Rep: bisexual, polyamorous MC Idlewild by jude sierra Tropes/themes/secondary plot: BDSM, polyamory, characters dealing with PTSD, lots of on-the-page sex (this one is definitely erotic romance). MCs: a gay SWAT commander who’s mostly in the closet about being kinky and submissive and a bisexual, polyamorous kinky doctor who works for the coroner’s office. Rep: disabled MC contemporary Gay Romance Novels Tactical Submission by ada maria soto Tropes/themes/secondary plot: enemies-to-lovers a mystery involving blackmail interesting and complicated family dynamics explorations of class differences and disability. Setting: Regency London and the English countryside MCs: a grumpy, unscrupulous, street-smart private eye (think: Olivia Pope in 1820s London) who grew up in the slums and despises nobility and a retired (and very proper) soldier who craves order and predicability. Rep: Indian, neurodivergent MC The Soldier’s Scoundrel by Cat sebastian Tropes/themes/secondary plot: a murder mystery a beautifully depicted tight-knit queer community some kink. MCs: a quiet boarding-house keeper and one of his lodgers, a taxonomist. Rep: black MC, trans MC An Unseen Attraction by K.J. The research project was supported by Harvard University.Tropes/themes/secondary plot: an exciting and action-packed rescue of a hospital patient about to be committed to an asylum racism and transphobia in 1830s NYC. Men who have faces that are higher in sexual dimorphism (masculinity) have been shown to have better health and dominance but lower investment in offspring.Īlthough it is difficult to make substantial evolutionary claims from this study, Glassenberg's work supports the idea that male attraction operates differently from female attraction, regardless of sexual orientation. Prior research has also shown that women prefer more masculine male faces when ovulating, indicating an evolutionary function for facial attraction. A sexually dimorphic female face has a more tapered chin, larger lips, and a narrower forehead. Sexually dimorphic features in male faces include a broad jaw, broad forehead, and more pronounced brow ridge. The study was conducted online, and included over 900 men and women. Participants viewed images of faces that were digitally manipulated to be more masculine or feminine, and then indicated which face they considered more attractive. In this particular study, straight women preferred more masculine-faced men than lesbian women, while lesbians preferred slightly more masculine female faces than straight women or men. Women's preferences are more complex than men's, as indicated by prior research demonstrating that ovulation, contraceptive use, self-perceived attractiveness, and sex drive all affect face preference. The study is the first to examine the facial feature preferences of gay men and lesbian women. Gay men and straight men did not agree on the types of male faces they considered attractive." "Men, gay or straight, prefer high sexual dimorphism in the faces of the sex that they are attracted to. Also, the types of male faces that gay men found attractive generally did not mirror the types of faces that straight women found attractive on average," says Glassenberg.
"Our work showed that gay men found highly masculine male faces to be significantly more attractive than feminine male faces. Glassenberg's co-authors are David Feinberg of McMaster University, Benedict Jones and Lisa DeBruine of Aberdeen University, and Anthony Little of Stirling University.
student in organizational behavior in Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Harvard Business School. The research is currently published online in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior, and was led by Aaron Glassenberg, while completing his master's degree in the Department of Psychology at Harvard. The findings suggest that regardless of sexual orientation, men's brains are wired for attraction to sexually dimorphic faces - those with facial features that are most synonymous with their gender.