Women like gay men
This article first appeared on The Conversation.
For years, friendships between straight women and gay men have been a subject of pop culture fascination. Books, television shows and feature-length films acquire all highlighted this unique bond, noted for its closeness and depth.
But with society's attitudes toward gays and lesbians changing, it's become all the more vital to build a holistic empathetic of the relationships between queer and straight people.
As a researcher in social psychology, I've often wondered: Why do straight female-gay male relationships labor so well? Why are unbent women so drawn to having gay men as friends? And when do these relationships typically form?
During the course of my research, I've discovered that the most interesting, compelling—and, arguably, most theoretically coherent—explanation is through the lens of evolution.
Specifically, I consider evolutionary psychology and human mating can help explain why relationships between straight women and queer men tend to flourish.
A trustworthy bet
At first glance, this
In less accepting times, straight women who enjoyed the firm of gay men were called “fag hags.” These days, being a “fruit fly” is appreciate wearing a badge of honor. Now, research reveals why the bond between them is so special.
There's just something unique about the friendship between linear gals and lgbtq+ guys. Admittedly, by comparison to friendships between straight people, this relationship has received less attention from researchers. What little there is, however, underlines its positive qualities. Studies show that same-sex attracted men shower unbent women with a sort of attention that straight men simply don't suggest them. For instance, straight women sense that gay men accept and respect them for their inner beauty, not their outer appearance. Subsequently, women with more gay friends feel sexier and more self-confident about their bodies by comparison to women who don't possess gay friends. Similarly, gay men build straight women perceive more appreciated for their personality than do straight men. Perhaps unsurprisingly, women say their friendships with gay people are more truthful and secure
Why straight women and queer men are often so close
Will and Grace knew it. Ditto for Stanford and Carrie. Now a new psychology study has provided evidence that queer men and straight women are the perfect friends with benefits – as long as the benefits have to do with trustworthy relationship advice.
“I was interested in the evolutionary perspective as to why gay men and direct women form close friendships,” says Eric Russell, a visiting psychology researcher at the University of Texas in Austin and guide author of the revise, published in the latest issue of Evolutionary Psychology.
Russell wondered if it had something to do with the exchange of mating advice since gay men and straight women aren’t romantic partners or mating competition and were “uniquely positioned to exchange honest information.”
To test his hypothesis, Russell enlisted the serve of 88 straight women and 58 gay men, all undergrads from the Texas ChristianUniversity, and conducted two experiments.
In one, linear women were presented with a scenario involving a party, a friend who bags out at the last mi
This post was co-authored by Elisha Sudlow-Poole, an International Exchange Student at St. Francis Xavier University.
Can men and women ever just be friends? A recent study published in Psychological Science has attempted to answer this interrogate by exploring the differences in how friendships evolve between women and men as a function of the man's sexualidentity. In other words, they examined how friendship development varies based on whether a straight woman is making friends with a male lover man or a unbent man.
Past research has shown that straight women and gay men form cover relationships due to an apparent increased willingness to engage in intimate conversations1. Some have suggested that this may be because straight men and women are perceived as having less in common with each other compared to straight women and queer men2. This explanation, however, is based on the stereotypical assumptions about lgbtq+ men and femininity. Consequently, researchers at the University of Texas explored an alternate potential explanation: Linear women may develop friendships with ga