Gay Male

The Western "homosexual" category has been related to the non-Western "third gender" category. It has been cast as a redefinition and expansion of the third gender category to include all biological males who acknowledge having same-sex attractions (instead of only effeminate males). This extension of the third gender is due to various factors that were unique to the Western world, including widespread influence of Christianity and, as a result, encouragement of opposite-sex relationships. Before the concept of sexual orientation was developed in the modern West, only the effeminate males who sought receptive sex from men were seen as a different gender category. The Western equivalents to the third genders, and not men with same-sex attractions, are the ones who started and propagated the Western concept of a homosexual identity. While many non-Western societies show hostility towards the concept of homosexuality, they do accept both men who have sex with men and third genders who have sex with men within the indigenous cultural parameters, just not as "homosexuals." Thus, there is a strong link between what the West calls "sexual orientation" and the non-West calls "gender orientation," what the West calls "homosexual" and the non-West calls "third gender," and what the West calls "straight" and the non-West calls "masculine men." In the West, a man often cannot acknowledge or display sexual attraction for another man without the homosexual or bisexual label being attached to him. The same pattern of shunning the homosexual identity, while still having sex with men, is quite prevalent in the non-West. In fact, in some sense, sexual attraction between men is seen or sometimes practised—either quietly or openly—as a universal male phenomenon, even if held morally wrong in the larger society, and, in the men's spaces, sexual attraction between men is seen as a universal male quality, not something limited to a minority.