From: cjmchale@dsg.cs.tcd.ie (Ciaran McHale)
Subject: Let's go Bonding (Was: 'women's' vs 'lesbian')
Organization: DSG, Dept. of Computer Science, Trinity College Dublin
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 16:02:04 GMT

Brad Shapcott writes:
	it seems that both male and female bisexuals form stronger
	emotional bonds with other females.

Alan Hamilton writes:
	This isn't just true of bisexuals, though.  Both males and
	females in the general population generally form stronger
	emotional bonds with females than with males.  If a person has
	a close friend or best friend, that friend is more likely to be
	female than male.

In <Bs3GBE.MBI@newcastle.ac.uk>
J.W.Harley@newcastle.ac.uk (Jon Harley) writes:
	I wish people would quote sources when making enormous
	generalisations like this.

The following quote (page 27 of "Equality Now for Lesbians and Gay
Men") seems to deal with romantic relationships rather than emotional
bonding between best friends, but perhaps the refs it gives might be a
good place to start looking for more information.

----cut here----
	... both heterosexual and lesbian women express similar levels
	of satisfaction and commitment from their relationships, as do
	heterosexual and gay men from theirs[11]. In fact, the
	differences in satisfaction and commitment which may exist
	between heterosexual and homosexual relationships arise not
	from the sexual orientation of the couple, but from the gender
	of the individuals[12].

Notes:
[11]	See Duffy and Rusbult, "Satisfaction and Commitment in
	Homosexual and Heterosexual Relationships," 12 J. Homosex. 1,
	18--19 (1985--86)
[12]	Ibid., at 20--21. The point is that people tend to learn
	socially inculcated gender attitudes and behaviour at a much
	earlier age than they become aware of sexual orientation.
----cut here----


@booklet{misc-3,
           title =	"{Equality Now for Lesbians and Gay Men}",
          author =	"Irish Council for Civil Liberties",
    howpublished =	"Published in the Republic of Ireland by ICCL",
         address =	"c/o 36 The Rise, Boden Park, Rathfarnham, Dublin 16,
			Ireland",
            year =	"1990",
            note =	"ISBN~0-9515425-0-8.
			\pounds 4.95",
	  annote =	"Perhaps a bit too academic and heavy going for the
			average Jo Bloggs, but a good book nonetheless.
			Basically, this book presents the other side of the
			argument to that of the Family Solidarity booklet
			\cite{misc-2}.",
	keywords =	"Ireland"
}


<> I'd rather that queers be represented by people like Elf!!, like Jeff
<> Dauber, like Harry Ugol and Tsilke Pearlman, who are gloriously OUT as
<> what they are, than by some poor wounded soul with closet-splinters
<> tangled in hir matted hair.  I don't want to be represented by Roy
<> Cohn, or Liberace, or Rock Hudson, but by people who are so little
<> ashamed of who and what they are that they can say "I'm here, I'm
<> queer, Yougottaproblem?"
<> --- STella (STella@xanadu.com)

Ciaran.
Apologise for the Two Nice Girls pun in the Subject: line? Nah...
-- 
Ciaran McHale                                                             ----
Department of Computer Science, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland.       \bi/
Telephone: +353-1-7021539 FAX: +353-1-772204 email: cjmchale@dsg.cs.tcd.ie \/
Newsgroups: soc.bi