Text 13483, 109 rader
Skriven 2007-04-12 11:01:40 av lizardgirl (16928.babylon5)
  Kommentar till text 13472 av rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated (16917.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: My Presidential Pick for 2006
=========================================
On Apr 12, 3:35 am, "Matthew Vincent" <mbvinc...@paradise.net.nz>
wrote:
> On Apr 11, 12:41 pm, Josh Hill <userepl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> [Re-sending as the original didn't seem to make it]
>
> >Just read an interesting article on the subject in today's Times:
>
> >http://tinyurl.com/ytp5db
>
> >I suppose it's too much to expect an accurate treatment
> >in a popular science article, and certainly this one doesn't
> >disappoint, neglecting as it does to mention the Kinsey
> >scale and the malleability of our sexual desires.
>
> Yeah, this article (like many others) seemed to be tailored to
> laypeople who wouldn't actually pay enough attention to understand all
> of what they were reading, but who'd find it validating to be told
> that scientists were supposedly finding something that confirms their
> own comfortable stereotypes. That being said, as you say there may be
> some accuracy behind some of the analysis, although it's still very
> much a provisional hypothesis. From an evolutionary perspective,
> bisexuality in women may have a specific function due to the fact that
> sexual relationships with other women provided a sexual outlet and
> intimate social connection at times when it wasn't ideal for a woman
> to get pregnant. By comparison, bisexuality and same-sex attractions
> in men may have less of a specific function but instead be mainly or
> even entirely an evolutionary side-effect. (As an aside, I wonder
> whether contraceptive technology will very gradually decrease the
> degree to which women have a biological propensity to view sexual
> intimacy with men as a pregnancy risk. It's likely that technology
> will also gradually reduce biological differences between women and
> men over time, as many of those differences have much less of a
> function today than they did in an evolutionary context.)
>
> Overall, for both women and men, same-sex attractions are likely to
> reflect a general trait for variety in evolution: most people will
> display a biologically favoured trait (like being at least primarily
> heterosexual, or disliking the idea of one's long-term relationship
> partner being sexually intimate with others), but there are exceptions
> due to the importance of variety. Consequently, having same-sex
> attractions or being poly (respectively) may be a result of
> individuals not displaying a dominant trait due to the priority that
> evolution gives to variety. Variety is so crucial in evolution because
> it allows a gene to survive even if the external environment changes
> unpredictably, so the best course of action for a gene is to exhibit
> the preferred trait in most persons but for there to be exceptions.
> This generalised trait for variety may apply even for some traits
> where the non-favoured condition of them has no evolutionary benefit
> whatsoever (in other words, this is a side effect of a generalised
> evolutionary trait for variety).
>
> Biologically speaking, there may be a difference for same-sex
> attractions in men due to the fact that male sexuality doesn't have a
> nine month cooldown period in the event of a successful pregnancy, so
> there's virtually no context in which a man having sex with a woman
> leads to a negative evolutionary outcome for him (except things like
> incest or if there are negative social consequences afterwards).
> Consequently, sex with other men may not be biologically favoured over
> sex with women at any time, and thus men (as a generalisation) may
> have some degree of biological programming to only look for sex with
> other men if there aren't women available, e.g. when away from the
> tribe in a hunting party. The typical social norms in men's prisons
> may be partly a reflection of this: the non-availability of women
> leads to a modified version of homophobia whereby only the man who
> plays a receptive role in a penetrative sex act is considered to be
> deviating from heterosexual norms. This may be a factor in the
> atmosphere of competitiveness and aggression between male prisoners,
> given that competing over who gets to play the penetrative (or "male")
> role in sex may be more intense than when criminally-minded
> heterosexual men compete for female partners (and status and
> resources) on the outside. (Competition over scarce resources, e.g.
> when each prisoner doesn't get much food per meal, is another
> contributing factor.)
>
> Anyway, if bisexuality is less of a specifically favoured evolutionary
> trait in men than it is in women, then it may be that bisexual men are
> in some ways more like women. Commenting based only on anecdotal
> experience, it does seem that bisexual men are comparatively more
> likely to be into activities like "cross dressing" or otherwise
> roleplaying being female in the bedroom, or having sexual fantasies
> imagining oneself as a woman. There are other potential explanations
> for this of course, but it would be interesting to empirically study a
> number of "feminine" traits across men of all four sexual orientation
> types (heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, asexual) -- such traits
> including cross-dressing as well as choice of occupation, career and
> subjects graduated in; biological indicators such as hormonal
> patterns; etc. It wouldn't be surprising if both homosexual and
> bisexual men had these traits more strongly than heterosexual men, but
> in the event that bisexual men had some traits more strongly than
> homosexual men, this would be consistent with the hypothesis that
> bisexuality itself is a "feminine" trait in the sense that men are (or
> may be, I should say) more likely to express their sexuality in a
> polarised category as either heterosexual or homosexual. (Naturally,
> displaying publicly observable stereotypically feminine behaviour in
> social settings is probably less common in bisexual men than in
> homosexual men, as it often relates to partner selection for the
> latter group).
>


or it could be that bisexuality as an intrinsically female trait is
the result of conflicted male sexuality.
a figment of freuds subconscious imagination.  :^)


lg
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