From Alan Turland
Twickenham, Middlesex
Unfortunately, the side-panels detracted a great deal from the main article.
The panel on p 34 “Do Gay Men Make Better Brothers?” begins with a spurious
quotation of homophobic hate-speak from Robert Mugabe. An attempt is made to
justify its inclusion on the grounds that it represents a popular sentiment.
However, it is difficult to understand how describing homosexuals as “lower
than dogs” can be equated with a popular sentiment that homosexuality is not
natural. (Is the reader expected to accept that all things lower than dogs are
not natural?) Mugabe was not “disseminating the lay version of the notion that
evolution could not possibly select for a gay gene”, he was stirring up hatred
either for sociopolitical reasons or because of his personal homophobia.
The panel on p 35 “The feminine mystique” begins with an assertion that
“men’s sexual orientation is more or less bimodal”. As a bisexual man who knows
many other bisexual men, I find this statement counter to my experience and
would be interested to know on what studies it is based.
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There is no reference given for this assertion and so no way to check the
methodology behind the statement that “far more women than men categorise
themselves as bisexual”. Whilst this may be true, there are many social reasons
why men may be more likely categorise themselves as gay or straight rather than
bisexual despite exhibiting just as wide a range of sexuality as women.
It is a shame that more attention wasn’t paid to bisexuality in the main
article since this is obviously relevant to research into a “gay gene”.
