Is a revulsion reaction to homosexual sex biological, cultural (or some combination of both)?

Great Debates
141

The main problem with the evolutionary argument is that it runs entirely counter to the observed evolution of the human species. All evolution “cares” about is whether a given behavior leads to the propagation of a creature’s genes. From an evolutionary stand point, there’s no difference between humping another guy, humping your fist, or humping a non-ovulating woman. None of these behaviors are going to lead to offspring. And of the three, homosex is far and away the least common. If there were any evolutionary pressure to select against non-reproductive sex, it would select against the ability to generate sexual pleasure through masturbation, and for women who show external signs of being in estrus. If we have evolved an instinctual aversion to homosexuality due to its non-procreative nature, why have we not evolved a similar aversion to these far more common acts that are also non-procreative in nature?

The second problem with this argument is that human culture does not come in discrete blocks. Cultures are porous. Ideas pass freely between them, and even in ancient times, they could travel across continents in relatively short order. Over half the people on the planet draw their religious beliefs from one bronze-age tribe from the Middle East - one which, for whatever reason, was pretty down on homosexuality. It’s not particularly meaningful to point to all the people in Europe, Asia, North Africa, and the Americas and say, “All of these people are homophobic,” when they’re all reading their homophobic beliefs from the same book. On top of that, you have the Victorians, who were fucking everywhere two centuries ago, imposing their own highly skewed notions of sexuality on their subjects, and frequently suppressing anything that offended their notions of propriety. If you want to draw any meaningful conclusions about what is instinctual, and what is cultural, based simply on observed human behavior, you need to compare groups that have had limited influence on each other. And those have been pretty hard to come by for quite a while now.

142

It might be better to avoid these ‘noise’ statements.

If that’s the case then you will have no problem pointing out the flaws in any suggestion.

That is what will convince intelligent readers, not childish ‘you don’t know what your talking about’ statements that can easily be thrown back at you and will make the debate degenerate to the level of an argument in a school playground.

Who knows?

But the fact that evolution has not (apparently) optimised one aspect of human reproduction does not mean that it hasn’t partially optimised others.

One explanation might be that because of the extremely long time that a human baby/infant is unable to fend for itself it would be sub optimal to have all births concentrated in one period.

It’s possible. And yet others have argued that there is ‘no evidence that humans are naturally meant to pair bond’.

But that does not mean that an aversion to sex with someone you are not attracted to cannot evolve as well as any other mechanisms.

No, that isn’t how science works. It seems that a lot of people who just read about science or teach it have a very peculiar idea that fully rounded theories form in the minds of the people that come up with them.

It’s not like that.

First you brainstorm, coming up with any ideas that you can think of no matter how off the wall. Then you remove any that would contravene any ‘laws’ of the subject that you are convinced are sound. Then you ask if there is any evidence that completely contradicts you theory. Then you ask if there is any evidence that supports it. Then you determine what predictions your theory might make and finally you design experiments or surveys that you hope will provide evidence that your theory is sound.

Only the most hopeless of scientists would dismiss an idea out of hand just because every piece of supporting evidence is not currently extant. Or assume that just because there is evidence that A causes B then that naturally implies that all of B is caused by A.

Do you have any citation for that? It sounds a little fanciful. It sounds as if you believe that evolution would come up with a method of killing people off once they had stopped reproducing.

Apart from anything else, males and females share pretty much the same basic template so by the reasoning above evolution would have had to find a way of killing off females at ~40 but not males as they can continue to reproduce.

Plus, apart from societal implications, which are know not exist, evolution cannot play much part in what happens to your body after you’ve stopped reproducing for rather obvious reasons. :smiley:

Again, this may well be the case but it doesn’t mean that there are not other mechanisms at play as well.

In fact, there very certainly are other mechanisms at play as well.

143

My innate revulsion to anal sex of any stripe is pretty much for these reasons. Poop is disgusting. Gay anal sex is gross, straight anal sex is gross, especially if the guy pulls out his poopy penis and sticks it in the poor girl’s mouth to ejaculate. That’s REALLY gross. There’s nothing sexy about poop.

144

But that speaks of our revulsion (and I think here the term is more appropriate) to faeces rather that hom or het sex.

145

Not that I disagree, but there are enough websites out there that suggest many people do find it “sexy”.

And I have no problem with anal sex, providing the woman is clean and a condom is used.

146

Do most people really have a strong urge to procreate? I think most of them have a strong urge to copulate, which is not the same thing.

In any case, it seems obvious that it is cultural, since it varies with culture. Some cultures have a strong taboo against it, and some have or have had strong cultural promotion of it.

And that’s not even touching the issue of same-sex non-sexual physical contact, such as the straight male hand holding that goes on in some parts of the world, or sexual rites of passage such as teenage straight boy circle jerks or straight teen female roleplay kissing.

147

Because the testicles and associated man-bits are incredibly sensitive? It wouldn’t have taken a prehistoric genius to figure out that covering up his junk reduced the chance of it getting hit/chafed/burnt/etc. I’m not sure what point this is meant to make. If you’re trying to say it has something to do with our prehistoric monkey-brains creating taboos around sex, I have to say I doubt it.

Okay, first off, the vast majority of people who read about science, as well as a goodly portion of those who teach it, are scientists in and of themselves. Actual published papers by scientists are by and large only read by other scientists, and at the university level and beyond those who teach science classes are generally scientists in their own right, with higher degrees and published peer-reviewed literature in the field. You can’t just dismiss all their experience as the peculiar opinion of those who ‘only’ read or teach the subject.

Second, your description of the scientific method is somewhat lacking. You are denigrating anyone who doesn’t get to the very end of this chain of thought with you, but what if we *do *think that your idea ‘contravenes laws’, or has ‘evidence that completely contradicts your theory’, or has absolutely no evidence that supports it. It’s not just a matter of having little or no extant evidence to support the theory, it’s a matter of believing there is contradictory evidence, or that the idea lies so very far afield of the known facts of evolution as to make no real sense.

Third, even if, say, we were to agree with you that this is a valid topic worthy of investigation in the form of experiments or surveys. What experiments or surveys would you propose to study this? Why do you think it is that it has never been studied before? Is there any real evidence that could possibly ‘prove’ this theory that could overcome the mountains of evidence that say our opinions about homosexuality is cultural?

As Zeriel said:

If there is evidence on your side, then I’d love to hear it. But the fact that you ignore or dismiss out of hand the evidence on the other side is not a valid means of strengthening your own thesis.

148

Do you really expect to be taken seriously when you argue from this degree of ignorance? Have you never watched the Travel Channel or Discovery or opened a National Geographic magazine?

149

I’ve seen may travel programmes and read many articles on remote groups but I’ve never seen any wondering around completely unclothed. However, recognising that this may have been a selection bias (or outright interference) on the part of the film makers or photographers, I specifically said ‘I’ve never seen or heard’.

No doubt you’ll provide citation that demonstrates that there are such groups and if, indeed, there are I’ll bow to your superior knowledge on these matters - you must have spent a lot more time peering into National Geographic in your youth than I did. :wink:

I not that Meyer6 seems as ignorant as I about the existence of such groups as he chose to speculate on alternative reasons rather than use the more final and definite: “Yes, there are people who do that”.

150

Not impossible. No doubt you have a citation for this. Or is it only those who are arguing a point on which you disagree that are obliged to provide citations for anything and everything they say?

You are aware, I suppose, that human beings did not stop evolving when they stopped (as far as they ever did stop) having ‘monkey brains’?

Of course. When I said: “people who just read about science or teach it”, those were the people I was talking about, not people who read or teach about science as well as doing it. That’s what the word ‘just’ was there for. :wink:

Really? You don’t say?

Do you think that might be because it was just a snippet to point out one particular point rather than a comprehensive article? :rolleyes:

Not true.

I’m denigrating anyone who spuriously claims that the chain is terminated because they have succumbed to a logical fallacy or decided to argue by diktat.

Then if you know as much as you seem to think you know you will have no problem explaining it quietly, calmly, and rationally - without all the ‘you obviously don’t know about’ histrionics.

And if a counter point is made to one of your points you’ll examine it carefully and come up with a counter counter point rather than throwing a tantrum and demanding to know what someone’s qualifications are. :slight_smile:

So far I haven’t seen any evidence that shows the idea that evolution could favour a trait that would cause some people to have more sex with members of the opposite sex is wrong.

You need to understand a couple of fairly elementary points if you want to show that - i.e.

  1. The fact that there is no evidence for something does not mean that something cannot be.

  2. The fact that there is evidence that A cause X is not the same as evidence that all of X is caused by A.

  3. If you offer some argument and someone offers a counter argument that does not mean that they are ignoring your point and it does not mean that just because they don’t accept your argument they don’t know what they are talking about.
    You see, Mayer6, I’ve known many, many, scientists in my life and there are a couple of things I can say about all the good ones:

  4. They will always explain things to people they believe have got something wrong. They will do it patiently, clearly, and lucidly.

  5. They will never try and short circuit a debate by pompously standing on their qualifications or telling someone that they don’t know what they’re talking about.

151

I’m sorry, but I fail to see the point of discussing a theoretical phenomena if you have no evidence for it. Enjoy your speculation, but evidence is part and parcel of the process of other people taking your speculations at all seriously.

Logic is all well and good, but there are an astounding number of errors in science caused by going with what seemed logical rather than what was observed and recorded.

152

Not by proper scientists.

You only go with what is logical until you can show to a certain degree of certainty that it is or isn’t correct.

You might care to note that there are probably a similar number of errors made by people who have taken insufficient evidence at face value.

You know the sort of thing: “Oh, look, there goes the Sun arcing across the sky again. It’s obviously revolving around the Earth”.

I’m not that bothered about pursuing this idea per se - merely defending it as one for which there is no prima facie reason to consider it at odds with evolutionary theory as certain rather hotheaded individuals have asserted.

153

No, I doubt that I did. It takes almost zero effort to find one example of societies in which exposed genitalia are common. So here’s one – until recent times the Kavirondo people of East Africa were habitually naked. They wore little pieces of string and goat skin, which practically hid nothing at all from public view. Here’s another – the Nuba people of Sudan traditionally wear very little clothing, often exposing their genitals. The men of the Kombai of New Guinea wear little gourds on the end of their penises, leaving their scrotums open to view.

The thing is that examples like these are so easy to find that your apparent bewilderment and inability to come up with them yourself are indications that you are participating in this discussion in bad faith.

154

Not at all.

For one thing, in not one of those cases where the people in question not wearing something!

So I ask for a citation for some tribe that wears nothing and you provide three for some tribes that wear something. :smiley:

But the specifics of what people wear are not really the point. The real point was that before complex human cultures animals most definitely did inherit predispositions to certain behaviours relating to sex and revolving around choosing sexual partners. And there is no doubt those that happen; they are called ‘mating rituals’ - and it’s extremely unlikely that common mating rituals seen displayed over disparate geographical areas are ‘cultural’, given that the animals in question have no language.

See, for example, the bower bird - which displays an extremely complex courtship ritual.

The fact that relatively simple animals can inherit very complex mate selection behaviours makes the militant assertion that humans don’t, and act entirely based on cultural rules all the more absurd.

155

Ah, so a string of beads around the waist or through the vulva counts as covering up in this exercise? This is what I mean by bad faith argument.

We know that peacocks display their colorful tails as part of their mating rituals. So, there’s no basis to reject the proposition that male humans display their colorful tails as part of their mating rituals as well.

Apparently, we have no evidence of how human beings behave, so that we have to extrapolate based on observations of birds.

156

Not at all.

It’s simply that you are taking an absurdly simplistic view.

There is no denying that cultural influences can modify natural tendencies. So it’s not in the least surprising to find a couple of outlier tribes whose culture has caused them to reduce the covering to a point where it’s doing nothing much at all but that does not alter the fact that something is causing them to still make some vestigial attempt to cover up.

And, despite your rudeness in ascribing my lack of knowledge of any tribe or culture that does not wear anything around their waist, you have not been able to come up with such an entity and have to resort to accusations of ‘bad faith’ to cover up your failure. A failure, moreover, that would seem to demonstrate that it is you who is operating from the degree of ignorance you were so ready to ascribe to someone else.

Again, you are taking an absurdly simplistic view. Various animals adopt complex,heritable, mating rituals - specifically the tendency to accept mates with certain characteristics and reject those without them - which are accepted as being a part of the evolutionary development of the animal.

So it is in no way beyond the realms of possibility that human beings can similarly have heritable mechanisms for mate selection/rejection. And yet it is a rejection of such a possibility that is one of the main planks in the out of hand rejection of the argument that some degree of disinclination to homosexual sex can be innate.

157

You realize that clothing or covering up is an adaptation to environmental conditions, right? Human beings began without clothing. And you interpret the evidence to say that these tribes are displaying “vestigial” needs to cover up?

And if you take the existence of any ornamentation somewhere near the region between the navel and the knees as somehow supporting your position, then there is no point in discussing the issue with you at all.

You don’t even know what you’re arguing about any more. Every word of this can be true and it still has absolutely no bearing on your hypothesis that “revulsion” against homosexuality is a genetic trait.

158

There are plenty of reasons asserted in this thread, you have just chosen to dismiss all of them. Which is fine, but if you are going to be dismissing evidence-based objections to your speculation, the time has come for evidence to be put forth in return. Otherwise, you come across like an anti-vaxer or any other species of generic-anti-establishment type.

159

Covering up large areas is obviously related to both culture and environment.

But all humans seem to need, by and large, to want to cover their genitals under most circumstances.

You have to ask yourself why, even in areas where it is so warm that they have no need to cover up in general, they still make some basic attempt to do so.

When you make rude and condescending statements about positions of ignorance and then demonstrably cannot back them up, it probably is time to give up the argument. :wink:

Once again with the absurdly simplistic view. :rolleyes:

Revulsion is just one extreme of a range of degrees of disinclination.

In the same way that humans (generally) have a fear of height (and you might note that there is a tribe of Native Americans for whom, apparently, height holds no fear without people insisting that this proves a fear of height must be cultural :D) but that can vary from very little fear at all to an abject terror of being more than a few feet off the ground.

The range of emotional responses engendered varies dramatically without people trying to pretend this makes it cultural.

160

I’m no more dismissing the arguments of others than they are dismissing mine.

That is what debate is all about. Making arguments and rebutting arguments.

Unfortunately, you and certain like minded individuals take an extremely partisan view of such rebuttals. When the rebuttal is made by someone on your side it’s good, solid, debate but when it’s made by someone on the other side it’s ‘dismissing’.

You need to try and adopt a more balanced view and understand that when people disagree with you they are not going to be won over with the first argument your side makes.

It’s informing that the vast majority of this ‘meta’ argument is coming from you and your friends who seem to think that you have a God given right for all your arguments to be taken at face value and yet also think you can simply ignore any arguments that are inconvenient to you, characterising them as mere ‘dismissals’.