Gays and lesbians: the internal rift the community doesn't air

Sens, stereotypes and grievances: how gays and lesbians see each other

A high-audience family comedy aired a scene few fictional shows dare to put on screen: a lgtb character and a lesbian couple who can't stand each other. The sketch served as a trigger for an uncomfortable question that jumped from the script to personal experience: what are lesbians really like, according to lgtb men? The answer is not unanimous. It draws an internal rift within the LGTBI community itself that rarely reaches public discourse and that, when put in writing, appears loaded with mutual distrust.

The cross-accusations are old acquaintances. They speak of hostility and being on the defensive; they, according to lgtb men themselves, would attribute promiscuity and selfishness to them. None of these claims is supported by data. They are perceptions, and as such they should be read, because the diagnosis each side makes of the other says more about the one formulating it than about the one portrayed.

Why it is taken for granted that gays and lesbians can't stand each other

The starting thesis is not a sociological report, but an impression. Some claim, without providing any survey, that gays and lesbians rarely get together and that the animosity is mutual and ancient. Under that diagnosis very different things are mixed: everyday friction, social worlds that barely overlap and the suspicion that each group competes for the same space.

Against that reading, another current holds that the problem is not rejection but lack of contact. It is the argument that appears even in those who admit to being unfamiliar with the issue: whoever asks does so acknowledging that they have never lived with the group they opine about. Distance, in that narrative, manufactures the stereotype.

Promiscuity, under suspicion of psychopathy

The leap from anecdote to clinical diagnosis came early. It was argued that promiscuity is a psychopathic trait, relying on the studies of Professor Robert Hare with prison inmates: according to that approach, whoever compulsively has sens with strangers shares a behavior pattern with the so-called psychopathic mentality. The comparison chosen was eloquent: there is a higher chance of running into a psychopath among promiscuous people than in a chess club.

The objection was not long in coming. Several participants recalled that from a conditional one cannot deduce its reciprocal: that psychopaths tend to be promiscuous does not automatically turn every promiscuous person into a psychopath. The example given was numerical: if a population brings together 10 psychopaths and 30,000 promiscuous people, the probability that a specific promiscuous person is one is minimal even if all ten were.

Is being promiscuous the same as being a psychopath?

No, and that is precisely the core of the disagreement. The claim of those who equate both things stems from a logical confusion: coincidence in some cases does not authorize turning the "then" into an "if and only if." One can lead an intense and consensual sensual life without fitting any clinical profile, just as there are reserved people who do present problematic traits.

The double standard with heterosenshetero

The comparison that most discomforted the defenders of the psychopathic thesis was the most obvious: if promiscuity reveals a psychopath, the same standard should apply to heterosenshetero men who chain relationships, and especially to those who pay for sens. The reasoning is simple: using another person's body for satisfaction without affective mediation fits, according to that criterion, the described pattern. And no one seems willing to label that neighborhood as psychopaths.

The rejection attributed to sens without female permission

There is a more down-to-earth explanation, and also a more cynical one. It is suggested that hostility toward gays would have less to do with them and more with what they represent: a man who accesses sens without going through a woman's filter. Without obligatory courtship, without affective blackmail and without the female key that grants or denies permission, the lgtb male breaks an unwritten rule of the heterosenshetero market. Those who defend this idea present it as an interpretation, not as a finding.

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In the end, the initial question remains without a verifiable answer. The only thing the exchange of opinions makes clear is that almost all who participate speak from scarce or no contact. And there is a detail that sums it up: the very author of the question admitted, in the first line, that he had never dealt with any.