Interviews with Joseph Nicolosi
Posted on August 12th, 2008 by Warren
Here is a three part interview with Joseph Nicolosi, who discusses his views of homosexuality and his approach to therapy.
I don’t agree with the basic theory but I wanted to provide the links for those of us who study the various approaches. When I study an approach, I like to have the current information, and these appear to be very recent.
Let’s have an open forum on this…
Opening quote from Dr. Joseph Nicolosi
I believe Dr. Nicolosi is swimming against the tide of science. Human sexuality like all animal sexuality is rooted in instinctive programming. Our conscious minds regulate it, but the instinct is the core.
Site Note:
Another seemingly complex behavior in humans and primates comes down to simple, instinctive programming.
Study: Winners’, losers’ behavior instinctive
Ann
You’ll like the above link because it mentions that blind atheletes act just like sighted atheletes when they win or lose. Like sexuality it’s something we just know.
I guess if I had one question for Dr. Nicolosi it would be this.
What evolutionary pressure would make male, human sexuality so fragile? According to Nicolosi without a proper father/son relationship (or other relationships) the male mind automatically defaults to lifelong SSA.
Drowssap:
Human sexuality is surely instinctive, but aberrant sexual behavior (including ‘feelings’ and ‘attractions’) is not. Experience and free will are involved in the gravitation toward SSA, MSM and WSW. So are perceived expectations of peers and significant persons during development.
We are “Hardwired to Connect” and we all need to love and be loved for who we are. We can re-fabricate “who we are” if it means obtaining the love we so desperately seek when our basic familial roots have been severed or damaged.
Sexual intercourse is a very emotional experience. Thus our brain imprints the memory of that initial experience (or intense fantasy) and it is thereafter associated with any normally experienced physiological sexual desire.
Yes, there are a number of factors involved in SSA, but they are experience-based, not biological-based.
I doubt that the blind comparison and sexuality are the same link. How many blind from birth homosexuals are there? And it doesn’t take sight to know that it feels good to win. And we will show it in our faces - yep - we all know that feeling - cross culturally, cross sightedness, cross sexuality. The feeling of triumph is not learned.
If we are to compare those things - then beastility is acceptable sexuality and biologically based- since - it doesn’t matter how you are stimulated - it will feel the same. There must be an emotion attached to sexuality (in most cases) and that is culturally learned - since sex practices varies among cultures and societies. Otherwise we would all be doing the same thing. Aaaaannnnnd, has anyone ever noticed that sex practices have changed over time in our own culutre???
We’ve been discussing here the work of scientists with an h-index of over 20. The Swedish twins study set the level of parental influence to 0. Nicolosi has to produce some facts to be taken seriously. Case studies don’t cost that much, whatever technology they use.
So back in the ’60s when I was a shy 10 to 13 years of age in a smallish Hoosier town and had only heard the most virulent talk against homosexuality and was battling against what I felt as puberty’s hot grip ever tightening upon me, my non-experience and my will which was affected by virulent homophobic hate yet gravitated me to an SSA? Or maybe it was the beating or two?
Perhaps, but my familial roots were in no way damaged when I came out to a friend at the age of 14, I enjoyed a great relationship with my father and mother for that matter.
So why didn’t my first sexual experience with a woman keep me in that camp? Goodness knows I tried to fantisize about women, always bothered me too (at the time) that I had to end with men.
How many more cases of gay men like myself and lesbians whose stories cannot in the slightest be due to experience or even psychological factors do you have to hear before you understand how wrong you are?
Dr T has in the past supplied cases and surely has some newer ones now that track factually in evidence against the “nurture/reparative” ideas.
Mary
Sexual practices have evolved over time, although I wonder if the change is as much as we might guess. Sexual attractions I’m not so sure. Nearly all men (straight, gay and inbetween) of all cultures are attracted to young, healthy, virile partners.
Women have a different set of evolutionary pressures on their shoulders so I think it works differently. But even among women I would guess that, all others things being equal they would chose young, healthy, virile partners.
I don’t know what else that could be besides instinctive programming. Nobody agrees on everything and on this one thing 99% of the population is in complete agreement.
Dave G
I don’t know if a hardwired to connect instinct is a good explanation for SSA.
In a lot of ways gay men seem more attuned to women than straight men are.
Drowssap,
Have you ever noticed how sexual practices change over time?
I was not talking about finding partners for marriage and reproduction.
Mary
I think I know what you are talking about. I mean without getting too specific “things” do sort of come and go but I wonder how much has really changed if we had a looooooong view of things. Maybe a certain sex act is taboo for 500 years but then something changes and suddenly it seems really tame.
But even when “it” was taboo it existed to some degree, maybe even great degree. And when it became UNtaboo everyone still didn’t do “it.” All that changes are the percentage of people involved.
As for really crazy things like beastiality I’m guessing that somebody would need to have some type of serious brain damage (literally) to be into that.
Dave G - I think Lynn posed some good questions in rebuttal. Any thoughts about them?
So far I’ve only seen the 1st two clips. However, they are telling enough. Some key points I noticed.
1) the comment he made about how gay men he’s worked with remember (emphasis mine) having a bad relationships with their fathers. Memories of early childhood can be very skewed and misrepresent the facts, especially when being recounted to a therapist who is clearly biased towards finding such bad relationships.
2) He makes misleading claims that current research supports his theories (most of the stuff I’ve read disproves them.) He misrepresents the Spitzer study. Spitzer studied 200 people who claimed to have changed orientation, Spitzer didn’t conclude that they had changed orientation in all cases. The most significant thing Spitzer said was that change might be possible in some cases but more study is needed.
3) He is drawing his conclusions about gays (in general) from people who are in therapy . Evelyn Hooker showed the problems with that 40 years ago.
ken
To me at least Nicolosi comes off as a guy who means well.
But I think he’s just hanging around waiting to be proven wrong. When he says,
It almost sounds like he believes they’ll find a biological explanation soon enough. Why NARTH doesn’t reform it’s platform on the cause of SSA I have no idea. These guys are a lot smarter than us. They must see the handwriting on the wall.
Drowssap said:
I was gonna write that.
I’ve checked their board and they do have some people with serious academic background. I’m sure they know where the train is headed to and they are aware of the pressure that is on them to start producing some hard facts before they completely run out of business.
But I don’t think they will cave in. They already allowed for predispositions, as Nicolosi mentioned, so I think they will continue to argue that sexual feelings, especially SSAs, are not inborn but somehow deflected from a usual path. You can’t argue with that much, unless you build an attractometer to measure attractions at each age in children who’ll be found to have all the genetic and biological markers for future homosexuality. But that still won’t prove that “homosexuality” is a clean-cut biological reality, as long as a sizeable portion of gays would be found to have some degree of secondary heterosexual potential (how many gays had kids?). When science finds that out about the complexity of attractions in different individuals, by that time labels will have fallen out of favour with most people. No one will win this “war”, if anyone imagines that. Some ideologies will lose, most probably.
Evan
For women I dunno what’s going on. But for men I think we’re pretty much straight or gay with not many guys too far inbetween. At least that’s what I’ve always personally felt. Bailey’s brain scan came out and found that out of 100 guys something like 99 were decisively either straight or gay and that sort of backed my assumption up.
But even without any evidence I would guess that would be true. For men there is absolutely no individual, evolutionary benefit to being gay. Theoretically speaking I don’t know why any guy should be gay… except a few percent are in every generation. Which is why it’s a pretty darned interesting topic.
Warren or anybody who understands EBE
Ever since you mentioned “Erotic Becomes Exotic” I’ve been thinking about it. I completely understand and agree with the concept as it applies to straights and inbreeding.
But gay men? Why would the brain evolve a mechanism that (for any reason including EBE) commonly defaults to lifelong homosexuality? During humanities 250,000 year history being gay has come in handy for spreading DNA precisely zero times. Why would the brain pop out a trait that always reduces or even eliminates fertility in every conceivable environment?
For an EBE trait to survive there would have to be a beneficial flipside. Men who grew up around lots of other boys would need to produce extra children that survived to adulthood as compared to men who grew up around a typical mix of boys and girls. Something has to make up for the fertility drag of gay men. It doesn’t matter if gay men have 99 children for every 100 that straights have. Even a 1% drag is enough to quickly doom the mechanism without a corresponding benefit.
Drowssap wrote:
Oy vey!! I wish you would get off the individual kick when it comes to evolution. Men are not that important! If you have a tribe started when a man takes over a group of women, then the Y-chromosome is the same for all descendants. So what diversity does a man make in passing on his Y?
Think of it this way, there are many males of herd animals which do not breed and it does not produce a problem, why? Because all the females are serviced anyway by a smaller number of males. Males of a species are at times less important than females. Mammalian eggs, or rather any one egg is more important than any one sperm. Eggs are produced sparingly and sperm in copious amounts. Thus females are more important to a breeding population than males.
Note: breeding population. Genetics and evolution are operative on a breeding population. Individual fitness may be important in additive ways in a breeding population; however fitness for those males who breed can accomodate that loss in fitness by those males which do not breed - ie. sperm is cheap. This is not necessarily true in females. Lose a womb, lose precious eggs and a population has lost its avenue towards diversity - fertility.
So… as I have said time and time again…. if you have a genetic predisposition based upon a “strong” (skewed towards/unmethylated) X-chromosome that produces a propensity for more children to be born and perhaps more female children (vital wombs/eggs) over male children (cheap sperm), then you are increasing a population’s avenue to diversity, you’ve increased fertility. If now this same unmethylated X-chromosome is the cause of 5% of the males having a homosexual orientation (via gene expression) then there need be no lessening of overall population fitness as all females still get bred. If the homosexual male should breed, that male still passes on the “strong” X-chromosome to any daughter, thus his own fitness is expressed in the increased fertility of his daughter.
As to Exotic Become Erotic (EBE)…. why should there then be homosexually oriented animals? Are we going to anthropomorphise what young sheep might go through? Did the budding homosexual sheep not like to butt heads with his male peers? Did he instead prefer to prance in the buttercups with his sisters? Now how does a sheep go about eroticizing all that?
Goodnight….. Zzzzzz
Drowssap,
That’s the problem: studies of brain areas or of hemispheres show distributions of sizes, not binary states like either gay or straight brains. This is what LeVay found, this is what Witelson found and this is what Savic found. However, when it came to measuring sexual response in the lab (penis response), most men had specific response, ie it was stronger either for women or for men. How to explain this mismatch between the continuous distribution of brain sizes but specific sexual response? It demands an explanation. Can some gay men on the side actually be able to be aroused by some women and some straight men by some men?
Also, the brainscanning study you mentioned showed that gay men had a greater response to their preferred stimuli (men) than straight men to theirs (women) and that they were more indifferent to non-preferred stimuli (women) than straights to theirs (men). So gay men appear to be more indifferent to women and more fearful to/aroused by men than straights are to men and women. Possible explanation? It might be that attractions are one thing and how they get processed into arousal it’s really another thing and this latter part is definitely more specific in men, whereas brain sizes and activity can vary more widely.
In women, most studies show that arousal is less specific, ie they respond to sexual activity in general, but only a tiny fraction identify as exclusively gay. I think female sexuality is different, probably because of how their bodies are projected in the brain. The fact that women are also more prone to stress must be related to why they are attracted to men. Women need more security and that’s probably why evolution programmed their brains to look for men. Maybe that’s what happened to gay men: their brains defaulted to a state in which they handle stress in a feminine way, which makes them more vulnerable to men and indifferent to women.
Drowssap,
I don’t buy the greater fertility hypothesis. What about the older brother effect. How could some gay men come from families which had more boys or only boys but still be part of a “stronger X” gene make-up? How come they are gay although the stronger X seems to have done a pretty lousy job at producing more females in their family? More boys in the family, no greater female fertility effect for gays with older brothers. Also, the study this hypothesis is based on was done on a very small sample: Camperio-Ciani’s study surveyed 98 gay men and 100 straight men and found that the mothers of gay men had an average of 2.7 children, while the mothers of straight men averaged 2.3. Sanders and the Northwestern team will address this problem too in their genetic linkage study which must show up anytime soon so we’ll see if it gets confirmed or not in a bigger sample.
The greater investment in family offspring by gay men was studied by Bailey and Rahman who found they were not more generous than straights even if they were richer.
I think the effort to explain the persistence of homosexuality in human populations is misguided by the assumption that homosexuality was somehow selected for some direct advantage bestowed on siblings, contributing to greater fertility in the population and not in each individual. It might be the other way around. Homosexuality could be a by-product of another type of selection that operated for both sexes. My bet is on neoteny by means of antagonistic pleiotropy.
An example: a Russian biologist bred wild foxes, selecting for tame behaviour. After 40 generations the foxes were more docile but had other physical traits which the scientist did not select for, like shorter tails and floppy ears. In a similar thought experiment, we could imagine how a selection for neoteny in humans might produce more good looking females and more juvenile-looking males who are less aggressive and more anxious. That makes women more desirable without actually making them more fertile or more strongly attracted to men — it’s not evolutionarily necessary, because men have pursued women more than the other way around. On the contrary, it makes them more appealing to other males, increasing their chances of having children. This kind of selection does not necessarily need to operate only on individuals in a directly causal way, ie in the same family, it could work indirectly too, in a cross-family effect: more females might be selected for paedomorphic traits in order to become even more attractive because more men might be affected by the same effect in other families, ie being less aggressive, more anxious and more paedomorphic looking. Neoteny might be an evolutionary by-product of humans’ tendency to live in less dangerous environments and more social settings which demanded less aggressiveness and more cooperation. Paedomorphic traits might accompany the selection of less aggressive traits which created a trend towards more pacific and more clustered societies. When ancient decision makers became aware of a marginal decrease in reproduction because of this trend, they might have come up with cultural fixes, which bypassed evolutionary forces by means of arranged marriages. Since women, for the greatest part of human history, have not been given the choice of their mates, any arragement set by males either naturally, ie more dominant males getting the best-looking females by imposing themselves, or culturally, by family arrangements, managed to keep the effect at bay.
Now, if any such effect is true or a combination of them, then the coming of the open society and of civil rights which gave women equal standing among all members of society might reverse this trend. This time, natural evolutionary selection might actually return in an uncontrolled way to select out gay genes because the cultural setting allows gay men to pursue sexuality without having any of the ancient constraints. Admittedly, some gay men might still have children either by artificial or natural means, but on the whole, I think it would be the beginning of a gradual reduction of the presence of gay genes in the pool. But then culture can be understood to have operated in the past much like technology begins to operate now. It might mean that individuals might come up with individual strategies, based on technological means, from some point onwards.
Lynn David
You’re right. In social groups not every male gets to have kids, in fact most don’t. I’ve read that in early hunter/gatherer societies approximately 80% of the women had children while only 20% of the men had children.
But the problem is that the collected scientific evidence points away from a “gay” gene.
Dean Hamer says there is no pattern of inheritance
Simon Levay (sorry can’t find the original quote) says that every version of the gay gene theory proposed so far lacks credibility.
Most importantly twin study after twin study finds very low concordence for SSA. The latest twin study from Sweden found that environment was the number one factor by a wide margin.
Theory doesn’t trump collected evidence. Homosexuality is largely environmental and personally I don’t buy socialization as a common explanation.
Side Note:
Michael Bailey recently said that another large twin study was due out soon.
Lynn David
Scientists have been looking for a Schizophrenia gene for like 20 years.
Over 1000 genetic studies conducted (That’s gotta be nearly a billion dollars)
3,608 potential disease genes discovered (Yeah! we found it…. again)
In the final analysis only 24 were statistically significant and all (or nearly all) were extremely rare mutations. DOH!
Gene-Hunters Find Hope and Hurdles in Schizophrenia Studies
If a trait reduces fertility natural selection konks it in the head every time. It certainly did in the case of Schizophrenia.
Evan
Ever since you posted that “When Minnie Turns Mickey” link I’ve been sold on the concept of instincts. I would guess that the slight brain structure differences between gay and straight men are secondary.
Evan
Yeah, women have a totally different set of evolutionary forces that shaped their brains. How they work is a total mystery to me. I believe that women are straight but they have this weird ability to shift attraction depending on circumstance. I think it has something to do with creating an environment to raise children. If their mate dies they can pair up with another widowed female to raise the kids.
Evan
I don’t believe in the gay gene but I think you’re right in a specific and general sense. Whatever the reason a gay gene might theoretically exist it wouldn’t last long in the modern environment. Mate choice has completely opened up, gay people are allowed to be gay and family size has plummeted. The mating game has changed forever and whatever fine ballance kept the gay gene (and probably other genes) alive is long gone.
Evan said in post 120600:
The greater investment in family offspring by gay men was studied by Bailey and Rahman who found they were not more generous than straights even if they were richer.
Can you provide a citation for this research? I haven’t been able to find it.
Evan
I have to wonder why anyone would guess that sexual orientation was in any way related to a strong desire to raise someone else’s kids. The two are completely seperate and unrelated traits. No wonder this concept is bust.
Evan,
….it’s not evolutionarily necessary, because men have pursued women more than the other way around. …..
Um, you might want to take another look at that. Women have prusued men however using different methods - my guess is that men have done most of the documentation of mating methods and have been duped by their females counterparts into beleiving they actually did the choosing and chasing??? LOL!!!!!
Evan,
That is A LOT of speculation.
Maybe cultures are fluid, Changing through out time. In agrarian societies what is attractive is strength and longevity, muscular development (good birthing stock - wider hips) for gaining financial strength. As we move through time, industrailized societies found other physical attributes more attractive - such as ability to sustain health in cramped living quarters, ability to control and curb birthrate, etc….
In the seventies it was fashionable for women to be thin and the feminine was masculinized in many ways. Flat chested, slim hips, short hair, less body fat, (which by the way prevents the opportunity for a female to become pregnant) etc… Now in this time, we have birth control that is 99% effective, over sexualized generation - J Lo plastic surgery for buttocks, Breast Implants that provide no value, pectoral implants, labiaplasty or vaginal cosmetic surgery, penis enhancements, viagra and one of the lowest birth rates among those that are partaking of all this body modification. See stats on birth rates in the United States.
I’m just pointing out that there are other perspectives.
Lynn David
One more thing that I wasn’t even aware of. The scientist who is trying to mathematically prove the extra fertility hypothesis says that no sexually antagonistic trait has ever been found in humans. That doesn’t mean there aren’t 100, but so far nobody has found even one.
Why Gays Don’t Go Extinct
Ken,
It’s the Bobrow and Bailey 2001 study. It’s called Is Male Homosexuality Maintained Via Kin Selection?
I can’t find Rahman’s study. Here’s an interview where he mentions his results. Quote:
Ken,
This is the second study: Qazi Rahman and Matthew S. Hull, An Empirical Test of the Kin Selection Hypothesis for Male Homosexuality, Archives of sexual behavior, 2005, vol. 34, no4, pp. 461-467.
Ken,
THe gay uncle familial investment hypothesis is no longer studied by mainstream researchers. It was invalidated two times.
Mary,
Courtship practices vary a lot in space and time, but usually the male has the initiative. This is less so for shy men. But usually, and I think there are biological factors for that, the male feels the impulse to pursue the woman. It’s less typical that women pursue men and that this would lead to men actually being in the position to choose whether they accept or not a female’s proposition. I never met that. In my country there is one region where traditionally girls have more initiative in pursuing boys, but it’s limited practice.
Mary wrote:
In agrarian societies what is attractive is strength and longevity, muscular development (good birthing stock - wider hips) for gaining financial strength. As we move through time, industrailized societies found other physical attributes more attractive - such as ability to sustain health in cramped living quarters, ability to control and curb birthrate, etc….
That does not interfere with the neoteny hypothesis. Women’s bodies have gone through many transformations, but in the long period of time, these changes have evolved inside a bigger trend. During times of poverty, plump women were considered real knockouts. During times of plenty, including modern times, skinny women took center stage. But vellus hair, waist-to-hip ratio, facial symmetry, hourglass shape have been a mainstay of female attractiveness across cultures in time and space.
Neoteny is a bigger trend than small adjustments in fashion and temporary perceptions created by the mere exposure effect. For instance, the neoteny theory states that humans in general tend to maintain features characteristic of juveniles well into adulthood. This explains many facts like: humans are the only species who have adolescence, extended period of brain formation, longer disposition to continuous learning, increasing time window of reproductive fitness, etc. The physical attractiveness dimension is part of this bigger trend. I argued that neoteny brought some very important advantages to the human race, but was probably accompanied by some other maladaptive traits, of which homosexuality might be one of them.
Evan
I’m glad you had the links to those two studies on kin selection. But it’s even worse than that. Gay uncles would have to treat their neices and nephews BETTER than their own parents do in order for a gay gene to survive. For every child a parents raises to adulthood and gay uncle would need to raise two to adulthood just to stay even.
Drowssap,
That story is a real watershed for the study of gender behaviours …in mice. But however truly captivating it is, because it blows away decades of research spent on the neurohormonal hypothesis in animal studies, no one knows right now how it could apply to humans. Monkeys have some brain characteristics which cannot be found in other mammals. Furthermore, humans have developed some adaptations in the visual system which are unique to our species. It is possible that we may not have gender switches. Take the Exotic Becomes Erotic theory. Even if the theory fails to explain all cases, it’s a good foundation to start on. It is clear that to some extent the exoticisation principle does apply to humans, who have a particularly longer period of brain development. There’s no such thing in mice. Also, female mice have a period during which they are “in heat” and produce some pheromones to signal readiness to reproduce, which are perceived by the gender-switching olphactory organ in mice, the vomeronasal organ. Human females do not have either of these. So instincts in humans are not as clear-cut and programmed as those in mice. It seems that many human characteristics are either programmed to be very variable or very malleable. It’s still not very very clear if humans do have instincts like mice have. Mice are not so choosy as humans, they just respond to some pheromone cues in a programmed way. The more interesting part in this story is whether the other principle, beside the gender switching organ, was kept - if humans, like mice, have reserved circuitry for both sex behaviour. The existence of autogynephiliac men seems to indicate this possibility.
I’m sorry, Warren, the topic has drifted from your original questions. I hope it’s at least interesting.
Evan
I don’t think we’re exactly like mice or flies (which also have the same “both gender” phenomenon). But I bet we have both sets of male/female gender circuitry. One turned on the other off. This system probably operates on specialized neurotransmitters, but who knows. This new concept provides an instant, general explanation of heterosexuality, homosexuality and transgenderism.
Flies get ‘mind-control sex swap’
In Fruit Flies, Homosexuality Is Biological But Not Hard-wired, Study Shows
I wish Narth would issue a position on this stuff. This is the future.
I wish Narth would issue a position on this stuff. This is the future.
… actually let me rephrase that.
I wish ANYONE would issue a position on this stuff. I don’t see anybody on any side of the debate burning up the blogosphere regarding the latest gender science.
Same old Gay Gene vs. Socialization debate going on everywhere.
To address this topic on parenting and gender appropriation issues inasmuch as they have a bearing on a son’s or daughter’s future sexual orientation. There can be a few genetically based familial dynamics by which a father is less dominant and also less involved in interacting with the son, because he is more emotionally inhibited, sometimes very much like the son. So it can be a mutual distancing of unintentional nature. This type of familially transmitted genetic-based dynamics is already documented for some behaviours. Another case would be when the son is less gender conforming and the father does not perceive him to represent him. Since fathers have been generally less involved in child rearing, it’s the best excuse that many fathers could produce for themselves not to get involved in their son’s development. But let’s consider an extreme case. If gay fathers, who may be presumed to be less typical in gender terms, don’t have a significant influence on their son’s sexual orientation*, how could heterosexual ones have such a decisive influence? One could argue that if the father antagonizes the son he never breaks free of the mother-son attachment bond. However, many fathers have hostile relations with their sons, especially in broken homes, but that does not lead to a son’s dependence on his mother, unless he already has some predispositions not to feel the drive to become autonomous. Those predispositions, if identified, cannot be caused by paternal lack of involvement.
* For this conclusion, see Bailey J Michael, Bobrow David, Wolfe Marilyn, Mikach Sarah, Sexual Orientation of Adult Sons of Gay Fathers, Dev Psychol, Volume 31(1).January 1995.124–129.
Drowssap,
I don’t believe in the existence of inborn sexual feelings in humans. Gender identity is separate from sexual identity, but I think they are linked somehow. Those flies and mice have no sexual orientation, because they are other-sex oriented by default. What scientists did was to trick their brains into believing they are of the other sex so they failed to discriminate sexes correctly. In flies that can be done by genetic manipulation, because their sexuality is genetically programmed. In mice, until recently, it was believed that the neurohormonal blahblah was the rule. It turned out it wasn’t. It was genetics, again. But mice in the wild don’t have sexual orientation, don’t have variable attractiveness criteria and don’t grow up in gender segregated societies. If we are honest, actually people are not attracted to gender in general (like mice are) but to some particular individuals inside a gender category. This strongly points to exotic effects (and to other evolutionarily conditioned ways of perceiving ideal types), maybe built on some animal layers which account for category specificity. Discovering the genetic and other biological substrates for gender identity will be very interesting for sexual orientation too — this is the only common factor I can see for mice and humans.
Evan
That’s not how it feels for me. For whatever reason, many years before I knew what sex was I knew that young women were attractive/exciting to look at. I think we have a search template and whenever we find a match bells go off. I’m not saying the conscious mind doesn’t play a part as well but attraction kicks into gear almost instantaneously. Sexual attraction works as fast as a reflex test when doctors bump your knee and your leg moves forward.
Evan
Wouldn’t you guess that inborn/preprogrammed sexual feelings are the norm for every creature on Earth? Why not humans?
Evan said in post 120664 :
THe gay uncle familial investment hypothesis is no longer studied by mainstream researchers. It was invalidated two times.
Those studies did not invalidate the hypothesis. They didn’t even properly address it.
While those studies might be useful in making inferences about the generosity of gays vs. straights, in modern, Western civilizations, they do not address the effects gay relatives had on the family thousands of years ago. Rahman even notes this problem in his conclusions (p. 466):
Even Bailey noted in his paper (from the abstract):
I suspect this estrangement Bailey notes is the result of more modern (i.e. in the last hundred years or so) attitudes about gays. And is an indication that studying modern families is not a good way to examine homosexuality from an evolutionary standpoint.
And neither study addressed how having a gay family member would effect the family during times of economic hardship. I don’t think whether or not a gay uncle spends as much a straight uncle on x-mas presents is the best indicator of whether a gay uncle will help keep the nieces and nephews from starving if the parents are out of work and can’t provide enough food for them.
Drowssap,
For the big majority of people attractions are oriented towards one gender. But people are not attracted to each individual for their genderness. They are first of all attracted to sexual difference and then to some specific features. But sexual difference may not be the strongest factor. It’s the primary factor which makes the brain identify the conspecific as “not one of my team so it might be interesting to study” 8). But in itself, preferred gender does not trigger physiological reactions, sexual ones (because we saw that the presence of females can boost T levels in hetero men regardless of a woman’s attractiveness, but it was related to gender status). Attractions are layered products; they are not as simple as pushing a button. Not being in the right mood or being angry can mess with attractions, for instance. So it’s not a reflex. It may not work with the same attractive person each time.
I said that we don’t have inborn sexual feelings, IMO. In mice, it looks like sexual orientation = gender identity. You have the gender switched right, you identify the conspecific right and get their cues for mating if appropriate to your gender. No variations of sexual behaviours in the wild inside the same gender category for them.
In humans, as I said earlier, evolution has selected for neotenous traits. Protracted brain development is part of this process. Our brains take more than 20 years to reach adulthood. There’s something unique about why it takes so long to develop a human (maybe because he/she doesn’t have programmed instincts?). Children play with toys, they have object preference, they develop specific skills for later tasks by play choices, they prefer playmates and reject others, they develop a sense of gender identity and body image (!), they slowly build maps of their world which include other people’s bodies and how they interact and the emotional tensions generated by that. Not much programming there, beside some factors which influence these choices, but they must be exercised to be developed.
Remember the feral children? After growing up outside human contact and sometimes close to animals, they fail to identify humans as one of their own. It’s an extreme case which shows that the human brain can be imprinted at a very early age by the lack of human contact and/or presence of other animals. If instincts were inborn and fixed, then they couldn’t be tampered with. Other studies in mice show that staying close to members of their species makes them notice their same-gender conspecifics less (beside the programmed instincts like aggression). It’s probably valid for other species too. Staying close most of your life to your gender peers makes you notice them less than if you grow up apart from them. So it looks like the brain forms some gender maps including your body and uses them to say: ‘nothing out of ordinary here, look on the other side.’ Probably this effect is strongest in humans, who have the least programmed instincts and depend a lot on the early formative period.
Ken,
Scientists tested that hypothesis in this very modern setting. If it doesn’t work now, when gays are not constrained to marry and have better jobs and gains than they probably had one century ago, how could this effect work during times when they were coerced into marriage? You mentioned “gays” in ancient societies as if they had a self-concept, behaviour and were recognised as such. For all we know, we can only ascertain this today. The largest chunk of male homosexuality might be created by an unknown environmental factor which messes up with maternities, for instance, that was not present 3000 years ago. The rest of homosexuals might be genetically generated at a very small rate, like smaller than 1%. Would there be any need for such investment at such a small rate? Were they sufficiently well-off to be able to have enough surplus to invest in relatives? Why would they do that and not invest in their lovers?
Bring some evidence to counter modern facts. I referred to modern empirical studies and they invalidated the effect in present societies assuming that it would have been carried on until now, when living standards are a lot higher than in ancient settings. If the effect was strong, then it woud be stronger today. But there’s no effect.
Gayness is modern Western. We assume, based on some written sources that there must have been a number of men who had exclusive sexual fantasies or intercourse with other men. Were they casual MSM, gays or gender variants, like Elagabalus? It’s hard to say. Only today we have separate gay identity and scientific study of sexual orientation. They go together somehow.
Evan
Women are only fertile during a short period of their lives. So you would expect any attraction instinct would take that into account. And an attraction to women instinct wouldn’t act in a vaccuum. We have 100 other survival instincts competing with each other for our conscious mind’s attention. So any of those mechanisms could easily suppress an attraction to women instinct.
Even if attraction to young, fertile, buxom women is an instinct it wouldn’t mean we’re robots. We have a conscious mind full of a lifetime of experiences in control of our choices.
ken
There are a lot of different versions of the gay gene theory floating around. The gay uncle theory has got to be the worst. I’m tellin’ you, forget that one. I don’t agree with the extra fertility hypothesis but AT LEAST there is some evidence in it’s favor. The gay uncle theory is pure craziness.
Drowssap wrote…..
You have a short memory for our talks here and what seems to be a poor understanding of what I said. Gene expression is not the same as having a specific gene. I agree… THERE IS NO GAY GENE.
There may or may not be a gene for female fertility. There may or may not need be a gene which effects a skew towards a particular X-chromosome. But somehow that genetic predisposition associated with fertility would result in gene expression of female genes from the X in male children which results in homosexuality. That in no way adds up to a simple gay gene.
Gene expression need not occur in every certain organism with that genetic predisposition. Thus a lower concordance is most certain. Also Twins need not be an example of gene expression, but possibly some other form. Perhaps some sort of in utero chemical “sibling conflict” or a severe form of birth order causes.
Evan wrote….
Well, the study conducted by that Italian group indicated that the women relatives of gay men were more fertile. It is in the female siblings that is the main, read if you will “normal,” effect of the gene or genetic predisposition. Homosexuality in males would be simply be a once in a while and not a necessary “side-effect” - formed not by that gene or genetic predisposition (for female fertility) should it exist, but by gene expression of other genes.
Why, cause we’re all so cute? I know a number of 6 foot plus bears on motorbikes who I can send over to your place to discuss that possibility. Which is to say it just doesn’t meet with my idea of logic.
Evan wrote….
Why would there need to be only one way to homosexuality? I, at this time, “buy” the women’s fertility (more women births) and the older brother effect - aka birth order causes (and one or two other possibilities). Birth order as a pathway to male homosexuality is thought to be derived of an effect in which mothers attempt to “reject” successive male fetuses. Miscarriages of male fetus have been shown to be more numerous (of a higher probability compared to female births) after a male child is born. This is supposed to come down to mostly hormones.
So here is one idea concerning birth order. The hormonal effect produced by the mother which results in higher percentage of miscarriages of successive male fetuses may lead to the same gene expression of an X-chromosome, not necessarily a “strong X,” an X-chromosome which resists methylation) in a fetus that one sees in the fertility/unmethylated X-chromosome scenario.
But then there is a second idea concerning birth order. The hormonal effect produced by the mother simply blocks that normal hormonal sequence in the brain which results in the masculinization in those structures associated with orientation.
Evan wrote…..
Yeah, that really went a long way to screwing with my mind…..
…
Ok… She’s almost there with me. It has no need of anything to do with sexually antagonistic genes. Because the gene which increases fertility in women is not necessarily being expressed in regular old, plain-vanilla, straight men. Because it is on the X-chromosome which is not being expressed in such men. That same gene possibly is being expressed in gay men, but isn’t the cause of homosexuality, other genes, not normally expressed in men, are the cause of that homosexuality.
Whoops… that last paragraph went with my next post…. sorry
Evan said - “So it can be a mutual distancing of unintentional nature. This type of familially transmitted genetic-based dynamics is already documented for some behaviours.”
Can you name the behaviors you are referring to?
Lynn David
My head is spinning on that one.
According to Camperio-Ciani scientists haven’t discovered any sexually antagonistic traits in humans yet.
Isn’t what you just described a complicated version of sexual antagonism? Whatever the genetic mechanism, girls get extra fertility, men become gay and natural selection finds a balancing point between these two traits.
Dean Hamer calls the women in the extra fertility hypothesis “super straight” so I propose a new name for this theory. It should be called the Hot, Female Vixen hypothesis. Without the fitness drag of gay men the “hot female vixen” gene would spread until it became fixed worldwide. All women would be like this if it wasn’t for gay men having fewer kids! DANGIT!
Drowssap wrote…
Like I said I may not understand it all. Except sexually-antagonistic genes must be operative in both men and women and they aren’t if they are normally on the X-chromosome. Unless they have no counterpart and are expressed…. ehh, then why aren’t all men gay? My point is a man may have the fertility gene and not be gay, or influenced by that gene. Doesn’t that make my idea different? Head hurts….
You shoulda seen my mother and aunts, and the distaff side of my family, I guess those women were hot…. ;~)
. . .
Lynn David
I think if a trait is created by natural, healthy processes dependent on genes AND it’s beneficial to one sex, but in some way detrimental to the other it’s sexually antagonistic. The rate of expression isn’t a factor in antagonism. All that matters is that it’s natural to the species and that it’s ying and yang.
BTW, if the extra fertility hypothesis were true it explains why generations of straight men have tried to get gay men to marry and have families. They want to keep the population of lusty women up.
Evan said in post 120711 :
Scientists tested that hypothesis in this very modern setting.
Except the hypothesis doesn’t necessarily apply to a modern setting. Lets make sure we are talking about the same thing.
Homosexuality has been observed in humans for thousands of years and likely occurred in pre-historic times as well. It has also been observed in other species. Evolutionary theory predicts that desirable traits will be passed on and undesirable traits will not (note to Drowssap, I said traits not genes and I suggest you learn the difference before you try to claim I’m supporting a “gay gene theory” ). The undesirable traits would eventually become suppressed or die out entirely. Since homosexuality has not died out, evolutionary theory suggests it must, overall, have desirable features (that outweigh any undesirable features)
However, evolutionary theory suggests that desirable traits should coincide with higher reproduction or higher survivability rates of offspring. Since homosexuality produces lower reproductive rates, evolutionary theorists focus on the survivability aspect. Further, they examining desirability on a familial or community level rather than an individual level. Thus was developed the kin selection theory (or the “rich gay uncle” theory).
This theory hypothesizes that since homosexuals do not devote time and energy to reproduction and child rearing, they can devote that time and energy to developing more resources or wealth (in terms of more spears, better skill with spears or at foraging, greater food stores etc). Further it hypothesizes that families (tribes, communities etc) with a “rich gay uncle” may have a higher survivability rate for their children because they have him as an additional resource. Not necessarily on a continuous ongoing basis. Perhaps just as a resource during times of hardship, ex. when a parent is injured or sick and unable to provide enough food or shelter for the children etc.
To emphasize, this is just a theory and not the only one regarding evolution and homosexuality. Nor am I claiming it has been proven, only that the 2 papers you cited do not disprove it. They are flawed in that they don’t address how the uncles respond in times of hardship for the families, or the relative wealth (in terms of disposable income or free time) of the gay and straight uncles. They were done in a time when society (and families) had been ostracizing gays for years and where there are welfare systems in place to help families during times of hardship.
Ken
You are making a substantial, logical error. Blindness has been around for as long as there have been eyes. However children are not commonly blind due to the genes they inherit from their parents.
Ken
Here is an even better example.
Infertility in women has been around as long as their have been wombs. There are probably more young, infertile women in your town than gay men. And yet, 20 year old women are not commonly infertile due to the genes they inherit from their parents. In young people a lot of infertility (maybe most) is due to common STDs.
Warren said in #120728: Can you name the behaviors you are referring to?
I wrote:
Let me clarify my idea. There is no known family interaction style which is genetically determined and inherited, although that type of interaction may result from genetically influenced inheritable traits. THe second sentence from my argument is too bold and you noticed that. Having similar predispositions can lead to similar maladaptations, but family interaction styles and any behaviours arising thereof are not genetically predetermined according to present genetic studies.
PTSD is known to have familial and inheritable support. But also, PTSD non-genetic transmission was reported to exist in the form of familial transmission of traumatic memory. This disorder might qualify for the model I mentioned in my argument. However, I haven’t seen any study yet which links the genetic influences with the familial non-genetic factors.
Coping styles have been considered to be determined by environment, especially familial environment. A team of researchers have found strong genetic influences on coping styles in a German twins study. -
Suicidal behaviour has been found to be highly familial and heritable too.
Smoking is familially inheritable in men, but it does not qualify as having a necessary interactional dimension in its transmission: members of the family might be predisposed to smoke but their decision/impulse to smoke might be triggered by peers and much less by family.
Another researcher proposed a newer and interesting perspective on how intergenerational transfer of experience can be inherited epigenetically. Could homosexuality work in a similar manner, taking into account that this perspective does not need a high DNA contribution to a trait? It’s worth to consider. One researcher from UCLA working on a genetic study on male homosexuality takes this approach (high-resolution scanning of choice sites, looking for differences in methylation patterns present in twins discordant for sexual orientation) which is different from that adopted by the Northwestern team (looking for linkage by low-resolution scans on a whole-genome basis - similar to Hamer’s method in his initial study but the sample is bigger). Results from these studies will clarify what genetic component is there for male homosexuality and how it’s expressed and will rekindle the debate on whether post-natal interaction can be decisive for a child’s future sexual orientation. Scientists will be able to discern a lot better how much parenting style can stifle or encourage a child’s developing same-gender attractions. Right now, Nicolosi can get away with his statements because there is no proof that what he claims is impossible in any subset, although non-existence of proof does not make his lack of any empirical evidence more impressive.
TEST - I tried to reply to a message here, but the spam filter may have interfered.
Warren said in #120728: Can you name the behaviors you are referring to?
I wrote:
Let me clarify my idea. There is no known family interaction style which is genetically determined and inherited, although that type of interaction may result from genetically influenced inheritable traits. THe second sentence from my argument is too bold and you noticed that. Having similar predispositions can lead to similar maladaptations, but family interaction styles and any behaviours arising thereof are not genetically predetermined according to present genetic studies.
PTSD is known to have familial and inheritable support. But also, PTSD non-genetic transmission was reported to exist in the form of familial transmission of traumatic memory. This disorder might qualify for the model I mentioned in my argument. However, I haven’t seen any study yet which links the genetic influences with the familial non-genetic factors.
Coping styles have been considered to be determined by environment, especially familial environment. A team of researchers have found strong genetic influences on coping styles in a German twins study.
(continued in the next message)
Now it’s posted.
Ken,
How can anthropologists ascertain that gay men in the past contributed to their relatives’ welfare, as the evolutionary perspective you mentioned argues, since there is no empirical proof of that?
Ken,
Sexuality did not play in the past the role that it plays today. It’s a common mistake in these evolutionary arguments to suppose that human sexuality is biological, therefore it manifested itself with the same animal strength in each epoch. Try talking about “gay” uncles during the Paleolithic era and come up with some evidence. Why don’t modern-day gay uncles invest in their relatives’ offspring more than straight ones when it’s easier for them to do that today? The argument that today we have welfare systems is too weak, considering that the investment that you might make in your relatives’ offspring if you are rich is remotely different from managing to survive by state aid. Do you think that it’s possible that there were so few androphilic uncles in the past who were not heterosexually paired that there wouldn’t be any need to superimpose our modern categories of sexuality on past practices?
Evan wrote….
I’m not arguing for the “gay uncle” hypothesis, I rather think it to be bunk, but there is emperical evidence in the way tribal societies in the Americas often accepted and integrated their homosexual members (often called two-spirit peoples) into their groups. One could simply surmise that this often happened in many a tribal society which could ill afford to “throw away” a person simple because they might not fit into the norm. But that doesn’t exactly fit th gay uncle stuff.
I sure hope human sexuality is biologically controlled. Sure starts out with gender and that has plenty of biologic control Why shouldn’t sexuality be a built in biological control (via an evolutionary path). Else humanity might never have survived.
Or are you saying that man unlike his non-self conscious ancestor species thought about sexuality and dismissed it? Even so, why should conscious mind trump biological controls? Would not the conscious mind simply restate what the subconscious instinctual responses are? Is that not from whence our social mores sprang?
And also on that note it was the majority that ruled, ie. homosexual peoples were overruled as societies became more organized beyond the tribal level in which all persons were needed for survival and none were deemed to be “throw-aways.” Marginalization came next, the Canaanite kadesh perhaps being a good example. Then came the “throw-away” cultures of more modern times. We’re only now getting back to our more tribal roots, so to speak, and allowing marriage between gays and lesbians.
This is the link to the study on the familiality of suicidal behaviour. The one in the message addressed to Warren was broken.
Also, I have a correction to make: it was the third sentence that was too boldly formulated.
Lynn David,
I wrote in a few messages on this blog about how losing a gender switch, discovered in at least one mammal right now, might have impacted the formation of sexual feelings in humans (message 1 and message 2). If gender identity no longer guarantees reproductive sexual orientation in humans because the gender-switching organ was not phylogenetically preserved in higher primates, then it must be that human sexuality is less programmed by fixed instincts. This lends credibility to Bem’s idea on the effects of gender segregation on the promotion of heterosexuality for reproductive purposes in human communities (You can find the theory by running a search on “Exotic Becomes Erotic”. If I post another link this message gets filtered). No other species does that in such a systematic manner. Humans might remarkably need cultural practices to give shape to less strict instincts. So it’s actually cultural practices that might have preserved the reproductive potential in human sexuality and not instinctual programming. To respond to your argument, returning to primeval practices might actually do away with those reproductively successful strategies. Having genetic and other biological underpinnings to influence early behaviour and set a child on a path to a certain variety of sexuality is not the same as claiming that human sexuality is biologically determined. Researchers can still find correlates, but no determining factor for sexual orientation, no point lever to pull in the womb or outside the womb to get a certain sexual orientation. No switch, no predetermined path to a certain sexuality, but lots of predispositions. I also thought about another possible perspective in which sexual orientation might be changeable, during some windows of opportunity, only in one direction but not the other one. So, sexual orientation might not be fixed, but neither bidirectionally reversible. This is another line that research does not pursue, because the climate is still too ideological to assume that sexual orientation is no inborn. The correct assumption is always the other one.
In ancient agricultural civilisations religious beliefs were focused on fertility and the corporate renewal of the world by divine procreation. Humans participated in that both by reproducing and by planting the earth. An argument for same-sex behaviour and correspodent recognised identity during that time is just mental play without any proof. On the contrary, in the spirit of that age, sex between men would have probably been considered a waste and desecration of god-given means. Not much room for free expression of “biological” sexual variety. One’s sexuality was not based on pleasure, most likely. We separated one from another very recently.
Sexual identity is not a transhistorical reality. You get the right to your sexuality when you become an individual, which you were not in certain societies. Actually it took some time until people split into individuals, acquired rights and started defining themselves by differences which they later claimed to be separate and requiring acceptance. This is a completely modern development. There is no “gayness” or “straightness” in any other age. We have reconstructed politically defined identities by using modern means and abstractions to filter past messages according to present interests. But human history is not mathematics, where one term can be equated with another. The terms are never equal and interchangeable. Who does that lacks historical conscience. When and where was gay identity shaped? — that is the answer to why so many symptomatically abuse history to make a case for the legitimation of modern sexualities, as if that must be found in the past in order to be legitimate. The same argument about usefulness, expressed today using the fashionable term of “evolutionary fitness.”
Lynn David,
I wrote in a few messages on this blog about how losing a gender switch, discovered in at least one mammal right now, might have impacted the formation of sexual feelings in humans (check comments 110070 and 110075 in this topic). If gender identity no longer guarantees reproductive sexual orientation in humans because the gender-switching organ was not phylogenetically preserved in higher primates, then it must be that human sexuality is less programmed by fixed instincts. This lends credibility to Bem’s idea on the effects of gender segregation on the promotion of heterosexuality for reproductive purposes in human communities (You can find the theory by running a search on “Exotic Becomes Erotic”. If I post another link this message gets filtered). No other species does that in such a systematic manner. Humans might have remarkably needed cultural practices to give shape to less strict instincts. So it’s actually cultural practices that might have preserved the reproductive potential in human sexuality and not instinctual programming. To respond to your argument, returning to primeval practices might actually do away with those reproductively successful strategies. Having genetic and other biological underpinnings to influence early behaviour and set a child on a path to a certain variety of sexuality is not the same as claiming that human sexuality is biologically determined. Researchers can still find correlates, but no determining factor for sexual orientation, no point lever to pull in the womb or outside the womb to get a certain sexual orientation. No switch, no predetermined path to a certain sexuality, but lots of predispositions. I also thought about another possible perspective in which sexual orientation might be changeable, during some windows of opportunity, only in one direction but not the other one. So, sexual orientation might not be fixed, but neither bidirectionally reversible (it could be different in different genders). This is another line that research does not pursue, because the climate is still too ideological to assume that sexual orientation is not inborn. The correct assumption is always the other one.
In ancient agricultural civilisations religious beliefs were focused on fertility and the corporate renewal of the world by divine procreation. Humans participated in that both by reproducing and by planting the earth. An argument for same-sex behaviour and correspodent recognised identity during that time is just mental play without any proof. On the contrary, in the spirit of that age, sex between men would have probably been considered a waste and desecration of god-given means. Not much room for free expression of “biological” sexual variety. One’s sexuality was not based on pleasure, most likely. We separated reproductive sexuality from hedonistic sexuality very recently.
Sexual identity is not a transhistorical reality. You get the right to your sexuality when you become an individual, which you were not in certain societies. Actually it took some time until people split into individuals, acquired rights and started defining themselves by differences which they later claimed to be separate and requiring acceptance. This is a completely modern development. There is no “gayness” or “straightness” in any other age. We have reconstructed politically defined identities by using modern means and abstractions to filter past messages according to present interests. But human history is not mathematics, where one term can be equated with another. The terms are never equal and interchangeable. Who does that lacks historical conscience. When and where was gay identity shaped? — that is the answer to why so many symptomatically abuse history to make a case for the legitimation of modern sexualities, as if that must be found in the past in order to be legitimate. The same argument can be made about usefulness, expressed today using the fashionable term of “evolutionary fitness.”
Evan asked in post a href=”#comment-121345″>121345:
How can anthropologists ascertain that gay men in the past contributed to their relatives’ welfare, as the evolutionary perspective you mentioned argues, since there is no empirical proof of that?
that’s why it is just a theory.
ken wrote….
No, that is why it would be known as a hypothesis. Theories, such as the theory of gravity or the modern synthesis of the theory of evolution, have evidentiary facts backing them up.
Evan said in post
Sexuality did not play in the past the role that it plays today.
Interesting statement considering in the previous post you were commenting on how difficult it was to obtain information about ancient times.
It’s a common mistake in these evolutionary arguments to suppose that human sexuality is biological, therefore it manifested itself with the same animal strength in each epoch.
it is known that there is a biological component to sexuality. However, nothing in th theory requires “the same animal strength in each epoch.”
Why don’t modern-day gay uncles invest in their relatives’ offspring more than straight ones when it’s easier for them to do that today?
1st, the 2 studies you cited don’t generally show that gay uncles invest in relatives’ off-spring more than straight ones. As for why the specific populations they studied didn’t, I already addressed that, one possibility is modern attitudes towards gays may have driven away those uncles, another is both countries the studies were done in already have extensive welfare systems which mitigate the need for a rich uncle to insure survivability of offspring.
The argument that today we have welfare systems is too weak, considering that the investment that you might make in your relatives’ offspring if you are rich is remotely different from managing to survive by state aid
Again the theory (at least one version of it) doesn’t require the rich uncles to “invest” in their nieces and nephews, only to be a resource to help them survive in times of hardship.
Lynn David said in post:
but there is emperical evidence in the way tribal societies in the Americas often accepted and integrated their homosexual members (often called two-spirit peoples) into their groups. One could simply surmise that this often happened in many a tribal society which could ill afford to “throw away” a person simple because they might not fit into the norm. But that doesn’t exactly fit th gay uncle stuff.
Actually this does fit the gay uncle concept I’ve been describing, however, instead of family being the unit, the scale is tribal. The idea is that gays contribute to the survivability of offspring (within the family or tribe) even if not their own. Although, in the tribal case it would be more of sharing the wealth (or helping generate greater tribal wealth) than just being a resource in times of hardship.
Evan wrote…
All the higher primates? Monkeys, apes, and humans? Or do you only allude to man and perhaps his closest relative, chimps, or perhaps more correctly, the bisexual bonobo. Well, prove it. But I don’t think you’re at all right. It all sounds like the old religious idea of putting ourselves above and separate from all animal life on earth.
Nor do I think that Bem’s theory has a leg to stand upon. Yes, I’ve read the paper. As I said before, when did a homosexual ram begin to move the exotic into the erotic. Was it when it eschewed head-butting with the young rams in favor of prancing in the buttercups with its sisters? Bem’s idea is nothing more than a last dying gasp of psychology to maintain its stranglehold on the roots of homosexuality. That’s not to say that psychology cannot aid persons in that regard or find some minor other cause of some persons’ homosexuality.
Aaaahhhh…. nope. When along the line did we lose it instinctually and thus need to systemize it as a part of our conscious mind. Had to happen comcommitently and that is just ridiculous if you must insist on it happening to all (most all?) “higher primates” when the conscious mind was not in effect until man came along, perhaps in Homo erectus, or maybe later, much later, as late as 55,000 years ago even some 130,000-150,000 years after our species, Homo sapiens, is identified as beginning.
And I never said it was. You’re imputing ideas upon me which I did not express, if only to simply try to “head my arguments off at the pass.” In the meantime, you completely missed what my arguments were. Nice job.
Here’s one point though, when I said, “homosexual peoples were overruled as societies became more organized beyond the tribal level,” I was saying the exact same thing you were saying about ancient agrisocieties. I was not speaking about any individual or group and their identification as homosexual. It is eminently obvious to any student of history that homosexual identity did come to be identifiable until the 3% or so grew along with the population as a whole for any societey. In modern times that was London about 1700.
And I wasn’t doing that. I was pointing out that individual homosexuality has likely always occurred in man. It is the society as a whole which has shaped homosexuality to its uses or completely repressed it. Society for the most part has been a perverter of homosexuality. For instance, your idea that….
Is purely a socio-religious construct. There is only sexuality in man, societies have falsely given modifiers to sexuality in order to demonize certain sexual pursuits, one of which was homosexuality among its individual members. Thus did western society (and others) demonize any attempt by homosexuals to group together calling such developments a ‘lifestyle’ subculture which was only about sex. Continues until this very day.
Correction. in my post 121393:
The line:
1st, the 2 studies you cited don’t generally show that gay uncles invest in relatives’ off-spring more than straight ones.
should read:
1st, the 2 studies you cited don’t generally show that gay uncles invest in relatives’ off-spring less than straight ones.
Lynn
As I said before, when did a homosexual ram begin to move the exotic into the erotic.
LOL!
Bem;s is one theory out of MANY, and I don’t know many people who take it seriously except those people for whom the theory already fits some preconceived ideology. 
Evan,
This is another line that research does not pursue, because the climate is still too ideological to assume that sexual orientation is not inborn.
I don’t any self-respecting scientist that truly believes sexual orientation is inborn - in the sense that it is genetically hard-wired without the environmen