A Homosexual or Bisexual Man Rapes a Man and is Charged with an Anti-homosexual Hate Crime

Yet another absurd case.

Alleged gay advance cited in rape

Cicero | Male suspect accused of sodomizing man with broomstick

December 28, 2007 – Eric Herman

A Cicero man angry about an alleged homosexual advance raped the man he claimed propositioned him, and then sodomized him with a broomstick, officials said.

Felipe Rivera, 43, is charged with a hate crime as well as aggravated criminal sexual assault and other offenses, said a spokesman for the Cook County state's attorney's office. If convicted, he could face more than 30 years in prison, a source said.

According to a spokesman for Cicero police, Rivera and the victim encountered each other at a party Friday night in the 1200 block of South 50th Avenue.

"Mr. Rivera got upset apparently because he believed the victim, No. 1, didn't respond to a female and then, No. 2, somehow winked at him -- made what he perceived as a sexual advance," said Cicero police spokesman Dan Proft.

30 years possible

Rivera then punched the victim in the face, Proft said, and was asked to leave the party. He allegedly waited outside for the victim. According to Rivera, the victim, 37, then propositioned Rivera for a sex act -- a claim the victim denies, Proft said.

Rivera followed the victim to the outer staircase of a basement apartment, where he removed the victim's pants and raped him, authorities said. Afterward, Rivera punched the victim in the head, leaving him semi-conscious, then inserted a metal broom handle in the victim's rectum, sources said.

Rivera gave police these details in a videotaped statement, according to Proft. When asked why he did it, Rivera allegedly said it was "because he hates f - - - - - s, and this is what they get," according to Proft.

A spokesman for the state's attorney said Rivera also shouted "sexually oriented derogatory comments" during the rape.

After the alleged attack, Rivera went to his mother's residence nearby. Because she has an order of protection against him, she called the police, Proft said.

At a Maywood court appearance Thursday, Judge Paula Dalio set Rivera's bond at $350,000, and added $50,000 for a probation violation.

Rivera, of the 1200 block of South 49th Avenue, could get up to 30 years for the sexual assault. The hate crime carries a possible sentence of one to five years.

What is the take of some homosexuals on this? Here is an example from Jim Burroway:

What LaBarbera doesn’t seem to understand however is that 1) we don’t know whether Rivera really made the offer, 2) we don’t know Rivera’s sexual orientation (was the offer real or a taunt?), and 2) Rivera’s orientation has no bearing on whether this is a hate crime or not. If a Black man who holds White supremacist views (and believe it or not, a very few of them exist) attacks an African-American solely because of his race, then it’s a hate crime.

LOL! Rivera’s allegation may or may not be true, but he raped the man with his penis! Erection is not under voluntary control, and Rivera has to be a homosexual or bisexual. Rivera may not identify as a nonheterosexual, and like some homosexuals/bisexuals, he may dislike same-sex attraction, but he cannot be a heterosexual. There are examples of men raping women because the women declined the offer for sex, but these are not charged as hate crimes regardless of whether the men involved have a low opinion of or dislike for women in general, and yet the Rivera case is being regarded as an anti-homosexual hate crime.

Burroway’s example of an African-American man holding white supremacist views is laughable since this person’s views delineated in the article do not endorse any belief of African-American inferiority.

Rivera’s case is of a sexual and physical assault combined. Physical assault is typically motivated by a dislike or hatred of the victim, but most such assaults are not prosecuted as hate crimes. Hate crimes laws make some victims special, which is just one of many reasons why they need to be scrapped.

Posted by Admin on Friday, December 28, 2007 in General
(34) Comments • Notify others • Permalink

Comments:

"Erection is not under voluntary control”

But erection can be consciously stimulated. Some gay men were married to women, and some of such marriages produced children—firstly because, well, their penises were erected and stuff. Sexual behavior doesn’t entirely reflect sexual orientation. For example, at least one study (http://www.annals.org/cgi/content/full/145/6/416) demonstrated that a significant minority of self-identifying straight men engaged in recent homosexual activities. The fact that that criminal’s penis was erected when raping that poor guy suggests, but doesn’t prove, he is gay.

And most importantly, whether or not this guy is gay is irrelevant as to the labeling of his crime as a “bias crime”. A Jew who holds anti-Semitic and “Aryan supremacist” views would still probably be condemned for a hate crime if it was proven he hurt or murdered Jewish individuals because of their religion/ethnicity. That’s because a bias crime is defined as a crime that punishes a victim because of his identity, and might be interpreted as a crime against the collective, as an attempt to intimidate a group and put it “in its place”. Thus, when defining bias crime, what is looked upon is the criminal’s motivation, not his identity. That rapist, again whether he is gay por not, was apparently motivated by prejudice against gay men, and, as such, his offense might be viewed as an anti-gay bias crime.

Posted by Clovis on December 30, 2007 at 11:18 AM | #

May I add that your comment on this case just repeats the same kind of silly reasoning, and the laughable and flawed arguments ("he penis was erected, and men can’t control erection!") I’ve already seen on all of the sections of this website.

Posted by Clovis on December 30, 2007 at 11:13 PM | #

Clovis: For erection to be “consciously stimulated,” one will have to imagine an erotic scene/encounter consistent with one’s erotic orientation, and this is what would prompt an erectile response. This is not the same as erection being under voluntary control. My argument isn’t that Felipe Rivera is gay, but that he is either gay or bisexual. There is no way a heterosexual man can imagine a heterosexual stimulus, try to convince himself that the anorectal region of a man he wishes to rape is that of a woman’s and then obtain an erection hard enough to anally rape the man.

I am aware of many studies where some self-identified heterosexual individuals reported some level of homosexual behavior or same-sex attraction, but this means that these people are not true heterosexuals. I agree that sexual behavior does not entirely reflect sexual orientation. For instance, a lesbian prostitute can cater to male clients without any opposite-sex attraction. Men indulging in sex with a partner to whom they do not perceive themselves being attracted to are still physiologically responding to the partner. Hence the “gay men” who are married to women are predominantly but not exclusively homosexual since they are capable of physiologically responding to women. In some such cases, the wife could be a masculinized woman, and when her predominantly homosexual husband would be having anal sex with her, it would be close to having sex with a man.

Formal analyses of sexual orientation reveal a heterosexual-nonheterosexual dichotomy, which is consistent with evidence from the subtlety of sex-atypical behaviors and self-rated masculinity-femininity, and also a cluster analysis addressed in Figures 2 and 3 here. Self-identified heterosexuals with either minor same-sex attraction or some level of homosexual behavior cluster into the nonheterosexual group.

I’d be interested in hearing about a case of a Jew-hating Jew assaulting a Jew because of the victim’s Jewishness and then being prosecuted for an ethnicity-related bias crime. If the definition of a bias crime involves a criminal’s motive, not his identity, then why are the majority of crimes involving some kind of hatred for the victim on the part of the perpetrator not classified as bias crimes? The fact is that bias crimes are defined for victims deemed special. A robber who assaults and robs rich individuals because he dislikes the rich for being rich wouldn’t be charged with a bias crime against the rich even though he dislikes the rich as a group.

Posted by Erik on January 06, 2008 at 04:50 AM | #

Erik, I repeat that your comments do not surprise me in a positive way. Througout your website, you quote a number of studies based on phallometric devices, e.g. those conducted by Dr. Kurt Freund and Dr. R. Blanchard. If you did read the actual text of the articles, and not only their abstracts (as so many politically biased, self-appointed experts on the subject of sexuality do), you’re probably aware that a major concern for scientists who rely on the penile plethysmograph is the possibility that subjects (specially those suspected to have deviant sexual interests) might control their erection, exaggerating arousal to a set of stimuli and suppressing reactions to another. This ability to consciously modulate one’s erection does point that erection can, at least partly, be voluntarily stimulated and suppressed. I used to believe that was obvious to every human male.

Holland wrote: “There is no way a heterosexual man can imagine a heterosexual stimulus, try to convince himself that the anorectal region of a man he wishes to rape is that of a woman’s and then obtain an erection hard enough to anally rape the man.”

Nobody suggested that, in order to maintain erection to a stimulus that is not one’s preferred, a male has to convince himself that his partner/victim is different from whom he/she actually is. But just as fantasizing and conscious effort have shown to have an impact in modulating arousal in laboratory phallometric tests, the same might be true about actual interactions with persons of the non-preferred gender/age. You said, with no evidence to back you up, that it is impossible for heterosexual men to be erected enough as to be capable of having intercourse with other males, but if that were true, wouldn’t it be also impossible for gay men to maintain erections that allowed them to penetrate women? That is obviously not the case. You stated that those few some gay men who, before being “out”, married women and had children with them are not entirely gay, but what evidence do you have to suggest so? Were those married or formerly married gay men tested to have some reation to female stimulus?

According to wikipedia’s article on Kurt Freund:

[Dr. Freund] demonstrated that even homosexually oriented men who appeared to have given up sexual relations with other men and established heterosexual marriages were still aroused by images of men rather than women.

In “Heterosexual Interest in Homosexual Males”, Dr. Freund wrote:

The [homosexual] patient may marry and have children, but afterwards his heterosexual adaptation may deteriorate to such a degree that he will not be able to further sustain the marital relationship.

So your speculation that gay men who are/were married to women and engaged in sexual activities with them did so because they are, to some degree, attracted to them, is not only unfounded, it is also contradicted by Freund’s phallometric assessment of those men and his analysis of their marital lives. Also, Freund’s conclusions that bisexuality (i.e. a heightened attraction to male and female stimuli) is so rare as to be non-existing among teleiophiles, and that gay men’s arousal to female stimuli isn’t significantly different from reation to neutral stimulus (just as straight men’s arousal to male stimuli isn’t significantly different from reation to neutral stimulus), suggest those gay men who married women and those straight men who, for whatever reason, decide to have sex with other men, do so because of reasons other than some attraction to the non-preferred gender.

Holland wrote: “I am aware of many studies where some self-identified heterosexual individuals reported some level of homosexual behavior or same-sex attraction, but this means that these people are not true heterosexuals.”

Please, provide evidence that those heterosexual men who admit having some consensual sex with males are not actual heterosexuals. You said you agree that sexual behavior doesn’t reflect sexual orientation, but the above quote just shows the opposite. Persons such as yourself usually state that the proportion of gays and lesbians in the adult population is between 1/50 and 1/35. However, if we include those self-identified heterosexuals who admit having consensual sex with other males as actually gay or bisexual men and women, wouldn’t the proportion of non-heterosexuals be much greater? The article I previously quoted indicated that 4.9% of the men studied self-identified as gay or bisexual, however, nearly 10% of heterosexual men had recently engaged in homosexual activity. If those men were labeled heterosexual, the proportion of non-heterosexuals would be higher than 10% of the adult male population. Some phallometric studies, such as those conducted by Kurt Freund and Michael Bailey (whose articles you now quote to suggest there are persons - presumably teleiophiles - who have some small attraction to people of their non-prefered gender), suggest that bisexuality among male teleiophiles is so rare as to be nearly non-existing (self-identified bisexuals Freund and Bailey individually analyzed turned out as actually typical homosexuals). If those self-identified heterosexual men who have sex with other men are not actual heterosexuals, what are they, and what label would be adequate to describe their orientation, since bisexuality does seem to be an extreme exception among teleiophiles?

“I’d be interested in hearing about a case of a Jew-hating Jew assaulting a Jew because of the victim’s Jewishness and then being prosecuted for an ethnicity-related bias crime”

I don’t know of any too, and it was clear from my previous message that it was a supposition. But in the country I was born and live in, Brazil, Northeasterners migrants and their offspring sometimes experience prejudice in other regions, and sometimes this prejudice amounts to verbal assaults and intimidation, and physical attacks—a part of this more extreme prejudice is exerted by young men who themselves have very recent Northeastern ancestry and are aware of that.

Posted by Clovis on January 06, 2008 at 09:05 AM | #

I’m sorry, I wrote the above response carelessly and some of the sentences just make no sense. I’m going to rewrite the second part of may answer:

“Please, provide evidence that those heterosexual men who admit having consensual sex with males are not actual heterosexuals. You said you agree that sexual behavior doesn’t reflect sexual orientation, but the above quote just shows the opposite. Persons such as yourself usually state that the proportion of gays and lesbians in the adult population is between 1/50 and 1/35. However, if we include those self-identified heterosexuals who admit having consensual sex with other individuals of the same gender as actually gay or bisexual men and women, wouldn’t the proportion of non-heterosexuals be much greater? The article I previously quoted indicated that 4.9% of the men studied self-identified as gay or bisexual, however, nearly 10% of heterosexual men had recently (in less than one year) engaged in homosexual activity. If those men were labeled non-heterosexual, the proportion of non-heterosexuals would be higher than 10% of the adult male population. If the authors had asked their subjects about consensual homosexual activity in their entire adult life, and just not in past year, the proportion of “non-heterosexual self-identified heterosexuals” would probably be even greater than 10%. But let’s put it in the context of phallometric data: phallometric studies, such as those conducted by Kurt Freund and Michael Bailey (whose articles you now quote to suggest there are persons - presumably teleiophiles - who have some small attraction to people of their non-prefered gender), suggest that bisexuality among male teleiophiles is so rare as to be nearly non-existing (self-identified bisexuals Freund and Bailey individually analyzed turned out to be, at least according to their phallometric assessments, typical homosexuals). If those self-identified heterosexual men who have sex with other men are not actual heterosexuals, what are they, and what label would be adequate to describe their orientation, since bisexuality does seem to be an extreme exception among teleiophiles?”

Posted by Clovis on January 09, 2008 at 09:08 AM | #

The first thing that’s funny about this is the comment made by “admin” at the end of the article. The author was not making a reference to an african american man because there was one in the article, he was trying to make a point that a hate crime isn’t a “gay” crime as most think it is. He was simply trying to reference another example of what a hate crime could be.

ERIK, your wrong in your assumption that Rivera was either gay or bisexual because he got an erection. Rape is rarely about the sexual act. Rape, in almost every instance, is about the power-pain-dominance inflicted upon another. Rivera could have gotten an erection from the rush of what he was doing. I don’t think I could find a single psychologist that would make the assumption of “knowing” what was going in in Rivera’s head at the moment of the rape, or about his sexuality, simply from the information provided.

Just because a homosexual man who was married can have sexual relations with a woman does not mean that man is bisexual or anything other than homosexual. Society forced many of these marriages to happen. Many men were/are not able to be themselves or admit to anyone else they are homosexual, because of this they conform to what society considers the norm. Them having sex does not mean they are sexually aroused by a female, many men (gay or not) can be aroused by almost anything. I would feel it to be normal for you to take 5 men, without knowing their sexual preference or background, and I would guarantee that if you could know everything about each man there would be more dissimilarities than there would be similarities. Many people won’t discuss with anyone their most private or secret desires, no matter what the situation is or how comfortable they may feel. But making assumptions in regards to this article and the information you are given is ludicrous.

Being a gay man, I have never seen a woman that was masculine enough for me to even remotely consider having sex with her. Your statement in that regards is incredibly laughable.

ERIK, Again, the comment about the Jewish man was an example. The reason Rivera was accused of a hate crime is because of his own confession of how much he hated homosexuals. I’m sure if he had not stated this, it would not have been handled the same way. I find it very plausible that a jewsih man murdering another jewish man because he was jewish would certainly result in a hate crime. Your example of a person robbing the rich just shows your reaching. Also, your assumption that hate crimes are only for people attemtpting to gain a protected status is also ignorant. There are many different types of hate crimes, not just those involving homsexuals. A hate crime is not targeted or classified for certain populations, a hate crime is a definition of WHAT the crime is and why. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hate%20crime

I’m really suprised by you, I haven’t visited this site in a very long time, and in my absence it seems you have strayed away from your purported “factness” to merely stating how you feel. It also seems your writing style has suffered and you seem to contradict yourself along with missing something very obvious stated by another.

Posted by Robert Williamson on January 16, 2008 at 06:30 AM | #

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Law
Main Entry: hate crime
Function: noun
: a crime that violates the victim’s civil rights and that is motivated by hostility to the victim’s race, religion, creed, national origin, sexual orientation, or gender

As I stated in another post, I’m sure this crime wouldnt have resulted in a hate crime if there these guys had simply wanted to steal his pot. The fact that he was targeted, I’m can guess with some physical aggression towards him, and in his eventual death are the facts that led to the hate crime.

You are sadly mistaken that most hate crimes against homosexuals are “verbal aggressions.” If this were the fact, there would be more hate crimes in the system than the system could bear. For you to make this statement along side a hate crime because of someones death is just stupid on your part. If this were just some guys wanting to rob a gay guy because they thought he would be an easy target it wouldn’t be considered a hate crime, but his eventual death and then the events leading up to that death would be considered. Also, because ther targeted a homosexual guy (it could just as easily have been a woman, an african-american, etc..) is one of the reasons for the hate crime. It exactly follows the definition above.

ERIK, how in the world can you say the incidents in that article are not motivated by dislike or hatred? I fail to see the convenience, but I did notice the underlying concern from the area police for the aggression/hatred towards homosexuals. I wonder why you didn’t see that? Biased?

Posted by Robert Williamson on January 16, 2008 at 06:51 AM | #

Robert Williamson: You wrote,

Being a gay man, I have never seen a woman that was masculine enough for me to even remotely consider having sex with her. Your statement in that regards is incredibly laughable.

Arguing against straw men appears to be your specialty.

Eric’s point—as I see it—is that those homosexual and bisexual men that choose to partner with a women (for whatever reason) will choose a masculinised women. So, for example, a homosexual male that wishes to enter into a sham marriage because his career would benefit is more likely to choose a relatively masculine looking woman.

The argument isn’t that masculinised women can and do serve as substitutes for homosexual men under ordinary circumstances.

-Peter Z

Posted by Peter Z on February 17, 2008 at 02:03 AM | #

Clovis: You wrote,

wouldn’t it be also impossible for gay men to maintain erections that allowed them to penetrate women?

Penetrating a normal anus (i.e. of normal anal sphincter muscle tone) of a willing partner requires a very firm erection, more so than that required to penetrate a vagina. Penetrating the anus of an unwilling partner requires an especially firm erection. This degree of penile tumescence implies high degree of sexual arousal.

You wrote,

in order to maintain erection to a stimulus that is not one’s preferred, a male has to convince himself that his partner/victim is different from whom he/she actually is.

This doesn’t seem plausible in that the burden of the fantasy is too great in the case of (penile) anal rape (as opposed to consensual penetration). The hypothetical heterosexual rapist who is anally raping a man must

(a) subdue his victim and keep him subdued during intercourse (unless the victim is unconscious this will entail much use of physical force);

(b) fantasise during the execution of (a) that;

(c) he is penetrating a woman despite all of the contrary ongoing sensory evidence (especially that provided by (a)) such that;

(d) maximal penile tumescence is achieved and maintained.

This just isn’t plausible because (a) is a constant intrusion into the fantasy that is required. Subjectively turning a man’s buttocks into a women’s requires immersive fantasy that (a) will not permit.

Removing the need for (radical) fantasy makes for a more plausible scenario.

-Peter Z

Posted by Peter Z on February 17, 2008 at 02:41 AM | #

Peter Z, refrain from distorting my words. This is what I wrote:

Nobody suggested that, in order to maintain erection to a stimulus that is not one’s preferred, a male has to convince himself that his partner/victim is different from whom he/she actually is

You quoted my post, but omitted the first piece, making the impression that I did say that men need to convince themselves their sexual partner/victim is someone else when having sex with/raping someone they’re not attracted to.

Men are able to masturbate not because their preferrential sex activity is solitary play, but because of the physical pleasure derived from self-stimulation plus the psychological pleasure derived from fantasies—mostly involving other(s) person(s)—that usually accompany masturbation. Thus, a man who’s having sex with someone outside of his attraction range might still attain erection because of the pleasure derived from physical contact plus the sexual fantasy that might help him keep involved in the stituation. I’ve read of gay men who were previously married to women stating they fantasized of having sex with men when they were in bed with their ex-wives.

Holland explained the above phemomenon as proof that self-identified homosexual men who had sex with women did so because they still had some small attraction to them (at another thread, he stated gay men are predominantly heterosexual in adulthood, and most engage in heterosexual fantasies and are somewhat aroused by the female physique). If this is so, why can’t we suppose the man who assaulted that other gay man is a heterosexual with some small inclination towards other males as well? Why he must be homosexual or bisexual? And how does Holland’s assertion that homosexual men who had sex with women have a degree of bisexuality stand against studies based on physiological reactions (now confirmed by at least one brain scanning study; http://wthrockmorton.com/2007/08/21/neuroimaging-study-differentiates-gay-and-straight-males/), according to which there’s no evidence of bisexuality among men with a preference for adult partners, and that self-identified bisexuals are undistinguishable from homosexuals (at least when it comes to sexual attraction) in having a much stronger preference for men over women?

Posted by Clovis on February 17, 2008 at 05:31 AM | #

Clovis,

My apologies. Your placement of the comma rendered your meaning different from that intended or at least ambiguous. There is no need for a comma after “that” if that is your intended meaning.

My point remain valid regardless. Masturbation isn’t a good analogue because the solitary conditions are ideally conducive to fantasy. Coercing an unwilling partner is not conducive to fantasy.

I can accept the anecdote about the gay men fantaszing about having sex with a man whilst having sex with their then wife if the (a) the sex was anal; (b) anal entry was from behind; (c) it was a dark or dimly lit room; and the women’s physique was masculinised.

You wrote:

why can’t we suppose the man who assaulted that other gay man is a heterosexual with some small inclination towards other males as well? Why he must be homosexual or bisexual?

Because its not plausible. Exclusively heterosexual men are repulsed by the ano-rectal region of other men. The mere thought of that region promotes a visceral (pre-cognitive) repulsion.

You wrote:

Why he must be homosexual or bisexual?

It’s the result of inference towards the best explanation.

Also, I don’t think Eric’s broader argument hinges on finding a distinct neurological pattern of activation for bisexual men versus homosexual men. Bisexuality could very well be the result of environmental variables operating on a fundamentally homosexual physiology and neurology. This doesn’t challenge Eric’s thesis of homosexuality being due to pre-/peri-natal disturbance.

The studies you allude to actually argue in favour of Eric’s position in that they suggest a distinct physiology and neurology amongst homosexual men versus heterosexual men. Your position—on the other hand—appears to be predicated on foundationless ideas about the “social construction of the homosexual” and the “fluidity of sexual orientation” drawn from queer and gender studies. Had the fMRI-based study you referred to found no difference in patterns of activation between heterosexual and homosexual men then your criticism would be be better founded. You would have had a good position from which to chastise Eric for being arbitrary for categorising Felipe Rivera a homosexual or bisexual.

Let’s consider the crime with reference to the fMRI results you introduced into the discussion. Given that Rivera had forcible anal sex with his victim and later inserted a broom handle into his victim’s anus (which suggests an erotic fixation with the ano-rectal region) which do you think is a more likely scenario? (a) Rivera
has a heterosexual pattern of neurological arousal; or (b) Rivera has a homosexual pattern of neurological arousal? My money is on option (b). This matter will necessarily remain an matter of conjecture because we won’t get the opportunity to test Rivera as per Bailey’s fMRI study. The point is, which is a more likely outcome given what we know?

Peter Z

Posted by Peter Z on February 17, 2008 at 07:41 AM | #

Clovis: I am pressed for time, and a detailed response from me will come later, but I will say this...goddamn do not distort my stances, and if you are incapable of understanding something, then leave the matter alone. You asked, “Please, provide evidence that those heterosexual men who admit having consensual sex with males are not actual heterosexuals.” Did you not see the references/links to taxometric analyses and a study on the subtlety of gender atypicality?

You also wrote, “at another thread, he stated gay men are predominantly heterosexual in adulthood.” Where have I said this? I said that homosexual behaviors have mostly occurred in the predominantly heterosexual, a well-replicated observation. Again, look up the taxometric analyses and see for yourself why the predominantly heterosexual with some level of same-sex attraction/homosexual behavior in lifetime belong to the nonheterosexual taxon.

Your comments in the other thread on the pedophilia issue are full of distortions of my arguments. Do not do this.

Posted by Erik on February 17, 2008 at 11:41 AM | #

“Masturbation isn’t a good analogue because the solitary conditions are ideally conducive to fantasy. Coercing an unwilling partner is not conducive to fantasy.”
Having consensual sex with a partner isn’t either, which doesn’t mean it sometimes is not followed by fantasies involving a different partner, even if the actual partner belongs to one’s gender-age range of attraction. Haven’t you ever heard of men and women who claim to fantasize about someone else whilst having sex?

“I can accept the anecdote about the gay men fantaszing about having sex with a man whilst having sex with their then wife if the (a) the sex was anal; (b) anal entry was from behind; (c) it was a dark or dimly lit room; and the women’s physique was masculinised.”
You may not accept the anecdots, it doesn’t matter. The reality you can’t argue against is that some gay men have sex with persons (females) they’re not attracted to. Some gay men, as I have previously noted, do have children of their own, and, before their children were born, they have to penetrate the vaginas of their female partners. You’re nobody to tell for sure what are the conditions they could or could not fantasize about being with someone else.

“Exclusively heterosexual men are repulsed by the ano-rectal region of other men. The mere thought of that region promotes a visceral (pre-cognitive) repulsion.”
You’re arguing against a strawman. My hypothesis, following Holland’s reasoning that gay males who have sex with females have a degree of bisexuality, is that the rapist mentioned in the article might be a heterosexual male with a degree of bisexuality, not that he is “exclusively heterosexual.”

“Also, I don’t think Eric’s broader argument hinges on finding a distinct neurological pattern of activation for bisexual men versus homosexual men.”
No, that was his argument. When I called to his attention the fact that men who molest male children do react to female stimuli in laboratory tests, Holland wrote:

You said that some of the studies on phallometric studies that I cited actually argue against my argument (...) The vast majority of people with same-sex attraction or homosexual behavior are predominantly heterosexual in adulthood. So finding that lots of male child molesters of boys are attracted toward women or even have majority attraction toward women shouldn’t be surprising.

Except, of course, that gay men (and even teleioiphilic bisexual men) do NOT respond to women in laboratory tests, which invalidates Holland’s objection to my point that offenders against male children are significantly different from gay men when it comes to assessed sexual preferences.

“The studies you allude to actually argue in favour of Eric’s position in that they suggest a distinct physiology and neurology amongst homosexual men versus heterosexual men.”
No. The study I cited argue in favour of my point that teleiophilic bisexuality is either an extreme exception (even when compared to homosexuality), or it is non-existing, and argues against some of Holland’s points in my discussions with him:

- that gay men who have sex with females have a degree of bisexuality;
- and that self-identified heterosexual men with very recent consensual homosexual behavior (which might constitute about 10% of the heterosexual male group) also have a somewhat bisexual orientation and, thus, can not be labeled heterosexual (a stance he’s reiterated in his last post).

“Your position—on the other hand—appears to be predicated on foundationless ideas about the “social construction of the homosexual” and the “fluidity of sexual orientation” drawn from queer and gender studies.”
Your stereotyping of my positions is ridiculous and unfounded. Where have I suggested male sexuality is fluid? My stance that male teleiophilia is heavily fixed when it comes to gender suggests the antipodal opposite of what you seem to see.

“Exclusively heterosexual men are repulsed by the ano-rectal region of other men. The mere thought of that region promotes a visceral (pre-cognitive) repulsion.”
Another ridiculous and stereotyped stance. Are you actually claiming all exclusive heterosexual are repulsed by the anus region? And what about heterosexual men who have anal sex with their girlfriends/wives, or heterosexual rapists who anally penetrate women?

Studies of heterosexual HIV transmission have consistently found anal intercourse to be a highly predictive risk factor for seroconversion (...)The health risks of anal sex appear to be severely underestimated by a substantial proportion of sexually active women and men in North and Latin America as well as parts of South Asia, Africa, and other regions. Among heterosexuals reported rates of condom use are nearly universally lower for anal than for vaginal intercourse (...) U.S. survey and other data suggest that, in terms of absolute numbers, approximately seven times more women than homosexual men engage in unprotected receptive anal intercourse.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10743535?dopt=Abstract

Let’s suppose 100% of male homosexuals and female heterosexuals are sexually active. Let’s also suppose that nearly 100% of homosexual men have had unprotected anal sex. Since they supposedly constitute 2-4% of the male population (which is almost equal in absolute number to the female population), then we could argue about 14-28% of the women have engaged in unprotected anal sex. Given that this proportion of females who’ve engaged in unprotected anal sex is far greater than the proportion of self-identified male bisexual, we can fearlessly assert the overwhelming majority of men who have had unprotected anal sex with females are heterosexual.

There’s more:

The 1992 National Health and Social Life survey, another nationally representative study of 3,159 adults between the ages of 18-59 (response rate: 80%), reported that 25.6% of men and 20.4% of women reported having had anal sex with an opposite-sex partner. Furthermore, 9.1% of married men and 7.3% of married women reported anal intercourse in the past year. (Lauman, Edward O.; Gagnon, John H.; Michael, Robert T.; Michaels, Stuart. The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994): Table 3.6.)

http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2008/01/26/1357

“that Rivera had forcible anal sex with his victim and later inserted a broom handle into his victim’s anus (which suggests an erotic fixation with the ano-rectal region) which do you think is a more likely scenario? (a) Rivera has a heterosexual pattern of neurological arousal; or (b) Rivera has a homosexual pattern of neurological arousal?”
Option (a) is more likely to be true, however, reality is not so black-on-white. I don’t remember having asserted that Rivera *is* heterosexual (and if I did, I retract from that position), only that he *might* be. I have previously at this thread pointed to a study conducted in a large American city, involving a few thousand participants who were asked about their sexual orientation and activities. According to this study, 10% of self-identified heterosexual men had only same-sex partners in the previous year; 72% of those who’ve reported only same-sex partners are self-identified heterosexuals. Not all males who have consensual sex with other males are self-identified homosexuals or bisexuals, so there’s a not-too-small probability that Rivera might not be either.

Holland assumes that those self-identified heterosexuals who behave bisexually or homosexually are not actual heterosexuals (see the above post; he probably believes they’re heterosexuals with bisexual inclinations). However, according to both phallometric data and the aforementioned brain scanning study, those heterosexuals CAN NOT be bisexuals or heterosexuals with a minor bisexual inclination, because according to those studies the bisexual potential of both heterosexual and homosexual men is very low to non-existing, while results from normal bisexuals indicate they’re no different from homosexuals. So, what are those “het” men? The only options left is that they’re heterosexuals or homosexuals. And, if they’re homosexuals, that would put the proportion of male homosexuality above the 10% figure gay activists until a recent past used to reference to.

Posted by Clovis on February 17, 2008 at 09:16 PM | #

“You asked, “Please, provide evidence that those heterosexual men who admit having consensual sex with males are not actual heterosexuals.” Did you not see the references/links to taxometric analyses and a study on the subtlety of gender atypicality?”

Since you’ve read the posts thus far, you’ve seen I have pointed to physiological response studies which question the existence of male bisexuality. *If* heterosexual men who have consensual sex with other men can not be heterosexuals, since according to you exclusive heterosexuals wouldn’t have sex with other males, what are they? According to phallometric and brain scanning studies, they can’t be bisexuals or heterosexuals with a bisexual inclination either. The author of one of the taxometric studies you pointed is Michael Bailey, who’s also the author of the latest study questioning male bisexuality: http://susiebright.blogs.com/BiMen.pdf

“I said that homosexual behaviors have mostly occurred in the predominantly heterosexual, a well-replicated observation.”

This is what you wrote:

You said that some of the studies on phallometric studies that I cited actually argue against my argument. Firstly, penile plethysmography is a poor diagnostic tool. Secondly, consider the distribution of same- and opposite-sex attraction. Most self-identified homosexuals have either experienced opposite-sex attraction or heterosexual sex at some point of their lives. Lifetime-exclusive homosexuals are rare. The vast majority of people with same-sex attraction or homosexual behavior are predominantly heterosexual in adulthood.

It does seem that I’ve misrepresented your assertion. That was not intentional, and I hope my admission convince you of that. However, the sentences were indeed ambigous, and what you wrote could be interpreted the way I’d read. We were talking about heterosexual attraction in male homosexuals, and you started your response by mentioning them and finished by referencing to “people with same-sex attraction or homosexual behavior”, who can be understood to be homosexuals themselves. You didn’t draw the line the way you’ve just done between homosexuals and persons with homosexual fantasies.

“Again, look up the taxometric analyses and see for yourself why the predominantly heterosexual with some level of same-sex attraction/homosexual behavior in lifetime belong to the nonheterosexual taxon.”

The taxometric studies you referenced to are based on self-reports, self-perception of a subjective nature that is likely to vary within personality traits (opennes to experience, degree of self-desclosure, etc.) and, obviously, is subjected to conscious omission of information, specially information on less than acceptable pratices, thoughts, desires, etc. Physiological response studies do not suffer from the same drawbacks: despite all of its imperfections, phallometric studies can detect deviant or uncommon interests even in individuals who deny them, and can point to faking by individuals being assessed. And what do phallometric studies say? That heterosexuals are exclusively attracted to females, that homosexuals are exclusively attracted to males, and that heterosexuals’ and homosexuals’ responses to non-preferred categories are not significantly different from their responses to neutral, non-sexual stimuli. And, at least in this respect, brain scanning studies, which are even less susceptible to faking than phallometric tests, agree with them. Between studies based on subjective self-report indicating a great grey area between heterosexuality and homosexuality, and studies objectively verifiable indicating a fixed orientation in teleiophilic males, like Peter Z., I bet my money on the latter.

“Your comments in the other thread on the pedophilia issue are full of distortions of my arguments.”

It’s too easy to dismiss a discussion by implying that the debater is distorting your stances without pointing them out. And that’s why I’m here: to point out your distortions and doubtful argumentation.

You continue to cite those “taxometric studies” and to avoid physiological reaction studies. I want you to comment on the studies I’ve cited. Do not avoid them. And finally respond to the question I posted days ago: since the bisexual potential in males is nearly non-existing, what is the appropriate label for self-identified heterosexuals who have consensual sex with males? They can’t be heterosexual, right?, since according yo you exclusive heterosexuals are so repulsed by the thought of having sex with other males. So what are they?

Posted by Clovis on February 17, 2008 at 10:32 PM | #

"It’s too easy to dismiss a discussion by implying that the debater is distorting your stances without pointing them [the distortions] out.”

Posted by Clovis on February 17, 2008 at 11:39 PM | #

Clovis: You wrote,

Having consensual sex with a partner isn’t either, which doesn’t mean it sometimes is not followed by fantasies involving a different partner, even if the actual partner belongs to one’s gender-age range of attraction. Haven’t you ever heard of men and women who claim to fantasize about someone else whilst having sex?

I don’t think you are being charitable in regards to interpreting what I write and I have no interest in continuing such a discussion if that is how you will continue.

The reason why I claim there is a disanalogy between masturbation and anal rape is because of the coercive component which is unconducive to egosyntonic fantasy. Besides the physical extertion required to subdue the victim—which diverts attention from the necessary fantasy—there is the constant stream of contradictory sensory experience (eg. the screams and grunts of a man, the texture
of the victims skin, the victims smell).

The fantasies of heterosexual couples during intercourse is disanalogous (because there is no coercion) and irrelevant (the fantasies are consistent with sexual orientation).

You wrote:

The reality you can’t argue against is that some gay men have sex with persons (females) they’re not attracted to. Some gay men, as I have previously noted, do have children of their own, and, before their children were born, they have to penetrate the vaginas of their female partners. You’re nobody to tell for sure what are the conditions they could or could not fantasize about being with
someone else.

I don’t need to argue against that. These gay men—as Erik has reiterated—are simply not exclusively homosexual. They may not even need to fantasize.

You wrote:

You’re arguing against a strawman. My hypothesis, following Holland’s reasoning that gay males who have sex with females have a degree of bisexuality, is that the rapist mentioned in the article might be a heterosexual male with a degree of bisexuality, not that he is “exclusively heterosexual.”

The evidence doesn’t converge towards that conclusion. The taxometry-based studies Erik referred you to suggest otherwise. A heterosexual male with a degree of bisexuality” isn’t a heterosexual male, he is a bisexual male.

You wrote:

Except, of course, that gay men (and even teleioiphilic bisexual men) do NOT respond to women in laboratory tests, which invalidates Holland’s objection to my point that offenders against male children are significantly different from gay men when it comes to assessed sexual preferences.

I don’t think the evidence warrants your conclusion. Although a distinct objective bisexual pattern of arousal is elusive a subjective pattern has been found (eg. “Sexual arousal patterns of bisexual men”, Rieger et al, 2005). Bisexuality may very well be the product of an environmental influence upon a homosexual orientation. The existence of a distinct subjective bisexual pattern of arousal
suggests that much.

You wrote:

Another ridiculous and stereotyped stance. Are you actually claiming all exclusive heterosexual are repulsed by the anus region? And what about heterosexual men who have anal sex with their girlfriends/wives, or heterosexual rapists who anally penetrate women?

This is a fine example of your absence of “interpretive charity” and it is indicative of your bad faith.

You should know that I am claiming that exclusively hetersosexual men are repulsed by the anorectal region of other men. That some heterosexual men enjoy anal sex with women is undisputed.

You wrote:

Option (a) is more likely to be true, however, reality is not so black-on-white...Not all males who have consensual sex with other males are self-identified homosexuals or bisexuals, so there’s a not-too-small probability that Rivera might not be either.

You are giving undue weight to self-identification. Some cultures have a strange conceptualisation of homosexuality such that only the receptive partner is a deemed homosexual if the insertive partner never assumes a receptive role and also has sex with women. Asking people to categorise themselves is highly problematic. You are inviting in all of their cultural and personal cognitive filters and self-concept. The issue isn’t what these people self-identify as it is rather what they are actually are with reference to their preferences and behaviours.

You wrote:

Holland assumes that those self-identified heterosexuals who behave bisexually or homosexually are not actual heterosexuals (see the above post;he probably believes they’re heterosexuals with bisexual inclinations).

Again you are giving undue weight to self-identification.

You wrote:

However, according to both phallometric data and the aforementioned brain scanning study, those heterosexuals CAN NOT be bisexuals or heterosexuals with a minor bisexual inclination, because according to those studies the bisexual potential of both heterosexual and homosexual men is very low to non-existing,
while results from normal bisexuals indicate they’re no different from homosexuals.

The plethysmographic and fMRI studies don’t warrant your conclusion. A subjective bases for bisexuality has not been ruled out and has actually been suggested. There needn’t be a distinct biological and neurological basis for bisexuality (as distinct from homosexuality) to justify the use of the bisexual taxa.

-Peter Z

Posted by Peter Z on February 18, 2008 at 01:31 AM | #

I don’t think you are being charitable in regards to interpreting what I write and I have no interest in continuing such a discussion if that is how you will continue.

That’s OK.

The reason why I claim there is a disanalogy between masturbation and anal rape is because of the coercive component which is unconducive to egosyntonic fantasy.

Peter Z., do you have anything that supports your statement, aside from speculation?

You’ve recognized that Rivera’s sexuality is not something that can be decided for sure, and I have stated the same at the above posts. It was Holland who decided to state, from the beginning, that a “A Homosexual or Bisexual Man Rape(d) a Man.”

Besides the physical extertion required to subdue the victim—which diverts attention from the necessary fantasy—there is the constant stream of contradictory sensory experience (eg. the screams and grunts of a man, the texture of the victims skin, the victims smell).

Your psychobabling isn’t impressive, Peter. I’ll repeat: do you have proof that Rivera couldn’t be fantasizing about anally raping a woman while he violated that gay man? You don’t have proof, and I predict that you’re going to respond (if you’re going at all) that my interpretation is not charitable, or something like that. You have recognized that Rivera’s sexuality is something that probably only he knows, hiwever when then do you still argue in favour of Holland’s labeling?

The fantasies of heterosexual couples during intercourse is disanalogous (because there is no coercion) and irrelevant (the fantasies are consistent with sexual orientation).

All of you’re conclusions are too fast and easy, not to say convenient, to make. Evidence that coercion would make difficult or impossible to fantasize, or that Rivera couldn’t have been imagining of anally penetrating a woman whilst raping a guy, you show none. And if you’re willing to speculate on why and how every person belonging to each different type of sexual orientation category behaves when crossing his preference, at least be humble and do not present them as objective truth. “Gay men wouldn’t be able to pretend their female partners are men if they didn’t have sex with them on the dark, if the sex is not anal or oral, if the woman is not somewhat masculine, and so forth”; “Rivera couldn’t be fantasising about a woman target when raping that man because he was coercing the guy, sexual coercion would distract him from his fantasies”; “actual heterosexual men can not have consensual with other males.” Nothing but spectulations, but you don’t flag them as such.

If a heterosexual couple is not a good analogy because one partner belongs to the gender-age preference of the other, what about men who cross that gender-age preference? See, for example, incestuous heterosexual child molesters. Most of them, specially fathers and stepfathers, are conventional heterosexuals(1) who regress to sex with children because of reasons other than sexual attraction.(2) However, since conventional heterosexuals feel little to no arousal to female child stimuli(2), how would they be able to penetrate their (step)daughters bodies, since their bodies and genitalias are so different from adult females’? Fantasy about a more preferred partner is very likely a common resort, however, would they be able to do so, while coercing the child, and being confronted by her protestations and horror expressions?

Unconvincing? OK. What about the aforementioned gay men who were married to women and, still, are not attracted to them? Women are outside of their attraction range, but still they sometimes are able to have full intercourse with them, and proof of that is that gay men do have biological children on their own. Speculation that those men are not completely homosexual not only is unfounded, just one more spectulation of yours, which by the way contradicts a phallometric and brain scanning studies which you previously seemed to have no problem about, but fortunately it is contradicted by some available research.

Freund, who’d conducted many phallometric assessment on samples of homosexuals, heterosexuals, rapists and child molesters, wrote the following(3):

The [homosexual] patient may marry and have children, but afterwards his heterosexual adaptation may deteriorate to such a degree that he will not be able to further sustain the marital relationship.

Further at the article he wrote:

Androphilic males, as a rule, erotically respond to pictures of nude females as little as to sexually neutral pictures.

Freund wrote that in spite of habing studied androphiles married to women, or because of it?

According to wikipedia:

[Freund] demonstrated that even homosexually oriented men who appeared to have given up sexual relations with other men and established heterosexual marriages were still aroused by images of men rather than women.

To sum up:

I. Gay men (androphiles) are no more aroused to female stimuli than they’re to non-sexual stumuli.
II. Heterosexually commited gay men are no different from typical gay men, that is, they’re not attracted to the female body.
III. Many of their marriages are ruined, even after having produced children, because they can’t keep having sex with females while having no contact with males.

The catastrophic ending of their marriages can only can only that those men were acting despite their inner desires and attraction, not because of some attraction to females, as you and Holland assume. They’re still, according to their desires, exclusive homosexuals.

I’ll continue with the assertion that a heterosexual couple is a poor choice for an analogy, because one partner still belongs to the attraction range of the other. I’ve cited already incest offenders against children and gay men. Now a verifiable anecdote: a homosexual pedophile, when asnwering a questionnare whose results were published on a 1983 book(4) by British researchers, wrote the following when asked about his attitudes on sex with adults:

“With little interest - have had sexual encounters with women and men but only really enjoyed them when I fantasised that they were boys.”

Men and women are very different from boys. Women differ extremely from boys in body type, and men differ in body smell, texture, and somewhat in body type. Still, that pedophile asserted he was able to enjoy sex with them despite the obvious differences. Why can’t a heterosexual man? a gay man?

Although a distinct objective bisexual pattern of arousal is elusive a subjective pattern has been found (eg. “Sexual arousal patterns of bisexual men”, Rieger et al, 2005).

I’ve cited this study previously. The authors didn’t find that there is a distict bisexual pattern of subjective arousal. They just reported that bisexuals’ rating of the videos was close to the predicted bisexual pattern, while their sexual arousal pattern was not. Whether or not those ratings reflect the truth is yet to be demonstrated. As I’ve already commented to Holland, self-reported data are not so trustworthy because they’re subjected to a wide range of factors that affect the way they’re presented. In a study(5) reporting correlations between viewing time of pictures of females and males of different ages, sexual arousal and rating of sexual attractiveness in a sample of normal heterosexual men and child molesters, the authors found that the three measures were highly correlated in the sample of normal men, but not in the sample of child molesters: while they, just like the control group, rated the adult female pictures by far the most attractive, they responded significantly more to the stimuli depicting adolescent girls and very young girls than to all other categories. What then? Do those child molesters have a subjective teleiophilic heterosexual pattern of arousal, or were they just skewing their ratings in order to confirm the image they wanted others to have of them?

In the brain scanning I cited earlier, Bailey commented on a subject who, despite identifying himself as heterosexual, responded, compared to the other ‘heterosexual’ subjects, too positively to the male stimuli and too negatively to the female stimuli (Bailey believes he’s homosexual in orientation but heterosexual in self-concept). If asked to rate the pictures he was exposed to in a rank of sexual attractiveness, how do you think he would rate them?

This is a fine example of your absence of “interpretive charity” and it is indicative of your bad faith.

My bad. I just missed the last bit of your sentence, just like you missed the first bit of a sentence of mine in your first reply to me. No bad faith involved.

On this issue still… You asserted that a heterosexual man couldn’t have sex with a male partners because of different smells and texture of the partner’s skin. However, you assume gay men do not face the same problem when having sex with women. Some of them wouldn’t even need to fantasize and they probably are not even exclusive homosexuals. However, again I ask you: can’t Rivera be a non-exclusive heterosexual that would have sex with a male partner without such a gigantic effort to ignore his victim’s obvious differences from an ideal partner/victim (a female)?

The issue isn’t what these people self-identify as it is rather what they are actually are with reference to their preferences and behaviours.

What I’m saying since the beginning is that sexual behaviors do not reflect sexual preferences entirely. Throughout many of his articles, Holland cites figures that put the homosexual population to be 40 or 50 times smaller than the general population. If we include the homosexual-acting, but heterosexual-identifying population in the homosexual/bisexual group, that proportion, at least according to the study I cited previously in this discussion, would be far greater, perhaps greater than 1/10 (greater than even the distorted figures gay activists cited). I wouldn’t expect such a high proportion of homosexuals/bisexuals to be reflective of the truth for many reasons. But the only way to try to find out the truth is to look at self-reported data (you accused me of relying too much on self-identification, and I accused you of relying too much on self-reported data), or to assess the sexual preferences of a great random sample of men (perhaps and unrealistic project).

The plethysmographic and fMRI studies don’t warrant your conclusion.

The do—so far they’ve indicated normal males are either exclusively heterosexual or homosexual in their sexual responses, with little or nothing in-between.

References:
(1) The Sex Pref. of Inc. Off. (1999), M. Seto, M. Lalumiere, M. Kuban
(2) A COmpar. of neuroend. and gen. factors in homo. and pedo. (1993), R. Langevin
(3) Hetero. Int. in Homo. Males (1975), K. Freund, R. Langevin, T. Wescom, Y. Zajac
(4) The Child-L. (1983), G. Wilson, D. Cox
(5) View. Time As A Meas. of Sex. Int. among Ch. Molest. and Norm. Het. Men. (1995), G. Harris, M. Rice, V. Quinsey, T. Chaplin

Posted by Clovis on February 21, 2008 at 02:54 PM | #

Sorry for the many typos.

Posted by Clovis on February 21, 2008 at 02:56 PM | #

I’m going to repost what I posted previously because some of the sentences in the previous message do not even make sense.

The reason why I claim there is a disanalogy between masturbation and anal rape is because of the coercive component which is unconducive to egosyntonic fantasy.

Peter Z., do you have anything that supports your statement, aside from speculation?

You’ve recognized that Rivera’s sexuality is not something that can be decided for sure, and I have stated the same at the above posts. It was Holland who decided to state, from the beginning, that a “A Homosexual or Bisexual Man Rape(d) a Man.”

Besides the physical extertion required to subdue the victim—which diverts attention from the necessary fantasy—there is the constant stream of contradictory sensory experience (eg. the screams and grunts of a man, the texture of the victims skin, the victims smell).

Your psychobabling isn’t impressive, Peter. I’ll repeat: do you have proof that Rivera couldn’t be fantasizing about anally raping a woman while he violated that gay man? You don’t have proof, and I predict that you’re going to respond (if you’re going at all) that my interpretation is not charitable, or something like that. You have recognized that Rivera’s sexuality is something that probably only he knows—why then do you still argue in favour of Holland’s labeling?

The fantasies of heterosexual couples during intercourse is disanalogous (because there is no coercion) and irrelevant (the fantasies are consistent with sexual orientation).

All of your conclusions are too fast and easy, not to say convenient, to make. Evidence that coercion would make difficult or impossible to fantasize, or that Rivera couldn’t have been imagining of anally penetrating a woman whilst raping a guy, you show none. And if you’re willing to speculate on why and how every person belonging to each different type of sexual orientation category behaves when crossing his preference, at least be humble and do not present them as objective truth. “Gay men wouldn’t be able to pretend their female partners are men if they didn’t have sex with them on the dark, if the sex is not anal or oral, if the woman is not somewhat masculine, and so forth”; “Rivera couldn’t be fantasising about a woman target when raping that man because he was coercing the guy, sexual coercion would distract him from his fantasies”; “actual heterosexual men can not have consensual with other males.” Nothing but spectulations, but you don’t flag them as such.

If a heterosexual couple is not a good analogy because one partner belongs to the gender-age preference of the other, what about men who cross that gender-age preference? See, for example, incestuous heterosexual child molesters. Most of them, specially fathers and stepfathers, are conventional heterosexuals(1) who regress to sex with children because of reasons other than sexual attraction.(2) However, since conventional heterosexuals feel little to no arousal to female child stimuli(2), how would they be able to penetrate their (step)daughters bodies, since their bodies and genitalias are so different from adult females’? Fantasy about a more preferred partner is very likely a common resort, however, would they be able to do so, while coercing the child, and being confronted by her protestations and horror expressions?

Unconvincing? OK. What about the aforementioned gay men who were married to women and, still, are not attracted to them? Women are outside of their attraction range, but still they sometimes are able to have full intercourse with them, and proof of that is that gay men do have biological children on their own. Speculation that those men are not completely homosexual not only is unfounded, just one more spectulation of yours, but fortunately it is contradicted by some available research.

Freund, who’d conducted many phallometric assessment on samples of homosexuals, heterosexuals, rapists and child molesters, wrote the following(3):

The [homosexual] patient may marry and have children, but afterwards his heterosexual adaptation may deteriorate to such a degree that he will not be able to further sustain the marital relationship.

Further at the article he wrote:

Androphilic males, as a rule, erotically respond to pictures of nude females as little as to sexually neutral pictures.

Freund wrote that in spite of having studied androphiles married to women, or because of it?

According to wikipedia:

[Freund] demonstrated that even homosexually oriented men who appeared to have given up sexual relations with other men and established heterosexual marriages were still aroused by images of men rather than women.

To sum up:

I. Gay men (androphiles) are no more aroused to female stimuli than they’re to non-sexual stumuli.
II. Heterosexually commited gay men are no different from typical gay men, that is, they’re not attracted to the female body.
III. Many of their marriages are ruined, even after having produced children, because they can’t keep having sex with females while having no contact with males.

The <b>catastrophic ending of their marriages can only that those men were acting despite their inner desires and attraction, not because of some attraction to females, as you and Holland assume. They’re still, according to their desires, exclusive homosexuals.

I’ll continue with the assertion that a heterosexual couple is a poor choice for an analogy, because one partner still belongs to the attraction range of the other. I’ve cited already incest offenders against children and gay men. Now a verifiable anecdote: a homosexual pedophile, when answering a questionnare whose results were published in a 1983 book(4) by British researchers, wrote the following when asked about his attitudes on sex with adults:

“With little interest - have had sexual encounters with women and men but only really enjoyed them when I fantasised that they were boys.”

Although a distinct objective bisexual pattern of arousal is elusive a subjective pattern has been found (eg. “Sexual arousal patterns of bisexual men”, Rieger et al, 2005).

I’ve cited this study previously. The authors didn’t find that there is a distinct bisexual pattern of subjective arousal. They just reported that bisexuals’ rating of the videos was close to the predicted bisexual pattern, while their sexual arousal pattern was not. Whether or not those ratings reflect the truth is yet to be demonstrated. As I’ve already commented to Holland, self-reported data are not so trustworthy because they’re subjected to a wide range of factors that affect the way they’re presented. In a study(5) reporting correlations between viewing time of pictures of females and males of different ages, sexual arousal and rating of sexual attractiveness in a sample of normal heterosexual men and child molesters, the authors found that the three measures were highly correlated in the sample of normal men, but not in the sample of child molesters: while they, just like the control group, rated the adult female pictures by far the most attractive, they responded significantly more to the stimuli depicting adolescent girls and very young girls than to all other categories. What then? Do those child molesters have a subjective teleiophilic heterosexual pattern of arousal, or were they just skewing their ratings in order to confirm the image they wanted others to have of them?

This is a fine example of your absence of “interpretive charity” and it is indicative of your bad faith.

My bad. I just missed the last bit of your sentence, just like you missed the first bit of a sentence of mine in your first reply to me. No bad faith involved.

The issue isn’t what these people self-identify as it is rather what they are actually are with reference to their preferences and behaviours.

What I’m saying since the beginning is that sexual behaviors do not reflect sexual preferences entirely. Throughout many of his articles, Holland cites figures that put the homosexual population to be 40 or 50 times smaller than the general population. If we include the homosexual-acting, but heterosexual-identifying population in the homosexual/bisexual group, that proportion, at least according to the study I cited previously in this discussion, would be far greater, perhaps greater than 1/10 (greater than even the distorted figures gay activists used to cite). I wouldn’t expect such a high proportion of homosexuals/bisexuals to be reflective of the truth for many reasons. But the only way to try to find out the truth is to look at self-reported data (you accused me of relying too much on self-identification, and I accused you of relying too much on self-reported data), or, better still, to assess the sexual preferences of a great random sample of men (perhaps an unrealistic project).

The plethysmographic and fMRI studies don’t warrant your conclusion.

They do—so far they’ve indicated normal males are either exclusively heterosexual or homosexual in their sexual responses, with little or nothing in-between.

Posted by Clovis on February 21, 2008 at 03:12 PM | #

OK, I quit.

Posted by Clovis on February 21, 2008 at 03:14 PM | #

Clovis: You are ignoring the cited taxometric studies and their significance.

-Peter Z

Posted by Peter Z on February 24, 2008 at 12:02 AM | #

Clovis: Another observation. You seem to arguing that Erik and I require a phenomenological record of Rivera’s experience whilst he was performing the rape. You are asking for an objective account of Rivera’s subjective experience in detailed phenomenological terms. Without such an account—which is unobtainable—no inference is permitted regarding Rivera’s sexual orientation and preferences. That seems to be the substance of your argument.

Even if I had access to Rivera and was able to solicit from him a phenomenological account of his crime you could always contend that he was lying, that his recall was being distorted by various cognitive biases or some such evasion. If tested using a plethysmograph or fMRI you could contend that he was manipulating the outcome by engaging in calculated fantasy.

Your standard of evidence is unsatisfiable. You may as well just fall back on the venerable philosophical problem of “other minds”. How can we be sure that Rivera even has a mind?
Your line of argument is disingenuous and can be (facetiously) applied to any explanation of human behaviour that invokes subjectivity to justify an accusation of speculation. But that is just epistemological sophistry.

Erik’s implicit account of Rivera’s subjectivity during his crime provides the most economical explanation that is consistent with the scientific knowledge regarding homosexuality and bisexuality (including the cited taxometric analyses), the physiology of erectile function and the form, content and limits of sexual fantasy as I experience it. Yes I am invoking my own subjective experience in attempting to understand that of someone else. In this context it is permissable, and because it converges towards the same conclusion as the other (objective) evidence, it is also justified.

For this reason it is entirely reasonable to conclude that Rivera is a bisexual.

-Peter Z

Posted by Peter Z on February 24, 2008 at 01:19 AM | #

PETER Z,

Can you give me the definition of “phenomenological” and describe its relevance to your use in the above comment.

I seriously doubt there is any person on the face of this earth that would have the specific knowledge or ability to consciously “manipulate” a plethysmograph, in particular reference to an FMRI. Exactly what do you think is being measured wtih a plethysmograph?

I believe you are wrong in using “disingenuous” as a description of Clovis. Seems he/she is very sincere in their argument. Or could there be another reason you have used this word? On that same remark, I believe facetiously would also be an inaccurate description.

“But that is just epistemological sophistry.” What are you trying to say with that statement?

BTW… It’s taximetrics, numerical phenetics, or numerical taxonomy not taxometric.

I would like to interject a paragraph from the very study you are citing

“Males do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual. The world is not divided into sheep and goats. Not all things are black nor all things white. It is fundamental to taxonomy that nature rarely deals with discrete categories. Only the human mind invents categories and tries to force facts into pigeon holes.”

I would like hear your definition of Taximetrics. I do not understand your statement:

“Erik’s implicit account of Rivera’s subjectivity during his crime provides the most economical explanation that is consistent with the scientific knowledge regarding homosexuality and bisexuality (including the cited taxometric analyses), the physiology of erectile function and the form, content and limits of sexual fantasy as I experience it.”

What are you trying to say in that paragraph?

Can you further explain your reasoning for coming to the conclusion that Rivera was “bisexual.”

Also, what is your background?

Posted by Robert Williamson on May 10, 2008 at 03:23 AM | #

Also, what are you really trying to argue about this article? Are you trying to argue that Rivera is straight, bisexual or homosexual? Are you trying to argue that a straight man can’t rape another man? Behaviorally, males raping women aren’t interested in the sexual act itself. The rape is domination, power, pain, etc… not sexuality.

The article is inacurately written:

“What LaBarbera doesn’t seem to understand however is that 1) we don’t know whether Rivera really made the offer, 2) we don’t know Rivera’s sexual orientation (was the offer real or a taunt?), and 2) Rivera’s orientation has no bearing on whether this is a hate crime or not. If a Black man who holds White supremacist views (and believe it or not, a very few of them exist) attacks an African-American solely because of his race, then it’s a hate crime.”

1) Rivera made no offer, he was the assailant.
2) Again, is #2 indicating Rivera made the sexual advance?

Also, Rivera’s orientation IS relevant. If he is homosexual and raped another homosexual it would not be considered a hate crime.

Posted by Robert Williamson on May 10, 2008 at 03:48 AM | #

Robert Williamson: You don’t know what you are talking about and should for that reason keep out of the argument. Taximetrics and taxometrics are two different—but related—things. Taximtetry—also known as phenetics—is concerned with classifying organisms based on their similarities. Taxometrics is a generic data analyses method that is concerned with discerning categories from continua and with defining indicators of identified categories. The cited study is taxometric and that is evident from its name: Taxometric Analyses of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity.

My use of the term phenomenological is conventional. Go away and look it up.

Any argument that is predicated on a demand for an objective account of subjective experience is nothing more than “epistemological sophistry”. Again my use of the terms epistemological and sophistry are conventional. Go away and look them up.

My background is such that I understand the difference between taximetrics and taxometrics and I can read the name of a paper

-Peter Z

Posted by Peter Z on May 10, 2008 at 12:37 PM | #

Peter Z

It’s nice that you can read the name of a paper, it still doesn’t mean you know what it is or that it’s used correctly.

The arguments of bisexuality, the indication of or absence of, have somehow became a part of the argument for this case when that indication has no bearing on the article.

No, your use of “phenomenological” is not conventional, if it were you would have easily indicated your usage and why.

It’s easy to see that you’re not a researcher, have any research background, or truly understand it.

Anyone can cite studies, just make sure their content is relevant to the argument at hand.

You can use all the big words you can look up and it still doesn’t make you any smarter. Your arguments have no foundation to the content of this article.

Posted by Robert Williamson on May 12, 2008 at 12:54 AM | #

Robert Williamson: You confused taximetry with taxometry—which implies that you don’t even know what taxometrics is—and now you presume to lecture me about the topic.

I used the term phenomenology to refer to lived subjective experience, i.e. what the rapist was experiencing in his mind whilst commiting the rape. This usage is common in psychiatry, psychology and criminology.

Demanding objective evidence of the most likely phenomenology of the rapist is a specious line of reasoning. It is superficially persuasive—just like the arguments of the Sophists—but it doesn’t withstand any scrutiny. Hence I labeled this tactic “epistemological sophistry”.

The study that Erik cites (and which I have provided a link to the full document) has nothing to do with taximetry, it is not concerned with classifying plants and animals into taxa. Gangestad et al’s uses taxometric analyses to demonstrate that non-heterosexuals are actually bisexual.

It is easy to see that you are an ideologue with little interest in inquiry and truth.

Further, you are resorting to an argument from (alleged) authority very early. That is lame. You are by implication a skilled researcher with a privileged relationship to the truth which I am unable to enjoy. I don’t understand how a self-proclaimed expert such as yourself can fail to understand the difference between taximetry and taxometry and then assume that Erik is citing a paper about plant and animal classification to support his argument. How can I be expected to take you seriously?

-Peter Z

Posted by Peter Z on May 12, 2008 at 02:32 AM | #

I did not confuse the terms taximetry and taxometrics, That’s your assumption and it’s false. Please don’t make an assumption when no information exists to pre-clude the basis for your assumption.

Your stating that your use of phenomenology, and Eriks assumption, is that there is a basis for Rivera to somehow be bisexual or homosexual and no 100% homosexual. There isn’t enough information in the article to make that assumption, no matter how big a word is to help you support it. Historically, most rapes are not sexually driven. Mot of these rapes are driven by rage, anger, power, domination, pain, etc… There’s no information to indicate Rivera was sexually (aroused) motivated in wanting to rape this man.

Your summary of the study as all homosexuals are bisexual is laughable at best. Trust me, I have never had one single erotic thought about a female and I personally know many many more homsexuals who will tell you the same thing. We mostly laugh at these studies because their methods and outcomes are comedic at best.

Actually, the truth I can see is this 1) An automatic inference was made that Rivera must have been bisexual or homosexual because he raped a man. Get out the DSMIV, look up rape, then tell me what you think. 2) I am suprised that this argument has come down to whether Rivera was gay, bi or straight. He was involved in an attack on another man that was motivated from perception. The fact that Rivera’s own mother had a restraining order against him would indicate there may have been some sort of mental distress previously occurring in Rivera. 3) Why is it always indicated that we’re not who we are? I know exactly who I am. I’m gay, and have no desire to be with a woman. However, someone always seems to cite a study that would indicate something that is totally out in left field about who I am.

How can you be expected to take me seriously? I don’t understand the need to explain the sexuality of Rivera. His action was rape, which has an incredibly high number of non-sexual related incidents. I will make a reference now:

“A Cicero man angry about an alleged homosexual advance raped the man he claimed propositioned him, and then sodomized him with a broomstick, officials said.”

Don’t take my word on anything. Consult the DSMIV or any psychologist/psychiatrist and ask them what their professional conclusion would be when a rape would involve someone using an object to inflict pain and humiliation on their subject. He didn’t just stalk him and force him to have sex.

I don’t understand the need to cite this study and that study about someones interpretation of sexuality when the article clearly indicates (from Rivera’s actions) Rivera’s thought process was not sexual in nature.

However, I’m sure you are still going to argue your point of sexuality. On that subject I disagree and can’t imagine a study you could show me that would cause me to agree with you. I’ve worked in the mental health field for many years and with many different populations, the statistics of rape are almost always the same with every population (possibly exclusing the mildly to severely mentally impaired and pre-teen children). Rarely is rape motivated by sexual attraction of just wanting to have sex.

Posted by Robert Williamson on May 12, 2008 at 08:23 AM | #

Robert Williamson: You wrote

I did not confuse the terms taximetry and taxometrics, That’s your assumption and it’s false. Please don’t make an assumption when no information exists to pre-clude the basis for your assumption.

Sorry, you did confuse the two, you wrote:

BTW… It’s taximetrics, numerical phenetics, or numerical taxonomy not taxometric.

Gangestad et al has nothing to do with taximetrics, phenetics or taxonomy. It is a study that uses taxometric analytical methods.

You wrote:

Your summary of the study as all homosexuals are bisexual is laughable at best. Trust me, I have never had one single erotic thought about a female and I personally know many many more homsexuals who will tell you the same thing. We mostly laugh at these studies because their methods and outcomes are comedic at best.

This demonstrates either one of two things: (a) you are a dullard; or (b) you are desperate.

I didn’t say or imply that all homosexuals are bisexual. Rather, I said all non-heterosexuals are bisexual. A non-heterosexual is not synonymous with a homosexual. A non-heterosexual is typically someone that self-identifies as “heterosexual” but happens also to be an MSM. Gangestad et al shows that these “heterosexuals” that have sex with men (or fantasize about having sex with men) are in fact members of the bisexual taxon.

You wrote:

Get out the DSMIV, look up rape, then tell me what you think

Well I have DSM-IV-TR (the latest edition) by my side and the word “rape” doesn’t appear in the index ("Rapid-cycling specifier for mood disorder” is the first entry under “R"). But why would the DSM have an entry on rape, the DSM is a manual for differential diagnosis and classification of psychopathology not a criminology reference? What I think? I think you are an intellectual fraud that hasn’t even held a copy of the DSM.

You wrote:

Why is it always indicated that we’re not who we are? I know exactly who I am. I’m gay, and have no desire to be with a woman. However, someone always seems to cite a study that would indicate something that is totally out in left field about who I am.

I don’t care who or what you are and it isn’t relevant.

You wrote:

Don’t take my word on anything.

Believe me I don’t and I have no intention of doing so. You are little more than a poor man’s ideologue. I expect you to soon launch into a soliloquy about homophobia.

Consult the DSMIV or any psychologist/psychiatrist and ask them what their professional conclusion would be when a rape would involve someone using an object to inflict pain and humiliation on their subject. He didn’t just stalk him and force him to have sex.

Well I have read most of the DSM-IV-TR and it makes no pronouncements about rape, as I already stated the word “rape” doesn’t appear in the index.

Any psychologist/psychiatrist. Really? The essential feature of Riviera’s crime is that he anally penetrated his victim both with his penis and with a foreign object. That he also used a foreign object also only demonstrates that he was a sadistic, violent bisexual as opposed to merely a violent bisexual.

You wrote:

On that subject I disagree and can’t imagine a study you could show me that would cause me to agree with you.

I don’t expect you to be persuaded by any evidence irrespective of how compelling it is. None of your beliefs on this matter are evidence based. They are based on a self-serving ideology, nothing more.

You wrote:

I’ve worked in the mental health field for many years

As what? A receptionist in a clinic? A cleaner in a psychiatric hospital? A social worker? Who cares? Even if you were the head of psychiatry in a major teaching hospital (which you most clearly aren’t) then at best you would be committing the fallacy of making an argument from authority. Your work experience has no bearing on the truth or falsity of a proposition.

Posted by Peter Z on May 12, 2008 at 10:09 AM | #

I had a response written and the webpage messed up when I was sending. So, I revert to my last question:

PETER Z: I do believe “work experience” has everything to do with someones argument when discussing medical/behavioral instances. What is YOUR background?

Posted by Robert Williamson on May 15, 2008 at 05:11 PM | #

Peter Z., I see you yourself are not homosexual, but yet that didn’t restrained you from inventing conditions under which gay men could effectively have sex with a female. The female must be masculine, the sex has to be anal and practiced in the dark, and so on… You didn’t offer evidence on which you based those restrictions, and I’m pretty sure there isn’t any. As I wrote previously, that was all speculation. And now I can do nothing but laugh at your pseudo-intellectual attempts at “epistemological skepticism”, since it was you and Holland—not me!—who tried to rule the conditions under which gay men (and later heterosexual men: “all heterosexual men react with disgust when imanining ‘that area’ of the male anatomy") could derive subjective positive reaction from sex with a female based on nothing but spectulation.

“Even if I had access to Rivera and was able to solicit from him a phenomenological account of his crime you could always contend that he was lying”

If Rivera were to give a detailed account of his sexual practices, his gender preferences, and so on, I really doubt his answers would be satisfying to you. This is a man who attacked a gay male after his victim allegedly made a pass at him. Rivera doesn’t seem to be a person who is used to and/or satisfied in being perceived as a desired sexual partner by another male, and, like many other heterosexual males in this kind of situation, Rivera reacted badly—except that most violent heterosexuals wouldn’t react to such a ‘provocation’ by sexually attacking the target. Sure I would be interested in knowing what men like Rivera say about their sexual orientation under non-threatening conditions, as well as to what extent do objective measures of sexual arousal confirm or contradict their statements… But that’s all. Despite self-reports on sexual matters should be taken with a grant of salt, it wouldn’t be me who would evade from existing evidence. Remember, it was not me who tried by any means to define Rivera’s sexual orientation based on one sexual “encounter”—nowhere have I said he is heterosexual, bisexual or homosexual—and I frankly have no precise opinion on this matter; all I’ve done this far is questioning Holland’s—and later yours—attempts to label Rivera’s preferences and argue that even if Rivera is a ‘queer’ that doesn’t mean his crime should not be considered a bias crime, since according to his own account the assault was motivated by anger at homosexual men.

“tested using a plethysmograph or fMRI you could contend that he was manipulating the outcome by engaging in calculated fantasy”

That is a major concern amongst researchers employing the plethysmograph to measure sexual arousal in criminal samples, however, even when analyzing such groups, the results tend to be within the range of the expected outcome; thus faking, even if practiced by most analyzed subjects, is only of very limited impact. So no, if Rivera’s test results would resemble anything like the result you hope he would get, I would not be the one who would claim faking drastically altered the outcome. Plus, I would only feel compelled at making such evasions if Rivera’s results somewhow mattered to me—but that is yours and Holland’s case, not mine. And by the way, I don’t even believe fMRI can be faked.

Holland’s speculation on Rivera’s sexual orientation stems from sad misunderstanding and ignorance of many concepts studies employing objective measures of sexual orientation have reached after years analyzing male sexuality. Objective measures, for obvious reasons, should be privileged over self-report analysis when both come to reach opposite conclusions on the same issue, and sadly many of Holland’s opinions derive from studies which conflict with researches based on a more empirical ground.

Until this discussion, Holland was completely ignorant on important matters such as the sexual arousal patterns of homosexual men and bisexual men, and the findings on the latter conflict entirely with your dear taxometric studies, which rather indicate a continuum from heterosexual to homosexual, going through het. with bisexual inclination, bisexual, and homo. with bisexual inclination, while objective measures indicate male teleiophilic orientation to be heavily discret and fixed when it comes to gender (thus there can not be a male bisexual, or heterosexual or homosexual with bisex. inclinations).

He gave no response when I asked him what should be done about demographic studies which, despite giving a prevalence of homosexuality between 1 and 4% of the population, find many more men practing homosexual activity (I cited a study giving a figure of 10% of straight men practcing only homosexual activity the previous year to the research). Since, according to you and Holland, no true heterosexual would ever voluntarily have sex with another male, and since there’s not much of an overlap between male sexual orientations, are those 10% of self-identified straight men actually gay (i.e., very few or none evidence of bisexuality or minor bisexual inclination)? So, would gay males make up more than 10% of the whole male population, according to at least the study I cited? I’ve received no answer.

The “most economical” explanation is not always the most realistic or the true one. I wonder what would you say about the sexual preferences of men who molest male children. The most economical explanation are, they’re pedophiles with exclusive or predominant attraction to male children; or, as I believe Holland would argue, they’re homosexuals who, “like many homosexuals”, have a extreme youth preference. A study performed in the late 80s(1) assessed the sexual preferences of male victim child molesters by means of phallometric devices, coming up to the conclusion that 2/3 of the offenders had a clear predominant heterosexual orientation when it comes to adults. These offenders, compared to the remaining 1/3, tended to molest particularly young children because, in spite of the sex differences, they perceived them to resemble adult females in some important aspects. Occam’s razor is not a heuristic method for defining truth

(1) W. Marshall et al. (1988) Sexual offenders against male children: sexual preferences.

Posted by Clovis on May 17, 2008 at 10:16 AM | #

Correction: imanining = imagening

Posted by Clovis on May 17, 2008 at 12:19 PM | #

CLOVIS

At this point I don’t believe you, or anyone else, could provide relevant unbiased arguments concerning this case to people like Erik and Peter Z. Why bother to continue when there is no mature progression of the argument at hand. The argument isn’t whether Rivera was bisexual, homosexual, whateversexual. The argument should have been, why would a heterosexual man rape a homosexual man. They’re missing the point by focusing on his sexuality. I don’t believe his sexuality has anything to do with the crime he committed. I don’t have access to any specific documentation about Rivera, and neither do they, so I’m confident that conjecture is pretty common with them. I do beleive there are other psychosis at work that would better explain why he did what he did. Why would that consideration have never come into their argument?

Posted by Robert Williamson on May 18, 2008 at 12:09 AM | #

To Peter and Rik,

Rape can be motivated by a variety of factors, paranoid delusion, assertion of dominance, anger, sadism, and even sexual gratification among them. What all rapes have in common is that they’re perpetrated upon a victim.

The idea that sexual appeal is necessary for rape to occur is contradicted in many cases. Here’s an article about the rape of an 89 year old woman: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4176/is_20060816/ai_n16643731/

Are we to assume the rapist could only have raped her due to some aspect of sex appeal she projected? Is it reasonable to assume that a man can only rape if he’s sexually turned on by his victim and thus the gender of his victim is proof of his sexuality?

Is it really beyond your imaginations to believe that Riviera may have stimulated himself to arousal through a perverted motivation that he was out to perform an act of poetic justice?

Perhaps he was a keen reader of homosexinfo.org.

Posted by Neil on December 12, 2009 at 09:48 AM | #

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A Homosexual or Bisexual Man Rapes a Man and is Charged with an Anti-homosexual Hate Crime

Alleged gay advance cited in rape

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