Well, allow me to be the first to burst your bubble. I like men, have always liked men, and have never even had so much as a fantasy about anything remotely sexual about another woman. The thought of having anything to do with another woman sexually repulses me. It is not becuase I am homophobic, because I am not. It is not becuase I am repressed, or prudish, or any of the other things I’ve heard said about folks like me who insist they have absolutely no homosexual tendencies. In fact, I actively engage in a fetish that is not mainstream, so the “repressed” or “prudish” label would certainly not apply to me. My behavior has never been inconsistent, and my desires have never been inconsistent to my behaviors. I like men and only like men and will only ever like men and have only had sex with men, and have only ever wanted to have sex with men, etc. etc. etc.
So, sorry, “virtually everyone” is NOT “this way”.
The “phenomenon” that you describe on this thread is no more a “‘mystification’ of sexuality” than the persistent attempts to categorise people using a set of binary opposites like heterosexuality/homosexuality, and to assign such labels by crude measurement of superficial phenomena.
It’s interesting that ambushed has shifted his/her emphasis to one of genetics, and has moved away from the superficial physiological experimentation that, before the last post, constituted his/her sole contribution to this debate. Where is your defence of measuring penis engorgement or pupil dilation now? And how does it relate to issues of genetics?
Who has denied that “genes have any bearing on this subject at all”? I made no argument in any of my earlier posts asserting that genetics was irrelevant to this issue. And neither have most other Dopers who have criticised the attempt to find fixed definitions of sexuality and sexual orientation used such a position to maintain that genetics is not a factor.
Well, firstly, your slighting (although not outright dismissal) of environmentalism implies a type of genetic determination. And the argument about complexity serves to undermine your position, because it is the very complexity of the variety of factors that might contribute to sexuality that makes it impossible to assign definitive, positivistic labels, as so many have pointed out in this debate.
And, all this aside, i think you badly misread many of the arguments on this thread by referring to them simply as a type of overdetermined environmentalism. Most of those who have argued against genetic predetermination have not made any attempt to lay sexuality solely at the door of environmentalism. What we have instead tried to do is to point out the inconsistencies in the methods that are generally used to attempt sexual labelling, and to the challengeable assumptions that underlie much of the so-called research into the issue.
The number of unexamined assumptions in these two paragraphs is staggering. How do you determine how close a particular behaviour is to “the heart of biology” (whatever the hell that is!)? Any attempt to make such a determination must, perforce, assume some of the very criteria that it sets out to measure. How do you know what is base, and what is superstructure? The very assumption that we can measure some behaviours or “psycho-behavioral ‘nexus’” (again, whatever that is) as being a certain “distance” from biology is, once again, an assumption that takes for granted what it is actually attempting to explain. And, as KellyM has pointed out, if all we have to make any measurements about sexuality is the Kinsey scale, “we might as well have nothing”.
Moving on from your unreflective assertion that sexual orientation is “genetically and biologically central” (something you have consoicuously failed to even provide evidence for, let alone prove), let’s look at your claim that it can be “empirically measured.” Well, measured by what? So far, you have offered a ridiculous codpiece that measures penile engorgement and that, as KellyM pointed out, can actually cause the very phenomenon it is designed to measure. And you gave meagre details of some other test that apparently measures pupil dilation and other “involuntary” physical responses. Again, this is nothing more than an assumption that any human psychological or sensory information must somehow register in a measurable way on the observable body. This dramatically over-simplifies the marvellously complex organ that is the human brain. And you also continue to assume, or at least your posts imply that you do, that sexuality or sexual orientation have direct, one to one correlations to specifically physical sexual acts.
Ben wrote:
I’m afraid i haven’t. I got my signature from a bumper sticker that i bought on a visit to Texas.
So mhendo’s not only eager to further mystify an emprical evolutionary biological question, but also seems rather fond of obfuscation and derision.
You can insult me all you like, but please don’t stoop to such smug condescension, okay?
Complexity has been adequately overcome before and will continue to be. The most successful strategies for dealing with complexity have one key element in common: Explanatory Reductionism. But you seem quite intent on denying the power and utility of this extraordinarily well demonstrated technique and instead prefer mystifying and over-complicating the issues.
Furthermore, sexual behaviors and predispositions aren’t even all that complex in comparison to other questions of human psychology and behavior.
Finallly, what could be more central to evolutionary biology than sexual behaviors?
But since you seem so intent on obfuscation and mystification, don’t let little old me and my apparently deplorable wish to understand complex issues by use of explanatory reductionism stand in your way. By all means, just throw up a smokescreen of “complexity” rhetoric rather than try to chip away at the apparent complexity.
I love it when people resort to the “woe is me” school of argument. Well, now that i’ve been accused of obfuscation, derision, insult and condescension, maybe i can take over the self-flagellating device from the hands of poor, put-upon ambushed. :rolleyes:
Seriously, give me a break. If simple disagreement with your point of view constitutes obfuscation, and if geniuine attempts to point where i think you go wrong are defined as derision, insult and condescension, then i see little point in continuing this discussion.
You keep asserting that what we are dealing with here is an “empirically evolutionary biological question,” but you have yet to give any (dare i say it?) empirical evidence of this, and you have also not yet answered any of my questions about how we might go about such empirical description without resort to the superficial experiments you mentioned previously.
My very first post on this thread, in case you missed it or just chose to ignore the relevant paragraph, noted that explanatory reductionism can serve a useful purpose if it is not extended too far. I said:
Given that your posts make a lot of strong claims about what is and is not known about human psychology, maybe you would care to enlighten some of us dunces with examples, rather than simply arguing that your position is self-evident so everyone should agree with you. For example, how do we determine the relative complexity of sexual behaviors and predispositions, compared to other “questions of human psychology and behavior”? Simply stating this doesn’t make it so.
Your assertion that sexual behavior is related to evolutionary biology is totally beside the point. As i said earlier, i don’t discount that genetics and evoltuion play a part in sexuality. The difficulty is in determining how other factors enter the equation. What happens when someone doesn’t fit into your neat little explanatory reductionist homo/hetero binarism? Do you just explain that person away as an aberration, or maybe create a new misfit category just for them?
I’m sure you would agree that the need to eat is about as fundamental a biological behavior as we might find. After all, no food = no life, right? But can the simple biological and evolutionary need to ingest nutrients explain the vast array of social and cultural practices and meanings that are associated with eating around the world? How do you explain the eating (or fasting) rituals associated with Lent, Passover, various Sabbaths, American north-west native potlatches, English afternoon tea, the backyard barbecue, the dinner party, the TV dinner? How do you account for the varied and changing ways of eating - knives, forks, chopsticks, fingers, bowls, plates, single, communal? While your explanatory reductionism might reduce all these to “eating,” such an explanation fails to tell us so much of what is really interesting. Any complexity is lost.
Similarly, while sex between a man and a woman might be necessary to our biological evolution (and with genetic technological advancement, even that statement may soon no longer be true), and reducing sexuality to binarism can at least help us split people into “procreative” and “non-procreative,” that’s about all it can do. Accounting for the vast matrix of physiological, genetic, psychological, cultural and social diversity expressed in human behaviour, and attempting to reduce all these to a person’s object choice or a person’s superficial observable reaction to a superficial stimulus, is just too difficult. And, as i said earlier, a big problem i have is that those who are keenest to reduce sexuality in this way are often those who are also keenest to monitor, regulate, and control people whose sexuality falls outside of prescribed and artificial norms.