– It seems in Henry’s post, he means that “pedophilia” is used erroneously in that child molesters and rapists are termed “pedophiles”. This is incorrect in that the terms are not inclusive of the other. One can be a celibate pedophile, conversely, one can be someone who rapes children for reasons of anger or desperation and not be a pedophile.
– In addition, some people sometimes complain that gays, in particular, are often accused of being pedophiles. I personally have not seen a lot of people espouse this opinion, then again I am not gay so I do not have much personal experience in that.
I think this second attitude stems from the fact the the percentage of victims of male child molesters are male disproportionately to the same-age % of gay/straight attraction in men, i.e. maybe 7%/93% versus perhaps 50/50 for child molesters. How people get from “more child molesters engage in homosexual acts” to “more homosexuals are child molesters” is beyond me.
Ludovic…
I think this second attitude stems from the fact the the percentage of victims of male child molesters are male to the same-age % of gay/straight attraction in men, i.e. maybe 7%/93% versus perhaps 50/50 for child molesters. How people get from “more child molesters engage in homosexual acts” to “more homosexuals are child molesters” is beyond me.
Because child molester is the most nefarious lable in our current society, (having a flair for color coordination simply does not have the same monsterous connatations) And the fact that the overwhewlming majority of pedophiles are heterosexual males is datum that the hate mongers debate by simply pretending it does not exist.
Liver and onions maybe…but I must admit that upon reading the post that equated homosexuality with eating shit I was left gagging with indignation - that is until I bothered to realize the poster was using it as metaphore to try and explain the level of dangerous irriationality the annaly verbatim biblical adherents, and just plain hateful hold against the gay community…Simply, I am way too touchy to be useful in a debate on this subject…And admittedly I am hesitant to expose my own inelegant humanity by expressing any of my precious bigotries -like awakening in a cold sweat screaming, whenever I have heard the term Gay Republican.
** zwald, ** perhaps I misunderstood what you were saying. Please clarify your statment about dominant traits.
It seemed to me as if you were saying that just because a trait was not dominant that it need not be accepted at large. Left-handedness was once “corrected” by forcing children to write with their right hands. Maybe I read more into the statment than you intended.
I don’t think that’s what ** ava ** meant. She was saying that acceptance of homosexuality varies with different cultures. Ours frowns upon it, while other cultures don’t. If disgust for homosexuality was innate, almost every culture would share in a rejection of it, because our very insincts would be telling us to do so.
Some behaviors are instinctual. You could make a good argument that disgust for * incest * is inborn and innate in humans. It seems to be cross-culturally frowned upon (with a few notable exceptions, such as ancient Egyptian royalty.) The same seems to apply to members of the animal kingdom. Animals not in captivity will usually refuse to mate with a close relative. This is a “dominant” trait.
Saying the same for homosexuality, however doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. It is widely accepted in some cultures, whereas incest is generally not. It is commonly seen in the animal kingdom, wheras incest is not.
This is exactly what I refuted in my statement. Most people in many cultures aren’t left handed. Most people (according to you) in many cultures don’t have an aversion to homosexuality. Why would this rule out a biological explanation for aversion to homosexuality and not for left handedness? Or do you not consider left handedness a genetic trait?
You’re talking about two different things. She’s talking about a disparity in a among different cultures, you’re talking about a disparity in a trait withing a population. Most people in many cultures are right handed because most people in the world are right handed. Again, her point is, aversion to homosexuality is not universal in terms of CULTURES, not populations. This means, that while in one culture, homosexuality is reviled, in another culture, it’s accepted. The same can’t be said for left handedness. It exists in the same rate across cultures. Thus, aversion to homosexuality is (so obviously) cultural.
Speaking of lefties, throughout history many cultures have discriminated against the left-handed. Some believed that the left-handed were actually evil. Others just thought it was a bad habit that needed to be drilled out of people. Even in the US and well into the 20th century left-handed children in many schools were forced to learn to write with their right hands.
If asked to defend these cultural practices some might have argued that aversion to left-handedness was a natural, innate human trait, but if that were true it would seem odd that anti-leftie discrimination has essentially vanished from our society today. Lefties still have some trouble, but most of that is the sort of trouble suffered by anyone who’s the member of a small minority group (trouble getting left-handed tools, the occasional stupid joke from righties), but they aren’t persecuted outright or forced to convert to right-handedness.
Wouldn’t it be funny if “natural” aversion to homosexuality turned out to be the same sort of thing? I don’t doubt that there is some natural human aversion to or fear of anything that is different or unusual, but how this manifests itself is primarily cultural.
I would need evidence from an unbiased source before I will accept that there are any genetically mixed cultures where every member is either averse to gay sex or not averse to gay sex. ava gave one example of a tribe in Malaysia where adults have sex with boys as a rite of passage. I’m going to go out on a limb and assume this is a relatively closed culture with a limited gene pool. I doubt anyone biologically averse to gay sex is clamoring to mix with this culture, so it makes sense that they would not share the trait. And I’m sure that anyone in that culture who did have the aversion would reproduce outside of the culture rather than submit their kid to an ass raping.
Another point is that mutations don’t have any particular purpose…they are successful or unsuccessful. It is entirely possible that aversion to gay sex is just an overactive revulsion reflex that is successful simply because people who have it tend to avoid anything potentially bacteria infested, including shit, road kill, and men’s assess. They might even avoid women if that instinct was not overridden by sexual attraction.
If asked to defend these cultural practices some might have argued that aversion to left-handedness was a natural, innate human trait, but if that were true it would seem odd that anti-leftie discrimination has essentially vanished from our society today. Lefties still have some trouble, but most of that is the sort of trouble suffered by anyone who’s the member of a small minority group (trouble getting left-handed tools, the occasional stupid joke from righties), but they aren’t persecuted outright or forced to convert to right-handedness.
Wouldn’t it be funny if “natural” aversion to homosexuality turned out to be the same sort of thing
I ain’t dead yet…just 47, but I remember quite vividly the consternation toward left-handedness. Even in school it was deemed a condition, and thus set upon by family and schools to rectify…I know this has swayed a bit from this very pertintent post ,but I wonder what negative results arose from this superstition?..Maybe at least a loss of artistic fluidity, or at worse things much more debilitating. The induced stigma of left-handedness doesn’t quite match homosexual persecution in scope, but for me, it works quite well as metaphore.
Having known more than a few gays that have commited suicide, and countless others that would have literally traded their left feet to be magically transformed heterosexual (and thus insulated from the constant persecution levied upon them by their families and society at large), proves to me that homosexuality is indeed inborne.
Here is a cite with graphs showing a geographic disparity among known genetic traits - skin color and blood type (see pages 20-22). It follows that cultures relegated to one area might exhibit traits not necessarily found to be dominant in cultures existing in another. Therefore, a variation in the appearance of aversion to homosexuality across cultures does not rule out a biological explanation.
I think you’ve hit the nail, though maybe not exactly on the head. I believe in the idea of memetic evolution, that in a population of beings that are capable of communicating concepts to each other memes act like life in that they live, die, reproduce, mutate, migrate, and evolve. A meme’s survival is based somewhat but not entirely on the success of those that carry it, like genes for traits that can be harmful in some situations but a benefit in others - for instance those with sickle-cell anemia are more likely to survive malaria, and therefore more likely to survive to breeding age in a situation where malaria is everpresent and untreatable, but the trait can lead to crippling pain and an early (by modern standards) death. I think any belief or practice that is common can be explained by memetic evolution. The concepts of homophobia, racism, and nationalism may not have survived because they were the most beneficial ideas for a person to have, but because those traits were naturally easier to spread to others, as those that resisted them would be subject to violent action by those who adopted them. They all may have had their roots in some instinct that evolved through genetic evolution before we became capable of more abstract thought, but are reinforced by being adapted and spread in the realm of thought, which does not require hundreds of generations to pass for changes to take effect.
I forgot to touch on another parallel between memetic and genetic evolution, and how they impact our lives. Some genetic traits become common because they allow the carrier to spread their genes more widely, even if they make it less likely for the carrier of the gene to survive - i.e. animals with structures used as mating displays (i.e. antlers, big colorful feathers) that actually hinder those that carry them physically have their traits propagated because the females mate with them more often. Likewise, some harmful memes are going to spread because they are easier to spread. As an example, look at the increasing trend of people performing dangerous stunts for attention. This is not helping the carrier of this meme survive, and the effect on the carrier’s ability to reproduce is questionable, but the meme spreads and survives because people performing dangerous stunts get a lot of attention, and thus the idea reaches a larger audience - ‘Hey, Og’s going to try and ride a mammoth again, let’s go watch!’. As technology allows more and more people to pay attention to people doing dumb stunts, the meme will spread more, reaching more and more people who have the potential to be impressionable enough to try and do that themselves.
An interesting side-effect of this is how this can be a defense to a meme being attacked by another meme. For instance, the idea that racism is bad is a rather recent meme, but it is spreading quickly because it is usually beneficial to the carrier and is compatible with older memes that are well established (i.e. the Golden Rule). But as this meme gets to the point where it is carried by a significant portion of the population, it’s going to lead to organized idealogical attacks on racists, which brings more attention to the racists among people who may never have thought about them because the meme had no reason to express itself in their area (maybe they lived in a racially homogenized area or separated from the local oppressed populations). Because more and more people are thinking that racism is bad, more and more people are being exposed to racists trying to defend themselves (nobody was protesting the civil rights movement before there was one), and because of this I believe the racism meme is experiencing a resurgence, or at least is being spread to new populations as it is being reduced slowly in the ones it was already common in.
Sorry. How homosexuality is viewed by a culture changes throughout the history of the culture. If aversion to homosexuality were indeed an inborn trait, then why would a culture shift thought patterns at different times in history?
Furthermore, the aversion to homosexuality within cultures often has little to do with the act of two people of the same having intercourse with each other, but rather with political, cultural, or religious dynamics.
And the Greeks, Chinese and Romans are hardly isolated cultures. All of these had considerable amounts of homosexual practices that were regarded with respect rather than disgust.
In fact, from what I have studied so far, I would say that a majority of humans engage in homosexual behavior at some point in their lives. While exclusive homosexual behavior seems to be limited to a select percentage of our population, most, if not all humans will engage in homosexual behavior at least once.
Your will never find an example of a culture in which every single member accepts the same value system. It simply doesn’t exist, and will never exist.
Trying to find an unbiased site on the net is like looking for a needle in a haystack, but here are some cites dealing with acceptance of homosexuality in foreign culrutes:
I was not aware the population size of a culture had any relevence.
You are correct, however, in your assertion that a person who rejects the practices of their culture would leave, or refuse to participate. However, if you had been raised in this culture, it’s unlikely that you would find anything wrong with it.
Here in the US, we circumcize our male infants, which some cultures find appalling. Other cultures circumcize female infants, which WE find appalling. Depending on the values with which you were raised, one or the other is “normal” and acceptable, while the other is not.
You were most likely raised to eat beef, but if you were Indian, most likely, you would feel adversion to eating a cow, which, to you, would feel innate. “How can anyone even THINK of eating a cow?” you would say, with a look of disgust on your face.
There is no “biological” aversion to homosexuality. It is learned, plain and simple, through socilization, just as racism is learned. If an aversion to homosexual acts was biological, 430 different species of animals wouldn’t have been observed participating in homosexual acts. This site says:
(Bolding mine.)
A pathological fear of germs is highly unlikely to manifest itself solely as homophobia.
This theory does not take into account that straight couples have anal sex as well. Even men who would never sodomoze another man sometimes have a yen to have sex with their wives in a similar fashion.
Don’t forget that I’m specifically referring to an aversion to gay sex, which for some people may carry over to aversion to gays, but not all and not necessarily. You have to be more specific about ‘how homosexuality is viewed’. It can be viewed as normal and acceptable by people that still gag at the thought of two men having sex. That homosexuals are welcomed into a society without discrimination is no indication of whether there are individuals in that society that find the sex acts repulsive.
Are you saying studies were done proving that not one member of any of these cultures were averse to gay sex? Like I said, I’ll need to see an unbiased cite to believe it. And again, to cite the absence of an inherited behavioral trait in societies that no longer exist does not disprove the success of the behavior or the possibility that it is inherited. As Lissa pointed out, whether or not homosexuality is considered normal is a matter of cultural perception. However a gut reaction to gay sex itself may not be.