oliverbeatson comments on Procedural Knowledge Gaps - Less Wrong

126 Post author: Alicorn 08 February 2011 03:17AM

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Comment author: oliverbeatson 09 February 2011 01:47:52AM 6 points [-]

I wonder how much this would work for a homosexual male.

I've actually been trying this essential thing, although with less persistence as it requires a certain amount of effort to attend to something that just seems so immediately boring to myself. Perhaps living in a hetero-normative culture ensures that when a man decides that he's gay, he is more likely to have discovered a roughly immutable biological fact?

Comment author: TheOtherDave 09 February 2011 02:34:42AM 10 points [-]

Two related thoughts come to mind.

One is that male anatomy is more familiar, and therefore presumably less intimidating, to straight men than female anatomy is to gay men.

Another is that in a heteronormative culture, men who aren't strictly monosexual are more likely to identify as straight than as gay. If what this technique actually does is make men who aren't monosexual more aware of their non-monosexuality, then I'd expect it to get more noticeable results on men who identify as straight. (I'd also expect there to be a wide range of effectiveness among straight-identified men.)

Comment author: David_Gerard 09 February 2011 12:13:35PM *  8 points [-]

Despite subcultural normativity being strongly biased against bisexuality, really quite a lot of gay-identifying men have experimented with heterosexual behaviour, but are - ha! - closeted about it.

Comment author: oliverbeatson 10 February 2011 02:19:53PM 1 point [-]

Alas the benefits of being open about a very slight sexual curiosity are probably not often great enough to make complete honesty seem worthwhile. Also such curiosity tends to signal a lack of self-knowledge and thus to an extent lack of trustworthiness, probably hence the vague stigma that many people have against dating bisexuals.

Comment author: David_Gerard 10 February 2011 06:44:39PM *  4 points [-]

The Bizarre World of the Bisexual - it's all 100% true! [1]

[1] Statement of 100% truth may not be 100% true.

Comment author: khafra 09 February 2011 02:02:39AM 1 point [-]

If you're finding it boring, you may be trying to go too straight too quickly, or you may not be using your preferred form of erotica--I used hentai as as example, but I could've used textual fiction, videos, etc.

Or you could just be immutably gay; I am generalizing from just a few examples.

Comment author: oliverbeatson 10 February 2011 01:45:34PM 1 point [-]

Hmm, I'll experiment with a variety, and report back if I make findings.