The Gay Personality Type

Numerous psychological scientists have tried to analyze human personality. In fact the old Greek philosophers already had ideas about the spectrum of human personalities. Plato divided personalities into four categories namely Idealists, Rationals, Guardians and Artisans. David Kersey later developed a test to help people understand themselves in relation to these differences. Carl Jung also had his ideas about different personalities and distinguished between thinkers, feelers, sensors and intuitive. The well known Myers-Briggs Type Indicator categorizes people into these quadrants. There is also the DISC system that distinguishes between personalities that are dominant, influential, steady or compliant. I can name hundreds of these instruments and although each of them is based on its own premises the common aim is to understand why people think, feel and act as they do. Some tests are more useful than others but all of them tell you something about yourself. As a sexologist I am more than interested in the relationship between sexuality and personality and as a gay therapist I am just as interested in the relation between personality and sexual orientation.
Without thinking twice the stereotypes come to mind; the sensitive, girly, more feminine than a beautician fag and the butch, strong, muscled, dirt under the nails dyke. Although they are stereotypes these personalities do exist to a certain extent; much less than the stereotype predicts but not uncommon.  In opposition to this queers know how wrong the stereotype could be. We all know the seriously butch gay guys and the highly feminine lesbians in our own gay communities; they are straight looking and straight acting but as gay as the rest of us. If these total opposites exist it would be rather difficult to describe something like a gay personality and maybe it would be better to declare that there is no such thing at all; not even in general or on average.
The so called tomdick&sally gay personality test you find on afterelton.com is closely related to the new DNA-personality test. In this test you are asked to state whether you agree or disagree with certain statements. Based on your answers aspects like Innovativity, spontaneity, confidence, optimism, sensitivity, caution, assertiveness and intro/extroverted are charted. If you compare this “gay” personality test with “general” personality tests you will realize that there are no differences. In other words gay people’s personality range is just as large as humanity’s range or there is no relationship between being gay and your personality. There are gay people in all personality types and all personality types can be found in the gay community.
Does this mean that it is senseless to ask questions about your gay personality type? Not at all; in fact knowing what kind of “gay” personality you have is essential for understanding yourself, your partner and a possible relationship. I would even risk my neck in saying that it is more important to know your type if you are gay. Not because gay people have certain personalities but because we have a smaller population to choose from, we have more obstacles in our day to day lives, we have more complications in our relationships and we have less support for our choices. We need to know more about ourselves than straight people do because our lives and our relationships are in general more complicated. The better you know yourself, your peculiarities and your abilities the easier it is to love yourself and if you do not love yourself it is impossible for others to love you.
I want to stress this; if you do not know and love yourself it is impossible for others to love you and a relationship is doomed to failure. Whether you do the Myers-Briggs, the 16PF, the DISC, DNA-personality test or the newest pop-psychology-test in your local girly magazine is immaterial. All these tests will teach you something about yourself and the more you know yourself the easier it will be to have a successful relationship. If you can not find a test to do you can inbox me on facebook and I will send you a couple.
On the other hand a word of caution; a psychological test has its limits and two of the biggest limits are the person who writes the test and the person who marks the test. If you are going to do both you should realize that there are always mistakes, generalizations and down right bullshit in all personality tests.  

This week's Cobrabite
by Andrew Blade


Cobrabites
Dr. Andrew Blade