male and female, neither male nor female, or a combination of male and female.
Agender: Someone who doesn’t identify as any particular gender.
Gender-expansive: An umbrella term used to refer to people, often times youth, who don’t identify with traditional gender roles.
Gender fluid: Not identifying with a single, fixed gender. A person whose gender identity may shift.
*(Note: While the previous six terms may sound similar, subtle differences between them mean they can’t always be used interchangeably).*
Gender non-conforming: People who don’t conform to traditional expectations of their gender.
Transsexual: A person whose gender identity does not align with the sex they were assigned at birth, and who takes medical steps such as sex reassignment surgery or hormone therapy to change their body to match their gender.
Transvestite: A person who dresses in clothing generally identified with the opposite gender/sex.
Trans: The overarching umbrella term for various kinds of gender identifies in the trans community.
Drag kings & drag queens: People, some who are straight and cisgender, who perform either masculinity or femininity as a form of art. It’s not about gender identity.
Bottom surgery: A colloquial way of referring to gender affirming genital surgery.
Top surgery: Colloquial way of describing gender affirming surgery on the chest.
Binding: Flattening your breasts, sometimes to appear more masculine.
Androgynous: A person who has both masculine and feminine characteristics, which sometimes means you can’t easily distinguish that person’s gender. It can also refer to someone who appears female — like Orange is the New Black’s Ruby Rose, for example — but who adopts a style that is generally considered masculine.
‘Out’ vs. ‘closeted’
Coming out: The complicated, multi-layered, ongoing process by which one discovers and accepts one’s own sexuality and gender identity. One of the most famous coming outs was Ellen DeGeneres, with “Yep, I’m gay” on the cover of Time magazine 20 years ago. Former President Obama awarded DeGeneres a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016, saying that her coming out in 1997 was an important step for the country.
/center
Outing: Publicly revealing a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity when they’ve personally chosen to keep it private.
Living openly: An LGBTQ people who is comfortable being out about their sexual orientation or gender identity.
Closeted: An LGBTQ person who will not or cannot disclose their sex, sexual orientation or gender identity to the wider world.
Passing: A person who is recognized as the gender they identify with.
Down low: A term often used by African American men to refer to men who identify as heterosexual but have sex with men.
Attitudes
Ally: A person who is not LGBTQ but uses their privilege to support LGBTQ people and promote equality. Allies “stand up and speak out even when the people they’re allying for aren’t there,” said Robin McHaelen, founder and executive director of True Colors, a non-profit that provides support for LGBTQ youth and their families. In other words, not just at pride parades.
Sex positive: An attitude that views sexual expression and sexual pleasure, if it’s healthy and consensual, as a good thing.
Heterosexual privilege: Refers to the societal advantages that heterosexuals get which LGBTQ people don’t. If you’re a straight family that moves to a new neighborhood, for example, you probably don’t have to worry about whether your neighbors will accept you.
Heteronormativity: A cultural bias that considers heterosexuality (being straight) the norm. When you first meet someone, do you automatically assume they’re straight? That’s heteronormativity.
Heterosexism: A system of oppression that considers heterosexuality the norm and discriminates against people who display non-heterosexual behaviors and identities.
Cissexism: A system of oppression that says there are only two genders, which are considered the norm, and that everyone’s gender aligns with their sex at birth.
Homophobia: Discrimination, prejudice, fear or hatred toward people who are attracted to members of the same sex.
Biphobia: Discrimination, prejudice, fear or hatred toward bisexual people.
Transphobia: Prejudice toward trans people.
Transmisogyny: A blend of transphobia and misogyny, which manifests as discrimination against “trans women and trans and gender non-conforming people on the feminine end of the gender spectrum.”
TERF: The acronym for “trans exclusionary radical feminists,” referring to feminists who are transphobic.
Transfeminism: Defined as “a movement by and for trans women who view their liberation to be intrinsically linked to the liberation of all women and beyond.” It’s a form of feminism that includes all self-identified women, regardless of assigned sex, and challenges cisgender privilege. A central tenet is that individuals have the right to define who they are.
Intersectionality: The understanding of how a person’s overlapping identities — including race, class, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation and disability status — impact the way they experience oppression and discrimination.
Decades before Alfred Kinsey developed his scale for human sexuality, there was Magnus Hirschfeld — a doctor who dedicated his career to proving that homosexuality was natural.
A party at the Institute for Sexual Science is shown here. Magnus Hirschfeld (second from right) is the one with the moustache and glasses. His partner Karl Giese is holding his hand.
[H]irschfeld’s reasoning was simple: In turn of the 20th century Germany, where he lived, a law called Paragraph 175 made so-called “unnatural fornication” between men punishable by prison time.
“Magnus was gay himself,” says Undiscovered podcast co-host Elah Feder. “He was both a scientist and an activist, and he was really hoping that his science would lead to greater acceptance of gay and lesbian people.”
Hirschfeld founded what’s considered to be the first gay rights organization and established the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin. He also gained international renown for his radical research on the biology of sexual orientation. “He was, in the 1930s, touring the world lecturing about sexuality in China and India,” says co-host Annie Minoff. “The American press actually called him the ‘Einstein of sex.’”
But as Minoff and Feder explore in a recent episode of Undiscovered, Hirschfeld’s legacy didn’t turn out quite as he’d hoped.
“Magnus was using the science at his disposal, right?” Minoff says. “So now, we might talk about genetics or even epigenetics, but back in his day, scientists could see chromosomes under the microscope, but they still weren’t sure if they had anything to do with heredity.”
“So, Magnus was really all about documenting and recording things like physical traits or behavioral traits, trying to see what gays and lesbians might have in common or might be different than the rest of the population.”
Today, some of Hirschfeld’s research comes across as antiquated, even a bit zany. In one excerpt from his book, “The Homosexuality of Men and Women,” Hirschfeld debunks an apparently long-held stereotype that gay men can’t whistle.
“This does not agree with the results of our statistics,” he wrote, explaining that in a sample of 500 gay men, 77 percent could whistle, although “only a few could truly whistle well.”
“But he found that among lesbians, the whistling arts were very strong, which was nice to hear,” Feder adds.
Other aspects of Hirschfeld’s science have better weathered the tests of time. “So, for example, he was interested in whether homosexuality ran in families,” Feder says. “You know — was it a heritable trait?”
“Or, you might remember a few years ago, there were a bunch of studies looking at the correlation between finger length ratios and sexual orientation. They seemed to find a connection in women. And he did stuff like that. He was looking at hip-to-shoulder ratios — pretty pioneering sex research.”
In 1919, Hirschfeld opened his Institute for Sexual Science, a big villa in Berlin’s Tiergarten. “They had medical examination rooms, they had a library, they had a sex museum that was apparently a big tourist attraction,” Feder says.
And, as Yonsei University history professor Robert Beachy explains, the institute also offered sex education to Germans who were queasy about publicly seeking advice.
“They had a little box at the edge of the property, and people could anonymously insert slips of paper with questions about sex or any sort of sexual issue that they had,” he says. “And then people were invited in, and these different slips of paper would be read out loud and then responded to.”
“There were questions about things like, I don’t know, [about] premature ejaculation and how effective it was to use condoms for preventing pregnancy. You know, just lots of relatively mundane questions. But it was supposed to be a public service.”
But if Hirschfeld hoped that greater scientific understanding could change Germany’s discriminatory law, Feder says things didn’t quite turn out that way in his lifetime. (Paragraph 175 wasn’t struck down until 1994.)
“It’s a nice idea,” she says, “but as we end up seeing in Magnus’ story, you can do science, you can hope that it’s going to be used in one way, and it can work out very differently.”
“And his story ultimately is a pretty tragic one.”
[T]he hanky code (aka. “flagging”) was a ‘60s and ‘70s era way for gay men and BDSM fetishists to covertly signal their sexual interests in an age when seeking and having gay sex could get you arrested, beaten up or fired (it can still get you fired, by the way). Though it has largely fallen out of disuse, several queer artists have created new hanky codes in new and interesting ways.
What was the old hanky code?
Different colored handkerchiefs signified what sex acts you wanted (red for fisting and yellow for water sports, for example) and the pocket position indicated whether you were a dominant/top (left pocket) or submissive/bottom (right pocket).
Here’s a simple hanky code color chart:
The old (simplified) hanky code chart
As the hanky code became better known, marketers began creating meanings for every bandana color imaginable (dark pink for tit torture and leopard print for tattoo lovers, for example), but it’s likely that few people actually knew the entire spectrum because — as you’ll see in the chart below — who could possibly remember all 65 variations or tell the difference between orange and coral in a dark bar?
The waaaaay over-complicated hanky code
What is “the new hanky code”?
In our modern age of legalized gay sex and social apps, the hanky code has become more of a fashionable conversation starter at leather bars rather than an active way to solicit sex. Nevertheless, around 2014, a queer Los Angeles art collective called Die Kränken (The Havoc) began discussing what a new hanky code might look like.
Incorporating the sexual inclinations and gender identities of their members, Die Kränken designed 12 new hankies and created an exhibition entitled, “The New Rules of Flagging.” Their new hankies included ones for polyamory, outdoor sex, the app generation, womyn power, Truvada warriors and “original plumbing” (which was either a reference to the transgender male magazine or to urine and bathroom sex).
You should see all 12, but here’s some of our favorites:
Bossy bottomQueensQueer Punk
In addition to displaying the hankies, Die Kränken gave surveyed and interviewed attendees to figure out what hanky best fit them. He then invited the attendees to perform a short, pre-choreographed dance demonstrating the spirit of each hanky. The Truvada warrior’s dance, for instance, had people mimic a scorpion crawling up their arm before confidently brushing it off and flinging invisible pills into the air.
We asked Jonesy and Jaime C. Knight, two members of Die Kränken, why their hankies were so much more explicitly designed than the in-the-know ’70s era hanky code. They more or less responded, “Because we wanted to design something cool.” Their handkerchiefs aren’t for sale, sadly.
“The New Hanky Code” is also a hilarious stand-up routine….
In his 2014 stand-up routine, gay comedian Justin Sayre, plays the Chairman of the International Order of Sodomites who announces, “The board is thrilled to announce that we will be bringing back the hanky code, but this time, it’s to talk about your damage.”
“Long have these issues laid in the shadows of a second date,” Sayre says, “but no more. We’d like to put it out there.”
In Sayre’s new hanky code, wearing a handkerchief in your right pocket means that you self-identifying as having a particular issue whereas the left pocket means you’ve only been called out on it, “so it becomes a playful game amongst friends.”
According to Sayre, white hankies now signify racists, gray equals boring, yellow is for commitment-phobes, baby blue means you have mother issues, pink stands for ingrained homophobia (i.e. “masc-seekers”), mustard means you drink too much, magenta is poor personal hygiene and so on for conspiracy theorists, those who don’t like The Golden Girls and others.
In Sayre’s version, people can make up their own personal hankies (like charcoal for workaholic and eggshell for undiagnosed) and also assign hankies to one another. “We ask you all to be kind when assigning colors to other people,” he concludes. “because remember: You’ll be wearing them too.”
… and there’s also a Hanky Code film for queer fetish fans too.
Hanky Code is also the name of a 2015 queer indie film made up of 25 shorts from different international queer directors that each explore a different color and fetish from the hanky code. It’s quite artistic, avant-garde and even a little graphic (the segment on piercing almost made our squeamish editor pass out), but it’s a fine piece of film that re-interprets the decades-old hanky code for a new age.
Many of us are all too familiar with the “beer goggles” effect: friends and strangers alike become more attractive after a drink or two. Undoubtedly, drinking alcohol lowers our inhibitions and makes us more open to experimentation with the same sex. In a new study, published in The Journal of Social Psychology, straight men were found to be more physically attracted to other men after a few drinks.
“Most notably, alcohol intake was related to increased sexual willingness of men with a same-sex partner, suggesting a potential shift in normative casual sexual behavior among heterosexual men,” wrote the authors in the study.
Researchers recruited a total of 83 straight men and women who were bar hopping in the Midwest at night. The participants were asked to complete a survey about how many drinks they’d had that night. In addition, they had to watch a 40-second video of either a physically attractive man or woman drinking at a bar and chatting with the bartender. Then, the participants rated their sexual interest in the person in the video, from buying them a drink to going home together to have sex.
Unsurprisingly, men showed high interest when the attractive woman was on the screen; women naturally were more attracted to the man. Moreover, men were more likely to make sexual comments about the woman after the video. Overall, they expressed more sexual interest in the women, regardless of how much they had. This coincides with previous research that concedes men tend to be more lax about casual sex with strangers.
However, the researchers noted an interesting observation: the more alcohol men drank, the more interested they became in the man in the video. Men who had nothing to drink showed no interest. Those who consumed over 10 alcoholic drinks were more likely to entertain the idea of gay sex just as much as having sex with a woman.
“Sexual willingness was only influenced by alcohol intake and perceived attractiveness of a same-sex prospective partner,” the authors wrote.
In women, the more alcohol they drank, the more interested they were in other women, and the opposite sex.
This suggests sexuality for men and women does not fall under straight and gay, but instead is fluid. A 2016 study found women have been evolutionarily designed to have same-sex encounters. The researchers proposed women’s sexuality has evolved to be more fluid than men’s as a mechanism to reduce conflict and tension among co-wives in polygynous marriages.
In men, studies have found a large number of straight men watch gay porn and even have gay sexual fantasies. Researchers believe homosexuality has evolved in humans because it helps us bond with one another. In other words, sexual behavior is not a means to an end of reproduction, but it can also be used to help form and maintain social bonds.
It’s no surprise drinking alcohol leads to sexual behavior, and even makes us sexually fluid, and less inhibited. Alcohol’s influence on specific brain circuits has led us to feel euphoric and less anxious. It makes us more empathetic and leads us to see other people — even the same sex — as more attractive.
Alcohol may allow us to freely express our sexual side, without judgment or reservations.
You must be logged in to post a comment.