I believe the problem with this study was both a low sample size and a non-random sample. Unfortunately the population of people who allow you to dissect their brains after they die is almost never going to be a random and representative slice of the population at large. The value of the study was in suggesting the possibility that the gland was a tip-off, not in giving us any useful numbers or percentages with which to generalize to the population at large.
As someone that does social science research on and off proffessionally, I think I speak for all social scientists when I say that if you would just let us discard the troublesome strictures of ethics and people’s civil rights, oh the rock-solid data we could provide! It’s tragic, truly tragic.
Except that the whole point is that thinking about a single individual as the subject of natural selection is an utter fallacy. It is populations, germ lines, and kin groups that survive, not individuals. So having a genome that spits out a gay person every once and awhile could be as likely to increase reproductive success of the rest of the kin group.
And as many anthropologists have pointed out, most societies, even very ancient ones, have cultural places carved out for non-reproducing members of society: the whole shaman model.
Can I look at that from the other side for a minute?
If you, as a heterosexual man, know 100 people and you know two of them are homosexual, can you accept that equally, there are homosexual men who could also know 100 people, of whom far, far more than two are homosexual?
I would never say that a gay person would know 100 people, of whom two would be heterosexual, as that suggests that there entirely gay societies where everyone was born from a lesbian being impregnated with the sperm of a gay man. Maybe such societies do exist, but I haven’t head of them.
So if you know two gay men out of your 100 friends and Sam knows 52, he can’t fo around saying more than 50% of the population is gay, any more than you can say 2% of the population is gay.
Just because a set of stats about the wider population don’t fit my view and experience of the world, that doesn’t automatically make them wrong.
And as for the blow job thing - who ever knows what goes on with anyone else?
Which is exactly why we should try to disregard the whole quantification issue.
Regardless of how jacked up the system currently is, the politicians work for us, the citizens. The voting populace has a choice. They can continue to empower the politicians to keep juggling in the three-ring circus of inflated numbers here, deflated numbers there…or they can empower themselves to see through the smoke and mirrors and ponder the root issues.
I’m not proposing that the lack of valid statistics is one of the root issues, but that it’s debate is a distraction from them.
And I don’t believe I made any reference to single individuals. If I did, I was mistaken - you are correct that evolution occurs in populations and ecological niches, not on single members.
Is there evidence that shamans reproduced at a lower level than the general populace?
Look, I don’t want to bust your chops, but the argument is that if there is a “gay” gene, it would be selected against because gays would tend to reproduce less than heterosexuals. The common counter-argument is that the presence of such a gene in a population would be an evolutionary advantage, because having a few gay members would increase the reproductive success of the rest. Is there any evidence that this actually happened?
My guess is that there is not, since historically gay people reproduced at nearly the same rate as everyone else, because of social pressure. Whatever lesser rates of fertility they effected would be drowned out by the “background noise” of lesser fertility rates among ancient peoples.
FWIW (and it ain’t worth much), I imagine that a “gay gene” is neither selected for nor significantly against. It is a commonly occurring variant/mutation, but has relatively little effect on the evolutionary history of a population.
The only counter-example I can think of is the Native American concept among at least one tribe of the man who takes on the role of a woman, whose name I can’t remember. Thomas Berger mentions it in his book Little Big Man, and IIRC such people did take on the role of a woman, and would thus assist with child care (rather than hunt as did men). I think this has also been mentioned in non-fiction as well.
It would be interesting to see if whatever tribe (I thought it was one of the Plains Indian groups) that had such a group enjoyed any reproductive advantage over other groups that did not. As well as studies of incidence of the “gay gene” among members of that tribe.
Why the statistics don’t matter to me and why I think they shouldn’t matter to our leaders:
I’ve learned the hard way (through lots of therapy and a long life) that the emotionally intelligent response to others is to mind my own business. Homosexuality, like heterosexuality, involves consenting adults – not consenting adults and one nosey old retired teacher who thinks she knows best.
Love and family committment won’t bring down a government.
It’s not just the homosexuals that form a voting block on this issues. It’s homosexuals (most of them I assume) and people who believe that have rights too.
It seems so unAmerican to deprive others of the rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” I would add to that the rights to bestow upon the person you love the legal rights that only a marriage allow.
What we know of the general role was one in which you didn’t take a wife or have kids, which was “celibacy” but may or may not have precluded sex. Maybe they had plenty of kids on the side, but that’s what we know of the role. And in a few cases, we know that shaman-type figures were indeed homosexuals. In most cases, we don’t know much more about them, and aren’t likely too.
There isn’t any solid evidence that either story is true: the point is that the first story is no more plausible than the other. I don’t think we can say anything for certain.
One of the things people have to realize is that it is extremely hard to define “reproductive advantage” once human society arises, because suddenly the acts of one or two individuals can doom or exult entire populations. Unfortunately, that’s also about when solid history and data on population and suvival rates arises too.
Here’s another hard to explain (by any theory!) example. Male homosexual swans court other male swans exlusively and then pair for life,just like het swans: they don’t reproduce with female swans, and while they sometimes rear young, the young is STOLEN from other pairs, which may or may not benefits swan young in general but not any preference for a gay gene. Yet there remain homosexual swans, even though their existence DOESN’T seem to benefit their own genes in any way, and you would think the behavior would be wiped out due to reproductive disadvantage. What is going on here? It doesn’t fit the altruistic model. It doesn’t fit the strict reproductive model. If it fits the behaviorist model, then it’s a pretty darn strange one.
The only case I can think of is based on the finding that male homosexual swans are for some reason able to control a larger territory than heterosexual pairs. The idea would then be that male homosexuality is a strategy that is in a reaction to whatever sexually dimorphic tradeoff was made that makes male/female pairs less aggressive and successful at defending territory: the prescence of some homosexual male swans then benefits all swans by allowing them to siphon off excess young and then raise them more successfuly. That’s a pretty complex and strained case, but it’s the best I can think of, and I guess my point is that the way traits can get into and benefit a population can be very convoluted indeed. Just like a computer, the actual workings can be too complex to understand, but the ultimate effect of some change is still going to be a benefit or a detriment to some task. And that only goes to illustrate the possibility of something: actually figuring out what is, indeed, the case, is many times more difficult (and perhaps in some cases impossible)
It’s one reason we aren’t likely to get good answers to these questions anytime soon. I think we’ll get answers far far far sooner from a direct study of genetics than we ever will from evolutionary biology.
It’s the hypothalamus, not the pituitary gland. It’s Simon Levay’s study and Apos is right. There have been some criticism about the non-random selection of samples and the low sample size. Simon Levay plans to make a similar study on living samples (using MRI) to address the criticisms but until now it hasn’t been done.
The percentage is from the Kinsey report (thanks, previous poster, for reminding me of the name), and has merely been repeated a lot, and has not been verified. However, let me join in saying “who cares what the percentage is?” The fact remains that whatever percentage of people are gay, they deserve equal treatement under the law.
The statistic was used a great deal by people who suspected or knew flat out it was inaccurate because it served their needs. That’s politics. They played their game, and power to them.
I remember some bathroom graffiti which opined, “Isn’t anybody straight anymore? Why should <1% of the population get so much attention?” The casual contradiction amused me, and even though that was 15 years ago, I still remember it. “Everybody’s gay and nobody’s gay.”