Straight scoop

The movie “Brokeback Mountain” provokes what one researcher calls “a very strong ick factor” in some straight men.

What is it in this story of two cowboy pals in 1960s Wyoming who find themselves in lifelong love – yet go on to marry women – that elicits this response from heterosexual males?

The answers are as complex as the plot.

The psychologist who coined the word “homophobic” says the revulsion is precisely that. A scientist who discovered genetic links to sexuality says he simply does not understand the response. The author of “The Sexual Brain” says there is nothing on a neurobiological basis to explain the aversion.

To film fan Eddie Hargreaves of Stockton, Calif., it’s more like the “ick” of romantic drama, straight or gay.

“I’m not going to speak for everybody,” he says, “but I don’t know a lot of straight guys who said, ‘Oh, man, I can’t wait to see “Bridges of Madison County.” ‘”

“Brokeback Mountain,” directed by Oscar winner Ang Lee and starring box-office hunks Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, is sparking both critical praise and water-cooler chatter. It’s been nominated for seven Golden Globe awards.

But when movie critic Dave White, who is gay, wrote a humorous piece titled “The Straight Dude’s Guide to ‘Brokeback,’” he says, “I got hundreds of messages, most of whom hated me for just existing.”

An excerpt from the column: “The good news – there’s less than one minute of making out. It’s about 130 minutes long and 129 of them are about Men Not Having Sex.”

We’re not talking here about rejections of homosexuality based on moral or religious grounds, though the film has provoked its share of those. It’s that some men who pointedly won’t see “Brokeback” are social liberals who generally find no fault with people being gay.

“I didn’t write the piece with the homophobe in mind,” says White, a Movie.com reviewer in Los Angeles who wrote the column for MSNBC.com. “I wrote it for the liberal guy who just can’t see this movie, because they know that reads as socially uncool.”

White’s theory on straight-male queasiness centers on self-identification.

“These characters are too close to being regular guys,” he says. “That’s part of the freakout.”

Timothy Shary also noticed that. He’s director of the Screen Studies Program at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., and examines masculinity in movies.

“This is a threat to most men because it opens up the possibility that two men who are friendly may become affectionate,” Shary says. “That’s something men just do not want to consider.”

George Weinberg says this aversion is “definitely homophobia.” He is the New York City psychologist and researcher who invented that term in the 1960s and broke ground with his 1972 book, “Society and the Healthy Homosexual.”

“This is the idea of one man’s adoration for another,” Weinberg says. “A love affair more deep and lasting and romantic” than with their wives.

His advice for straights uneasy about “Brokeback” is to “first understand you have this problem. At least by acknowledging it, that’s a start. It’s like saying, ‘I have a fear of heights.’ “

Research into a physical source of these feelings is lacking.

“It does seem to be almost culturally universal that heterosexual men can have a deep repulsion to overt homosexuality,” says Dean Hamer, scientist and author of “The Science of Desire: The Gay Gene and the Biology of Behavior.”

“But there is no study I know of to ascertain whether this is a biologically based trait,” Hamer says.

Simon LeVay agrees. He is a lecturer on neuroscience and author of “The Sexual Brain,” a biological overview of sexuality.

“From a neurobiological basis, I just don’t think this response has been researched at that level,” LeVay says, “although it’s something that should be.”

Movie buff Hargreaves, who is straight and married, still isn’t going to see “Brokeback Mountain.” Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

“To say that straight guys are missing out because they’re unjustly turned off by the plot, well, there wasn’t anything to turn them on in the first place,” Hargreaves says. “At least ‘The English Patient’ had a plane crash.”