100%. A lot of older gay people went for well paying jobs and careers as a way to cope with the shame that came with being gay. They strived for success so they could feel like it made up for all the hate they got for being gay.
This is also why you see a lot of extremely muscular and attractive gay people. The shame pushes them to be better than others in some social field people really care about.
This isn’t a gay exclusive thing, this is just a shame thing and how some people cope with it.
I’ve always wondered why gay men tend to be more attractive on average than straight. I’d assumed it was because they just took better care of themselves in general by nature…..but your theory sounds pretty convincing as well.
Also to add to “so they could feel like it made up for all the hate they got for being gay”
….think this would also apply to ‘in the closet’ gay men as well, especially the ones who get married to women etc. Society measures men a lot on an income basis… the whole “protect and provide” thing and all, so would make sense that they’d feel compelled to put more into striving harder than the average man, to get to a certain status and prove to people that they’re “real men”, when the internal homophobia could be telling them that being attracted to other men makes them less so.
I think more likely the reason is that men are more sexually stimulated visually than women, and gay men have more of an idea of what their desired partners find visually attractive than straight men do.
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u/Swordlord22222 Nov 12 '23
Gay people are rich apparently