No abstract

In March 2020, in response to the COVID‐19 pandemic, Canadian provincial governments instituted a variety of public health measures that included social distancing and isolation, which may have had unintended consequeses. According to the Loneliness and Sexual Risk Model, gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (GBM) often cope with loneliness through risky sexual behaviors. Previous studies have demonstrated that COVID‐19 measures such as social distancing and isolation led to increases in loneliness; thus, these measures may also have led to elevated sexual risk‐taking among some GBM. Participants were recruited from an ongoing cohort study on GBM health and well‐being, and were included in the current analysis if they had completed relevant study questions (n = 1134). GBM who reported lower levels of social support pre‐COVID‐19, were younger, and lived alone each reported greater loneliness during the first year of COVID‐19. Although feelings of loneliness did not predict sexual risk‐taking within the first year of COVID‐19, loneliness did predict greater sexual risk‐taking 6 months later. Additionally, younger GBM and those living alone were more likely to engage in sexual risk‐taking at both COVID‐19 data collection points. These findings offer some support of the Loneliness and Sexual Risk Model; however, it is possible that the unique circumstances of the COVID‐19 pandemic resulted in a temporary suspension of this association, as many GBM took steps to protect themselves and partners in the context of COVID‐19.

Male androphilia (i.e., sexual attraction to adult males) is considered an evolutionary paradox because it reduces direct reproduction but is influenced by genetic factors, reliably occurs across cultures, and has persisted over evolutionary time. The hypergyny hypothesis rests on the premise that the female relatives of androphilic males possess physical traits that signal fertility, such as elevated symmetry. If this premise were true, such traits could help attract reproductive partners with higher socioeconomic status, thereby furnishing resources to produce and sustain multiple offspring. This, in turn, would help females to offset their androphilic male siblings' lack of reproduction. The present study examined whether the sisters of male androphiles have elevated facial symmetry compared with women without androphilic male siblings. Sixty-six women with androphilic male siblings and 271 women without androphilic male siblings were recruited from Thailand and the Istmo region of Oaxaca, Mexico. Results demonstrated no significant differences in facial asymmetry between women with and without androphilic male siblings. In the absence of such a difference, this study, like previous ones, does not support the hypergyny hypothesis as a viable explanation for the evolutionary paradox of male androphilia. Public Significance StatementMales' sexual attraction to females and females' sexual attraction to males is perhaps the largest and most phylogenetically widespread of any psychological sex difference. The occurrence of exclusive male same-sex sexual attraction in most human cultures deviates from this common pattern. The present study is significant because it attempts to elucidate the evolutionary basis of male same-sex sexual attraction-a trait that has long perplexed evolutionists.