Question

1) What is the impact of gender on love? Is it as significant as a culture?

2) What are some differences between male and female intimacy?

3) Are there any differences between ga y and straight love? Why or why not? What does the evidence suggest regarding the similarities and differences between sexual majority and minority love?

2. why is it so common for many heterosexuals to discuss and understand homosexuality only as same-sex behavior, rather than as a complex identity no different than a heterosexual identity, with the drive to love and be loved at its core?

Answer 1

• Each gender has the same capacity to experience the pleasures and pains of romantic love. Women and men describe being in love in similar terms.Still, there are some important differences between women's and men's experiences of romantic love.
• The difference in expressing love between genders happens because there is a strong cultural component to love, and there are different cultural imperatives for the sexes. Because they are socialized in different ways, men and women tend to have different ways of expressing love or intimacy.
• This difference leads to women being more interpersonal in expressing intimacy and men being more instrumental and expressing power over love.
• Women have a feminine identity and therefore express their intimacy in a maternal way by falling in love, pair-bonding, and literally becoming mothers. Men on the other hand acquire a masculine identity and this is something which is culturally prevalent in every society. Men are seen adopting economic role for the family whereas women are seen and brought up as being more compassionate and taking care of others. For the male, in contrast to the female, romantic love generally conflicts less with parental love than with the necessity for establishing his gender identity.
• There may or may not be any differences in how love is expressed in same-gender relationship or straight relationship. Love is a universal emotion and everyone has the right to choose who they want to be with.The culture, however, puts pressure on individuals to couple and form units and families.
• GLBT persons have unique challenges and may bring unique resources to their loving relationships that are not shared by straight couples. Many GLBT couples date and live invisibly or in the shadows and their concern over discovery or being obvious limits spontaneous affectionate/dating behavior and is stressful to a relationship.
• Men in relationships, whether same-gender or straight tend to operate out of learned male role behavior. Competitiveness, power/dominance,limited negotiation/verbal skills, need to maintain a sense of independence all can interfere with becoming the necessary we/us in relationships.
• Women generally possess better verbal/negotiation skills than men. They affiliate more naturally and are less needful of being dominant or independent. These attributes often lead to relative ease with which relationships of any type can be formed.
• It is common for straight people to not understand same-gender couples because till today people have the preconceived notion of a male-female pairing. Despite so much education and modernization people still havent come to terms with the fact the same-gender couples is a normal thing. People still dont understand that it is a choice that someone makes in life and is as normal as being straight. Culturally we all have been brought up with this notion that males are responsible for earning money and females for rearing children and therefore it is necessary to have a male-female pairing to run the lifecycle but times have changed and people have all the right to choose who they want to spend their lives with. People still dont understand that how would same-gender couples rear children and who will assume which "role" i.e. the preconcieved responsibilties of males and females that we have been brought up with.