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Iridescent Iguana's avatar

Your essay has a great deal of validity but misses some nuance in its deterministic orientation (although I guess that was implicit in looking for evolutionary explanations, which are only ever just part of the full story).

I can only speak to anecdotes since this is not something I have spent time studying/researching: my own drift rightward was driven primarily by the same forces as every other white male (actually I'm Latino, which is "white-adjacent" though my own experience growing up was virtually indistinguishable from properly-White middle-class experience): concern for the Western values on which our society is at least nominally based. It's as simple as that.

Obviously I'd be naive to assert that there is no sexual drive underlying the yearnings in the depth of my psyche: in my case, as is the case for probably a large number of gay men missed in your essay, the ideal man is about 40 years old, not 16. That was the case for me when I was 16 and remains the case in my mid-50s. At an archetype level (which is as equally compelling to me as evolutionary explanations) it has everything to do with fatherhood: the ideal man is the kind of man who embodies positive paternal strength. So, politically, I will always prioritize policies that facilitate and incentivize whole families (mom + dad) where children can grow up in healthy environments with positive role models of both sexes.

Fundamentally, the major crisis facing us right now is that neither boys nor girls have positive male role models. Almost all of the current social pathologies flow from this root cause.

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Rajeev Ram's avatar

With regards to having high influence over culture, I'm surprised you did not put more into addressing gay men's higher verbal fluency and acuity. I would posit there is a strong correlation there; not a coincidence that the most powerful techbro right now is a gay jew.

Part of this tendency may be genetic, but a whole lot of it is probably environmental. Walt has written about how women win in the arena of words, and a lot of that is probably having to learn how to avoid direct conflict, which gay men have to learn how to do as well; though less so, to the degree that they are physically capable.

Would also be interesting for you to present more information on sports that are more gay-coded. These likely include swimming, tennis, gymnastics, track but not basketball, football, combat, baseball. Soccer, volleyball, ice hockey, powerlifting are somewhere in between and tend to split either way, depending on the context.

One aspect of this is training that requires more fluidity and endurance (<hetero) versus training that requires more strength and technique (>hetero). Another aspect is highly contingent on social organization. Country clubs, which are often a hub for gay men, are more amenable to racket and aquatic sports (individual talent) compared to league sports (teamwork).

Plus, certain athletic endeavors are more conducive to other activities that gay men participate in with frequency, such as modeling/acting.

If we accept your hypothesis – which I agree with – that more non-flamboyant gay men will start drifting rightward, I suspect there will be an in internal cleavage between those who are more rhetorical/artistic/expressive (thus more centrist) and those who are more autistic/systematic/technological (thus further right).

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