Heterophilosexuality

I am quite a fan of homespun sociology/psychology (as well as criticism of homespun sociology/psychology). So as my inaugural post, here's a little theory you may enjoy. It's a regularity that I noticed in an very informal survey of my friends and acquaintances. See if you can spot it applying in your own life!

Definitions: three types of people

First, I will define 3 types of people. Gynophiles, androphiles, and bi-philes (sorry about the ugliness of that last word). Notice that I color coded them because, well it's damned fun.

Gynophiles are people, male or female, whose circle of friends mainly consists of women.

Androphiles, conversely, are people whose circle of friends mainly consists of men.

Bi-philes, as you might expect, have more or less equal numbers of men and women in their circle of friends.

Note that these definitions depend, unlike some definitions of hetero- and homo- sexuality, not on the genders of the friends a person would prefer to have, but rather on the friends that a person does have.


"When we grow up we're going to be androphiles!"
(photo used under Creative Commons license from Tiggywinkle)

Get to the theory!

My theory is this - a great majority of same-sex binary relationships (with two partners of the same gender) consist of one androphile and one gynophile. I'll call such couples heterophilosexual.

This is different from butch and femme, and also different from masculinity and femininity. I know femme androphiles in relationships with femme gynophiles, masculine gynophiles with feminine androphiles and so on. The one thing (so far as I know) that has remained constant - one partner has mainly male friends, the other mainly female friends.

Just to clarify, individuals are not heterophilosexual, couples are. I don't think of heterophilosexuality as a preference or even a status that can be accorded to individuals (what would that even mean as an individual status?). It refers only to couples that have one androphilic and one gynophilic partner.

Problems/Gaps in knowledge:

Does this work for different-sex couples? Well, I don't have as much opportunity/inclination to inspect their relationships. It seems to me that often, regardless of their previous status, these couples often start to hang out exclusively or predominantly with other different-sex couples, hence making both partners default to bi-philes. In contrast, partners in same-sex couples tend to maintain more separate circles of friends (either ones they had before entering the relationship, or ones they cultivate on their own while in the relationship). It's a question of community norms.

What about bi-philes in same-sex couples? Well, like most nascent theories of this kind, mine does not fully escape the trap of dualism, so... you're out of luck, queer bi-philes. I'd welcome more anecdotal accounts of bi-philes in relationships, though. I'm more than happy to mess with mister in-between. I just need more data.

What's the point of all this anyway? Mostly an idle exercise for intellectual interest. I suppose if it is true that most same-sex couples are heterophilosexual, it raises some interesting questions about the mechanisms by which androphiles and gynophiles seek each other out or end up getting along. Because I've framed the categories as behavioral rather than identity or desire-based, I think the theory lends itself to behavioral explanations of how gyno and androphiles meet.