Posts made by nordicblue

twunk and gay-sians
bears and otters
gay jocks  :cheers:
circuit boys
gay-listers
show queens
art fags
drag queens
:closet:

Twinks
Body Type: Thin, smooth, often blond, usually with longish bangs and often with highlights.
Description: This young breed of gays is never over 30 and tends to be on the queeny side and hews closely to the conventional stereotypes of gay man. Wild, ornery, and still getting over their coming out issues, the twink is the gay gone wild, and is bait to older men who are into trying to suck off their youthful energy.
Subcategories: The Twunk, the Gay-sian, the A&F boy.
New York City Hang Out: Rush, Campus Thursdays at Splash
Diva of Choice: Lady Gaga
Preoccupations: Fashion, drama, partying, hooking up, college, coming out
Top or Bottom: Bottom
Celebrity Example: Zac Efron

Bears
Body Type: Large, hairy, often with facial hair
Description: The bigger, generally older subset of the population is new but increasingly popular both in the community and pop culture. They have their own social calendar that is well populated with events to support the flannel-clad butch lifestyle of beards and beer guts.
Subcategories: Cubs, Otters, Wolfs, Gorillas
New York City Hang Out: Woof!, Snaxx, Nowhere
Diva of Choice: Cyndi Lauper
Preoccupations: Food, hair, coming up with silly bear puns, Tom Colicchio
Top or Bottom: Bottom
Celebrity Example: Kevin Smith

Gay Jocks  :cheers:
Body Type: Athletic, muscular, possibly gone-to-seed
Description: This guy prides himself on the fact that no one thinks he is gay until he tells them. His love of sports is just about the only unaffected aspect of his masculinity. He wears T-shirts and ball caps with his favorite team logo, and likes guys who are "non-scene," unless the scene is a gay sports team.
Subcategories: Gay football players, gay soccer plays, gay rugby players, etc.
New York City Hang Out: Gym Bar
Diva of Choice: The guy who sings "Are You Ready for some Football."
Preoccupations: Passing, talking tough, locker rooms, fantasy football
Top or Bottom: Bottom

Circuit Boys
Body Type: Muscular, waxed, preened, most usually with tribal tattoos
Description: This subset rose to prominence in the '90s around the drug-fueled, all-night dance parties that were in different cities around the country. While it has few new recruits, its core population is die-hard and aging quickly. Many of the parties have died off, but they're still dancing to bad tribal house wherever they can.
Subcategories: Tweekers, muscle Marys, those queens who twirl flags at dance parties
New York City Hang Out: Alegria
Diva of Choice: Deborah Cox remixed by Junior Vasquez
Preoccuptions: Pecs, ecstasy, house music, conformity, backne, the afterparty
Top or Bottom: Bottom
Celebrity Example: This is such a specific type it doesn't really exists in the world at large, but the Platonic ideal of a circuit boy is DJ Brett Henrichsen

Gay-Listers  :cheers:

Body Type: Body toned by the personal trainer, hair done by celebrity stylist, wardrobe picked out at Barneys
Description: These are the uppity homos who live the good life, and are generally too good for you. They only like to talk to each other. They usually work in advertising, PR, marketing, or the entertainment industry and make a ton of cash which they use to have perfect apartments, fantastic wardrobes, and summer homes near all the other gay-listers. You can try to get invited to their parties, but you will never belong.
Subcategories: Power gays, the velvet mafia
New York City Hang Out: Beige
Diva of Choice: They're probably friends with Madonna
Preoccuptions: Looking good, work, HRC dinners, summering as a verb, what everyone else is doing, hooking up with each other, the steam room at the gym
Top or Bottom: Bottom
Celebrity Example: Andy Cohen

Show Queens  :bithfight:
Body Type: They come in all shapes and sizes, from the young, spry dancer to the balding, pudgy critic.
Description: These are the kids who are so gay they could never fit in during high school and sought refuge in the music department. They have devoted their lives to performing, show tunes, and learning all the words to very obscure songs. They often work in theater or the arts in one way or another, be it on the Great White Way or as a high school drama teacher.
Subcategories: They are only defined by which diva they love most.
New York City Hang Out: Marie's Crisis
Diva of Choice: Liza, Judy, Barbra, Elaine Stritch, Patti LuPone, Ethel Merman, Sutton Foster, Bernadette Peters
Preoccuptions: Original cast recordings, collecting Playbills, karaoke, out of town previews, Puck on Glee's abs, outing Hugh Jackman
Top or Bottom: Bottom
Celebrity Example: Neil Patrick Harris

Art Fags  :puke:
Body Type: Emaciated, tattooed, usually with some sort of ironic facial hair and an enormous coif.
Description: The art fag is cooler than you. He's also cooler than all your friends, and he is not afraid to show it. He is usually an artist (duh), photographer, fashion designer, band member, or something that requires a degree from RISD, FIT, or some other art school that is an acronym. He dresses either in the most current prissy fashions or like a homo version of Terry Richardson, in big glasses, flannels, and jeans that looks so thrown together that it took him hours to put together. You're more likely to find them at a gallery opening or model party, but every so often they'll be at a gay bar to rub elbows, and other parts, with the other homos.
Subcategories: Alternaqueers, gipsters
New York City Hang Out: The Cock
Diva of Choice: Peaches
Preoccuptions: The hottest club, looking down on things, cheap coke, being bohemian, the outer boroughs
Top or Bottom: Bottom
Celebrity Example: Marc Jacobs

Drag Queens  :rotfl:
Body Type: Either big, buxom Divine style or svelte and RuPaul-esque.
Description: This is a very small but very powerful contingent of the gay population. The drag queens are not only the court jesters of the gay community, dressing up like clowns for our entertainment, but they are also a bridge to the straight world. As much as gay men appreciate the queens for their looks, wit, and shade, straight people love a drag show even more than the queers do. Somehow they manage to be the most outrageous segment of the population and the most embraced, making the rest of us look positively boring by comparison.
Subcategories: Club kids, trannies.
New York City Hang Out: Pick a bar, any bar.
Diva of Choice: Oh, honey. They are each their own diva.
Preoccuptions: Shade, wigs, annoying jerks who ask for too many drink tickets, other queens biting off their look, lip syncing, straight guys
Top or Bottom: Bottom
Celebrity Example: RuPaul

But my favorite type is  :closet:

When we initially published part one and part two of this series on Gay OCD (also known as HOCD), it was intended solely to reflect this rather common form of the disorder as we saw it presented in many of our clients.  We had not anticipated such a significant online response, with so many additional questions and angles on the subject.

Sexual obsessions in general are under-reported because of shameful feelings associated with them.  And yet there is probably a somewhat higher prevalence of sexual obsessions in OCD than any other obsession for this same reason – the thoughts are unwanted! This seems so very evident in Sexual Orientation OCD because the feared consequence appears so tangible.  In other common OCD obsessions, such as “Harm OCD”, the idea that someone might be in denial of violent impulses is plenty terrifying.  However, there is an understanding that being violent is unacceptable in and of itself.  With Sexual Orientation OCD, the sufferer generally does not see anything wrong with being gay per se, as long as it is not themselves being gay.  This causes a lot of confusion and a lot of resistance to seeking treatment.

We’d like to use this latest installment in what has become a series of discussions on Sexual Orientation OCD to be more specific about the different ways we have seen this OCD manifestation present and the different Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) strategies that appear to work.  We have attempted to categorize them, but it’s important to remember that sufferers are likely to fall into a combination of several categories and not just one.  Also bear in mind that we will continue to use “gay” or “homosexual” to be synonymous with alternative orientations for simplicity’s sake only.  Homosexual and bisexual individuals with OCD can, and do, sometimes obsess about being straight.
All-Or-Nothing HOCD

This is perhaps both the most common and the least reported subtype of HOCD because it is easy to overlook the OCD characteristics.  In short, All-Or-Nothing HOCD describes the experience of those who have always been of one orientation, have never experimented with other orientations, and who do not have gay fantasies, but who just randomly have a “gay” thought or feeling one day and it scares them.  It is often reported as starting with a simple, “Did I find that person attractive?” and “What does it mean that I can’t be 100% certain that I did not find that person attractive?”

In All-Or-Nothing HOCD, the primary distorted belief is that straight people never have any gay thoughts, so any gay thoughts must be an indicator of latent homosexuality.  In fact straight people do have gay thoughts, but generally prefer not to apply them to gay sexual behaviors.  In actuality, it is not possible to know what the word “gay” even means on a literal level without having what can only be described as a “gay” thought.

So for the sufferer who sees gay thoughts as contaminating an otherwise purely straight mind, compulsions are going to be focused on making the gay thoughts go away through various proving rituals.  This may take the HOCD test form of compulsive masturbation to straight fantasies or avoidance of anything that might trigger the presence of a gay thought.  It often involves avoiding people who the sufferer sees as even having the potential to be gay.  Just as a handwasher tries to be certain there is not contaminant on their hands, this HOCD sufferer is aiming for total eradication of the unapproved gay thought.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) treatment strategies for All-Or-Nothing HOCD should involve gradual exposure to things that trigger gay thoughts while the sufferer practices resisting the urge to tell themselves they are not gay.
Relationship HOCD

People are complicated.  That means relationships are twice as complicated.  Some people are lucky in love, some people are unlucky, some people are both, and some people really can’t tell because of their OCD.  This form of  HOCD occurs when an OCD sufferer uses potential gayness as an explanation for what they see as failed heterosexual relationships.  Women with Relationship HOCD may identify themselves as “man-hating dykes”, while men may see themselves as “just not understanding women”, and may describe themselves as being “in denial” of their “true” sexual orientation.

Often in cases like these, the HOCD itself is a smokescreen for what is sometimes called Relationship OCD (aka ROCD) or Relationship Substantiation OCD.  Those with ROCD tend to have obsessions that revolve around fears of not “really” loving or being sexually attracted to their spouse or partner, not being involved with the right person, or not being the right person for their partner.  Those with Relationship HOCD can put off dealing with these issues if they conceptualize themselves as being incapable of having a healthy heterosexual relationship because, in their mind, they might actually be gay!

Because this form of HOCD emphasizes partnership, sufferers are likely to over-attend to how they relate to people of the same sex.  A man may notice that he feels better understood, has more in common with, and enjoys his time with another man in ways that women do not satisfy him.  The only thing missing is the sex, he thinks, and this triggers a lot of compulsive analysis about who he is “really” wired to love.

Similarly, a woman may become aware that other women share qualities their male partners seem to lack – for example, sensitivity, patience, and emotional availability.  In those who don’t have HOCD, this same-sex identification is looked at as totally normal.  “Of course my same-sex friends understand where I’m coming from.  They know what the other sex is like!  They get my interests and motivations!”.  The word “gay” doesn’t enter into the equation.

CBT for Relationship HOCD is going to involve traditional Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) for sexual orientation fears, but also exposure to behaviors that demonstrate vulnerability to a romantic partner, accepting uncertainty about the “quality” or “completeness” of heterosexual relationships, and other non-avoidance exposures.
Self-Hating HOCD

This form of HOCD generally has more to do with depression than sex or sexual orientation.  Typically (though not exclusively) this seems to occur in people who were severely mistreated, abused, or bullied.  Just as this can occur in Social Anxiety Disorder, the “bully” takes up residence in the person’s mind and any perceived failure in life triggers an internal statement of “You’re gay.”  It’s meant as an insult, more than a suggestion that one should set about finding themselves sexually.

The constant inner-abuse seen in this type of HOCD often leads to a deeper depression, which further distorts the intrusive thoughts, which in turn leads to even more depression.  In some cases this may lead to a pseudo-gay fantasy state in which the sufferer imagines themselves living out what they see as the greatest disappointment to their parents.  The line of thinking is that they are so unlovable as to be invisible to their desired orientation.  In treating those with this type of HOCD, there may be more emphasis on cognitive Mindfulness Workbook for OCDrestructuring and learning to identify “bully” thoughts as distorted glitches in the mind which are essentially irrelevant to sexuality.  Because ERP requires significant motivation and commitment, it may also be clinically appropriate to focus on the depression first before engaging in exposures.

Experimental History HOCD

Despite the fact that same-sex exploration is common in children who are learning about the human body (i.e. playing “doctor”) and discovering how different things look and feel, people with OCD who obsess about their sexual orientation may use benign childhood experiences as “proof” of latent homosexuality.  So despite a post-pubescent life of heterosexual behavior, the presence of unwanted homosexual thoughts triggers frightening doubts.  The sufferer is likely to compulsively review childhood memories and the unknowable memories of thoughts and feelings that might have been had during any same-sex exploration.  “What exactly did I do and why?”

It is also common for teenagers throughout the course of puberty to experience confusion related to gender, orientation, and other sexual issues.  As the sexual brain develops, so too the does the sexual mind.  For people with OCD during their teens, this can be very troubling.  For those whose HOCD develops later, they may look back on this period in which their sexuality was developing and compulsively analyze anything that could be construed as inconsistent with their current sexual preference.

Another variation on this reflecting form of HOCD is compulsive analysis of any same-sex play that might have taken place in college or at some other point in life.  A big part of treatment for those with this type of HOCD is identifying mental checking as a compulsion to be resisted, instead of as a way to figure out one’s sexuality.  Curiosity is not orientation.  Whatever happened, happened.
Real Man / Real Woman HOCD

People who suffer from this form of OCD place a lot of emphasis on masculinity and femininity and the cultural expectations that come with them.  A male sufferer might notice an attractive male, and then chastise himself for being able to notice attractiveness in males.  He assumes this is a sign of femininity, something a “real man” would have no ounce of (again see the all-or-nothing thinking).  This can also present itself through a man’s affinity for the arts or other things he may have been culturally primed to see as non-masculine.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for this form of HOCD may involve more exposure to material that the sufferer sees as “dainty” or weak, such as watching program with a flamboyant homosexual character or attending a ballet.  This is sometimes more triggering than exposure to gay pornography.

Similarly, a heterosexual woman may notice another woman is beautiful and then distort this through the belief that “real women” only ever think about men.  It also may involve avoidance of assertive behavior or any other cultural attribute traditionally associated with masculinity.  Exposure for this sufferer may involve images and films involving “butch” lesbians or feminist literature.
Groinal Response HOCD

The functioning paradigm here is, “I must experience sexual arousal or groinal sensations only in very specific pre-approved circumstances.”  These circumstances typically mean in the presence of an attractive, age-appropriate member of the opposite sex.  But there are a few important considerations to note here:

all sexual thoughts (wanted or unwanted) may cause sexual arousal;
    attending to one’s groin actually causes sensations to occur there;
    there are sensations going on in your groin all the time, but unless you go out of your way to pay attention to them, you just don’t notice them;
    groinal sensations often occur for no reason.

Men don’t get headaches just because they thought of something painful and they don’t get erections just because they are feeling sexual.  In short, who knows what’s going on down there?  Yet the HOCD sufferer is going to compulsively check and analyze sensations for evidence of homosexuality.  Part of the confusion the OCD capitalizes on is the fact that groinal stimulation is generally considered a positive sensation.  Fellatio or cunnilingus is going to feel good no matter what gender is delivering it, but the HOCD mind insists it only be delivered by a person to whom we are attracted in order to accept it.  HOCD manipulates the mind into thinking that any positive groinal sensation at the “wrong” time must mean a general sexual preference to whatever is in the environment at that moment.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy(CBT) for the treatment of this type of HOCD is going to involve identifying and challenging distorted beliefs about groinal responses and exposure to arousing material that falls outside of their traditional preferences.

PLoS One
http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Shan_Lu2/publication/232649767_Serum_Neutralizing_Activities_from_a_Beijing_Homosexual_Male_Cohort_Infected_with_Different_Subtypes_of_HIV-1_in_China/links/0deec521127d166010000000?ev=pub_ext_doc_dl&origin=publication_detail&inViewer=true
Protective antibodies play a critical role in an effective HIV vaccine; however, eliciting antibodies to block infection by viruses from diverse genetic subtypes remains a major challenge. As the world's most populous country, China has been under the threat of at least three major subtypes of circulating HIV-1 viruses. Understanding the cross reactivity and specificities of serum antibody responses that mediate broad neutralization of the virus in HIV-1 infected Chinese patients will provide valuable information for the design of vaccines to prevent HIV-1 transmission in China. Sera from a cohort of homosexual men, who have been managed by a major HIV clinical center in Beijing, China, were analyzed for cross-sectional neutralizing activities against pseudotyped viruses expressing Env antigens of the major subtype viruses (AE, BC and B subtypes) circulating in China. Neutralizing activities in infected patients' blood were most capable of neutralizing viruses in the homologous subtype; however, a subset of blood samples was able to achieve broad neutralizing activities across different subtypes. Such cross neutralizing activity took 1-2 years to develop and CD4 binding site antibodies were critical components in these blood samples. Our study confirmed the presence of broadly neutralizing sera in China's HIV-1 patient population. Understanding the specificity and breadth of these neutralizing activities can guide efforts for the development of HIV vaccines against major HIV-1 viruses in China.

There is a widespread belief that some men’s sexual orientation can be judged on the basis of their voice (i.e. that some men “sound gay”).  One currently untested explanation of the origins of gay sounding speech is that it acts as a social marker of membership in the gay male community.  The current study casts doubt on that hypothesis.  However, gay sounding speech was strongly related to recalled childhood gender nonconformity in both gay and heterosexual men.  This is consistent with the hypothesis that gay sounding speech emerges early in life when boys mimic and adopt certain speech patterns more typical of females.  Because gay men are significantly more likely to experience gender nonconforming childhoods, feminine speech patterns become associated with male homosexuality mainly through proxy.

Introduction

Stereotypes suggest that gay men’s speech differs from that of heterosexual men.  As one scholar noted, “A dependable wellspring of this caricature [of gay men] is popular culture, which seemingly never tires of the lisping fag, whose roller coaster intonation and high pitched shrieks mark him as an object of comedy or contempt” (Kulick, 2000, p. 260).  These stereotypes, however, are not new; case studies dating back to the nineteenth century frequently remarked on the distinctive nature of gay men’s voices (Shaw & Ferris, 1883).  Accordingly, many people believe that they can determine a person’s sexual orientation based solely on the way that he speaks.  A handful of studies investigating this issue have found that judgments of sexual orientation, based only on speech samples, are in fact usually accurate (Travis, 1981; Gaudio, 1994; Linville, 1998).  Other researchers have isolated specific acoustic cues (also characteristic of female speech) that people attend to in making these judgments (Linville, 1998; Rogers & Smyth, 2001).  Thus, the notion that gay men speak differently than heterosexual men has received some empirical support, although stereotypes may distort and exaggerate this difference.

This line of research has several implications.  It contradicts the opposing belief that sexual orientation, unlike race or gender, is largely invisible in social interactions (Frable, Platt, & Joey, 1998).  As others have noted, controversial policies such as “don’t ask, don’t tell” also rely on the assumption that sexual orientation only becomes apparent when one chooses to disclose it (Ambady, Hallahan, & Conner, 1999).  Perhaps equally important, understanding the concomitants of sexual orientation may aid in understanding the origins of sexual orientation itself.  Given the widespread belief that speech patterns are associated with sexual orientation, it is surprising that such little research has been conducted in this area.

Moreover, the existing studies in this area suffer from two major handicaps.  First, they have relied on extremely small samples to determine the accuracy of judgments of sexual orientation and to estimate the magnitude of speech differences between gay and heterosexual men.  The largest published study examining perceptual accuracy contained only 5 gay and 4 heterosexual male speakers (Linville, 1998).  Second, and more importantly, no study to date has examined the possible origins of these speech differences.  Therefore, the purposes of this paper are to replicate previous findings using a larger sample and to address the question of why some men, for lack of a better term, “sound gay.”

Current Explanations

One possible explanation is that gay sounding speech acts as a marker of membership in the gay male community and that gay men either consciously or unconsciously acquire this speech through exposure (Linville, 1998).  Others have theorized that phonemic variation in general may signal group identity (Chambers & Trudgill, 1980).  Thus, the implicit assumption is that gay sounding speech serves a functional purpose, such as uniting gay men from diverse backgrounds (Barrett, 1997).  It is also possible that gay men adopt specific speech patterns in order to identify each other in diverse social settings.  In that case, gay sounding speech would be analogous to nonverbal cues of homosexuality, such as rainbow-colored ornamentation.  All these hypotheses presume that gay sounding men are also those who self-identify as gay (Kulick, 2000).  For example, a closeted gay man may go to great lengths to conceal signs of his homosexuality rather than advertise it.  Hence, openness about one’s homosexuality, i.e. outness, is hypothesized to mediate gay sounding speech.

Although gay sounding speech may be used for functional purposes, that does not necessarily imply that it exists because of them.  There are four reasons to question the hypothesis that such a speech pattern develops in order to accomplish a particular goal, such as signaling one’s membership in the gay male community.

First, gay sounding speech appears to emerge early in life, well before a specific self-identification as gay.  Two longitudinal studies examining the relationship between homosexuality and childhood gender nonconformity (discussed below) both noted feminine sounding speech in boys who disproportionately became gay in adulthood (Zuger, 1984; Green, 1987).  Zuger (1984) collapsed feminine speech into a category with feminine gestures and found that 73% of the effeminate boys displayed some feature associated with this category.  Likewise, one mother in Green’s study remarked that her son “talks like a girl, sometimes walks like a girl, acts like a girl” (1987, p. 2).  These observations are quite common; mothers of boys with gender identity problems rate their sons’ speech and motor behavior as significantly more feminine than mothers of sons in control groups (with effect sizes ranging from 0.92–4.47) (Zucker, 1992).  Thus, if gay (or feminine) sounding speech emerges early in life, this would be inconsistent with the hypothesis that such a speech pattern develops in response to something dependent on self-awareness of sexual orientation (e.g. a desire to signal other gay men).

Second, such a hypothesis fails to account for the fact that some gay men do not sound gay (Travis, 1981; Gaudio, 1994; Linville, 1998) and that, at least based on informal accounts, a few heterosexual men do.  Thus, the literature demonstrating within-sex speech differences based on sexual orientation has largely ignored within-orientation differences.  If gay sounding speech originates from a desire to unite gay men from diverse backgrounds, for example, it makes little sense why a sizable number of gay men do not possess this speech pattern and are usually misidentified as heterosexual.  Likewise, under this hypothesis, heterosexual men who sound gay (though perhaps few in number) have no reason to adopt a speech pattern widely associated with a sexual orientation discordant to their own.

Notably, there are few stereotypes about lesbian speech (Zwicky, 1997), and the limited research comparing lesbian and heterosexual women’s speech has found few actual differences (Moonwomon, 1997; Waksler, 2001; but see Travis, 1981).  At face value, though, many of the current hypotheses about the origins of gay sounding speech should apply equally well to speech differences between lesbians and heterosexual women.  However, based on current research, these differences (assuming they exist) are far less perceptually salient than comparable differences in men.  Any hypothesis attempting to explain the causes of gay sounding speech must also explain why there is such an apparent difference between gay and heterosexual men’s speech but not between lesbian and heterosexual women’s speech.

Third, none of the current explanations would predict that gay sounding speech differs from other types of speech specifically because it is shifted in a female-typical direction, which appears to be the case (Rogers & Smyth, 2001; Linville, 1998).  Indeed, some have argued that there is no a priori reason to suspect that gay sounding speech shares greater similarity with female speech, and that our perception of gay sounding speech as feminine simply reflects our bias to interpret all deviations from cultural norms as feminine (Zwicky, 1997).  For example, if the purpose of gay sounding speech is create a sense of unity among gay men (Barrett, 1997), one could just as easily imagine the adoption of some arbitrary deviation from convention—such as putting stresses on the wrong syllables or clucking in the place to pauses—to mark gay sounding speech.  In reality, though, gay sounding speech differs in a very specific, female-shifted way.

Fourth, current explanations of gay sounding speech ignore the social costs that accompany sounding gay, such as stigmatization during childhood and adolescence.  While gay male youth who are open about their sexual orientation often face harassment, the very perception of being gay (or feminine) may be an equally if not more relevant risk factor (Remafedi, Farrow, & Deisher, 1991).  Sociolinguists have idealized the causes of gay sounding speech while seemingly ignoring the practical consequences of such speech in social interactions.  Even in adulthood, most gay men prefer sex-typicality in their romantic partners (Bailey, Kim, Hills, & Linsenmeier, 1997) and frequently make proscriptions against feminine men (i.e. “No femmes” or “If I wanted to date a woman, I’d date one”).  Thus, it is unlikely that many gay men consciously choose to sound gay, given the attendant costs of such a speech pattern in the romantic marketplace.

While some gay men who do not normally sound gay may occasionally adopt such a speech pattern as a “register” in certain social contexts (Barrett, 1997), this is a temporary deviation from their natural speaking styles, and does not negate the finding that most gay men desire masculine partners.  Conversely, it is clear that some men “may have spoken in a stereotypically gay style for most or all of their lives” (Barrett, 1997, p. 194).  It is these individuals that pose the more difficult question.  What causes them to sound gay?

Alternate Explanation

There is at least one other possible explanation of the origins of gay sounding speech: gay sounding men may have been more likely during childhood to mimic and adopt the speech patterns more typical of females.  Such a method of acquisition would be similar to that of a learned dialect.  This female-shifted speech pattern, superimposed onto a male voice, produces what we perceive as gay sounding speech.

If gay sounding speech is learned, it must be acquired fairly early in life, given that some boys already begin to sound gay in childhood.  Moreover, it is likely that certain behaviors facilitate or reinforce this acquisition.  Research on the acquisition of accents may be relevant here.  Children who immigrate with their parents to a foreign country tend to pick up the accent of the new location, rather than that of their parents, because they learn from and imitate their peers (Harris, 1998).  For example, after a few months at a nursery school in California, the daughter of a British linguist began speaking “black English” (Baron, 1992).  Although not all the children attending the school were black, the children she played with were, and their speech pattern was the one she adopted.

While it is unlikely that gay sounding men developed their speech patterns by mimicking other gay sounding boys in childhood (because they were probably rare), they might have adopted the speech patterns of other girls.  The acoustic cues of gay sounding speech are also those more prevalent in female speech (Rogers & Smyth, 2001).  For example, /s/ production in gay sounding speech (the cue accounting for the most variance in voice ratings) is longer and has a higher frequency than typical male speech—but it falls in the range of typical female speech (Linville, 1998; Avery & Liss, 1996).  Given that boys and girls speak differently on average even before puberty (Bennett & Weinberg, 1979), it is possible that a small fraction of boys adopt the speech patterns more typical of girls (or women) and, as a result, sound gay.  If so, the things that promote (or at least accompany) the development of gay sounding speech in childhood might include behaviors such as preferential affiliation with females, having more friendships with females, and taking a female role during role play; affective components serving a similar function might include feeling very feminine and greater self-identification with other females.

There is, in fact, a large body of evidence documenting such behaviors in the childhoods of prehomosexual boys.  These behaviors generally fall under the label of “childhood gender nonconformity,” which takes into account behaviors such as same- versus opposite-sex peer affiliation, rough-and-tumble play, toy interests, fantasy roles, and dress-up play.  These behaviors not only differ significantly between boys and girls on average but also between prehomosexual and preheterosexual children within each sex.  As previously mentioned, two prospective studies have found that boys who exhibit marked levels of childhood gender nonconformity are much more likely to become gay in adulthood compared to controls (Zuger, 1984; Green, 1987).  While these studies included boys with levels of childhood gender nonconformity high enough to meet the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) criteria for gender identity disorder, and hence may have limited generalizability for non-clinical populations, other studies relying on more representative samples of gay men replicate the finding that childhood gender nonconformity frequently precedes male homosexuality.

Bailey and Zucker’s (1995) meta-analysis of 41 studies demonstrated that, on average, gay men and lesbians recall significantly more gender nonconforming childhoods than their heterosexual counterparts (effect size = 1.19).  These results cannot simply be attributed to factors influencing subjective recall, e.g. that gay men internalize of stereotypes about gay men’s femininity and thus expect to remember more gender-atypical childhoods.  For example, a mother’s recall of her gay son’s gender-related childhood behavior is correlated with her son’s own recall (Bailey, Nothnagel, & Wolfe, 1995) but is uncorrelated with the extent of her knowledge about her son’s sexual orientation (Bailey, Miller, & Willerman, 1993).

This association between childhood gender nonconformity and homosexuality, however, must be accompanied by a caveat, which is relevant to the phenomenon of gay sounding speech: not all gay men recall childhood gender nonconformity and not all heterosexual men recall childhood gender conformity.  In fact, about a third of gay men have recall profiles identical to that of heterosexual men (Bailey & Zucker, 1995).  Likewise, a boy exhibiting levels of childhood gender nonconformity comparable to those recalled by most gay men has a 49% chance of becoming heterosexual in adulthood.  Moreover, simply because childhood gender nonconformity precedes adult homosexuality, it does not necessarily follow that the former causes the latter.  The predominant biological theory of homosexuality posits that sex-atypical prenatal hormone exposure partially shifts the organization of certain brain structures toward that of the opposite sex (for a review, see Rahman & Wilson, in press).  This, in turn, affects sex-typed traits, such as sexual attraction to either males or females and certain childhood behaviors, which are usually—though not necessarily—clustered together.

If certain components of childhood gender nonconformity cause gay sounding speech, but are only imperfectly associated with adult homosexuality, this may explain why some gay men do not sound gay and why some heterosexual men do.  Likewise, because childhood gender nonconformity is significantly more predictive of homosexuality in males than in females (Bailey & Zucker, 1995), the variation in adult female speech patterns may not correspond to female sexual orientation as well as does variation in male speech patterns for male sexual orientation.  Thus, it might be the case that there are true differences between lesbian and heterosexual women’s speech, but that these differences are poor predictors of female sexual orientation and are less perceptually salient given greater overall variability in female speech.  A causal relationship between childhood gender nonconformity and gay sounding speech would also be consistent with the evidence that many prehomosexual boys already begin to sound gay in childhood.  Because this speech pattern persists into adulthood for a sizable number of men (against countervailing social forces), it appears relatively difficult to change, in much the same way that an accent is difficult to change once the critical period for language acquisition and development has passed (Munro, Flege, & MacKay, 1996; Bialystock & Hakuta, 1994).  Not surprisingly, this critical period for language overlaps with the period of sex-typed childhood behavior.

Rationale for Present Study

The primary purpose of this study is to determine if there is an association between childhood gender nonconformity and gay sounding speech.  This association may explain why judgments of sexual orientation based on speech are usually accurate, although the cues that people use to make judgments may depend more on childhood behaviors than on sexual orientation per se.  Moreover, because many of the currently proposed explanations for gay sounding speech hypothesize a linkage between speech and openness about one’s homosexuality, one simple test of this would be to examine whether degree of outness correlates with how gay a man sounds.

Methods
Participants

Participants were recruited as part of a larger study investigating various concomitants of sexual orientation; however, the results reported here are limited to those relevant to gay sounding speech.  The sample consisted of 30 gay, 4 bisexual, and 24 heterosexual males recruited primarily through networking (“snowballing”), flyers posted around the University of Texas at Austin campus and local coffeeshops, and (for a limited number of gay participants) through a posting to a local gay-oriented website.  Bisexual males were omitted in any analyses explicitly comparing groups by sexual orientation but were otherwise included.  All participants were paid $10 as compensation.  The gay men were slightly older than the heterosexual men (mean age = 24 and 21.8, respectively), but this difference was not statistically significant.  The ethnic compositions of the heterosexual and gay sample were comparable.
Measures

Sexual Orientation  Sexual orientation was assessed by both self-report (heterosexual, gay, bisexual, or other) and the Kinsey scale, which allows individuals to rate themselves along a 7-point continuum from exclusively heterosexual (0) to exclusively homosexual (6).  For participants to be considered heterosexual, they had to identify as such and score 0 or 1 on the Kinsey scale; for a male to be considered homosexual, he had to identify as such and score 5 or more.

Childhood Behavior Scale  Childhood gender nonconformity was assessed using the Recalled Childhood Gender Behavior Scale (Mitchell & Zucker, 1991).  The scale includes 18 items which assess both behavioral aspects of gender conformity (i.e. “As a child, I enjoyed playing sports such as baseball, hockey, basketball, and soccer”) as well as affective components (“As a child, I felt very masculine”).  Participants were instructed to consider only the period before 12 years of age.  Participants’ responses to individual items were averaged together, with higher scores indicating greater recalled childhood gender nonconformity.

Outness Inventory  Participants identifying as gay completed the Outness Inventory, which assesses the degree to which a person is open about his or her homosexuality (Mohr & Fassinger, 2000).  Overall outness is derived from averaging together the inventory’s subscales (outness to family, religion, and world).

Recording Procedures

All recordings were obtained with a microphone headset (Labtec Axis-521) attached to a computer.  The use of a headset standardized the distance from the speaker’s mouth to the microphone.  Voice samples were digitally recorded at 44.100 kHz using the 1st Sound Recorder software with noise cancellation activated.

Before the recording, I explicitly requested that participants try their best not to alter their voice in any way from natural speech.  In accord with Gaudio (1994) and Linville (1998), participants read an excerpt from a play (Torch Song Trilogy), first silently and then aloud using their natural speaking voices.  The dialogue was a conversation between two individuals in a bar, but participants read the part of only one speaker.  The advantage to having all participants read the same dialogue is that it controls for any differences in what participants say, focusing instead on how they say it.  The obvious drawback to this method is that reading text aloud is an imperfect representation of a person’s actual, spontaneous speech.  However, prior research found no interaction between the type of speech sample acquired (spontaneous versus reading) and sexual orientation on voice ratings of sounding gay (Travis 1981).  In other words, although there may be perceptible differences between spontaneous and read speech, these differences are not immediately relevant to the phenomenon of gay sounding speech.

Participant Ratings

An excerpt (approximately 30 seconds long) was then extracted from the middle of the voice samples for playback.  Each participant rating the voices (the listener) wore earphones.  Presentation order of the samples was randomized and listeners had control over when to advance to the next voice.  Listeners rated each voice on a 7-point scale for how gay it sounded.  In a pilot study of 10 listeners and a partial sample of the voices, interrater reliability for the voice ratings was high (Cronbach’s α = 0.91).  The results reported here are based on 4 listeners (not involved in any other part of the experiment) who rated all 58 voices.  The reliability of these listeners’ voice ratings was also high (Cronbach’s α = 0.84).

Results

To determine whether or not listeners are accurate in judging sexual orientation from voice samples, previous studies have typically employed forced-choice items in which participants must classify each voice as belonging to either a heterosexual or gay male.  However, the problem with this approach is that results may be distorted by listeners who are overly conservative or overly liberal in their judgments.  For instance, a listener who rates the vast majority of voices as belonging to heterosexual males will have a very poor accuracy index.  To avoid this problem, the present study used discriminant function analysis.  In discriminant analysis, the independent variables are the predictors (the voice ratings of how gay a voice sounded) and the dependent variables are the groups (gay or heterosexual).  Thus, based on all four listeners’ ratings of how gay a voice sounded, a prediction was made regarding the sexual orientation of each speaker and compared with that speaker’s actual sexual orientation.  The overall accuracy of these predictions was 68.5%, which is significantly greater than what would be expected by chance.  Broken down by sexual orientation, 75% of the heterosexual speakers were correctly classified, while 63% of the gay speakers were correctly classified.

A one-tailed t test revealed that gay men were significantly more gay sounding than the heterosexual men (t (52) = -3.964, p = .0002).  The effect size for this difference was large (Cohen’s d = 1.12).  Moreover, how gay a man’s voice sounded correlated with childhood gender nonconformity (full sample, r = .544, p < .0001) in both the gay (r = .429, p = .009) and heterosexual men (r = .365, p = .040).  Figure 1 shows the relationship between these variables in the full sample.

@kagaminelen:

Grampa
Too much muscle
Feet

Too much muscle? ???
Feet, so pretty much every man alive is out.

@Minerboh80:

@harrisbren:

Not a size queen, as long as he knows how to top then I'm good to go.

PS: The question is quite superficial. Sure, physical appearance is important but I'd like to think that good looks is just added bonus to someone with a good heart.

Seconded, thirded and fourthed!

If only it were true, but alas, I don't mind if they're high-maintenance as long as they are a walking work of art.

Who actually writes "blah blah blah", opposing opinions are welcome except when they are completely devoid of intelligence thought.  Using the word "supposed" implies you know better when you are not in fact omniscient, which is what you would have to be know if God exists.  Secondly, the existence of God doesn't rest upon the validity of a book written by man as you say.

@kagaminelen:

I mean, I don't mind if a gay person wants to be a Christian, let them be.

This is a truly enlightened person.

According to the survey it was the 20th dirtiest place in the world.

Gay, Straight, and the Reason Why
Oxford University Press
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/gay-straight-and-the-reason-why-9780199737673?cc=ca&lang=en&

A study done by Yale University and Columbia University

1. Iceland
EPI score: 93.5
GDP per capita: $36,000
Population: 311,000
In the category of air pollution (effect on humans), Iceland scored 97.4, compared with 84.8 for countries of similar GDP per capita.

2. Switzerland
EPI score: 89.1
GDP per capita: $37,000
Population: 7.6 million
Switzerland scores a perfect 100 in forestry, water quality (effects on humans) and biodiversity and habitat. Like most rich, industrialized nations, its lowest scoring was in air pollution (effects on ecosystem).

3. Costa Rica
EPI score: 86.4
GDP per capita: $9,600
Population: 4.5 million
That such a relatively poor and developing country ranks third in the EPI is testament to the natural endowments of Costa Rica, with dense forests, plentiful water and abundant wildlife. With smart development, Costa Rica can avoid the standard path that growing nations take of polluting their environment, only to clean it up again once they become wealthy. Costa Rica touts its EPI ranking in ads for its tourism sector.

4. Sweden
EPI score: 86
GDP per capita: $33,400
Population: 9.1 million
Sweden has bragging rights, for the moment, among the Scandinavian states, where out-greening one another is a regional competition.

5. Norway
EPI score: 81.1
GDP per capita: $48,000
Population: 4.7 million
Norway is a nation of astonishing wealth, built on vast offshore reserves of oil and natural gas. The global warming impact of those fossil fuels is not debited from Norway’s results, rather it is recognized in the nations that burn them.

01 Norway  :cheers:

For the third year, Norway ranked no. 1. With per capita GDP of $54,000 it is among the richest in the world and ranks first in social capital and second in safety and security.

02 Denmark  :cheers:

Denmark is no. 2 for the third year. The tiny country ranks first in entrepreneurship and opportunity, based on high levels of social equality, high connectivity and the world's lowest start-up costs.

03 Australia  :cheers:

Australia has moved up from fifth place in 2009, the result of excellent education, an efficient government bureaucracy and booming trade in natural resources.

04 New Zealand  :cheers:

New Zealand ranks no. 2 in governance, education and personal freedom. No country ranks higher in tolerance for immigrants.

05 Sweden  :cheers:

High levels of political participation and social equality combine with environmental protection and 123 mobile phones per 100 people to create a tech-savvy socialist paradise.  ABBA, Volvo, H&M, Ericsson, Lasse Larsen

06 Canada  :cheers:

The most prosperous nation in the Americas, Canada ranks first in personal freedom. As befitting a giant landmass with only 30 million people, Canada is very tolerant and welcoming.

07 Finland  :cheers:

As with its Scandinavian sisters, religion is an afterthought in Finland, with just 13% attending church; yet it ranks 3rd in education and entrepreneurship.

08 Switzerland  :cheers:

Number 1 in governance, 2nd in health and economy. Sticking with the Franc rather than going Euro has helped make Switzerland a bastion of stability in shaky Europe right now.

09 Netherlands  :cheers:

A robust democracy with broad civil liberties and lots of social cohesion, 90% of the Dutch report deriving daily enjoyment from their natural surroundings.

10 United States  :cheers:

An excellent place to start a business, the U.S. also ranks no. 1 in health, a function of high immunizations, clean water and the highest levels of gov't spending on healthcare.

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/tables/4tabledatadecoverviewpdf/table_4_crime_in_the_united_states_by_region_geographic_division_and_state_2012-2013.xls

What is also not surprising is that there are not any countries from central or south america nor Africa and only one country from Asia.  They are all in northern Europe.  :cheers:

A global survey of 223 cities ranks some of the capitals in Central Asia and the South Caucasus the world’s worst places for foreigners to live. Tajikistan’s capital, Dushanbe, for example – where officials build themselves multi-million-dollar palaces and ignore basic property rights, education, and a failing healthcare system – now ranks the worst city in Asia for expatriates to make a home.

The annual ranking, released February 19 by Mercer, a New York-based human resources consultancy, measures cities based on quality of living for foreigners, not locals. The company takes into consideration 39 factors including political stability, the effectiveness of law enforcement, censorship, pollution and healthcare, electricity supplies, the quality of schools and public services, availability of consumer goods and climate. The scores are “weighted to reflect their importance to expatriates.” The ranking has been published since 1994.

A decade ago, Asia would probably have offered more competition at the lower end of the rankings. But with stunning economic growth across much of the continent, today it is post-Soviet Central Asia that sweeps the bottom of the table. Dushanbe (ranked 209 globally) was one-upped in Asia by the capital of Bangladesh, Dhaka (208), and fell two places in two years. Ashgabat came third from the bottom in Asia at 206, falling seven places since 2012. Fourth- and fifth-worst, respectively, Bishkek ranked 204 and Tashkent 202. (Almaty ranked 169 in 2012; Astana wasn’t surveyed. If you want to know where they rank this year, you’ll have to shell out $499 for the report.)

These cities’ low marks are “essentially due to the following combination: Political instability and lack of infrastructure. Often facilities and infrastructure such as hospitals, advanced public transports and services such as electricity, potable water are poor or not to an international standard. Furthermore, personal safety of expatriates and their respective families can also be of a concern in these cities,” Mercer Senior Researcher Slagin Parakatil told EurasiaNet.org.

In Europe, Tbilisi ranked worst at 191, but it has jumped in two years from 213. It was followed by Minsk (189) and Yerevan (180). Tbilisi “continues to improve in its quality of living, mainly due to a growing availability of consumer goods, improving internal stability, and developing infrastructure,” Mercer said in the statement.

That Ashgabat should feature so prominently might be a wake-up call for the leaders in any other resource-rich country. But in totalitarian Turkmenistan, which has spent billions building an inhospitable monument to megalomania, the rankings are unlikely to stop the relentless construction.

Globally, Baghdad ranked the worst for quality of living at 223. On the flipside, Mercer ranked Singapore and Tokyo as the most livable cities in Asia; Vienna and Zurich topped the Europe and global ranks.

Mercer stresses that the closely watched annual rankings are designed “to help multinational companies and other employers compensate employees fairly when placing them on international assignments.” They are “not designed or intended for use as the basis for foreign investment or tourism.”

Finland Overview  :cheers:
When the first PISA results became public, and Finland topped the league tables, no one was more surprised than the Finns.  Long in the shadow of the Swedes, the Finns had no idea that they might finish first.  Some thought it might be a fluke.  But they have been among the leaders ever since.  A steady stream of researchers and educators have been trekking to Finland to see if they can divine the Finnish secrets of success.  The Ministry has had to create a unit devoted solely to helping foreigners interested in learning about their system.

Right after the Second World War, Finland was largely a land of woodcutters and agriculturalists.  Finland’s education system and student achievement at that time were unremarkable.

In the early 1990s, Finland was forced to completely re-think its economic strategy. An overheated economy combined with the collapse of the Soviet Union, a major trading partner, to produce a precipitous decline in GDP and an unemployment rate of 20%, higher than in the Great Depression.  Following this cataclysm, Finland applied for entrance into the European Union and began to move away from its traditional export strategies. The government decided to funnel resources into the development of the telecommunications sector, hoping to reinvent Finland as a global telecommunications capital. Nokia took on a leadership role in developing this industry. By 2003, 22 of every 1000 Finnish workers were involved in the research and development sector, a figure almost three times higher than the OECD average, and more than four times higher than in Finland in 1991.  The Finnish economy had undergone a major transformation.

The education system was able to respond to the workforce needs created by the events of the early 90s because of a series of extensive reforms that had begun in 1972, which had changed the face of teaching and learning in Finland.  These began with creation of a unified comprehensive education structure and national curriculum guidelines. Accompanying the restructuring of schools was a restructuring of teacher education, with responsibility for teacher training moving to Finland’s universities, where Finland’s other most valued professional had long been trained. Other measures were also aimed at improving the quality of the Finnish teaching force.  Over time, mathematics, science and technology all took on greater importance in Finnish curricula, as did higher-order thinking skills like problem-solving, teamwork, creativity and interdisciplinary studies.  These reforms and others, described in more detail in other sections on Finland on this site, made Finland’s economic survival in the 1990s possible.

Now, Finland is counted among the world’s high technology leaders, with a very modern economy centered on the telecommunications, consumer electronics, forest products and metals industries.

BEST COUNTRIES TO BE A WOMAN

Measures of well-being include life expectancy, education, purchasing power and standard of living. Not surprisingly, the top 10 countries are among the world's wealthiest.

1. Iceland
2. Norway  :cheers:
3. Australia  :cheers:
4. Canada  :cheers:
5. Ireland
6. Sweden  :cheers:
7. Switzerland  :cheers:
8. Japan
9. Netherlands
10. France

Here are the 10 countries where homosexuality may be punished by death
10 countries
Homosexual acts can be punished by death
It is illegal in 67 other countries including Papua New Guinea and Malaysia.

Details about their laws:

Yemen

According to 1994 penal code, married men can be sentenced to death by stoning for homosexual intercourse. Unmarried men face whipping or one year in prison. Women face up to seven years in prison.

Iran

In accordance with sharia law, homosexual intercourse between men can be punished by death, and men can be flogged for lesser acts such as kissing. Women may be flogged.

Iraq

The penal code does not expressly prohibit homosexual acts, but people have been killed by militias and sentenced to death by judges citing sharia law.

Mauritania

Muslim men engaging in homosexual sex can be stoned to death, according to a 1984 law. Women face prison.

Nigeria

Federal law classifies homosexual behavior as a felony punishable by imprisonment, but several states have adopted sharia law and imposed a death penalty for men. A national law signed in early January makes it illegal for gay people countrywide to hold a meeting or form clubs imposes a 14-year jail term for homosexual relations.

Qatar

Sharia law in Qatar applies only to Muslims, who can be put to death for extramarital sex, regardless of sexual orientation.

Saudi Arabia

Under the country’s interpretation of sharia law, a married man engaging in sodomy or any non-Muslim who commits sodomy with a Muslim can be stoned to death. All sex outside of marriage is illegal.

Somalia

The penal code stipulates prison, but in some southern regions, Islamic courts have imposed Sharia law and the death penalty.

Sudan

Three-time offenders under the sodomy law can be put to death; first and second convictions result in flogging and imprisonment. Southern parts of the country have adopted more lenient laws.
United Arab Emirates

Lawyers in the country and other experts disagree on whether federal law prescribes the death penalty for consensual homosexual sex or only for rape. In a recent Amnesty International report, the organization said it was not aware of any death sentences for homosexual acts. All sexual acts outside of marriage are banned.

Is violence associated with increased risk behavior among MSM? Evidence from a population-based survey conducted across nine cities in Central America.
Wheeler J1, Anfinson K2, Valvert D3, Lungo S3.
Global Health Action 23 October 2014

Abstract
BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVE:

There is a dearth of research examining the linkages between violence and HIV risk behavior among men who have sex with men (MSM), including those who identify as transgender women (TW), particularly in Central America where violence is widespread. In this paper, we use population-based survey results to independently examine the correlations between physical, emotional and sexual violence and HIV risk behavior among MSM populations in five countries in Central America.
DESIGN:

As part of USAID's Combination Prevention for HIV program in Central America, PASMO http://www.psi.org/country/panama/ conducted population based surveys using respondent-driven sampling (RDS) in nine cities in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. Initial seeds were recruited using the following criteria: individuals who represented subgroups of MSM by self-identification (homosexual vs. heterosexual or bisexual vs. transgender), social economic strata, and by sex work practices. This study examines the association between violence and 1) HIV risk behaviors relevant to the study populations; 2) protective behaviors; and 3) reported STIs. Individualized RDS estimator weights for each outcome variable were calculated using RDSAT software, and logistic regression analysis was used to determine associations between different forms of violence and the outcome variables.
RESULTS:

MSM who experienced physical violence were more likely to be engaged in transactional sex (OR: 1.76 [1.42-2.18]), have multiple partners in the past 30 days (OR: 1.37 [1.09-1.71]), and have engaged in sex under the influence of alcohol or drugs (OR: 1.51 [1.24-1.83]). Both physical violence and psychological/verbal violence were also associated with reporting STI symptoms or diagnosis within the past 12 months (OR: 1.72 [1.34-2.21] and 1.80 [1.45-2.23]). The effects of violence on the outcomes were observed after controlling for other risk factors. Transgender women were 3.9 times more likely to report engaging in transactional sex. Respondents who were heterosexual, bisexual, or transgender were also more likely to both report multiple partnerships (OR: 1.44 [1.07-1.96], 1.99 [1.67-2.38], 1.79 [1.37-2.33], respectively) and more likely to report engaging in sex under the influence of alcohol or drugs (OR: 1.52 [1.15-2.01], 1.38 [1.17-1.63], 1.47 [1.16-1.87], respectively), as compared to those identifying as homosexual.
CONCLUSION:

Violence experienced by MSM and TW is widespread in Central America. The experience of violence is shown in this study to be independently associated with risk behaviors for HIV infections. Further research and studies are needed to identify the effects violence has on HIV risk behavior among this under-researched population to improve targeted HIV prevention interventions.

Personality traits, sexual problems, and sexual orientation: An empirical study.
Peixoto MM1, Nobre P.
a Faculdade de Psicologia e de Ciências da Educação da Universidade do Porto , Porto , Portugal.
Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy 18 November 2014
PubMed

Abstract Personality traits, namely Neuroticism, have been suggested as vulnerability factors for the development and maintenance of sexual dysfunction, in heterosexual samples. However no evidence was found regarding homosexual samples. The current study aimed to analyze the differences on personality traits between heterosexual and homosexual men and women, with and without sexual problems. Two-hundred and eighty-five participants (142 men and 143 women) completed a web-survey. Participants answered to the NEO-FFI, the BSI and questions regarding sexual problems. The groups of men and women with and without sexual problems were matched for sociodemographic variables. A 2 (group) x 2 (sexual orientation) MANCOVA was conducted separately for each gender. Results indicated a significant main effect for group and for sexual orientation in both male and female samples. Men with sexual problems scored higher on Neuroticism, while women with sexual problems scored higher on Neuroticism and lower on Extraversion when compared to healthy controls, regardless of sexual orientation. Additionally, gay men scored higher on Neuroticism and lesbian women scored higher on Conscientiousness compared to the heterosexual groups. Current findings emphasize the central role of Neuroticism on sexual problems in both men and women regardless of sexual orientation.