This research although, shows that, transvestism or cross-dressing is not necessarily a heterosexual phenomenon, but it is clear that it is predominantly a heterosexual phenomenon.
The abstract of the research:
Bonnie Bullough1 and Vern Bullough2
(1) University of Southern California, 1540 Alcazar Street, Los Angeles, California, 90033
(2) State University of New York, University of Southern California, Los Angeles
Abstract A survey of 372 male cross-dressers gathered data about present and childhood experiences and attitudes in light of the growing knowledge about transvestism. This article focuses on data related to sexual orientation, particularly in relationship to the definition of transvestism in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders of the American Psychiatric Association. It is argued that transvestism is not necessarily a heterosexual phenomenon.
"Quote: Hirschfeld, the first serious student of cross-dressing, coined the term
"transvestitism" and indicated that the group was primarily heterosexual."
December 27, 2008
October 16, 2008
Gay or straight? Watch his walk
Melissa Dahl
Health writer
IS HE GAY OR STRAIGHT? At a glance, the key to telling might be in the way he walks.
A swing of the hips or a swaggered shoulder is enough for many casual observers to identify a man’s sexual orientation, according to a study published in the September issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Observers were only able to accurately guess the sexual orientation of men; with women, their guesses didn’t exceed chance. But what’s most interesting to researchers is understanding how that snap judgment can unleash a series of stereotypes — even from the most liberal-minded.
“This is important for the understanding of perception and feelings of assumptions and bias,” says lead author Kerri Johnson, an assistant professor of communications at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Once you know an individual’s sexual orientation, every else that happens is seen through that lens.”
Johnson and her colleagues attached motion sensors, like those used in the movie industry, to the hips and shoulders of eight volunteers – four men and four women, half of whom were gay. The motion sensors captured the only movements of the walkers, masking details such as clothing or hairstyles.
The researchers videotaped the volunteers walking on a treadmill at various speeds, and then played the video for 150 undergraduate observers, who were asked to determine the sexual orientation of each person.
Observers' accuracy
As the gay men walked, they slightly swayed their hips. The observers were accurate in assessing the men's sexual orientation a little more than 60 percent of the time.
“There’s reason to think that gay people can’t conceal their homosexuality,” says Michael Bailey, a professor of psychology at Northwestern University. “I don’t think it’s a performance that gay people enact. I think it’s something that either is inborn, or it’s acquired very early, perhaps by watching members of the other sex.”
Research such as Johnson's may give scientific credence to "gaydar," suggesting that people really can tell whether someone is gay or straight from visual clues.
As the lesbians walked, they slightly moved their shoulders back and forth — Johnson calls it a less exaggerated version of an Arnold Schwarzenegger-type swagger.
But when it came to identifying the sexual orientation of the women, it was all up to chance.
“Women in our society are permitted a greater latitude of behaviors,” Johnson says. “They’re able to act in masculine ways , and adopt traditional masculine roles. That’s been happening since the ’60s.
“We’re a society that permits women to do this, in fact, celebrates women who do this,” she continues. “But we punish men for [adopting feminine traits]."
Johnson jokes that she’s often been called a “men’s libber,” but she hopes her research will provide a foundation to explore those types of gender biases.
The findings aren’t meant to be used as a diagnostic test, Johnson says. In other words, don’t use her research to out someone. But although the research is getting attention for its results about a distinction in how gay men walk, Johnson and her colleagues were more focused on studying the observers.
“If we know how people use these cues to categorize one another, it can help us understand what happens in how they react with other people,” Johnson says.
That quick assessment can mean that the observer is associating that person with stereotypes they've heard — for example, that a gay man isn't as masculine as a straight man. Next, Johnson plans to study the implications of judging someone's sexuality by those visual clues.
Even if we’ve unconsciously identified a person’s sexual orientation, it can affect how we treat that person, says Gerulf Rieger, a lecturer of psychology at Northwestern University. Rieger has worked on similar research projects that deal with people identifying someone’s sexual orientation when given very little information.
“We can pick these signals up; we can tell who’s gay and who’s not,” Rieger says. “Understanding how people differ, and accepting those [genetic] differences, can only help tolerance.”
(NOTE FROM RECLAIMING NATURAL MANHOOD SITE: Notice how the researcher is cunningly portraying his homosexualising of man to man sexuality in the garb of being broad minded.)
Health writer
 | MSNBC video |
 |
Science backs form of "gaydar" Researchers attached motion sensors to gay and straight volunteers to see if sexual orientation can be detected by the way people walk. Check out their footage. Can you tell a difference? NBC News |
IS HE GAY OR STRAIGHT? At a glance, the key to telling might be in the way he walks.
A swing of the hips or a swaggered shoulder is enough for many casual observers to identify a man’s sexual orientation, according to a study published in the September issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Observers were only able to accurately guess the sexual orientation of men; with women, their guesses didn’t exceed chance. But what’s most interesting to researchers is understanding how that snap judgment can unleash a series of stereotypes — even from the most liberal-minded.
“This is important for the understanding of perception and feelings of assumptions and bias,” says lead author Kerri Johnson, an assistant professor of communications at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Once you know an individual’s sexual orientation, every else that happens is seen through that lens.”
Johnson and her colleagues attached motion sensors, like those used in the movie industry, to the hips and shoulders of eight volunteers – four men and four women, half of whom were gay. The motion sensors captured the only movements of the walkers, masking details such as clothing or hairstyles.
The researchers videotaped the volunteers walking on a treadmill at various speeds, and then played the video for 150 undergraduate observers, who were asked to determine the sexual orientation of each person.
Observers' accuracy
As the gay men walked, they slightly swayed their hips. The observers were accurate in assessing the men's sexual orientation a little more than 60 percent of the time.
“There’s reason to think that gay people can’t conceal their homosexuality,” says Michael Bailey, a professor of psychology at Northwestern University. “I don’t think it’s a performance that gay people enact. I think it’s something that either is inborn, or it’s acquired very early, perhaps by watching members of the other sex.”
Research such as Johnson's may give scientific credence to "gaydar," suggesting that people really can tell whether someone is gay or straight from visual clues.
As the lesbians walked, they slightly moved their shoulders back and forth — Johnson calls it a less exaggerated version of an Arnold Schwarzenegger-type swagger.
But when it came to identifying the sexual orientation of the women, it was all up to chance.
“Women in our society are permitted a greater latitude of behaviors,” Johnson says. “They’re able to act in masculine ways , and adopt traditional masculine roles. That’s been happening since the ’60s.
“We’re a society that permits women to do this, in fact, celebrates women who do this,” she continues. “But we punish men for [adopting feminine traits]."
Johnson jokes that she’s often been called a “men’s libber,” but she hopes her research will provide a foundation to explore those types of gender biases.
The findings aren’t meant to be used as a diagnostic test, Johnson says. In other words, don’t use her research to out someone. But although the research is getting attention for its results about a distinction in how gay men walk, Johnson and her colleagues were more focused on studying the observers.
“If we know how people use these cues to categorize one another, it can help us understand what happens in how they react with other people,” Johnson says.
That quick assessment can mean that the observer is associating that person with stereotypes they've heard — for example, that a gay man isn't as masculine as a straight man. Next, Johnson plans to study the implications of judging someone's sexuality by those visual clues.
Even if we’ve unconsciously identified a person’s sexual orientation, it can affect how we treat that person, says Gerulf Rieger, a lecturer of psychology at Northwestern University. Rieger has worked on similar research projects that deal with people identifying someone’s sexual orientation when given very little information.
“We can pick these signals up; we can tell who’s gay and who’s not,” Rieger says. “Understanding how people differ, and accepting those [genetic] differences, can only help tolerance.”
(NOTE FROM RECLAIMING NATURAL MANHOOD SITE: Notice how the researcher is cunningly portraying his homosexualising of man to man sexuality in the garb of being broad minded.)
August 27, 2008
Men's face tell a woman about his masculinity/ queerness
"According to a new study carried out at the Universities of Chicago and California, women can tell, just by looking at a man's face, whether he is good with children - and therefore a good long-term catch, or just very masculine, and better for a short-term relationship.
It seems that a man's face can reveal to women how high his testosterone levels are. His value as a mating partner can be quickly assessed by looking at his face, say the researchers."
Click here to read the entire news about this research.
It seems that a man's face can reveal to women how high his testosterone levels are. His value as a mating partner can be quickly assessed by looking at his face, say the researchers."
Click here to read the entire news about this research.
Hormones converge for couples in love
"Men are from Mars and women from Venus - except when they are in love. During this intense period, men and women become more like each other than at any other time.
. . .
Men who were in love had lower levels of the male sex hormone testosterone - linked to aggression and sex drive - than the other men. Love-struck women, in contrast, had higher levels of testosterone than their counterparts, the team will report in Psychoneuroendocrinology."
Men are from Mars and women from Venus - except when they are in love. During this intense period, men and women become more like each other than at any other time.
We already know that falling in love is a bit like going crazy. Donatella Marazziti of the University of Pisa in Italy showed in 1999 that levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin, which has a calming effect, dip below normal in those who say they are in love as well as in people with obsessive compulsive disorder. Both groups spend inordinate amounts of time obsessing about something or someone (New Scientist print edition, 31 July 1999).
Now Marazziti has looked at the hormonal changes that occur in people who are in love. Her team measured the blood levels of several key hormones in 12 men and 12 women who said they had fallen in love within the past six months. The researchers compared these hormone levels to those in 24 other volunteers who were either single or in stable long-term relationships.
The first finding was that both men and women in love have considerably higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol, indicating that courtship can be somewhat stressful. "But the most intriguing finding is related to testosterone," says Marazziti.
Split the difference
Men who were in love had lower levels of the male sex hormone testosterone - linked to aggression and sex drive - than the other men. Love-struck women, in contrast, had higher levels of testosterone than their counterparts, the team will report in Psychoneuroendocrinology.
"Men, in some way, had become more like women, and women had become like men," says Marazziti. "It's as if nature wants to eliminate what can be different in men and women, because it's more important to survive [and mate] at this stage."
But is falling in love really responsible for these changes? Andreas Bartels of University College London points out that the hormonal changes could just be a result of increased sexual activity. "There's a high degree of affection, but there's also, without any doubt, extremely high sexual activity," he says.
Marazziti thinks that this explanation is unlikely, however, because in her study those in the control group were having sex just as often as those in the "in love" group.
Love is blind
What is more, other studies suggest that testosterone levels in men rise as sexual activity increases (New Scientist, 27 November 1999). So if the hormonal changes were just the result of sex, testosterone levels would be expected to increase in men, rather than fall.
Converging levels of testosterone may not be the only thing that helps a man and woman overcome their differences. Other research has shown that falling in love really does make us blind to our partner's faults.
Bartels's team has found that when people look at their lovers, the neural circuits that are normally associated with critical social assessment of other people are suppressed (Neuroimage, vol 21, p 1155).
But the blissful state that is romantic love does not last. When Marazziti retested the same people one or two years later, when they said they were no longer madly in love, their hormone levels had returned to normal.
May 18, 2008
Heterosexual rams are queers/ gays
washingtonpost.com By Rams Will Be Rams
Sunday, July 4, 2004; Page BW07
Joan Roughgarden is a professor of biological sciences at Stanford Univeristy -- and a woman who was once a man. As such, she has a keen interest in sexual variation, a subject she addresses in Evolution's Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People (Univ. of California, $27.50). One of the many surprising scientific findings she reports is that exclusively straight male bighorn sheep -- those who do not engage in sex with other males -- are, from many points of view, "effeminate." "These males are identical in appearance to other males," she writes, "but behave quite differently. They differ from 'normal males' by living with the ewes rather than joining all-male groups. These males do not dominate females, are less aggressive overall, and adopt a crouched, female urination posture." Meanwhile, most male bighorn sheep are busy having intercourse with both females and other males. "This case," as Roughgarden adds, "turns the meanings of normal and aberrant upside down."
Toward the end of the book, Roughgarden engages in some Biblical interpretation, focusing on the passages that are "cited . . . against gay and lesbian people." She argues, for example, that Paul's criticism of homosexuality in his letter to the Romans can actually support a pro-gay reading. "The sense of Paul's letter," she writes, "is that if someone who has been worshipping God gives this up to follow other deities, their behavior will become unnatural for them -- they will start behaving out of character. . . . For someone who is primarily gay, the opposite is unnatural. For people who are gay to force themselves into heterosexual sex may be unnatural for them, and unfair to their partner, too."
-- Dennis Drabelle
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)