Things To Get the Mods for Xmas, Female Roadgeek Census, and Other Miscellany

[elsmere241]

My best advice when it comes to finding a significant other: don't be afraid to step out of your comfort zone. It's worked for me, at least.

I met my wife in a chatroom.  We were engaged in a month and married six months later.  (We did talk every day but one during that time.)

[Laura]

it's likely that my brain is wired more like a "born" man's brain in areas pertaining to attraction to woman and a love of roads. There's probably an overlap there. I would suspect that there are similar overlaps to explain why there is a higher percentage of roadgeeks who are LGBTQ than in the general population, and why it's more likely for "transitioned/ing" women to be into roads than "born" women.

how does that work?  I remember someone making an offhand remark to me that 1/3 of roadgeeks are gay males, and that seems plausible to me... wouldn't the "attracted to men" part of the neuroanatomy cause them to lean against a love of roads? 

Fascinatingly, no. LGBTQ people can have both male and female types of cognition - the "overlap" effect that I mentioned in my previous post (although it's more like a mosaic than an overlap). Here is an article explaining sexual orientation spatial memory differences in easy to understand English: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080103135205.htm

Unfortunately, I can't access the full PDF of the research (stupid $ firewall - I work for a different publisher so I can't access it) but the abstract is here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hipo.20375/abstract

Quote from Science Daily:

Differences in spatial learning and memory (our ability to record and recall information about our environment) are common between men and women. It has been shown that men consistently outperform women on tasks requiring navigation and discovering hidden objects; whereas women are more successful at tests which require them to remember where those objects lie in a particular space.

Dr Rahman and his research assistant, Johanna Koerting, found that during the MWM test gay men and straight women took longer to find the hidden platform than did straight men.  However, both gay and straight men spent more of their "dwelling time"  in the area where the hidden platform actually was, compared to straight and lesbian women.

This might mean that sexual orientation affects the speed at which you acquire spatial information, but not necessarily your eventual memory for that spatial information.

The researchers also found that gay and straight men were similar in their performance on the Radial Arm Maze. "This suggests that sexual variation in spatial cognition is not straightforward — gay people appear to show a "˜mosaic' of performance, parts of which are male-like and other parts which are female-like,"  adds Rahman.

[bugo]

EVERYBODY has a "male side" and a "female side".  Everybody.  It's not something that is unique to transgenders.

[vtk]

EVERYBODY has a "male side" and a "female side".  Everybody.  It's not something that is unique to transgenders.

And the biggest reason out gay & bi men act "effeminate" is they've stopped suppressing their female side as most straight men do. 

[Brandon]

EVERYBODY has a "male side" and a "female side".  Everybody.  It's not something that is unique to transgenders.

And the biggest reason out gay & bi men act "effeminate" is they've stopped suppressing their female side as most straight men do. 

Suppressing?  Different people express different attributes (I wouldn't call any really specifically "male" or "female" - it's society that seems to determine that) due to their genetics and experiences.  It's hardly "suppressing" anything.  Does a tomboy suppress her "feminine" side?

[hbelkins]

EVERYBODY has a "male side" and a "female side".  Everybody.  It's not something that is unique to transgenders.

How do you define those sides? Does the female side manifest itself in males when they play with dolls, enjoy doing housework, get emotional, wear pink shirts or what? And does the male side manifest in females if they like to play sports, hunt and fish, like cars or what?

[bugo]

I wouldn't want to date a road enthusiast.  Some of my hobbies are very personal, and I want to be interested in things that my old lady isn't interested in.

[Laura]

EVERYBODY has a "male side" and a "female side".  Everybody.  It's not something that is unique to transgenders.

And the biggest reason out gay & bi men act "effeminate" is they've stopped suppressing their female side as most straight men do. 

Suppressing?  Different people express different attributes (I wouldn't call any really specifically "male" or "female" - it's society that seems to determine that) due to their genetics and experiences.  It's hardly "suppressing" anything.  Does a tomboy suppress her "feminine" side?

Suppressing isn't the right word. I think the leanings are subconscious and can be determined by genes and environmental factors.

Alfred Kinsey's research in the mid 20th century suggested that few people are 100% straight or 100% gay - most fall somewhere in the middle.

(I'm really enjoying the intellectual matter of this thread, btw, and how civil we are all being about what could be a touchy subject.)


iPhone

[vdeane]

The only reason I would ever draw a distinction between "born" female and "transitioned/ing" is in the case when we're looking at why men become roadgeeks but not women, and the idea that there may be genetic predisposition. That's because I have to get beyond gender to the actual chromosomes themselves. It makes me uncomfortable to have to do that, but I've never been one to hide behind political correctness.

Genetic / anatomic / physiologic predisposition may play a role, but I think we also have to consider the significant differences in socialization and enculturation of boy children vis-a-vis girl children and how deeply our society encodes presumptive gender differences. Well before children are born, parents choose room decor, clothing and most certainly toys based on the gender of the infant. Cars, trains and airplanes are frequent themes for boys' toys and decor; girls get dolls, dolls and dolls but no Hot Wheels or Tonka, and at best a Barbie car, at least from most parents. The movie "Cars" has its token female characters, but it's clearly intended for an audience of boys (and a few grown roadgeeks who lurk in the shadows). 

I'll bet we've lost numbers of female roadgeeks by snuffing out their interest in childhood.

I think that's a very large part of the reason why trans women are over-represented among the roadgeek population.  Even when parents try to avoid having gender influence their behavior, it invariably does at least subconsciously.  Transgender women deal with it all the time.  People who knew them before transition often still see them as men, people who met them after transition can't believe they ever lived as men, and people who met them during transition think of them as "the transgender person I know".

Well before children are born, parents choose room decor, clothing and most certainly toys based on the gender of the infant. Cars, trains and airplanes are frequent themes for boys' toys and decor; girls get dolls, dolls and dolls but no Hot Wheels or Tonka, and at best a Barbie car, at least from most parents.

...

I'll bet we've lost numbers of female roadgeeks by snuffing out their interest in childhood.

I'm not sure that's a significant factor.  In families with both boys and girls, all the kids have opportunity to play with trucks or dolls as they please.  On the other hand, I was one of three boys in my family.  Mom got us a babydoll once, on the off chance it would bring out some nurturing instincts or something.  All we did was torture it or use it as a hostage in pretend standoffs.

Gender does innately shape behavior in places too... mostly due to hormones in fetal development rather than genetics, though (about the only thing the Y chromosome has been proven to do is cause the gonads to become testicles instead of ovaries).  It's hard to say where the line is, though.  For nearly every study claiming something's innate, there's another claiming it's socially conditioned.  We do know that some things are definitely socially conditioned (like associating pink with girls) due to changing cultural norms over time, and that some is predisposed (though MRI scans, and studies involving botched circumcision and subsequent sex reassignment surgery).

I feel like a girl today, so count me in.  Grrrrrrl power!

It's not a day-to-day thing... more like a lifetime identity.

EVERYBODY has a "male side" and a "female side".  Everybody.  It's not something that is unique to transgenders.

And the biggest reason out gay & bi men act "effeminate" is they've stopped suppressing their female side as most straight men do. 

Suppressing?  Different people express different attributes (I wouldn't call any really specifically "male" or "female" - it's society that seems to determine that) due to their genetics and experiences.  It's hardly "suppressing" anything.  Does a tomboy suppress her "feminine" side?

Gender's a spectrum, with some people more to the male side and some more to the female side.  And then there's people like me who are all over.

[vtk]

EVERYBODY has a "male side" and a "female side".  Everybody.  It's not something that is unique to transgenders.

And the biggest reason out gay & bi men act "effeminate" is they've stopped suppressing their female side as most straight men do. 

Suppressing?  Different people express different attributes (I wouldn't call any really specifically "male" or "female" - it's society that seems to determine that) due to their genetics and experiences.  It's hardly "suppressing" anything.  Does a tomboy suppress her "feminine" side?

Suppressing isn't the right word. I think the leanings are subconscious and can be determined by genes and environmental factors.

Alfred Kinsey's research in the mid 20th century suggested that few people are 100% straight or 100% gay - most fall somewhere in the middle.

(I'm really enjoying the intellectual matter of this thread, btw, and how civil we are all being about what could be a touchy subject.)

I'm just saying, in America we have a prototypical "straight male" set of behaviors and traits which I think is actually more purely masculine than guys just being themselves.  Men and boys who wish not to be perceived as "gay"  adhere tightly to this prototype, and this adherence is so pervasive that any deviation is by contrast perceived as "effeminate", even if it's actually more natural straight male behavior.

[hbelkins]

Alfred Kinsey's research in the mid 20th century suggested that few people are 100% straight or 100% gay - most fall somewhere in the middle.

I would be at one of the extremes of Kinsey's research, then.

[NE2]

Alfred Kinsey's research in the mid 20th century suggested that few people are 100% straight or 100% gay - most fall somewhere in the middle.

I would be at one of the extremes of Kinsey's research, then.

Which extreme of being completely out of the closet or being in total denial?

[Alps]

Alfred Kinsey's research in the mid 20th century suggested that few people are 100% straight or 100% gay - most fall somewhere in the middle.

I would be at one of the extremes of Kinsey's research, then.

Sounds like someone who feels a little unsure of himself. Why else state it in a forum?

[bugo]

There are plenty of folks who are 100% straight or 100% gay.

[Brandon]

There are plenty of folks who are 100% straight or 100% gay.

I'm not so sure I'd call it a spectrum either.  It's straight, gay, or bi with consenting adults.  More like a three-position switch with bi in the middle of course.

Now, an expression of one's sexuality probably is on a spectrum from ultra-macho to ultra-effeminate, but that has no real bearing on one's orientation.  There's plenty of gay guys who are very macho and plenty of straight guys who are more effeminate.

[Alps]

There are plenty of folks who are 100% straight or 100% gay.

I'm not so sure I'd call it a spectrum either.  It's straight, gay, or bi with consenting adults.  More like a three-position switch with bi in the middle of course.

Now, an expression of one's sexuality probably is on a spectrum from ultra-macho to ultra-effeminate, but that has no real bearing on one's orientation.  There's plenty of gay guys who are very macho and plenty of straight guys who are more effeminate.

I think female sexuality is less definite than male sexuality, based on what I've heard from female friends.

[Laura]

Alfred Kinsey's research in the mid 20th century suggested that few people are 100% straight or 100% gay - most fall somewhere in the middle.

I would be at one of the extremes of Kinsey's research, then.

Sounds like someone who feels a little unsure of himself. Why else state it in a forum?

I wrote that post quickly with Tapatalk and realized that I overgeneralized it, and that by doing so, changed the meaning. In Kinsey's original research, he found that "nearly 46% of the male subjects had "reacted" sexually to persons of both sexes in the course of their adult lives, and 37% had at least one homosexual experience" (quoted from Wikipedia - original source - Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, p. 656). He concluded that 10% of men were homosexual, so that leaves about 44% as heterosexual. His original scale was from 0-6, btw, but it wasn't meant to be the sort of thing where a person would always identify as a certain number. Kinsey's research was about 60 years ago...I feel like there must be something newer to explain this better.

I don't think HB is unsure of himself. I see no problem with him saying that he is straight. Most people assume I'm straight, and since I'm married to a man, I could easily hide the fact that I'm attracted to women for the rest of my life.

There are plenty of folks who are 100% straight or 100% gay.

I'm not so sure I'd call it a spectrum either.  It's straight, gay, or bi with consenting adults.  More like a three-position switch with bi in the middle of course.

Now, an expression of one's sexuality probably is on a spectrum from ultra-macho to ultra-effeminate, but that has no real bearing on one's orientation.  There's plenty of gay guys who are very macho and plenty of straight guys who are more effeminate.

I think female sexuality is less definite than male sexuality, based on what I've heard from female friends.

There are different kinds and levels of attraction. I like women more than men, actually, so I would lean more to the lesbian side than the straight side. However, I love when a man is romantic more than when a woman is romantic.

Also, I think it's a huge (and dare i say damaging) stereotype that male sexuality is more black and white. Ugh, I actually heard someone say the other day that "bisexuality is the gateway drug to homosexuality". I've met many men who have told me they are bi, but they generally only come out and identify as straight or gay because of the stereotype that bi men don't exist. On the female side, coming out as bi has the awful stereotype of being a slut that will magically hook up with any threesome involving a guy and another girl (ughhhh - I've experienced this).

but I get why most bisexuals stay hidden - I really have no reason to come out, either, since I'm married to the most awesome man on the planet. I'm not going to leave him for another man or a woman. I'm not out with most people (including my family), and I'm not sure if or when that will change.

[hbelkins]

I don't think HB is unsure of himself. I see no problem with him saying that he is straight.

This. The way the original post was worded made reference to a vast majority in the middle with very few on one end or the other. I'm average or mainstream in a lot of ways, but if this is indeed true, I'm at an extreme.

And not to comment on any one person in particular, but I have felt for a few years that being bi, or at least saying that you are bi, is somewhat of a trendy or fashionable thing at the moment, especially among females. I would agree that there is not as much of a stigma among women as there is among men. I'm not sure if Freddie Mercury broke that stigma or reinforced it.

[Alps]

I don't think HB is unsure of himself. I see no problem with him saying that he is straight.

This. The way the original post was worded made reference to a vast majority in the middle with very few on one end or the other. I'm average or mainstream in a lot of ways, but if this is indeed true, I'm at an extreme.

And not to comment on any one person in particular, but I have felt for a few years that being bi, or at least saying that you are bi, is somewhat of a trendy or fashionable thing at the moment, especially among females. I would agree that there is not as much of a stigma among women as there is among men. I'm not sure if Freddie Mercury broke that stigma or reinforced it.

I think that trend has largely faded, or else it persists but is confined to a few years around the high school years. I certainly never run into such a thing. The people I know, whatever they are, they are.

[Laura]

I don't think HB is unsure of himself. I see no problem with him saying that he is straight.

This. The way the original post was worded made reference to a vast majority in the middle with very few on one end or the other. I'm average or mainstream in a lot of ways, but if this is indeed true, I'm at an extreme.

And not to comment on any one person in particular, but I have felt for a few years that being bi, or at least saying that you are bi, is somewhat of a trendy or fashionable thing at the moment, especially among females. I would agree that there is not as much of a stigma among women as there is among men. I'm not sure if Freddie Mercury broke that stigma or reinforced it.

I think that trend has largely faded, or else it persists but is confined to a few years around the high school years. I certainly never run into such a thing. The people I know, whatever they are, they are.

When I was in undergrad ('05-'09), there was an all girl's college across town. They had a slang term for girls who experimented with other girls while there - lesbian until graduation (LUG). The school is co-ed now, so i suspect there are much fewer lugs than there used to be.

It reminds me of this: http://www.theonion.com/articles/lesbian-identity-ends-abruptly-midjunior-year,1505/

[JMoses24]

For the record, it's completely possible for a man and woman to share one common interest. If my future significant other (I consider myself definitively a straight male) has an interest in roadgeeking but not so much in weather geeking and storm chasing (something I enjoy), great, and I would suspect she will have interest in something which I don't care about whatsoever -- that time apart is what ultimately makes a good relationship work (because let's face it, if you spend 24/7/365 with someone, it'll drive you insane). That's why we will have other friends (single AND not, male AND female) who ARE into the things we individually enjoy doing.

[Duke87]

I'm not so sure I'd call it a spectrum either.  It's straight, gay, or bi with consenting adults.  More like a three-position switch with bi in the middle of course.

Except that bi does not necessarily mean equal desire for men and women. You can be bisexual and prefer one gender while being attracted to some degree to both. Or you can be sexually attracted to both but only emotionally attracted (i.e., interested in having a serious relationship) with one.

As for being 100% straight, I would tend to think that's more of a macho insistence than a common reality. I'm not going to kid myself or anyone else, I'm proudly 98% straight.

Although I do wonder if spending years in a committed serious relationship doesn't move some people closer to 100% simply by virtue of them becoming emotionally attached specifically to their significant other.

I think female sexuality is less definite than male sexuality, based on what I've heard from female friends.

This is because women are generally less physical and more emotional about such things. I.e., a greater percent of a woman's attraction to someone (compared to a man's) is to the person, not to their body.

[Scott5114]

And not to comment on any one person in particular, but I have felt for a few years that being bi, or at least saying that you are bi, is somewhat of a trendy or fashionable thing at the moment, especially among females. I would agree that there is not as much of a stigma among women as there is among men. I'm not sure if Freddie Mercury broke that stigma or reinforced it.

I think that trend has largely faded, or else it persists but is confined to a few years around the high school years. I certainly never run into such a thing. The people I know, whatever they are, they are.

Could also be that more people feel comfortable identifying as bi or gay in recent years, so it seems like there are more people doing so than you remember in the past (i.e. the number of bisexual people is the same, they're just not as quiet about it anymore).

[english si]

I wrote that post quickly with Tapatalk and realized that I overgeneralized it, and that by doing so, changed the meaning. In Kinsey's original research, he found that "nearly 46% of the male subjects had "reacted" sexually to persons of both sexes in the course of their adult lives, and 37% had at least one homosexual experience" (quoted from Wikipedia - original source - Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, p. 656). He concluded that 10% of men were homosexual, so that leaves about 44% as heterosexual.

It should be worth pointing out that this study, while the groundbreaking first one in the field, is seen as statistically bunkum due to the sample self-selecting to take part in the study*. This is shown most clearly overestimating the number of homosexuals (which is shown to be something like 3%, rather than 10%).

The findings like the scale are relatively reliable science. The figures of how many people are in those boxes aren't.

*and also being from a population (the area around the college where he worked) with a reputation for 'deviancy', IIRC.

[agentsteel53]

Except that bi does not necessarily mean equal desire for men and women. You can be bisexual and prefer one gender while being attracted to some degree to both. Or you can be sexually attracted to both but only emotionally attracted (i.e., interested in having a serious relationship) with one.

As for being 100% straight, I would tend to think that's more of a macho insistence than a common reality. I'm not going to kid myself or anyone else, I'm proudly 98% straight.

Although I do wonder if spending years in a committed serious relationship doesn't move some people closer to 100% simply by virtue of them becoming emotionally attached specifically to their significant other.

indeed.  I'm about 95% straight.  hey, David Bowie is hot; this is a universal fact!  I don't think (even if I weren't in a relationship) I'd act on any attractions I felt towards men, but I am completely okay with acknowledging that some of them are pretty damn attractive.