Gays And Neoteny, Do You Buy It?

[Jingthing]

Perhaps this isn't new to you, but if it is, it is really worth having a look for food for thought alone.

Are gay men in general (compared to heterosexuals) --

more playful

more creative

more curious

more childlike

more inventive

more aware of our feelings

make a disproportionately greater contribution to life

in short, more neotonous

Personally, I feel that I can relate to most of those things. I also know many gays both unknown and famous fit those descriptions. However, I am really unsure about making such a wide generalization about gays in general.

What do you think? Are you neotonous? Do you think this is a general gay thing, or is this line of thought completely off the mark? Read the link please for a better background about this.

http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg12537.html

Edited January 11, 2010 by Jingthing

[isanbirder]

Of course we are! More easily conned, too.

[Jingthing]

Of course we are! More easily conned, too.

More easily conned? I don't know about that. Reading all these I bought the bargirl a mansion in her name and then she locked me out and fed me to the pigs stories kind of balances that out, eh?

[PeaceBlondie]

Nah. Oscar Wilde, gay and a father. Plenty of creative straights, but it's programmed out of most heteros. What was that silly flick where the teacher was the last to realize he was gay, but he liked Broadway musicals? Didn't he kiss Burt Reynolds?

[Jingthing]

Nah. Oscar Wilde, gay and a father. Plenty of creative straights, but it's programmed out of most heteros. What was that silly flick where the teacher was the last to realize he was gay, but he liked Broadway musicals? Didn't he kiss Burt Reynolds?

I don't get your point about Wilde. I don't care if he sired a football team. You can't be much more gay than Oscar Wilde.

Of course there are plenty of creative straights and plenty of Joe Six Pack gays. That is why I will always be unsure about these kinds of generalizations.

However the question isn't about whether these tendencies apply to all gays, but whether there is a definite pattern where gays are MORE likely to have them than straights. I think maybe it is so. You say it is about programming. Maybe. But maybe there is more to it than that. Perhaps genetics?

Edited January 12, 2010 by Jingthing

[isanbirder]

Of course we are! More easily conned, too.

That wasn't just a cynical one-liner! After being ostracised for centuries in all sorts of so-called civilisations, we're now suddenly a mite respectable. As a result, aren't we predisposed towards anyone paying us compliments?

Actually, I thought it was rather a silly article. The quote about Picasso rather set the tone; so Picasso was omnifutuant (nice Anthony Burgess word, that), so Leonardo was gay, so what? I don't think we're any less diverse than any group of people who share a single characteristic (lefties, redheads etc).

[Jingthing]

Again, I am not so sure. All any of us have on this topic are our personal IMPRESSIONS which are of course very personal and anecdotal. To make a scientific case about the theory, there would have to be some large scientific studies covering large groups of people across different cultures. I know of no such study. If a study did find a noticeably greater occurrence among gays, then the next question would be WHY?

That said, I disagree that being pegged with all these descriptors is entirely positive or a compliment at all! For adult men to be called childlike, aware of feelings (which machos would say make us women), playful etc. in many circles would be considered a great insult!

Edited January 12, 2010 by Jingthing

[Curt1591]

Although some gays may display similar traits, the one thing they all have in common is an attraction to their same sex. Beyond that, they can exhibit any traits that anyone else does.

[LindsayBKK]

neotonous :

Keeping some features that are associated with its youthful state, even while the animal itself has reached its mature state.

This term is often used to describe the ability of some animals to reach sexual maturity while still larvae.

more playful yes

more creative yes

more curious yes

more childlike yes

more inventive yes

more aware of our feelings yes

make a disproportionately greater contribution to life ummm... not sure about that one

[Jingthing]

Although some gays may display similar traits, the one thing they all have in common is an attraction to their same sex. Beyond that, they can exhibit any traits that anyone else does.

Agreed. But again we are not talking about ALL here; rather a greater tendency than heteros to have these neotonous characteristics, or not.

make a disproportionately greater contribution to life

I think this one is probably the most loaded item on the list. All I can think is that Desmond Morris might have been talking about how as most of us do not have children, many of us have more free time to channel our creative energies in other areas that cast a wider social net than a family. When you combine the increased free time with the supposed greater tendency towards creativity, you have potential societal contributions. That doesn't mean that most of us are doing great creative things that are changing the world, but perhaps a greater percentage of us are proportionally compared to heteros. Perhaps. Edited January 12, 2010 by Jingthing

[Pawpcorn]

What was that silly flick where the teacher was the last to realize he was gay, but he liked Broadway musicals? Didn't he kiss Burt Reynolds?

Eh, PB, that was Kevin Kline, in the movie "In & Out", and yes... I agree, in some ways that silly flick was almost painful to watch... A MUCH better, and very tastefully handled recent movie in the same genre was Adam Sandler in "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry"; a movie I was certain I was going to HATE, and only went to see it because I'm a HUGE Adam Sandler fan... and I absolutely loved it.

To the subject of this excellent post... Geeze, I had to look up "neotonous"; kudos to your vocabulary, JingThing!

Past the focus on the sexual development of larvae(!) I finally found this contemporary definiton on "Urban Dictionary":

------------------------------------------------------

neotonous: Keeping some features that are associated with its youthful state, even while the animal (!) itself has reached its mature state. This term is often used to describe the ability of some animals to reach sexual maturity while still larvae.

It also applies to our modern obsession with hairlessness, big eyes, and youthful clothing.

-------------------------------------------------------

hmmm me thinks this term could apply to Thai boys, to be sure.

AND, back to the point, I've felt throughout my lifetime (especially during the first 40 years of living in the closet, and being witness to others frequent gay-bashing / gay-humiliation "humor", comments and put-downs,) that aside from other aspects, living (even secretly) as a member of a discriminated minority (and being GAY), gave me MUCH more insight to life, spirituality, sexuality, love, and the human condition, in general.

Nowadays, I'm always pleasantly surprised when I'm frequently faced with day to day situations (typically at work, with other Farangs) where I recognize that I continue (at the tender age of 60) to be much more open minded, liberal, fun-loving, playful and youthful than my middle-aged counterparts... and FORGET the comparisons with other 60 year-olds... NOT APPLICABLE, DOES NOT APPLY, really, other than actual chronological body age. The fact remains that I am MUCH more comfortable kicking back and mixing it up with young guys, than with old foggies my chronological age.

Luckily I'm still a handsome devil!!! AND ready to play, three times a day!

Pawpcorn

Edited January 12, 2010 by Pawpcorn

[Ijustwannateach]

I think that neoteny- though I understand it as a concept- would be very hard to define in such a way as to test it scientifically.

Also, there's still that little spanner in the works of what 'gay' itself means- the 'binary' conception of it common in the US is really not a very good description of the real feelings and real behaviour of our very complex lives. Does one have to identify as gay to be gay? What about degrees of bisexuality, or sexuality that changes over the course of a lifetime?

I don't really think that 'gay' itself has been pinned down as a 'real' thing- people declare themselves gay for convenience, but that's shorthand for who they are.

In terms of those I have stereotypically known to be 'gay' (self-identified), I could possibly agree with the correlation; however, I know there are also a lot of people in the closet who might throw the numbers off (in countries which have 'gay' people- and what about countries where same-sex activity occurs without an identity shift?)

In other words, does the neoteny occur because of a tendency towards same-sex attraction, or because of the adoption of a self-conscious gay identity, or partly both? (assuming wrongly that the neoteny itself is not contentious)

[PeaceBlondie]

I can't imagine a straight over-60 blonde in a ponytail leading a class of teenagers to sing "If I Loved You" from Carousel as a demonstration lesson, but I did.

[isanbirder]

I can think of a lot of gay teachers who wouldn't do that either!

[Scott]

By and large, gays are more of a lot of things. You don’t spent your life, being pushed in a direction you don’t want to go without learning to be creative and deceptive and these are the traits that make good actors and writers. For many the push to conformity broadens one’s abilities, rather than limiting them. We often look at life through more than one set of eyes, a sort of 3-D perception in a world of black and white. The world is different for us than for people who never have to confront themselves and their being. We have an insight and an understanding of others from the introspection that is necessitated by a life-style not always condoned.

We sometimes must live and enjoy the moment, because those moments may be few and far between and they may go away. This makes us more playful. We also have to look at a future that we may spend legally alone and we have to prepare for it.

We live outside the box and most of us know it. We understand unjustified hate; we understand what it means to be misunderstood. We’ve lived a life of extreme loneliness at times because we didn’t know we weren’t the only ones who were ‘different.’ We have learned to appreciate the depths of true friendships and the joy of people liking and accepting us whom we didn’t expect it from. And we learned the heartbreak of having people we expect it from, turn their backs on us.

Like rocks in a stream, some of us get polished and others just get worn down. Most us, I like to think, get polished like a jewel. More than would be expected have done great things with these exceptional circumstances that surround our lives.

[Ijustwannateach]

Good points, Scott!

From a biological point of view, human beings as a species are more neotenous than many other animals because we don't develop highly specialised adult body parts- an adult human is a more-or-less slightly modified and extended fetus (i.e. nearly all the parts present at adulthood- even including fingernails and hair- can be present in the fetus). This also makes us more sexually isomorphic (male and female have the same form) than many other species, which- if you think about it- makes it unsurprising that we have the capability for same-sex attraction.