There’s nothing I find so regularly disturbing in movies and TV as sex scenes between dudes. I recently had to stop watching the Netflix thriller series Black Doves because of the incessant explicit homo sex scenes.
I don’t think I’m alone in my involuntary disgust reaction.
The study, which was carried out by the American Institute of Bisexuality, found that even those who say they are accepting of the LGBT community have a physical reaction upon seeing two men showing affection for each other.
The participants were shown images of gay men kissing, hugging and engaging in sexual activities.
Scientists then measured the levels of salivary alpha-amylase present in the men’s saliva, which is a type of a digestive enzyme which has links to stress and disgust.
Dr Blair and their team found that when they were presented pictures of gay men kissing, the participants produced the same salivary alpha-amylase levels as when they were confronted with images of rotting flesh and maggots.
It also showed that the level of alpha-amylase was the same for those who were shown to be tolerant of gay relationships and those who were not.
Here’s an example of the opposite approach studios could take: FT: “Religious films are a saving grace in tough year for Hollywood”
I’m willing to put up with a lot of my internal disgust reactions if the movie or TV series is great. Black Doves was mediocre so it wasn’t a big sacrifice to give it up. The TV series Industry and Aaron Hernandez: American Sports Story were great and so I didn’t give up watching despite all the gay sex. I also loved the gay cowboys movie Brokeback Mountain. I just stopped watching during the four homo scenes.
Michael Medved wrote in his 1992 book, Hollywood vs. America:
In 1990, for example, NBC lost several hundred thousand dollars when it proved unable to sell all the available advertising time on its controversial docudrama on the abortion issue, Roe vs. Wade. ABC took an even bigger hit by sanctioning the inclusion of a scene in “thirtysomething” in which two gay male characters appear in bed together, talking about the one – night stand they’ve just enjoyed. This brief sequence cost the network more than $1 million in lost revenue, but following the fiasco top corporate officials assured “thirtysomething” producers that “they would fully support any future exploration of the gay characters’ lives.” True to their word, they authorized another show in the next season (1991) in which the same two characters exchange a midnight kiss at a New Year’s party. This time, advertiser withdrawals cost the network more than $500,000. “I am grateful that ABC was willing to air the program at a loss,” said Ed Zwick, co – creator of the critically acclaimed series. Robert A. Iger, president of ABC Entertainment, told the press that his support for the embattled episode reflected his “social and creative responsibilities.”
Along similar lines, NBC aired a January 1992 edition of “Quantum Leap” about a heroic homosexual cadet who becomes the victim of gay – bashing aimed at a naval college. Four months before the broadcast, NBC executives had asked Universal Television, producers of the series, to accept liability for any lost advertising revenue associated with the episode’s controversial content, but in the end they relented and agreed to swallow the loss themselves. The predictable result of this noble decision: a setback for the network estimated by official sources as “about $500,000.”
This pattern — repeated on several other shows in recent years — could be applauded as a courageous example of unselfish devotion to principle, or it could be condemned as a stubborn refusal to respond to public and advertiser concerns over highly sensitive materials. In any event, it demonstrates that in today’s Hollywood, the famous bottom line is not always the bottom line.No one could deny that the formidable gay presenee in the entertainment business encourages industry leaders to take a far more sympathetic view of homosexuality than does the public at large. In a 1990 study of “Hollywood opinion leaders” by University of Texas government professor David F. Prindle, 68 percent said they supported “gay rights,” compared to only 12 percent who endorsed that position in a 1987 national Times Mirror poll. More recently, an impressive array of the Hollywood establishment’s most influential figures have provided support for leading gay rights organizations. In August 1991, top executives from all four television networks and from the eight largest movie studios served together on the host committee for a gala dinner to benefit the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.
Two years ago, Maga9428 posted on Patriots.win:
I have had it with this bullshit, I’m so tired of seeing gay shit thrown into otherwise normal TV shows. If a movie or TV show is going to have gay kisses or sex scenes then it needs to be a movie/TV show intentionally made for gay people. But this crap of just pushing gay shit into TV shows that aren’t about gay stuff is becoming more then just obnoxious. Its intolerable and disgusting.
Straight men do not want to watch dudes kissing or fucking other dudes. Its fucking repulsive, and completely unnecessary on top of that. And I’m sick of seeing Hollywood shilling lesbian crap too. I’ve absolutely had it with these giant corporations not giving a shit anymore about what their customers actually want and instead just trying to shove their beliefs down our throats.
I scroll and scroll on Google about this disgust reaction by straights to unexpected gay scenes and I can find no respectful or sympathetic treatment of our pain. Similarly, I scroll and scroll through Google and can find no sympathetic treatment of the distress normal people feel when they can’t figure out whether someone is male or female. I guess our pain doesn’t matter.
Grok gave an even-handed reaction when I wrote in: “I hate seeing gay scenes in movies/tv”
Grok included this response:
Opposition to Inclusion:
Personal Discomfort: Some individuals express discomfort or dislike for these scenes, often citing personal taste or cultural upbringing. This discomfort might not necessarily stem from homophobia but from a general aversion to sex scenes or unfamiliarity with non-heterosexual relationships.Oversaturation Concerns: There are opinions that the inclusion of gay characters or scenes has become excessive or tokenistic, used more for the sake of appearing inclusive rather than serving the narrative genuinely. This perspective sometimes leads to discussions about whether such inclusions are forced or if they contribute meaningfully to the story.
Grok linked to this LaShaun Turner essay:
“I don’t mind if people are gay or transgender, it’s their choice and body and none of my business. However, I’m offended to see this rammed down my throat every tv show I watch as if it’s normal when it isn’t. I don’t accept that and shouldn’t be forced to. Be gay but don’t be overly graphic about it to prove a point. Where is my choice? I don’t want to see that garbage as it repulses me,” wrote one commenter on a thread.
I don’t enjoy watching gay sex scenes. I find it somewhat repulsive. In my opinion, it would be better to insinuate it, that’s enough.
Grok linked to this Reddit post:
Why are LGBTQ Characters so Over-Represented in modern Television, Movies and Streaming (Especially Netflix)?
According to Where We Are on TV Report – 2020 | GLAAD , LGBTQ characters represent 9.1% of characters on prime-time T.V.The largest reputable estimate of the LGBTQ population I could find is 5.6%. LGBT Identification Rises to 5.6% in Latest U.S. Estimate (gallup.com) (Note that this number has increased from 3.5% to 5.6% in the past 9 years).
Using these numbers alone, representation of LGBTQ characters in prime-time television is a whopping 71% higher than what you might expect to find in reality, however when you compare the numbers of specific stations it is clear some take it further than others.
The CW is the leader of the pack, having had 14.2% of their characters as LGBTQ. This is an astounding 2.5x higher than our best guess at representation in the real world.
The report from GLAAD does not detail the specific percentages for streaming services (although reading the report suggests they have the data available) however one thing is abundantly clear: Netflix Originals have by far more LGBTQ characters than other producers.
There are roughly the same amount of LGBTQ characters in Netflix produced shows (110 total counted) than in The CW, ABC, FOX, NBC, CBS, Amazon Prime and Hulu Combined (111 total counted).
Grok linked to this X post: “I am getting so tired of almost every show/movie coming out and having some male homosexual effeminate character that adds nothing to the story. It is disturbing because the majority of gay males do not act like women or broadcast gay.”
I asked Grok: “I find it disturbing when I can’t tell if somebody is male or female.” I got back a purely PC response: “Luke, it sounds like you’re grappling with some discomfort around gender ambiguity. This is a common feeling for many people as societal norms around gender become less binary.”
I put “distress” into a search of Rony Guldmann’s book Conservative Claims of Cultural Oppression and received more empathy for my lived experience:
* “psychic distress is a kind of mental pain” and “is plainly something that people prefer to avoid.” There is thus an obvious sense in which conduct that causes it—like the consumption or dissemination of pornography—is “harmful” and falls within the ambit of the harm-principle, irrespective of secondary effects. The same holds true of communal harm: “If people get satisfaction or happiness from living in a particular kind of community, then conduct that subverts that kind of community and thus reduces such happiness inflicts a kind of ‘harm.’”
Yet liberals will greet such claims with “peremptory dismissal” and “dismissive indignation,”…
* Though the old Victorians have an undeserved reputation as meddlesome moralists and officious busybodies, they would in reality “have been as distressed by the overtness and formality of college regulations governing sexual conduct (with explicit consent required at every stage of the sexual relation) as by the kind of conduct—promiscuity, they would have called it—implicitly sanctioned by those regulations.”
* Therapism seeks to “professionalize” normal human distress, appropriating common sense as its own special province, and thus persuade the public that it requires specialized assistance to cope with normal human travails. Enfeebling the objects of its compassion, therapism is an assault on the “American Creed” and its paramount virtues of self-reliance, stoicism, and courage. In undermining these, argues Sommers, therapism has gradually slid the nation into a permanent regime of “therapeutic self-absorption and moral debility.” By resisting the solicitude of therapeutically-minded liberals, conservatives are once again signaling their rejection of the disciplines and repressions of the buffered identity, whose innerness they cannot but see as “therapeutic self-absorption.” Their antagonism to therapeutic ideals is merely one outgrowth of their broader resistance to the liberal elites’ ordering impulses, which are always lying underneath the altruism. In rejecting these impulses in favor of “the trials of everyday life,” conservatives are embracing the pre-modern anti-structure that forever upsets all merely human designs, announcing their resignation to the flux and disorder that the modern order refuses to acknowledge.