Talk:Homosexuality/archive5

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Contents

Whose critique?

§ One paragraph of the current article has two kinds of problem:

One theory, presented by Susan Blackmore, is that homosexuality is largely genetic in origin. The question of how homosexuals counterintuitively replicated their genes, given that homosexual sex does not result in reproduction, can be answered by the theory that social dogma prompted individuals with homosexual genes to behave heterosexually and thus reproduce. This theory goes on to predict that homosexuality will be less common in the future because, as we enter the information age, homosexuality will become more widely known and accepted, and therefore individuals with homosexual genes will feel less inclined to behave heterosexually and will thus reproduce less frequently. This particular interpretation is deeply unsatisfying - if gay-gened people learn to behave heterosexually through social means then presumably straght-gened people can learn to engage in homosexuality and there is no need for a gay gene whatsoever.
  • It speakes of a "gay gene" as though some humans have a gene that other humans lack. If one person has blue eyes and another person has brown eyes, it is not because they have different genes. Instead, they have different versions of the same genes, the "eye color genes." When there is more than one form of the same gene, the different versions are called alleles.
  • It is not clear whose critique is given in the last sentence. Judging by the way it is written, it appears to express the point of view of the contributor to Wikipedia who wrote that paragraph. If it does repeat the opinion of a researcher in the field, then the source of this opinion should be cited.

§ Wherever it came from, it might better be omitted since it is logically flawed. That social expectations can influence gay individuals to copulate with females is well known. It isn't that somebody has convinced gay individuals that heterosexual intercourse is intensely satisfying to the gay individuals. "Try it, you'll like it," works out favorably sometimes, even with pokeberry icecream. But it is much more accurate to say, "Try it, you may like it." And that works both for people who previously have only had homosexual experiences and people who previously have had only hetersexual experiences. What determines future behavior, all other things such as opportunity being equal, is how much the person likes it. The passage quoted above says, "if gay-gened people learn to behave heterosexually" when it should say, "if gay-gened people are constrained to behave heterosexually," or at least "are influenced to behave heterosexually." Neither what the person in question prefers to do, nor what the person needs to be constrained or otherwise influenced to do, is likely to be an uncaused event or condition. Whether the cause of the preference is genetic or of some other character can only be found by examining the causes of the preference. The presence or absence of a "gay gene" will be determined by matching preferences with alleles, not by examining the forced behavior of individuals. P0M 06:44, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

    • I'll keep it short: agreed. -Seth Mahoney 09:04, Aug 10, 2004 (UTC)
    • Agree the paragraph is not the greatest, particularly with respect to genes and alleles. The criticism of the thesis was written me without reference to sources but I would be amazed were it original. If a genetic tendency to homosexualtiy can be constrained by social factors then why cannot homosexuality be produced by social factors alone, and why argue for a genetic basis at all? Obviously this does not meet the scientific standard of proof, but it suggests that particular explanation of the genetic thesis is flawed.The Land 10:24, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)
      • Because social factors constrain behaviour, not tastes; homosexual attraction is on a different level. So the fact that society can influence homosexual acts doesn't undermine the possibility of homosexual likes being genetic; the logic of this rebuttal is unsound.
    • In fact rereading this I think the genetic thesis section needs more work overall (while I added the end of the paragraph I'm not sure who added the first section). Am sure more than one researcher favours genetic interpretations and that there's much more to be added. The Land 10:29, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The fact that Steward could have plotted the killing of Lincoln doesn't prove that he did it. And actually, when you get into the very substantial literature on suspected causal factors, the clearest conclusion is that gender identity is formed by a complex of factors. Identical twins do not always turn out to be both gay or both straight, but they do turn out that way more often than do same-sex fraternal twins and same-sex siblings. There is indeed one camp that argues that one's sexuality is entirely a social construct, i.e., one is born as a tabula rasa and if your family, community, society turns you into a homosexual that's what you are, and if it conditions you the other way then you are a heterosexual. But that leaves lots of things unclear, and most researchers do not accept that explanation.

The whole analysis is messed up by our tendency to dichotomize. People think that one is either homosexual or heterosexual. Then they find out that there are switch hitters. So they divide the world into gay, bi, and straight. The reality has to be otherwise. If it were not, people would not get so upset by the issue of homosexual behavior. Everybody has a different threshold for homosexual behavior and for heterosexual behavior. The person who is stereotypically heterosexual (far to the heterosexual end on the Kinsey scale in other words) may very well behave in a homosexual way if s/he gets pushed over the relatively high threshold for homosexual behavior. Typically that happens when somebody grows intolerably horny in a prison or some other setting where heterosexual drive objects are not available. Sometimes it happens when somebody loves a person of the same sex very strongly for reasons that are non-sexual. Sometimes it happens when people experiment. These kinds of experience, or "near misses" can lead to homosexual panic, and people frequently need to be reassured that it doesn't necessarily prove anything more than that it happened. (It's like the old "one drink and you'll become an alcoholic" theme. If somebody had a strong need to self medicate it might look like it's true, but most people can take occasional drinks all their lives and not become alcoholics.)

Something sets these thresholds. Twin studies suggest that there is a genetic component. Studies of phenomena that occur when abnormal hormone levels are present during gestation (see Freemartin for instance) indicate that some factors are at work during certain stages of fetal development. Some studies indicate that early childhood development is crucial in the formation of one's gender identity. Some societies program their children to be strongly homophobic or heteronormal or whatever you want to call it. Other societies, such as the ancient Greek society, make homosexual intercourse a socionormal part of growing up. That didn't prevent the ancient Greeks from reproducing quite successfully. Evidently they were happy, most of them, to get sexual satisfaction from their wives even if they had been earlier or even always been pleased to "help a buddy get off." Sometimes, expecially with regard to the paraphilias, very strong (traumatic, usually) emotional experiences during adolescence or maybe even later can create a profound change in one's sexuality. (See, for instance, the case of "formicaphilia" described in John Money's Gay, Straight, and In-between. As I recall the story, a young man was interupted in the middle of intercourse by his father who started beating him while he was ejaculating. The scene involved ants and other insects crawling on the guy's body because they were in some insect-prevalent shed or garage or something like that, and ever after the guy could achieve climax only if insects were crawling over his body.)

I originally didn't like beer. Maybe that was partly genetic because I also don't like other bitter flavors (it's known that some individuals avoid things like brocolli that would be better for them to eat because they help prevent cancer, for instance). I was conditioned against drinking by a "one drink and you're an alcoholic" mother, and I didn't like certain people in my social environment who used drinking beer in conjunction with certain rowdy behavior that I found disturbing. Later I learned to drink wine, but I still didn't like beer. Then I ended up on an island in the Pacific that was terribly hot, and somebody gave me draft beer to drink. Suddenly my preference changed. The moral of the story is that you can't just look at one factor if multi-factoral causation is at work.

It is difficult to get a handle on all of this stuff because we are generally miseducated by people on all sides. Probably the single best source of information (in my opinion as one who has at least read most of it) is Anne Fausto-Sterling's Sexing the Human Body. She is very hard on people who draw unjustified conclusions from partial evidence, and I think you would like the book. P0M 16:16, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

  • I'm inclined to agree with your point of view - however where is this leading the article? ;-) The Land 16:37, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure. The subject is highly "political" and lots of people have strong opinions. It's generally easier to change an article by chipping away sentence by sentence. In the end that can make for a disunited essay. P0M

Has this article been protected

Last night I noticed vandalism that included inserting claims that "it all started with [john doe]". I tried several times to revert, and the changes that I made to get rid of "john doe" seemed to stick, but in the identity of the anonymous contributor. Now this page appears to be protected. If someone has protected it, shouldn't a notice to that effect have been added? P0M 21:55, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Strange. I can edit it, but I can't revert it. P0M 21:57, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

American POV?

It seems to me that there is a fairly heavy American POV in the legality of homosexuality (especially the paragraph referencing Lawrence v Texas). It seems to focus heavily on U.S. case law with little consideration of current events elsewhere in the world with regard to this movement. Perhaps we should rewrite this bit? Just a thought! -SocratesJedi 08:01, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I hadn't considered that, but you're totally right. Maybe there should be a section on the legal situation in America, or maybe there should be a separate article on the legality of homosexuality, with a short paragraph in Homosexuality and then a link to the new article. Unfortunately, I'm not familiar enough with the situation in most of the rest of the world to do anything useful here - oddly, I think you'd have to have the POV of someone in a particular culture to understand that culture's response to something like homosexuality and then write an NPOV article on it. -Seth Mahoney 08:13, Aug 14, 2004 (UTC)

§ We shouldn't have too much difficulty in getting one of our UK contributors to summarize the situation there. Would the French, German, etc., articles have anything? But where would we stop? Monaco? Togo? Nation by nation may be too ambitious. How about legal systems, Napoleonic laws, British common law derivities, Muslim legal systems..???

§ There is another side to this issue. There are non-judicial acts committed against individuals because "There are laws against people like you," e.g., Matthew Shepard. Some police departments in the U.S., for instance the one in Sacramento, California, have gone out of their way to ensure that the police do not harrass homosexuals or fail to give aid in, e.g., domestic violence situations. However, in other parts of the world the police may "make their own laws", "conduct their own trials", and even "conduct their own executions," or at least so I am led to believe. The situation in Taiwan until recently, while it did not involve extreme sanctions, did involve arrests and harrassment for "crimes" that are not and were not then on the law books of the Republic of China. These activities have been fictionalized by Pai Hsien-yung (or Bai Xianyong) in Nie4 Zi3" -- translated as Crystal Boys and also time-shifted and produced as a motion picture the name of which I can't remember. Anyway, my point is that we risk giving an inaccurate picture of the position of homosexuals in society if the extra-legal situation is not put alongside the legal position.

§ There are so many different countries and different sets of reactions to homosexuality that it would be impossible for practical reasons to give a complete picture. Maybe some Googling would give us a list of nations that have explicit laws against homosexual acts. (Many people would probably assume that the ROC has or had laws against homosexuality. It can be difficult to prove a negative, especially if you don't have direct access to the evidence.) P0M 19:54, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The necessary length of a section on the legality of homosexuality is why I proposed an additional article, with a brief summary in homosexuality. You're right, though, its a lot of work and a lot of information to sort through, and will end up having a lot of content, which might actually be good. The other option, which might get kinda tedious, would be to have a series of articles by country, and have them all in the same category, say, Category:Laws on homosexuality by country. An article, if it doesn't already exist, on the historical legality of homosexuality would be valuable too. -Seth Mahoney 20:02, Aug 14, 2004 (UTC)

Recent problematical changes

I see that one or two people have been busy making major changes to this and a related article, and that someone else has reverted those changes. I think that reversion was the appropriate thing to do because the edits really were not well considered, and involve many problems that might have been avoided by studying the original articles carefully and trying to understand why they have gradually assumed their present forms over the last couple of years. The edits probably were well intended (I took the time to look at some of the "user contribution" stuff). I can understand being irritated by them because they caused some inconvenience to the people who have been improving these articles and reverting the frequent incidences of vandalism. However, if somebody does something in a well-intentioned way it probably would be better to put the reasons for reversion in the talk page where they can be stated fully and clearly. For one thing, much like answering machine messages, the cramped circumstances of communicating provided by the edit summary almost guarantee that the comment will appear curt and unfriendly.

Since the new contributors have not registered yet, it becomes a catch as catch can situation when one tries to communicate with them. If the person who made the extensive edits to the Homosexuality article happens upon this discussion page, s/he can communicate with the rest of us here. For the moment I will just say that I would have reverted the article myself if I had seen it first because the changed text involved some simplistic judgments that represent the points of view of some people who write on the subject, but are far from being things that can be regarded as "matters of fact." For instance, the assertion was made that homosexuality is determined by genetic inheritance. While there may be hereditary factors that predispose to homosexuality, the same contributor mentioned whole populations that are described by researchers as engaging in homosexual behavior as an activity that is socio-normal to members of those communities. There is no point of my going through the now-reverted text point by point without knowing whether the person who stated those views will ever read this discussion page, and I don't have time to go back to the history page and copy out the problematical statements anyway.

In short, getting your stuff reverted is enough psychic trauma for a new contributor to absorb at one time, so let's try to just say something like, "Reverted to version by John Doe. Please see discussion page." P0M 07:05, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Statement in need of proof

§ As it currently stands, the article says:

"Throughout most of written history, same-sex relations were not restricted to the exclusively homosexual but were engaged in by a large proportion of the male population."

There are several serious problems with this formulation:

  • By mentioning written history, the article implies that looking into the history one could find reflections of the practice of homosexual relationships in the daily lives of "a large proportion" of ordinary people and important leaders. But history books usually report the exceptions, the scandals that bring down governments, etc., and demographies that detail the sexual practices of the people of a given nature are not common before the 20th century. Only ons (or two?) English kings was known for preferring his male sexual partners to his wife, and in China (which has the most exhaustive archives of government records, summaries of government records, and more formal histories) one does not find references that suggest homosexual relations on the part of rulers after about 200 B.C. Earlier than that it was not unusual to see mention of king so-and-so's male favorite. In the Shi Shuo Xin Yu, a record of the goings on of two members of the group called the "seven sages of the bamboo grove" indicates that their sexual behavior was regarded as unusual enough to merit a kind of "delighted with naughtiness" mention. Anyway, if the business about written history has any merit at all it would need to be made to state clearly what years, decades, or centuries were not times when homosexuality was widespread -- and why.
  • What does "engaged in" really mean here? Does it mean something like what Kinsey found? -- that a high percentage of people would at least admit to having tried it once or twice? Or does it mean that a high percentage of men (and women?) were happily engaging in same-sex relationships? Or does it mean that from the point of view of religious authorities an astoundingly large percentage (say 5 or 20%) were breaking the rules?

§ So what is the real evidence? Is it historical? How about some citations. Is it evidence found in cultural artifacts like statues, novels, poems, etc.? What does it say about the likelihood that someone would try it casually, do it when nothing better was available, maintain a long-term relationship alongside a heterosexual relationship, or maintain a long-term relationship and avoid heterosexual contacts? As it stands, the passage practically begs for attack as a biased report favoring homosexual lifestyles when the goal of a good article should be to accurately and comprehensibly reflect what actually has gone on. P0M 14:10, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Reverts

I reverted a bunch of edits to clear vandalism and very strange edits to the References section. But I accidentally reverted most of Ludwigvan beethoven's edits. They seemed POV and needed massive cleanup, so I can't easily fix it. Could someone take a look?

If you would please sign your postings it would make things easier for everyone. 金 (Kim) 04:58, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Derogatory Terms

Regarding the quote: 'Less frequently, the terms queer, homo, and fag or faggot, and dyke are used positively among gay men and lesbians; these terms may be considered derogatory when used by non-gays.'

Consider - these terms may or may not be considered derogatory when used by any person, depending on the context and the observer. I don't think "non-gays" use the terms particularly any more derogatively then gay people.

Also I would consider (in the UK) that the term 'gays'/'non-gays' as used in this article are derogatory, (not to mention that the meaning is unclear; including gay women or not?), and prefer 'gay men' or 'gay people'. Perhaps a personal preferance, though? Mysteronald 23:32, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The UK must be much more highly advanced that some places I've lived if they don't use "faggot" in a derotatory sense most of the time. There wouldn't happen to be a comprehensible reason why the good people there would adopt for their general or value-neutral use a word that has long been a term of violent abuse, would there? The fact that some gay people adopt the term probably depends on the same psychology that encourages some black people to adopt use of the "N" word among themselves -- it takes a portion of the venom out of it to hear it coming from friendly lips. But unless you want to openly identify yourself with that community -- and establish that identity with the person you intend to use the word on before you use it -- it might be kinder and less provokative to avoid its use. For one thing, for a teacher or other responsible member of the community to use it in public legitimatizes its use by the same people who have taken to using "gay" as a term of derision. (As, for instance, when a high school teacher says, "Oh, ,J.J., it's so gay when you leave your shirt hanging outside your trousers like that. Why don't you start dressing like a responsible adult!") 金 (Kim) 05:18, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

You've missed my point, I think. I have never before heard the group noun 'gays' (and by extension 'non-gays') used in any way other than derogatory, was my point. It's more standard to use terms such as 'gay people' or 'gay men' when being polite... with gay as an adjective, not a noun Mysteronald 18:07, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Here in the States, 'gays' is usually used in an unintentionally derogatory way, in much the same way that 'coloreds' (is that the correct spelling? It looks funny) or 'negroes' might have been used back in the day. Gay people tend not to like it, and generally only people who are ignorant to the fact that it is offensive to gay people use it (along with the word 'homosexual'), and usually only when trying not to be offensive. The one exception is in the media, especially newspapers, where the word can be found in scads. Here too, though, gay as an adjective is generally preferred. -Seth Mahoney 18:16, Sep 8, 2004 (UTC)
In view of this, I am going to remove uses of gay as a noun as featured in the article. -Mysteronald 18:26, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I don't think there will be any serious objections. The one thing I didn't mention is that there may be geographical areas in the US where 'gays' is preferred (I live in a fairly liberal, fairly sensitive area), but even if that is the case, the move seems to be toward 'gay people'. -Seth Mahoney 18:29, Sep 8, 2004 (UTC)

Intro

I've replaced the sentence:

"Some people identify themselves as homosexual even though they may engage in sexual activity with both men and women (whether occasionally or regularly)."

by:

"The term homosexuality is also occasionally applied to sexual activity between members of the same sex."

Reasons:

  1. I think it's irrelevant for the intro how some people identify. The intro should explain how the term homosexuality is commonly defined and understood. If someone says he or she is homosexual, I understand that as "he or she is sexually inclined exclusively, or almost exclusively, to his or her own sex". A different use seems rather idiosyncratic to me.
  2. When, for example, the Wikipedia article about Paragraph 175 says that it "made male homosexuality a crime", then homosexuality is here, of course, understood as denoting same-sex sexual activity, not a sexual orientation. This part of the definition definitely belongs in the introduction. --Amys 04:37, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Recent edits

What is meant by the phrase "in which case it would serve to provide 'deniability' for authentically homosexual orientation."? I don't understand what "authentic" means, and who is denying what to whom. -- Beland 00:31, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

have changed it to read
This DL behaviour may serve as a cover of secrecy for homosexual men who would find it difficult to come out.
which is what I understood from the original paragraph --Mysteronald 21:00, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Broken?

Ok, ok - who broked the article? Barneyboo 14:36, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

uh oh :| I was the last one who edited it... What now? Sietse 14:39, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Phew :) It seems to be fixed. Sietse 15:21, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Nurture (in Utero)

Expoding boy, that homophobe crap was somebody else, from the comment a scientific illiterate, who couldn't understand that the implications of a birth defect are no different than genetic for how homosexuals should be viewed. But since birth defects have an environmental component, they should be part of nuture. Please be careful in how far back you revert.--Silverback 20:10, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

129 states this POV inappropriately on the article page, I will respond here:

"Homophobes theorize that some homosexuality may be a birth defect, this of course is a nature argument, not nurture and presupposes that showing affection for another person is wrong and unnatural even when there is good reasoning behind the attraction such as beauty, intelligence, kindness. Also homophobes somehow believe that they need not apply their reasoning to heterosexuals i.e. the couple wont have children, not monogamous for life, athletic sex, bad taste in clothes, etc because then their logic falls apart that much faster"'
Deciding what is nature versus nurture is complex, but I think you overrate the implications of the distinction. Calling something a birth defect is little different than calling it genetic, other than to note an event in utero produced a result different than what usually occurrs in whatever the scientist or doctors consider the normal environment. Lots of other utero events are being discovered to have life long or even late life implications, such as for risk of diabetes, heart disease and cancer, although they may also have beneficial effects earlier in life, such as preparing the physiology to be better tuned to handle the environment the mother was experiencing at the time of the pregnancy.
This kind of reasoning is being applied to heterosexuals, a heterosexual male genetically tuned to find the wrong waist to hip ratio beautiful, may end up selecting a less fertile mate and have fewer offspring, or who is not attracted to kindness may select a less nurturing mate, or who is not monogamous, may have less children survive to adulthood, or if they do, have them be less successful in attracting mates, etc.
Beauty itself is thought to have a strong genetic component. An asymmetrically disfigured person, a morbidly obese person, a chimpanzee, a worm, brains spilling out on the ground, are as far as science can determine no more or less intrinsically beautiful than a supermodel. Beauty is in the brain of the beholder, not on the beheld, in fact, a chimpanzee may differ in the mates he/she considers attractive than we humans. Humans generally find other healthy humans more attractive than animals.
A complex phenotype such as homosexuality, probably has many causes, both environmental and genetic. If particular genes are found to be important contributers, they may not even be genes "for" homosexuality, in the sense, that they main effects are elsewhere and they may only increase the percentage of homosexuality by a small percent, and then perhaps only in some environments, such as ones where there is not great pressure to repress it. Whatever, the origins are, by the time the behavior is expressed, they must be strong motivating factors, because in some past environments, the behavior was expressed despite strong repressive social forces. The same is true of heterosexual behavior, which was often expressed outside of wedlock, even in societies where there were severe social consequences if the behavior became known.
I don't see how the logic fails. You shouldn't underestimate the power of our chemical natures. The sex drive is normally strong in human males, and one would expect a male mate to be more compatible both in appetite and in general interests. So unless for some reason human females seem particularlly attractive, they simply are not worth the bother, since females are more protective of access to their reproductive capacity (hard to get). That is why the particular physiological difference I cited, which was probably present from birth, is intriguing, because it involves the part of the brain associated with males finding females attractive. The situation is likely to be different in female homosexuals, since historically, due to male aggressiveness and possessiveness, what females find attractive has been less important, since they were likely to be imposed upon anyway. Undoubtedly, they in general find humans attractive. One theory of some subset of autism is that it is a birth defect in that portion of the brain that makes humans attractive, for them humans may be no more interesting than other objects, and human intrusiveness may be confusing and human faces as hard to remember and tell apart than individual animals. --Silverback 21:56, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Were the above 5 paragraphs all by Silverback? 金 (Kim)

With regard to the paragraph that was removed: I question the assertion that a birth defect is nature not nurture. If a fetus's arm is broken while the baby is still in the womb, and it was broken because the mother was involved in a traffic accident, the broken arm is not a natural characteristic of the baby. Instead, it is the product of a kind of "negative nurture." Lots of post-partum traumatic events are included under "nurture' too -- bad nutrition, bad home environment, bad parenting, etc. "Nurture" is not an entirely satisfactory word because we ordinary think of nurture as something done for someone's benefit, something done to help them grow well. 金 (Kim) 03:24, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Yes, all 5 were by silverback. Nuture (in Utero) was removed, but the information is preserved in the nature section. You are correct about a birth defect being arguably more nurture than nature, and it is perhaps these terms that generate strong feelings, because calling it nurture, is in a sense denying that it is part of a homosexuals "nature". Really these are lay terms though. Genes vs environment would probably be more correct, but the two are irretrievably interwined, because the genes are nothing without the environment, and their environment includes the other genes. Genes can be the same between different species and when those species are distantly related, they can have quite different functions because of the company of other genes that they keep. So I did not think it important to fight out where the line between nature and nurture should be drawn. I just thought that one prominent theory of possible explanatory value for some homosexual behavior was missing. It is now represented. I also thought some people were more fearful about this theory than they should be. Its moral and cultural implications should be minimal.--Silverback 03:54, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

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