[jabberwcky]

> effeminate male

> gay son

This is a dangerous stereotype that is equally harmful to people of any sexuality, I'd encourage you to correct it. Most of the gay folk I know personally tend towards the athletic end of the spectrum

[spodek]

Is there some law of the internet that when someone corrects someone, they often commit the error they're pointing out?

Did you mean to imply that effeminate -- showing characteristics more associated with females than males -- was at the other end of a spectrum from athletic?

[jabberwcky]

The inverse of effeminate by definition is butch, I purposefully avoided using it as it invokes yet more popular and inaccurate gay stereotypes that in no way capture the folk I was describing

[waterhouse]

> Is there some law of the internet that when someone corrects someone, they often commit the error they're pointing out?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law

[filoleg]

>Did you mean to imply that effeminate -- showing characteristics more associated with females than males -- was at the other end of a spectrum from athletic?

Agreed, the terminology used by the parent comment was a bit strange, but I got the idea of what they meant.

They were talking about an effeminate skinny type of a male compared to a very masculine athletic "macho man"-looking type. In terms of celebrities and purely their appearances, think of young David Bowie vs. Arnold Swarzenegger.

I guess the parent comment simply conflated athleticism with masculinity, but that's just an aspect of it, and not all kinds of athleticism are inherently "masculine" (think yoga or acrobatics or figure skating).

[kepler1]

You're really swinging to the opposite end of credibility, bending over backwards to put on blinders and assert that gayness has absolutely no relation to some effeminate qualities. It goes against people's own ability to observe facts and undermines your position. Maybe it's not true for every gay male, but it is certainly an observable phenomenon.

[tomc1985]

Curious as to whether we'd see a lot of effeminate straight men if social norms permitted it. My guess is yes

[irrational]

Definitely. I'm straight and I love watching Jane Austen, Anne of Green Gables, Musicals, Hallmark, Downton Abbey, Romcom, etc. movies with my wife. But I'd never let any of my male friends know.

[KozmoNau7]

Why wouldn't you let them know?

One would think that standing by your choices and not trying to hide then away, would be the assertive and self-confident approach. If your friends are really so fickle as to think less of you based on the TV shows you watch and the love you show for your wife, are they really worth keeping around?

[csin]

Friends don't exactly grow on trees.

My best friend died in his 20's. So, I have a cynical view on friendship.

It's very time intensive to find new friends and filter out the one's that don't make the cut. Not to mention the awkwardness that comes with breaking up with the one's that don't make the cut.

[KozmoNau7]

I know the struggle, I've completely abandoned three separate circles of friends due to moving cross-country and interpersonal drama, over a period of 10 years.

Building up a new circle of friends where I live now took some time, and was initially kicked off by reconnecting with a childhood friend. A huge positive is that we're all mid-30s to mid-40s and more mature, less concerned about outward appearances, so it feels more real and down to earth.

Just being able to be yourself in the company of others is refreshing, because you can relax and lower your guard.

Round of beers, one friend asks for a diet soda? Sure thing. Heck, I have a standing agreement with another friend that I'll bring him a soda even if he asked for a beer and I think he's had one or two too many, because he knows he has a tendency to drink a bit too much. He'll grumble about it, but because we've talked it through, he knows I'm looking out for him.

My best friend is a huge metalhead, but also loves sugary J-pop with a burning passion. And nobody thinks less of him for it. We don't believe in guilty pleasures, you like what you like.

Honestly, and I know this doesn't apply to everyone, I would rather have no friends at all if I couldn't be 100% myself around my friends :-)

[circlefavshape]

/me blinks

Liking Jane Austen is effeminate?

[irrational]

Go up to a group of supposedly all straight men and ask who is interested in watching the BBC production of Pride and Prejudice (ideally they will ask “which one?” and you can respond “the one with Colin Firth”). Then do the same thing with a group of women. Maybe you live somewhere unusual, but in my experience you will have no takers from the men but many takers from the women.

[circlefavshape]

In my understanding "effeminate" means one's physical mannerisms, not one's taste

[the_af]

While on the subject, is liking Downton Abbey or Anne of Green Gables effeminate? That's news to me. Huge fan of "Anne with an E" here -- still can't get over the fact they canceled it.

[MaximumYComb]

I'm really masculine. I'm tall, reasonably heavily muscled, assertive, hyper competitive, dominant, etc. I've still had some friends tell me that they wouldn't have been surprised if I was gay/bi. The only explanation I have is that they struggle to understand my refusal to conform to norms and I'm interpreted as "different".

[valarauko]

> I'm really masculine. I'm tall, reasonably heavily muscled, assertive, hyper competitive, dominant, etc.

Yup, sounds like a Grindr bio all right.

[rcoveson]

Isn’t “being attracted to males” a predominantly female characteristic in animals that reproduce sexually? On the “sexuality” dimension, do not gay men fall closer to the female cluster than the male cluster?

[drdeca]

I assume you mean more in that direction than a typical male?

Because I’m pretty sure that homosexual men aren’t overall more like heterosexual women than they are like heterosexual men, at least in terms of appearance.

[rcoveson]

By default, let’s assume that homosexual men have the same distribution of all other traits as heterosexual men. In N-dimensional space, they are biased slightly away from dead center of the male cluster towards the female cluster because of the female bias of the attracted-to-men trait.

You could say the same thing about long-haired men. It doesn’t mean you’re implying that any other traits are more feminine, because the one trait in question is already biased female.

[valarauko]

I suppose this is true along the dimension labelled "attracted to dudes". There are probably many many more dimensions where homosexual men are not biased towards the female cluster, while many heterosexual men are.

> By default, let’s assume that homosexual men have the same distribution of all other traits as heterosexual men

In some ways, homosexual men might very well cluster away from females, even more so than heterosexual men.

[rcoveson]

> In some ways, homosexual men might very well cluster away from females, even more so than heterosexual men.

Aren't we back to what the person I was originally replying to would describe as "dangerous stereotypes"?

The point I was trying to make is that the only thing you can say about homosexual men without invoking stereotypes is that they are attracted to men. And in a statistical sense, that is a feminine characteristic.

[valarauko]

I think your initial premise is flawed - that males and females form neat clusters with perfect Gaussian distributions, on any reasonable number of dimensions. Yes, on the axis for attraction to men, gay men are shifted towards the female group. On the majority of dimensions, males and female are probably hard to distinguish. On some dimensions, gay men may indeed cluster away from women.