Evolutionary advantage of homosexuality: Super Uncles

[Eddie Teach]

No, I meant the wars culled the number of men, so there were always more women. And societies too weak to go to war tended to end up dead or enslaved.

[crazy canuck]

Well OK: Homosexuality is innate in all men, but is only activated in some men when it is beneficial to the tribe, under certain circumstances. This would explain homosexuality from an evolutionary perspective.

And so in modern society homosexuals are "activated" so that merchants of expensive male grooming products have a viable market?

[The Brain]

It is activated by TELEFON.

[Ed Anger]

It is activated by TELEFON.

[Iormlund]

TGDR

[DisturbedPervert]

Most homosexuals report being homosexual long before they join the navy and are switched on

[DontSayBanana]

So then it's simply a case by case basis. everyone handles "stress" differently. for example: I have struggled with all sorts of "identity issues" throughout my life. Never has it been so stressful that it interfered with my daily life (other than in banal annoying ways). I'm a whiner, but not a big whiner.  That's the real difference.

Took a while to get back to it, but this.  Pretty much any DSM IV container will give lots of blanket warnings about how severity of the symptoms need to be interpreted and admissions that diagnoses are all subjective and should be administered by experts to increase reliability.

@Raz: Homosexuality can induce stress in the individual, but the stress is largely from unrealistic expectations of societal rejection; in that vein, it's closer to a social anxiety disorder, treating the patient by helping them reconcile their perception of society's rejection with reality while trying to impress a more positive self-image.

[Pat]

Well OK: Homosexuality is innate in all men, but is only activated in some men when it is beneficial to the tribe, under certain circumstances. This would explain homosexuality from an evolutionary perspective.

And so in modern society homosexuals are "activated" so that merchants of expensive male grooming products have a viable market?

You obviously didn't read my real argument. "Presumably this would work at a sub-conscious level and be triggered by group dynamics and workings of the cultural super-ego beyond the understanding of individuals." There are many ways for this mechanism to trigger. I gave some examples of circumstances where it would be likely for it to trigger, but those are, of course, mere examples to illustrate the general principle.

No, I meant the wars culled the number of men, so there were always more women. And societies too weak to go to war tended to end up dead or enslaved.

We are talking about hunter-gathereres, on the move. There are many ways for a small group of hunter-gatherers to avoid being dead or enslaved without being sufficiently strong enough to take on another tribe in war for women. And war is risky business which could easily cause the whole tribe to be wiped out. This would be a much safer solution to the same problem.

Also, there are many ways one could imagine there being more men than women. They can have lost women to other tribes, in war, or women might have defected to a stronger tribe.

Also, it is not unheard of for families to give birth to six girls or six boys in a row. A small tribe could easily produce considerably more boys than girls just by the roll of the dice.

And anyway - we are talking about evolutionary time-frames here. Millions of years. It need not have been very common - just common enough.

Most homosexuals report being homosexual long before they join the navy and are switched on

Self-reporting is notoriously unreliable. People lie to themselves, and people lie to others.

[citizen k]

And anyway - we are talking about evolutionary time-frames here. Millions of years.

Evolutionary time frames for the human species is in the thousands of years and shorter.

[Pat]

And anyway - we are talking about evolutionary time-frames here. Millions of years.

Evolutionary time frames for the human species is in the thousands of years and shorter.

OK sure I agree, but that's not the sense I was using the word in the context of what you quote. I was just trying to illustrate how over an evolutionary time frame of millions of years it would certainly be common enough for there to be more men than women, for this to give rise to evolutionary solutions.

[crazy canuck]

You obviously didn't read my real argument. "Presumably this would work at a sub-conscious level and be triggered by group dynamics and workings of the cultural super-ego beyond the understanding of individuals." There are many ways for this mechanism to trigger. I gave some examples of circumstances where it would be likely for it to trigger, but those are, of course, mere examples to illustrate the general principle.

On the contrary I did read it.  In fact I thought enough of it to ridicule it by pointing out that your explanation for the trigger of homosexuality does not explain what triggers homosexuality in a modern society.  You simply missed the point.

[Pat]

You obviously didn't read my real argument. "Presumably this would work at a sub-conscious level and be triggered by group dynamics and workings of the cultural super-ego beyond the understanding of individuals." There are many ways for this mechanism to trigger. I gave some examples of circumstances where it would be likely for it to trigger, but those are, of course, mere examples to illustrate the general principle.

On the contrary I did read it.  In fact I thought enough of it to ridicule it by pointing out that your explanation for the trigger of homosexuality does not explain what triggers homosexuality in a modern society.  You simply missed the point.

I daresay you are the one to have missed the point, seeing as I did give examples of how this mechanism could be triggered in modern society. You are obviously labouring under a misunderstanding of my argument of one sort of the other, and by assuming you had not read my post I was being charitable - the alternative is that you read it but did not understand it.

[Sheilbh]

This theory's been around for a while, I've posted it many times before.  It's basically a gay version of the human grandmothering/menopause thing.   

To a couple of the comments: Yi, they've not found anything that they think is a lesbian gene, there is a reasonable candidate for a gay male gene.  Pat, I think you talk a lot of shit a lot of the time.

[crazy canuck]

Sheilbh,

The thing that makes me wonder about such a thing as a gay gene is historical societies where homosexuality was more prevalent and in fact the norm - say Sparta or Greece.

Its unlikely that all males had such a gene in those societies and then the gene just died out suddenly.

Also, it doesnt really explain bisexual males.

I wonder if it is just that we all  have preferences.  For example I dont find all women attractive.  I have certain preferences for who I find sexually attractive.  Could dividing society into gay and straight be an artificial divide.  Could it be that we all find certain things attactive or not and those certain things vary greatly among individuals?

[crazy canuck]

I daresay you are the one to have missed the point, seeing as I did give examples of how this mechanism could be triggered in modern society. You are obviously labouring under a misunderstanding of my argument of one sort of the other, and by assuming you had not read my post I was being charitable - the alternative is that you read it but did not understand it.

Now that Marti is posting less it is good to see someone come in to fill the void.