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"Why Women Love Gay Men"

By nilliejones on February 18, 2010 4:40 PM | 4 Comments

I was at www.askmen.com and saw this title for an article, so I couldn't resist.

As it's part of askmen.com, the article is geared towards providing advice for men - in this instance, particularly straight men.  The article is examining the traits of gay men and why straight women love the gays so much for them.  They talk about clothing style, physical fitness, sensitivity, faithfulness, and fun.

Most heterosexual men's fashion is based on three things: sneakers, wrangler jeans, and a t-shirt.  And while this is fine for us men, women are typically more sophisticated.  They want to be able to talk about their outfits, hair, skin care, etc.  Who is going to provide more to a conversation on hair, a straight guy who puts on a hat until it lies flat, or a gay guy who can compare and contrasts features of different products?

It's harder for women to maintain a set weight for various reasons - partly because their bodies are continuously preparing itself to hold a child each month.  As the article says, " [in] many instances, gay men simply take better care of themselves than we do . . ."  Their gay best friend is, however, someone who will tell them the new ways to lose weight or who will go to the gym with them.

 

The website tells how an article by the National Academy of Sciences in 2008 describes how heterosexual women's brains and homosexual men's brains are similar - making it more likely that their brains function the same way.  This would explain one reason why gay men tend to be more willing to talk about their emotions than we, heterosexual men, are.

 

Faithfulness is yet another quality that women love in their gay men.  They don't have to worry about the man leaving them for another woman.  It removes a deep-seated insecurity.

 

And lastly, gay men are just more fun.  They can comparatively talk about sex with women and give them tips from a guy's perspective on what feels good without being embarrassed.

 

This can all be explained with a simple answer: the psychological need for relatedness.  Gay men can just relate to straight women on levels that straight men cannot.  However, this is NOT an excuse to not try.

 

As my mom always says, "try walking in the other person's shoes for a while."  If we straight men try this, I'm sure we can all relate to females much better and avoid unnecessary arguments - because sleeping on the couch sucks!

 

http://www.askmen.com/dating/curtsmith_300/332b_why-women-love-gay-men.html

Brain surgery boosts spirituality??

By Natalie on February 11, 2010 4:05 PM | 0 Comments
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100210/full/news.2010.66.html

This article explains how spirituality was measured in 88 patients with brain tumors.  They were assessed before and after their surgeries on different aspects of self-transcendence.  I found it interesting that the experimenters found two specific brain regions connected to spirituality.  This is something that we usually attribute to being very private and personal, it is hard to view spirituality as something that comes from our brain.  However, spirituality like any other feeling or belief is something that comes from our brain.  This concept is hard to accept.  For me, it put into perspective the idea of people not believing in psychology or believing that the feelings that we have come from our brain activity.  This is the same as people who feel that when someone is depressed they just need to get over it, as opposed to actual brain differences that are causing them to feel this way.  Spirituality is even harder to use our brain activity as a cause.

I guess I would be interested to hear what some people think about this. Do you think that spirituality, just like other personality attributes, comes from brain activity? Could someone be made more spiritual by performing surgery? Seems a bit far fetched to me. 
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