From the "marriage doesn't civilize men, women civilize men" file

David Morrison at Sed Contra, who probably speaks with some credibility on this issue, has this observation:

This last is something I have noticed myself. There has long been a tendency in some conservative Christian circles to posit that the promiscuity which has long been associated with a least a very public portion of self-identified gay male life is somehow inherently a part of homosexuality. Which actually I don't think is true.

I think for better or worse, mostly worse, American culture has taught boys and young men that their primary sexual goal is one of conquest. How many women can a man get to sleep with him, how many times, etc. I think this teaching and socialization is taught to men generally, and does not break down along temptation lines. Where self-identified gay male promiscuity does occur, it happens in part because there is no party to the encounter who is socialized to say no. Essentially, I guess a man could walk up to 100 women in a bar situation and say wanta ---- (which I have actually seen and heard in gay bar situations) and maybe only 3 in that 100, if that many, would take him up on it. (Yes, it could be higher but still not too much higher). By contrast a greater percentage of guys, who will be to a great extent a similar socialization about the matter, will likely have a different response.

I take it that Morrisons's point is that the promiscuity of male homosexuals arises more from the fact that male homosexuals are male than that they are homosexual. [Although the next paragraph in his post might suggest otherwise.] My intuitive feeling is that Morrison is generally right about the male/female difference in attitude toward promiscuity. I suspect that all societies have been more encouraging of male sexual activity compared to that of females. Certainly, there must be a sociobiological component to this difference in attitude, although apparently the sociobiological component can be overstated. There are also security and safety issues that create a different attitude to the behavior Morrison describes. [By the way, I think he is way too "optimistic" in his hypothetical, and if he has in fact seen such behavior in gay bars, then that would itself be a strong indication of male homosexual promiscuity.] I suspect that there are still different attitudes toward promiscuity even in this era of "hooking up."