Why are twins gay

This latter detail appealed to my nonbinary gay neighbor, who is the latest in a series of queer friends I have acquired since I belatedly came out five years ago. There was a pause during which I sensed a sigh of impatience dissipating through the rafters. It turns out that 50 percent of being a lesbian is being attracted to women and the other 50 percent is having a crush on Rachel Weisz.

Someone needs to write a manual! We had only recently been talking, in fact, about the odd connections between twinhood and queerness I had been tracking in the mass of material I had been sifting through for the book. More surprising why are twins gay two cases I had encountered where even incestuous twins of different genders were coded as queer.

Both men—artistically inclined, decadent, idle—have effeminate characteristics, whether it is slim hands, soft hair, a delicate nose, sensuously curved lips, or a tremulous voice. Somewhat paradoxically, they are both classically camp and hot for their sisters. Twins and queers participate not in a shared relation of sameness but a shared relation of difference.

Roderick and Siegmund seem not only gay but sick, weird, and creepy. In the latter respects they are textbook examples of the pathologization of twinship that has recurred in Western culture over the past two centuries. We see it in yet another horror trope of overly attached twins wasting away, as if they have morbidly turned in on themselves.

And we see it in the new version of Dead Ringers. Waving my grief-stricken, codependent cocktail cherry by its twin-less tail, I felt that I was on to something. But what, exactly? Weston does not make the twin connection herself: what interests her is the way that members of gay couples have tended to be read as mirrors of each other.

The mirror is also a classic metaphor for twinhood.

What it’s Like Being Gay and Non-Gay Identical Twins

The connection goes back to the very root of the word narcissism. On an alternative telling of the myth of Narcissus, advocated by the second-century Greek geographer Pausanias, the boy was not merely a twink but a twin. He stares at his reflection not because he is in love with himself but because it reminds him of his adored dead sister.

Same same but different? That this mirror metaphor misrepresents queer relationships should be clear. What might need more emphasis is that it also misrepresents twinship. My identical twin and I looked very alike as kids and shared similar obsessions, talents, and flaws, but our many differences were obvious to all who knew us well.

I was the quiet one, the reader, half philosopher and half nun; Julia was the loud one, the artist, leader of women, seducer of men. When spending time with my twin, I have never once felt that I was gazing into my own captivating eyes. Mirrors do not merely replicate; they also invert.

And when it comes to twinhood and gayness, the standard mirror metaphor gets things exactly the wrong way around. Twins and queers participate not in a shared relation of sameness but a shared relation of difference, with respect to the majority singleton and straight worlds.

In our heteronormative culture, the pervasive expectation is that highly intimate adult couples will be romantic partners of different genders. People in same-gender romantic relationships violate this injunction. But so why are twins gay many adult twins: if they are close, they partake in an intimate nonromantic relationship, and they can also share a gender.