You know how this experiment goes: Guys agree to let researchers measure how erect they get when they watch porn, and the guys who self-identify as homophobes get the most turned on, showing off the “12 millimeters of mercury” … in growth. But when asked how aroused they got? That same crowd denied it.
Homoerotics
Gay Porn Turns On Homophobes. A Lot, It Turns Out
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Paul
I absolutely love clinical research. I wonder what the experiments author’s hypothsis was at the outset of this experiement and if their hypothesis was proved or disproved.
Anyhoo, I am sure that these results come as no surprise to many in the GLBTQ community….and also to the non homophobic stright community as well.
This would have been my operating hypothesis:
“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
–From Hamlet (III, ii, 239) (Shakespeare)
As with all good science, in order for the results be taken as fact, the research must be reproduceable in additional experiements. Does Queerty have a research budget? I will gladly serve as the project manager of this study!
KJ
No surprise there, though one group necessary for “baseline” is missing — self-identified male homosexuals. I suppose it might be difficult to find volunteers available to watch gay porn and have their penis measured. 😉
Paul
@KJ:
Agree that there was no control group. However, I would suggest that the control group….one for each (homophobe straight, non homophobe straight and homosexual) should have been shown straight porn in order to compare the results.
ask ena
You needed a clinical study to tell you that??
But, this is a joke, right?
Paul
@ask ena:
Probably yes as to my knowledge there is no scientific proof that homophobes actually secretly are sexually aroused by homoerotica. Only a oft common hypothesis until proven.
JayCanuck
That video is a few years old and has been on YouTube since April 2007. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cy-7AoxFEJA
I personally find it quite interesting, but not very surprising.
Just fyi, the source of the clip is an HBO documentary called “Middle Sexes: Redefining He And She” http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/middlesexes/synopsis.html Well worth watching 🙂
Tallskin
Can I just say that the most horrifying aspect of this is the fact that they’re using video tape!
Video tape????
Video Tape, grandad??
dgz
in related news: EW! they didn’t even put any plastic on the chair.
AlwaysGay
This documentary is based on old research from 1996. The researchers couldn’t find any HETEROSEXUAL males who were not at least moderately anti-gay so they broke them up into two groups; moderately anti-gay and extremely anti-gay. Both groups became fully aroused when shown heterosexual and lesbian pornography which means they were in fact HETEROSEXUAL because gay men do not become aroused by lesbian porn. Next they showed them gay porn and both became slightly aroused although the extremely anti-gay group more so. Some men when they are ANXIOUS become aroused.
Recent research has shown that HETEROSEXUAL males become more aroused by gay porn (men only) than gay men do by lesbian porn (women only).
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/pdf/ps/sex_difference.pdf
The Gay Numbers
@AlwaysGay: Why is that?
Qjersey
@AlwaysGay:
That’s a spurious citation that is irrelevant to the argument as it is unrelated to homophobia. Further, the paper does not support your argument, as this difference was not reported to be statistically significant.
emmazon
@Paul: Right…homophobes are perfectly contented heterosexuals. ROFLMAOTIPMP!
ask ena
@The Gay Numbers:
I think it’s because gay or straight, you can always identify with a guy getting off, more so than a gay guy can with a woman getting off…with another woman.
ask ena
(I was referring to a man when I said “gay or straight”, no offense to the lady-lovin’ women)
MTiffany
@Tallskin: Video… tay..? Tay…? Tay…? Video what?
Kevin B
Shark eyes! That guys has shark eyes!
AlwaysGay
@Qjersey: Yes, it is relevant because it shows the average arousal of heterosexual males and gay men.
GranDiva
@AlwaysGay:
Really? I’m a Kinsey 6. A gold-star gay man. Yet I have seen some girl-girl scenes in straight porn (I make a point of not calling them lesbian scenes, because those girls represent a straight male fantasy of what lesbians are like, rather than what lesbians actually are, which nine times out of ten would turn your typical straight man limp like overcooked pasta) that have more than piqued my curiosity. Then again, I can watch just about any combination of people (though I do have limits) have sex and find something to be interested in. Call me polymorphous perverse, I guess.
Please don’t speak in sweeping generalizations.
kevin (not that one)
@Kevin B: Shark eyes? Or just dosed on 3 hits of laboratory grade LSD.
The guy is studying boners…recreational drug use is an on-the-job hazard.
kevin (not that one)
BTW, I didn’t need to measure this guy’s arousal to see that he is gay. Just look at those sandals! Hello, Mary!
TANK
Who’s narrating? It sounds eerily like gore vidal. LOL! It couldn’t be…
TANK
I clicked on the link provided. It is…love gore vidal. I dunno if any of you saw that interview he recently gave where he said of emeila earhart, “she wasn’t a good pilot.” Nice.
mb00
This is old news. I saw a report exactly like this over a decade ago on like 20/20 or Dateline. Anyway, the results were not shocking at all.
Isn’t that how the saying goes, the the most homophobes are usually the most repressed homosexuals?
@Daniel_Baylis
@ask ena: I’d love to see Sacha Baron Cohen do a spoof on this!
Yeah, it all seems rather intuitive… homophobes are scared of something within themselves. Shocking.
Michael vdB
I don’t really think it means too much. Most males will get aroused during most sexual situations because we are very visual. The question is, should a person that identifies as a heterosexual male just accept the fact and move on with life or should he spend his life thinking something is wrong with him and turn that hatred outward? Society seems to love rules when it comes to sexual identity and what hole do you (or can you) fit in. We should just admit that some things turn you on and some things don’t. As the commercial goes…”sometimes you feel like a nut…sometimes you don’t.” 😉
mikeandrewsdantescove
Whoever did the casting of the man in the monitor room – WHAT LEGS. Now we know homophones are fighting themselves by being turned on by other men.
Mike
http://www.last.fm/music/Mike+Andrews/Sex
Jason Alvarado
i hate gays
treymon ellis
Gay porn turns me on so hard.
treymon ellis
Gay porn gives me the opportunity to be one with my true sensuality, its sooooooo amusing 🙂
Tony
If this is true, then I want to see what Obamabigot is watchin’ on his sleek and sexy blackberry. (Sounds from the Oval Office) “Umm that looks good. Umm, that looks like it feels good. Michelle, oh the hell with Michelle, don’t ask and don’t tell.. Why do those gays want to get married, marriage isn’t about sex cuz god is in the mix, mix, mix, I’m cumming…..Jesus, oh Jesus….”
TANK
@Tony:
Pure class.
Dane
@Tony:
kinda turned me on.
eagledancer4444
There’s a very interesting study that was done looking at what individuals fantasized about sexually (in other words, not necessarily what they “did” as a behavior, but what they fantasized about) looking at straight identified men and women,and gay men and lesbians (i.e. four groups). Among the groups, gay sex for the straight men; lesbian sex for the straight women; het sex for the gay men and the lesbians–all were within the top 3 categories out of 5–another example of how sexuality appears more fluid than this culture allows it to be, and how “hard” (ok, bad pun) it is to fit into tight little boxes (oh, was that a pun?)
Anyway, for those of you who want more details about the study posted on Queerty, along with some follow-up stuff, here’s a fuller treatment of it that appeared earlier this year in Scientific American. The author also addresses the issue of anxiety impacting the sexual arousal, and correctly points out the apparent need for the subject to be within a sexual context when anxiety is induced for it to be relevant in the context of this study. People with a phobia of water don’t tend to become sexually aroused looking at a bathtub. I’m also pleased to see an openly gay psychologist is now doing a regular column for the SA. The original SA article is 4 web-pages, so rather than cut and paste the whole thing, I’ll just stick the url on at the end if anyone wants to continue reading it…
January 30, 2009 | 60 comments
Single, Angry, Straight Male… Seeks Same?
A classic study reveals that young homophobic men have secret gay urges
By Jesse Bering
Jesse Bering
From the In-Depth Report
The Science of Love
I wish I could say that I decided to come out of the closet in my early twenties for more admirable reasons—such as for love or the principle of the thing. But the truth is that passing for a straight person had become more of a hassle than I figured it was worth. Since the third grade, I’d spent too many valuable cognitive resources concocting deceptive schemes to cover up the fact that I was gay.
In fact, my earliest conscious tactic to hide my homosexuality involved being outlandishly homophobic. When I was eight years old, I figured that if I used the word “fag” a lot and on every possible occasion expressed my repugnance for gay people, others would obviously think I was straight. But, although it sounded good in theory, I wasn’t very hostile by temperament and I had trouble channeling my fictitious outrage into convincing practice.
I may have failed as a homophobe, but unfortunately, many people succeed. And it turns out we may have something in common—many young, homophobic males may secretly harbor homosexual desires (whether they are consciously trying to deceive the world about them as I was or not even aware they exist). One of the most important lines of work in this area dates back to a 1996 article published in The Journal of Abnormal Psychology. In this empirical paper, researchers Henry Adams, Lester Wright, Jr., and Bethany Lohr from the University of Georgia report evidence that homophobic young males may secretly have gay urges.
In this study, 64 self-reported straight males with a mean age of 20.3 years were divided into two groups (“non-homophobic men” and “homophobic men”) on the basis of their scores on a questionnaire measure of aversion to gay males. Here, homophobia was operationally defined as the degree of “dread” experienced when placed in close quarters with a homosexual—basically, how comfortable or uncomfortable the person was in interacting with gay people. (There is debate in the clinical literature about the semantics of this term, with some scholars introducing other constructs such as “homonegativism” to underscore the more cognitive nature of some people’s antigay stance.)
Each participant then agreed to attach a penile plethysmograph to his, well, “lesser self.” According to the authors, this plethysmograph device is “a mercury-in-rubber circumferential strain gauge used to measure erectile responses to sexual stimuli. When attached, changes in the circumference of the penis cause changes in the electrical resistance of the mercury column.” Previous research with this apparatus (the plethsymograph, not the penis—well, actually both) confirmed that significant changes in circumference occur only during sexual stimulation and sleep.
Next, the participants were placed in a private chamber and presented with three 4-minute segments of graphic pornography. The three video snippets represented straight porn (scenes of fellatio and vaginal intercourse), lesbian porn (scenes of cunnilingus or tribadism), and gay male porn (scenes of fellatio and anal intercourse). Following each randomly ordered video presentation, the participant rated how sexually aroused he felt and also his degree of penile erection. Can you guess the results?
Both groups—non-homophobic and homophobic men—showed significant engorgement to the straight and lesbian porn and their subjective ratings of arousal matched their penile plethsymograph measure for these two types of video. However, as predicted, only the homophobic men showed a significant increase in penile circumference in response to the gay male porn: specifically, 26 percent of these homophobic men showed “moderate tumescence” (6-12 mm) to this video and 54 percent showed “definite tumescence” (more than 12 mm). (In contrast, for the non-homophobic men, these percentages were 10 and 24, respectively.) Furthermore, the homophobic men significantly underestimated their degree of sexual arousal to the gay male porn
http://www.scientificamerican.com/page.cfm?section=mailconfirm
jack
hiiiiiiiiiiiii
jack
@Jason Shellman: hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
jack
how are you 😛
jack
@jack: how are you
jack
@treymon ellis: hii 😛
jack
@Dane: how are you
jack
i want sex with you
john
“64 participants”
not statistically significant, tho’ I don’t disagree with the results.
Jason
Admins,
Thank you very much for removing the post in question. However, there are still some remaining posts with my name in them, Post number 35, and 40 from Jack restating my name. Thank you again for taking care of this.
Regards,
Jason