WOW and homo-/bisexuality

[Skol]

Everthing is worth dissecting. Understanding what makes us tick is an essential step in changing and fixing it when it's broken.

Of course, you're implying that humanity is somehow broken.

And if that's your argument, then, yes, you are saying homosexuality needs to be fixed because it's not "normal", something you've brought up a lot. What's normal?

 

It can only because of some innate human instinct against homosexuality.

I know too many people that refute this asinine claim. Way too many people. Most of them women, some of them men.

That can only mean that it isn't normal or natural behaviour, if anything, distaste for homosexuality is normal and natural.

I know too many people jacking off to lesbian porn to refute this equally asinine claim. Far more people than above.

 

Are these two groups also abnormal?

 

My point is that if homosexuality was as 'normal' or widespread as some people like to claim, then it would be widely accepted, homosexuals wouldn't be a minority in the first place.

Assuming this is a completely nurtured phenomenon. Given todays climate, there would be very few homosexuals (low, low 1%). So I assume it's also a natural phenomenon. But if it's natural, and society was completely accepting, they wouldn't reproduce, and again there would be very few homosexuals.

 

I think the word 'natural' should be ignored entirely, since it doesn't imply anything about the subject matter, it doesn't mean it's wholesome or should be tolerated.

again with the normal. wholesome? what is wholesome? And why is abnormality not to be tolerated? (you'll need your definition of normal)

[obscurus]

I would like to hear theories as to why homosexuality has been so universially loathed and despised, forbidden and taboo, punishable by death or imprisionment in the vast majotiy of cultures throughout history (with a few exceptions that prove the rule)

 

I think saying that homosexuality is universally loathed is going a bit far. And you need to be a bit specific here: female homosexuality has been almost universally ignored, tacitly condoned, if not explicitly encouraged, while male homosexuality is either loathed or tolerated so long as it is kept "in the clost", in most societies. There are a lot of cultures that have strong taboos about male homosexuals, with no corresponding taboos concerning lesbians (this probably has something to do with very common male sexual fantasies).

 

Quite a few cultures have very different views on what even constitutes homosexuality.

 

For example, in most cultures of the Indian sub-continent, two men walking down the street holding hands would be considered perfectly normal and quite heterosexual. You have to be very careful when making sweeping generalisations about what is "normal" for humans beings, because we are so diverse and variable. We like to categorise things and reduce complex variety down to a few simple variables (it seems to be in our nature to do so), but reality rarely cooperates with this desire of ours.

[demagogue]

Yeah, moving from biology into culture is a big step ... and when you talk about what kind of behavior is socially acceptable/encouraged, that's culture. The argument that there's a clear trend across cultures is something to explain, but does not justify your sweeping generalisation as obscurus says. First, there have been plenty of cultures quite open to homosexuality. Ancient Greece, old hat example, of course the *norm* for established males was to have younger male lovers; whereas it was revlied in Roman morality (which just gets tagged on to Christianity).

 

So, Rome > Greece = Europe is anti-gay for most of the rest of its history; Europe = entire Western Hemisphere after 1492. You could say the same thing for Song neo-Confucion (via Zhu Xi, et al, sythesis with Tao and Buddhism; supremacy of 1-sided obedience obligations: citizen to king; wife to husband, son/daughter to father expecting normal marriage, etc...) and the entire Far East (Korea, Japan, Vietnam) since 1100; 5th Century Bedouin muru'a values (via Mohommad and Islamic jihad) and all of North Africa, entire Middle East, much of SE Asia ... I mean, go region by region, culture by culture, and you can trace specific cultural values (like homophobism) to very particular social groups with very particular cultural values embedded in very specific historical circumstances, gaining cultural ascendancy in very specific instances (*this* battle, *this* rebellion, etc) ... and then setting and defining the cultural values for that region -- sometimes by the sword, sometimes by socio-economic ascendancy (you want a good job, you do what's "right" according to your employer's morality), sometimes mixed reasons, but always in a social context -- until some other power group or historical circumstance supplants it.

 

And in each case, it's not like anti-gay attitudes were just a "normal" reaction, just like most strongly held cultural values; e.g., in the same way that most historical moralities are misogynistic (male-centered; women can't get into power); they had a power agenda behind them, e.g., a very unnatural form of estheticism which gave them a foundation to assert claims of moral, and thus political, authority. There's nothing "natural" about it. It's something asserted by human will with an agenda behind it.

Edited June 1, 2006 by demagogue

[oDDity]

That doesn't make any sense either. Surely in a male dominated society, men pushing women even furthur out of the picture and having relations with each other instead would be the way to go.

After all, the only way women could worm their way in is through their sexual lure, so if you remove that possiblity, they'll have no chance. THey can be kept at arms length and used as incubators.

MEn who want to live in a male dominated society, allowing themselves to be lured by the charms of women is not very smart - uless they have no choice n the matter, which of course, they don't.

No, it's got nothing to do with that,

Religion - as I've alreadsy said, religions are just a formal way of writing out moral values that already exist. It's not like religions just made up brand new moral codes and forced them on everyone. The fact is that a distaste for homosexuality already existsed in almost ever culture that created a religion, which is why the religions formed there reflected that.

[Order of the Hammer Bureaucrat]

Religion - as I've alreadsy said, religions are just a formal way of writing out moral values that already exist. It's not like religions just made up brand new moral codes and forced them on everyone.

 

I'm an engineer, not a sociologist, so I may be wrong with this, but weren't whole villages and many people massacred in the name of religion because they wanted to follow their moral codes while the more powerful people bringing in the religion wanted them to follow the religion's moral codes.

[demagogue]

Ok, put aside male-dominated-ness for the moment; no need to sidetrack ourselves more. (In that case, cultures are even more varied on that than homosexuality, so you'd need to go into even greater specificity to explain what we see today.)

 

The point I'm trying to make is that I don't take these cultural biases as for granted as you do. The way I've studied them, there's nothing natural about them, they came out of very specific historical circumstances that *really* could have gone the other way, and if you're not talking about those circumstances, you aren't saying anything about the culture at all.

 

I mean, the Greeks didn't *have* to be overshadowed by the Romans or (even more likely) Roman authority really could have been swept aside by the Huns in the 400s if Atilla hadn't been food poisoned, in which case all of Europe and the Western Hemisphere would be significantly more gay-friendly than the way it did turn out. Neo-conficionism really didn't have to become culturally ascendant in 12th Century China, e.g., over more naturalist pre-conficion worldviews like Toaism (or in Japan: Shito) which were much more naturalist about sex roles, including homosexuality. And take away Mohammad and Bedouin muru'a values would have just withered away into the sands of time, and some other cultural value would have filled the gap; keep the Hun story above and it would have been Hun animism.

 

I mean, it's funny. Here you are with this Zola quote: religion is a sham; don't trust its claim for moral authority. But put the *same* moral stance under the heading of "culture" and suddenly you are the same stupid blind sheep Zola despised (to put it in a provokative style you are fond of, if you are saying what it looks like you're saying): "The fact is that a distaste for homosexuality already existsed in almost ever culture that created a religion." What do you mean by that? That now "biology" (filling in the role of God) instilled this moral distaste, so it has a certain authority? ... or if not "biology", what? Historical necessity? Social darwinism? Just what is it that's giving this widespread historical practice any moral authority?

 

I don't think anything does. I think there are very specific historical explanations that explain for "every" culture why it turned out homophobic (but only individually for *each* culture) that in almost every case really *could* have gone in another direction tweaking history this way or that (and, of coure, that *has* gone in another direction with the rise of modernism and democratic liberalism and the social-revolution in the West in the 1960s, where many parts of the US and Europe are quite open to gay lifestyles and it's actually traditional sexual mores that are losing their cache.)

 

The problem here IMO isn't that what you're saying is implausible, it's that it's not specific to any situation, and you are trying to generalize without having a basis for generalization. So, I can totally agree with you that religions are just reifying moral values that are already out there and have no unique moral authority. But I think *you* are making the *same* mistake when you say that moral values already out there are really the natural ones and have some kind of moral authority. Of course they aren't. Get specific! Why are Muslims homophobic? Because Islam reified pre-Islamic muru'a values (muru'a = sort of like Latin American machismo; men are very macho and cannot be "girly"). Why? Because of Mohommad et al and his jihad inculcated the value by sword. Did it have to turn out that way? No, e.g., not over the more Hellinized areas of N. Africa if they were never exposed to Islam. We don't even have to ask why muru'a values tended towards homophobia; it doesn't even matter if it never spreads. But there's an easy explanation if one looks for it, of course: it comes from a nomadic society where survival means people take their social roles seriously. Men need to provide authority, labor and sperm for making babies and there isn't enough social tolerance for expecting less of them (which of course has it's own twisted logic maybe for nomadic tribes in a 6th century Arabian desert; but nothing to do with what the Muslim population looks like now, overpopulated and oil-rich.)

 

I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but you give the impression that because so many cultures historically tended towards considering homosexuality as unnatural that there is some kind of moral authority for the value that it really is unnatural. Whereas to my eyes, it's just a series of historical accidents in the strong sense and worthy of no moral authority at all. Because history really could have gone the other way, adding up historical trends is a terrible way to establish moral authority. A better way is using a rational basis for values, like democratic liberalism, which might state that "healthy sexuality" is (1) consensual by all partners, (2) does not physically/psychologically harm any partner, and maybe (3) does not critically undermine a person's productive life (so, e.g., you might still want to say that having sex with 4 people a day is unhealthy to one's productive life). But aside from those three, not sure you'll have a rational basis to morally constrict a person's sexual behavior more, and if there's no rational basis, then how can it have any moral authority at all?

Edited June 2, 2006 by demagogue

[Springheel]

As has been mentioned before, most heterosexual males have a visceral reaction to the idea of engaging in sex with another man. Is this a cultural reaction? I don't think so, any more than most males feeling disturbed by the notion of sleeping with their mother is cultural. These are reactions that are instinctual, probably an evolutionary response to things that would generally be bad for the survival of the species.

 

It's not much of stretch to think that this instinctual distaste could eventually turn into a cultural aversion, and then eventually into a moral judgement.

[demagogue]

Ok, good ... there's more to work with there and I can clear up some confusions.

Although ... unfortunately, not much time here, I'll have to answer this later, but maybe I can outline a bit here.

 

Yeah, I can agree with you that there's probably a visceral reaction at the sight of certain kinds of gay behavior across a very broad demographic, but I don't see the rest of the argument following at all. So going back to my cogsci days ... disguist is handled by the anterior insula (in the double-dissociative sense it's both necessary and sufficient for the feeling of disgust).

 

Two problems.

 

1. One, I'd argue that culture is doing more work to drive a-i activity (or rather, cultural and "identity" understandings, work going on in the parietal lobe taking cues from social context) in this case than a-i activity is driving culture, certainly more than you are giving it credit for ... that's a big claim that requires more effort than I can give it here, though! But lots of ways to support the idea: (1) cross-cultural a-i studies (some cultures, guy-hand-holding is disgusting but not in others; cock-in-mouth disgusting over a broader range among males but not 100% nor uniformly, more to say there), (2) plasticity of a-i activity within one culture over time (this idea of "habituation", like prisoners), (3) cross-modal studies (that is, comparing a-i activity at (a) the sight of puke or crap even an erect cock to a male (in a non-gay context, though, disgusting to non-homo males for quite straightforward natural-selection reasons) vs. (b ) a token gay scene (& be sure to separate what is disgust at the gayness of the scene itself vs digust just, e.g., at seeing a cock that would be ok in a traditional marriage context). So I'd argue that the former (a) are going to be much more "reflexive"; the latter (b ) are in a family of reactions more like taking instructions from a higher-level, so to speak, more a signal of parietal-lobe disapprobation ("I'm not the kind of person that tolerates that kind of "sick" behavior") than a visceral reflex within the a-i itself. That is, I don't think you are justified to use the word "instinctual" with gayness itself, and I'm not sure the science backs you up on it), or (4) cross modal studies with other forms of pornography vs. gay porn, and then (5) that cross-cultural. I mean, whatever anyone wants to speculate on, the answer here lies within the work of the anterior insula, and it's a much bigger wash than the idea you seem to have of how it works. But I think "instinctual" is not the right concept to be going with. Although I grant the feeling may be quite "visceral" for some persons, ideas of "gayness" triggering the a-i doesn't seem to work like seeing puke the way I understand it; it's much more "top-down". There's just a lot of argument to cover that one, can't do right now. I mean, seriously, lots of work to be done here to make sense of this argument one way or another, making distinctions, drawing lines, getting the evidence lined up... So I'll just leave it at a wash, grant that it's visceral for a wide male population, but won't let you get away with saying it's driving culture any more than Nazi disgust at Jewishness was "instinctual" and driving their cultural norms. The idea of "instinct" just doesn't fly with concepts at that high level.

 

2. But two, the reason I can skimp on #1 in any event, is that: even if that weren't the case and you were right (which I don't think you are), it would make zero difference to the moral authority of claims that homosexuality is unnatural. I mean, doesn't everyone remember we had a whole enlightenment to deal with this issue? A cultural aversion does not a moral judgment make; doesn't matter how loud you cry "tradition!". I don't give 2 shits what some Amazonian native gets sick at his tummy at seeing ... We in the civilized world base moral restrictions on reason, the most basic rule being: A moral restriction has moral authority just to the extent that it would be irrational for anyone under the restriction to reject its application. Are gays being totally irrational when they say social approbation for their sexual preference is unfounded? No, it's the perfectly reasonable response we'd expect them to have.

 

I may just be misunderstanding the point trying to be made. I think you can try to say as a historical fact, the work of the a-i (e.g., with the hypothesis that it is genetically hardwired to "see gayness -> disgust") explains in descriptive terms why so many anti-gay laws exist, whether they're morally right or not. And I'd reply that, to my understanding, it's actually a relatively poor explanation and that parietal-lobe-centered "cultural" understandings, put into social context, is a much better explanation, and the a-i at best plays a supporting role by taking instructions from the parietal lobe in eliciting feelings of disguist at the thought of certain gay behavior. But anyway, all of this is a debate in the discriptive analysis; what explains social attitudes on gay-ness. As for the moral (normative) analysis, to me all of this just seems flat irrelevant, maybe at best a good argument for prohibiting public lewdness. But the "harm" of a-i activity by unseen sexual behavior is simply laughable as a serious moral claim to restrict homosexual behavior. And it's the moral argument that's the important one.

 

Anyway, it's a fun exercise to think through ... Not that many hold-outs even left in the culture wars nowadays (in the West, anyway), so I feel like we should argue 'em up before they're all gone.

Edited June 2, 2006 by demagogue

[obscurus]

As has been mentioned before, most heterosexual males have a visceral reaction to the idea of engaging in sex with another man. Is this a cultural reaction? I don't think so, any more than most males feeling disturbed by the notion of sleeping with their mother is cultural. These are reactions that are instinctual, probably an evolutionary response to things that would generally be bad for the survival of the species.

 

It's not much of stretch to think that this instinctual distaste could eventually turn into a cultural aversion, and then eventually into a moral judgement.

 

 

Do they? Males brought up in societies which condem male homosexual behaviour who identify as heterosexual may feel this, but it does not mean it is an innate, geneticly controlled instinct.

 

Human sexuality has very little to do with reproduction - that is a tertiary aim at best (very few people (hetero or otherwise) have sex solely for the purpsoe of porcreation, not even on a subconscious level).

 

It is very normal for many other animal species to be quite bisexual.

 

Although the imperative to reproduce will mean that exclusively homosexual individuals will be rare, animals and especialy humans have sex for other reasons than reproduction (to assert dominance, social bonding, comfort, pleasure, boredom, overexuberance following a long period of abstinence). In humans, these other resons are more important than the reproductive motive.

 

And even in societies that claim or seem on the surface to disapprove of male homosexual behaviour, it is very common. Many men who claim to be heterosexual will engage in homosexual behaviour, but do not even consider it to be such. And activities like Rugby, or wrestling, for example, have very homoerotic overtones - males groping and wrestling with other males, showering together afterwards - a lot of very physically intimate behaviour can be found in male sports, as though homosexual male behaviour is acceptable provided it is "manly". Homosexual males that behave in a manly way, and do manly things are generally much more accepted by hetero males than men who are effeminate. A lot of male homosexuality comes under the imperative of asserting dominance.

 

If there was some underlying, innate, genetic instinct that men would have an aversion to male homosexuality, it would seem strange that many societies, such as the oft mentioned ancient greeks, would celebrate it.

[oDDity]

I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but you give the impression that because so many cultures historically tended towards considering homosexuality as unnatural that there is some kind of moral authority for the value that it really is unnatural. Whereas to my eyes, it's just a series of historical accidents in the strong sense and worthy of no moral authority at all.

 

 

Because history really could have gone the other way, adding up historical trends is a terrible way to establish moral authority. A better way is using a rational basis for values, like democratic liberalism, which might state that "healthy sexuality" is (1) consensual by all partners, (2) does not physically/psychologically harm any partner, and maybe (3) does not critically undermine a person's productive life (so, e.g., you might still want to say that having sex with 4 people a day is unhealthy to one's productive life). But aside from those three, not sure you'll have a rational basis to morally constrict a person's sexual behavior more, and if there's no rational basis, then how can it have any moral authority at all?

 

How many 'historical accidents' can you permit as random chance or social engineering, before you eventually have to say 'there is a definite pattern imerging here, maybe it's actually something innate about it'

I'm not sure why you're so against the idea of humans having an innate 'eww, that's disgusting' reaction to homosexuals, rather than it being something that thousands of cultures independantly sat around a little table and debated.

'..and item #4 on the agenda today is 'should we tolerate homosexuality'

Even if for some bizzare reason, that happened to be the case, you still have to wonder why virtually all of them happened to decide 'no', if it's got nothing whatever to do some with gut instinct.

[Fingernail]

So why are many societies gradually becoming more tolerant? Your suggestion would mean that it's a constant, surely.

 

At least the liberalisation could be an example of rational logical thought overcoming these suggested "innate" dislikings, which once again suggests that they cannot be nearly as universal or powerful as you make out.

[oDDity]

Rational (or irrational) thought can overcome the strongest of instincts - sex, hunger, ect, people choose cellibacy or even to starve themselves.

We can pass all the laws we like about everyone having equal rights, but it doesn't mean those natural instincts aren't there. lurking.