The Gay Animal Kingdom: a challenge to Darwinian theory of sexual selection

[Stella_Omega]

Hmm.

For so very many reasons (which fall into the "hey asshole, that's ME you're talking about" and/or "pseudoscience makes Baby Jesus cry" categories), the words "homosexuality' and "genetic disease" in the same sentence are awfully offensive.

Even more so on a porn writer's forum.

 

[Epmd607]

I was referring to Huckleman's post #10 in this thread.

"Yes, and according to Roughgarden, “a ‘common genetic disease’ is a contradiction in terms, and homosexuality is three to four orders of magnitude more common than true genetic diseases such as Huntington’s disease.” Also, there is the well-documented correlation between bi- and homosexuality and birth-order. If females are living long enough to have many offspring, by implication they are in a stable social setting."

Some of your posts seem to neglect what's been said before, as if you're looking for the sensational and neglecting the uncommonly civil discourse for a thread on a porno message board.

How homosexuality has been compared/alluded to as a 'genetic disease' on this thread and in the literature:

met⋅a⋅phor
  /ˈmɛtəˌfɔr, -fər/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [met-uh-fawr, -fer]

–noun
1. a figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance, as in “A mighty fortress is our God.” Compare mixed metaphor, simile (def. 1).
2. something used, or regarded as being used, to represent something else; emblem; symbol.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Alcoholism is the analogy you want for homosexuality.

 

[JamesSD]

I've been reading the comments and trying to figure out why, with all the consensus leading to continued human evolution and cultural factors being a major part of that evolution, why don't all the men have 10" cocks and the women have DD breasts? It seems that it's always been a desired trait that men wish to have and women want bigger breasts as well. If society and culture play such a key role in development, why haven't these changes become the norm? It's been a desired trait of both for centuries and very little has changed in that way. We are about as sexual as our species can be and put great emphasis on it, so it would only stand to reason that we should have inherited these traits by now, after so many 1000's of years of wanting it. There must be another factor that alludes us to acheiving the aforementioned traits.

For a Primate, human males have truly enormous penises relative to our stature. Chimps, our closest genetic cousins, also have quite large dicks. Somewhat amusingly and probably counter intuitive to some, bigger (relative) penises correlate very closely in primates with higher intelligence. I would argue there have been some evolutionary upward pressures on penis size, although it is merely one of many traits that make a man sexually desirable, as any woman could tell you. A similar argument could be made about height; for men being tall is cross-culturally viewed as an advantage, so why aren't we all 7' tall?

As for breasts, the obsession with huge tits is largely a product of Western Civilization, particularly the US, and really, cultures where women cover up. Again, with cross-cultural studies men are more likely to be obsessed with a round ass. Still, with some variation, human females by and large have huge breasts and wide hips, especially compared to men. There is even some evidence that the more of an "hourglass" figure a woman has the more fertile she tends to be, although like a lot of human studies these sorts of correlations are tough to test with complete confidence.

Getting back to the original article, I actually was suprised at the implication there are still a lot of scientists that take Darwin's sexual selection theory so literally. Any scientist worth his or her microscope should know that in the real world things are often a lot messier and more complicated than we'd like them to be. Most traits, especially in humans, are rarely expressed in a 1 gene:1 trait manner. Great easy examples of this are hair and eye color. Even very nordic looking parents can produce a fairly wide range of hair and eye color, although probability does tend to favor looking more like your parents.

The genetic basis for homosexuality is well established, even if people who don't like homosexuals don't accept it. Twin studies, genetic histories and other science all points to the fact that there is at least some genetic component to homosexuality. Many social scientists will also argue that a much larger portion of the population is far more predispositioned to bisexual desire than act on it in practice. Most "gay" men are rarely entirely homosexual in their behavior, especially in their late teens and twenties. Some are closeted, some are in denial, and some are just horny and willing to accept whatever mouth happens to be available. Very recently in the United States nearly every homosexual man would end up in a marriage with a woman. Most of those unions presumably produced children at a fairly standard rate.

Ironically, one side effect of more teens coming out of the closet at a younger age is in the long run we may actually see a decreased incidence of homosexuality in the US. Of course until the Ted Haggards of the world come out saying "I'm gay and that's ok" there will always be some homosexual genes around, not to mention those hard to categorize bisexuals having babies. But as a percentage there are going to be a lot less gay men entering marriages under duress, and presumably having less children.

I guess I'm babbling. My central point is that I'm not surprised that animals engage in sex for pleasure as much as reproduction. And my mind is hardly blown away by the idea that there are some traits that at first glance aren't strictly advantageous. Again, nature likes to hold onto traits even if they may not be strictly "ideal" for the current conditions. The world is a constantly changing place and having minority members of the gene pool can provide flexibility when those big sudden changes occur.

 

[WRJames]

The assertion that homosexuality is "unnatural" (and thus sinful) predates Darwin by quite a few centuries.

Paul in his letter to the Romans condemns "unnatural" acts of men acting as women and women acting as men. In fact, there are earnest attempts in the Christian community to assert that homosexuality is "natural" and innate in some individuals.

What is certainly true is that, by accident or design, we are able to give and receive sexual pleasure in a variety of ways. What we do with this basic physical equipment is probably more a matter of nurture than nature.

 

[Epmd607]

Alcoholism is the analogy you want for homosexuality.

Even though he's trying to make someone mad, he's made an analogy that's probably better than the lactase deficiency one.

Alcohol is pretty recent in our history, you need agriculture for massive amounts of alcohol, so alcoholism is fairly recent. And the best theory on alcoholism is that some folks are genetically predisposed to become alcoholics, so there's the genetic component. The genetic predisposition is only a side effect of some other trait that was selected for.

You can have things in genetics that aren't selected for or against, I don't think that alcohol has been around long enough to be selected for or against. So alcoholism, its genetic causes, might resemble the earlier everydayness of homosexuality in ape populations.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Ep, here's something about evolutionary basis for alcoholism;
http://icb.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/44/4/284

It can be very well argued that it's a survival trait that's gone out of control. Diabetes is the result of our desire for high-calorie foods, which once were rare and hard to find, but, because we humans are so damn good at manipulating our environment to suit our needs and desires-- we have facilitated our search for cheap calories to our own detriment.

it's entirely possible that making it easy to be homosexual, as JamesSD has mentioned, will eventually diminish whatever genetic component there might be to homosexuality. Or that there will someday be as many queers around as there are diabetics.

EXCEPT THAT! Homosexuals can make babies, regardless of their primary preference. And they do-- even out and proud gay men and women are willing to procreate.

 

[Huckleman2000]

The assertion that homosexuality is "unnatural" (and thus sinful) predates Darwin by quite a few centuries.

Paul in his letter to the Romans condemns "unnatural" acts of men acting as women and women acting as men. In fact, there are earnest attempts in the Christian community to assert that homosexuality is "natural" and innate in some individuals.

What is certainly true is that, by accident or design, we are able to give and receive sexual pleasure in a variety of ways. What we do with this basic physical equipment is probably more a matter of nurture than nature.

Perhaps the "gay" qualities that evolution has selected for work best for clan-type civilizations. When you're a small bunch of proto-humans roaming the plains, greeting another small group of proto-humans with handjobs all-around instead of spears seems to be a better survival tactic for the species.

Once a culture becomes organized and successful enough to exert oppression, maybe repressing sexual desires in favor of societal organization needs is one of the first tools of "the state." The top-down pressure on lower-status societal members to quit fucking around and produce!

 

[Stella_Omega]

Perhaps the "gay" qualities that evolution has selected for work best for clan-type civilizations. When you're a small bunch of proto-humans roaming the plains, greeting another small group of proto-humans with handjobs all-around instead of spears seems to be a better survival tactic for the species.

Once a culture becomes organized and successful enough to exert oppression, maybe repressing sexual desires in favor of societal organization needs is one of the first tools of "the state." The top-down pressure on lower-status societal members to quit fucking around and produce!

I'm going to try this argument on a bunch of MEN EVOLVED TO RAPE-type Evo Bio dorks I know.

 

[CharleyH]

Came across this article in Seed Magazine about the work of a Stanford professor who wrote a book (Evolution's Rainbow) cataloging sexual behaviors in vertebrates. This includes documentation of homosexual activities in over 450 species. This abundance of non-reproductive sexual behavior led her to question the theory of sexual selection - that traits that weren't explained by natural selection were explained as part of sexual attraction. for example, the peacock's extravagant tail attracts females, and so is selected as an evolutionary trait even though it isn't an environmental adaptation. Within this theoretical framework, homosexuality is an anomaly, since it doesn't lead to reproduction.

What she postulates from her work is that homosexual behaviors are actually selected for in species that have higher degrees of social behavior. Shared homosexual experiences in many species reinforce social bonds and maintain social stability.

One implication is that individuals would have to select for group traits, not the individual "best genes I can find" idea that predominates Western cultural stereotypes.

That's a REALLY brief summation of a far more interesting article.

This is interesting. What is more INTRIGUING is that when there is a lack of male or female genders in some animal species, they evolve... some change to female, some to male in order to keep the pace and the species alive. In saying this, I've nothing against LGBTI, BELIEVE ME. I am just saying that compared to other species, humans are a bit behind in evolution... trans individuals cannot procreate, for example.

 

[Huckleman2000]

I'm going to try this argument on a bunch of MEN EVOLVED TO RAPE-type Evo Bio dorks I know.

I'm interested to hear how that goes, LOL.

Not to threadjack my own thread, which has proven to be really interesting IMO, but I originally came by the article in the OP via another news item where a high-school English teacher in Illinois was recently suspended for allowing his sophomore honors-class students to read the article. He has since returned to his job, after apologizing for the "age-appropriateness" of the article. Some parents had complained and even called in child-welfare authorities with the idea that it was "child-abuse".

/threadjack

 

[Epmd607]

I'm interested to hear how that goes, LOL.

Not to threadjack my own thread, which has proven to be really interesting IMO, but I originally came by the article in the OP via another news item where a high-school English teacher in Illinois was recently suspended for allowing his sophomore honors-class students to read the article. He has since returned to his job, after apologizing for the "age-appropriateness" of the article. Some parents had complained and even called in child-welfare authorities with the idea that it was "child-abuse".

/threadjack

To hit vaguely on topic... Creationism has seemingly re-appeared in Upstate New York education. It's something that caught my eye a few days ago, I'm trying to remember where it appeared.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Even though he's trying to make someone mad, he's made an analogy that's probably better than the lactase deficiency one.

Alcohol is pretty recent in our history, you need agriculture for massive amounts of alcohol, so alcoholism is fairly recent. And the best theory on alcoholism is that some folks are genetically predisposed to become alcoholics, so there's the genetic component. The genetic predisposition is only a side effect of some other trait that was selected for.

You can have things in genetics that aren't selected for or against, I don't think that alcohol has been around long enough to be selected for or against. So alcoholism, its genetic causes, might resemble the earlier everydayness of homosexuality in ape populations.

More to the point: Its very possible to be alcoholic and not drink, and its very possible to be gay and not insert your penis in colons.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Perhaps the "gay" qualities that evolution has selected for work best for clan-type civilizations. When you're a small bunch of proto-humans roaming the plains, greeting another small group of proto-humans with handjobs all-around instead of spears seems to be a better survival tactic for the species.

Once a culture becomes organized and successful enough to exert oppression, maybe repressing sexual desires in favor of societal organization needs is one of the first tools of "the state." The top-down pressure on lower-status societal members to quit fucking around and produce!

Maybe homosexuality is a vestige of social dominance behavior. Most of us make-do with the verbal FUCK YOU, though.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

This is interesting. What is more INTRIGUING is that when there is a lack of male or female genders in some animal species, they evolve... some change to female, some to male in order to keep the pace and the species alive. In saying this, I've nothing against LGBTI, BELIEVE ME. I am just saying that compared to other species, humans are a bit behind in evolution... trans individuals cannot procreate, for example.

Naaah. Theyre sick, twisted pups with depraved appetites they cant control.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Writing porn has taught me that when it comes to sex, we're talking about the most complex behavior indulged in by the most complicated organism we know of. When you think of the bewildering psychology of affection and sexual attraction in highly socialized animals, and the staggering cascade of biochemical events that have to occur before sex can happen between two members of the genus homo, it's really quite amazing that anyone manages to get laid at all. The whole scheme is just rife with places where things can go off kilter, get short-circuited, bleed into one another, get cocked-up, and otherwise display all kinds of psychophysical entropy.

And so you get men who are sexually excited by balloons or stuffed animals, or women who are ashamed of their simple desire to couple, or men who can only get off by fucking shoes, and people whipping each other and tying each other up. You get people murdering other people because they love them, and marrying other people because they hate them.

A few things are clear. Procreation is definitely not the major purpose people use sex for. Sex is used to a much greater extent to express affection, status, belongingness, power, and a host of other social traits. I think it's pretty clear that homosexuality is not a reproductive strategy, but expresses something social and affectional. It's not primarily a survival mechanism.

I have a cat who nurses on tee-shirts when you pet her. I doubt very much nature has selected for this behavior on the chance that a tee-shirt nursing cat may occasionally come across an unattached tit lying about in an abandoned fruit-of-the-loom, and so be fed while a non-teeshirt-nursing cat would starve. It's obviously a case of some kind of excursion going on the Alice (the cat's) little feline brain, and one that probably has neutral survival value.

Darwin's theory allows for value-neutral mutations and behaviors, changes in structure or behavior that have no effect, pro or con, on an organism's chances of survival. But when you look around for them it turns out they're very hard to identify in the lower animals. Humans, due to our tendency to love and care for the genetically less-robust among us, show a host of these behaviors.

I'm pretty sure homosexuality is something like that--an excursion in the sexual cue-recognition center of the brain that leads to a behavior with neutral survival value, but with a lot of high-value social feedback for the participants.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Birds do it, bee's do it, even educated fleas do it.

You can make a case that most of the maize the world produces isnt used for frosted corn flakes and mazola margarine.

Homosexuality is the Publishers Clearing House notice of evolution winners.

 

[Epmd607]

"Procreation is definitely not the major purpose people use sex for."

I'd just spin it a little:
Procreation is definitely the major purpose evolution uses people for.

It's common that we don't recognize our own urge to procreate. When you're a boy and you rub yourself against your blanket and get a woody, you don't recognize that that behaviour is brought on by the biological urge to pass on your genes. If it feels good, there's probably evolutionary reason for it feeling good. All the assortment of ways it feels good is just an incentive to ejaculate and to self-lubricate that squishy tube. When I woke up this morning my nose was near my wife's underarm, it smelt like syrup, which is weird, but I then had the urge to put my peen in her based on the new strange smell.

Gays are passing on their genes through surrogates, James. If gay is something that can be passed on, it's definitely not going to disappear any time in the future. Especially since we don't know how gay people become gay and straight become straight. There's really no way to measure how many gays are in a population aside from just asking "Do you prefer another of your sex as a primary sexual partner?" We can't really ask macaques that.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

EPMD607

The most likely reason for gay is androgen hormone insensitivity in the woody genes. But some believe gays are pathologically confused about their attraction to females.

 

[JamesSD]

Gays are passing on their genes through surrogates, James. If gay is something that can be passed on, it's definitely not going to disappear any time in the future. Especially since we don't know how gay people become gay and straight become straight. There's really no way to measure how many gays are in a population aside from just asking "Do you prefer another of your sex as a primary sexual partner?" We can't really ask macaques that.

Actually, we're pretty damn good at observing actual behaviors in macaques, bonobos and other animals. Especially in the era of tiny, high resolution digital cameras and hard drives big enough to store hours or days of video. That's presumably part of what has spurred our increased knowledge of homosexual animal relations. Pulling a Jane Goodal just isn' that efficient given our current technology.

I agree completely the genes that lead to homosexuality will not disappear, but my hypothesis is that when homosexuality is accepted gay men are much less likely to enter into marriages with women and have biological children. A decrease in the incidence of a gene is not the same as it disappearing completely; in fact, in my previous post I believe I outlined the exact reasons why it won't totally go poof. I'm also talking about shifts that will occur over several generations, presumably going from something like 5.6% to 5.5% over a decade, etc. It's really more of a thought experiment than something that will have appreciable effect in our lifetimes.

 

[Stella_Omega]

For that matter, gay women will be less likely to enter into marriage with men and have their children. Women tended to come into their lesbianship later in life, in our society, but I think that the internet has given more young women more information earlier.

And here's something else to think about; the gay women that I know who have artificially inseminated, have in many cases asked a gay male friend for the donation. What that will do to the gay gene could be much fun fodder for our armchair theorists!

(The commonness of gay male/female friendships a societal outcome by the way, because society's attitudes shove gay men and women together into the same ghetto.)

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

More than likely flood America with fat florists, hairdressers, librarians, and movie critics.

 

[Stella_Omega]

More than likely flood America with fat florists, hairdressers, librarians, and movie critics.

Sorry, but you trying to insult people by calling them fat makes me laugh.

 

[Epmd607]

Actually, we're pretty damn good at observing actual behaviors in macaques, bonobos and other animals. Especially in the era of tiny, high resolution digital cameras and hard drives big enough to store hours or days of video. That's presumably part of what has spurred our increased knowledge of homosexual animal relations. Pulling a Jane Goodal just isn' that efficient given our current technology...

We are good at observing behaviours in our ape cousins, we've been doing it pretty serious since the mid-60's at least. I don't know that I'd use "actual behaviours" as opposed to presumed behaviours. The observer, such as the fabulous Jane Goodall, spent so much time with their apes that they've been criticized for over anthropomorphizing human structure and relationship onto the apes and monkeys.

It's easy saying that two lemurs sleeping together every night our lesbians, but that's not really science is it? If a bonobo strokes a crying infant's genitals to soothe it, is that really homosexual behaviour? Homosexuality is primarily a state of mind when approaching sexuality, a choice of one partner over another; we can't get at states of mind of other apes because they can't speak to us. If a female macaque chooses to mate with another of their own sex and passes at a chance to be with a male during estrus, then yes, observation might tell us that we have a homosexual macaque. It's just too easy to jump to conclusions, even as a scientist looking to get published and make a name to get more money to continue living in the jungle with their little tarsiers.

 

[Stella_Omega]

We are good at observing behaviours in our ape cousins, we've been doing it pretty serious since the mid-60's at least. I don't know that I'd use "actual behaviours" as opposed to presumed behaviours. The observer, such as the fabulous Jane Goodall, spent so much time with their apes that they've been criticized for over anthropomorphizing human structure and relationship onto the apes and monkeys.

It's easy saying that two lemurs sleeping together every night our lesbians, but that's not really science is it? If a bonobo strokes a crying infant's genitals to soothe it, is that really homosexual behaviour? Homosexuality is primarily a state of mind when approaching sexuality, a choice of one partner over another; we can't get at states of mind of other apes because they can't speak to us. If a female macaque chooses to mate with another of their own sex and passes at a chance to be with a male during estrus, then yes, observation might tell us that we have a homosexual macaque. It's just too easy to jump to conclusions, even as a scientist looking to get published and make a name to get more money to continue living in the jungle with their little tarsiers.

Lemurs, marmosets, and macaques have one habit that makes observations like these more verifiable; they pee, every morning, at the same time in the same place. In the field or in captivity, it's very easy to capture individual daily urine samples for analysis. The hormonal fluctuations tell researchers a lot-- including sexual preferences vis oxytocin, vasopressin, dopamine, prolactin...

but besides that, I agree with you, that homosexuality per se is still a homo sapiens issue.