Who you love
Eric Russell et al.
Personality and Individual Differences, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although research has begun to elucidate why women form close friendships with homosexual males, little research has investigated individual differences in women's tendency to befriend gay men. Because (1) gay men do not have the motive to mate with women or to compete with them for straight male partners and (2) attractive women are more likely to be sexually and competitively targeted by heterosexual individuals, we hypothesized that attractive women place greater value on gay's men mating advice and are more likely to befriend them. In Study 1, participants indicated their likelihood of deceiving female targets. Results revealed that more attractive targets were more likely to be both sexually deceived by straight men and competitively deceived by women. In Study 2, women created their ideal group of friends by allocating “friend dollars” to individuals of different genders and sexual orientations. More attractive women allocated more dollars to gay male friends, and this outcome was mediated by their perception that gay men would value them beyond sex and could offer them valuable mating advice. These findings suggest that befriending gay men may be an important feature of women's mating strategies, especially among attractive women who face greater mating threats from heterosexual individuals.
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Richard Lippa
Archives of Sexual Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Recent research has documented large and robust sex differences in the category specificity of self-reported sexual attraction and viewing times to men and women, with men showing more polarized responses to the two sexes than women. However, this research has been limited by the use of small and restricted samples. To address this, the current study assessed a representative sample of more than 2800 U.S. adults on demographic and attitudinal variables and on two measures of category specificity: one based on self-reported sexual attraction and the other based on viewing times to male and female swimsuit models. Key findings were replicated. On average, men were considerably more category specific in self-reported sexual attraction and viewing times than women, and this was true for both heterosexual and homosexual participants. Self-identified bisexual and asexual participants tended to be lower on category specificity than other groups. Although demographic and attitudinal factors such as age, ethnicity, state and region of residence, social class, political liberalism-conservatism, and religiousness were sometimes weakly related to category specificity, sex differences in category specificity remained robust despite demographic and attitudinal variation.
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Sexual Orientation in the Labor Market
Trenton Mize
American Sociological Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Most analyses of sexual orientation and earnings find that gay men face a wage gap, whereas lesbian women earn higher wages than similar heterosexual women. However, analyses rarely consider bisexual men and women as a unique group separate from other sexual minorities. I argue that such binary views of sexual orientation — treating sexual minorities as a homogenous non-heterosexual group — have obscured understandings of the impact of sexual orientation on labor market outcomes. Specifically, I predict that unequal outcomes for gay men and lesbian women are partly due to the influence of family arrangements and their effects on earnings. In contrast, I argue that bisexual men and women should be the most disadvantaged in the labor market, due to particularly disadvantaging stereotypes, perceptions of choice to their sexual orientation, and prejudicial treatment. Using data from the General Social Survey (N = 13,554) and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (N = 14,714), I show that family arrangements explain some of the observed earnings differentials for gay men and lesbian women. Bisexual men and women, in contrast, face wage penalties that are not explained by human capital differences or occupational characteristics. Perceptions of prejudicial treatment partially explain the observed wage gaps.
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Changes in Reported Sexual Orientation Following US States Recognition of Same-Sex Couples
Brittany Charlton et al.
American Journal of Public Health, December 2016, Pages 2202-2204
Objectives: To compare changes in self-reported sexual orientation of women living in states with any recognition of same-sex relationships (e.g., hospital visitation, domestic partnerships) with those of women living in states without such recognition.
Methods: We calculated the likelihood of women in the Nurses’ Health Study II (n = 69 790) changing their reported sexual orientation between 1995 and 2009.
Results: We used data from the Nurses’ Health Study II and found that living in a state with same-sex relationship recognition was associated with changing one’s reported sexual orientation, particularly from heterosexual to sexual minority. Individuals who reported being heterosexual in 1995 were 30% more likely to report a minority orientation (i.e., bisexual or lesbian) in 2009 (risk ratio = 1.30; 95% confidence interval = 1.05, 1.61) if they lived in a state with any recognition of same-sex relationships compared with those who lived in a state without such recognition.
Conclusions: Policies recognizing same-sex relationships may encourage women to report a sexual minority orientation. Future research is needed to clarify how other social and legal policies may affect sexual orientation self-reports.
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Self-employment, earnings, and sexual orientation
Christopher Jepsen & Lisa Jepsen
Review of Economics of the Household, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although many studies document differences by sexual orientation in earnings and other labor-market outcomes, little is known about differences in self-employment. Our study contributes to both the self-employment literature and sexual-orientation literature by analyzing differences in self-employment rates and earnings by sexual orientation. Gay men are less likely to be self-employed than married men, whereas lesbians are equally likely to be self-employed as married women. We find that gay men earn less than married men. We do find, however, that for those gay men who are self-employed, there is little evidence of a further earnings penalty, at least among full-time workers. Lesbians earn at least as much as married women, but receive no further earnings premium — or penalty — by being self-employed, again among full-time workers.
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Gender differences in recognition of toy faces suggest a contribution of experience
Kaitlin Ryan & Isabel Gauthier
Vision Research, December 2016, Pages 69–76
Abstract:
When there is a gender effect, women perform better than men in face recognition tasks. Prior work has not documented a male advantage on a face recognition task, suggesting that women may outperform men at face recognition generally either due to evolutionary reasons or the influence of social roles. Here, we question the idea that women excel at all face recognition and provide a proof of concept based on a face category for which men outperform women. We developed a test of face learning to measure individual differences with face categories for which men and women may differ in experience, using the faces of Barbie dolls and of Transformers. The results show a crossover interaction between subject gender and category, where men outperform women with Transformers’ faces. We demonstrate that men can outperform women with some categories of faces, suggesting that explanations for a general face recognition advantage for women are in fact not needed.
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Bud-Sex: Constructing Normative Masculinity among Rural Straight Men That Have Sex With Men
Tony Silva
Gender & Society, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study draws on semistructured interviews with 19 white, rural, straight-identified men who have sex with men to understand how they perceive their gender and sexuality. It is among the first to use straight men’s own narratives, and helps address the underrepresentation of rural masculinities research. Through complex interpretive processes, participants reworked non-normative sexual practices — those usually antithetical to rural masculinities — to construct normative masculinity. Most chose other masculine, white, and straight or secretly bisexual men as partners for secretive sex without romantic involvement. By choosing these partners and having this type of sex, the participants normalized and authenticated their sexual encounters as straight and normatively masculine. The participants engaged in bud-sex, a specific type of male–male sex that reinforced their rural masculinity and heterosexuality. The married men framed sex with men as less threatening to marriage than extramarital sex with women, helping to preserve a part of their lives that they described as central to their straightness. The results highlight the flexibility of heterosexuality; the centrality of heterosexuality to normative rural masculinity; how similar sexual practices carry different meanings across contexts and populations; and the social construction of masculinities and sexualities by age, race, gender, time period, and place.