Well, I’ve been meaning to write another blog for a while, and my friend Sean’s blog certainly had an obvious enough prompt for a topic. He talks about sexuality, homo-sexuality along with its reasoning and implication. I must admit I very much agree with his viewpoint – does it really make a difference?
Well, anyhow…evolution. We have all been raised within an educational framework that teaches us about evolution to some extent. Mr Darwin’s legacy lives on strong and proud within the western mindset specifically, a legacy of evolution whereby we physically adapt to encompass changes within our biological needs. This is indeed true and I think at this point only the religiously ignorant feel the need to discredit the concept of evolution.
But surely there is more, and I think that has become evident as humans develop more. With most other animals, all changes that have been needed are physical due to this being almost the sole governing factor in an animals existence. Emotional qualities are still at the low end of development. For the human animal though, our physical capabilities are in fact diminishing, being overtaken by our emotional, sensory and sexual needs.
I think is it becoming quite evident that evolution is in fact working in these areas also. But I will just look at sexuality for now.
Homosexuality has often been a topic of hot debate. Originally thought of as a mental disorder, later thought of as a personal choice and the current popular theory is that it is in fact a natural body response. I must admit, I sit on the fence between personal choice and natural response. My reason being is that I think homosexuality is an evolutionary response to overpopulation. The human collective is more than capable of this level of response, post-second world war being an example, with the baby boom of male babies – without that male baby boom to restore the balance society would have in fact suffered considerably due to full scale society gender imbalance. Where we suffer now is from serious over-population, a topic which no MP would go near with a barge pole, they would rather waste every ones time saying carbon footprints, reduce your emissions, do this do that instead of saying “for crying out loud people, you don’t HAVE to have a baby”, but that’s OK, nature is here to do a better job than any mouthy politician. Take a person, have them fancy the same sex – hey presto, no baby! One step closer to population control.
Simplistic view, but it works. I do believe though that at the moment we are midway and so there are many people who are gay by personal choice only, and those who are gay from just simply “being gay”. Is there a way to tell the difference? Nah, I don’t think so – it would be easy to say “those who camp it up are making a statement and fall in the choice category” but I really don’t think it is as clear cut as that.
We are a physically defunct species pretty much, by comparison anyway, and so we must start keeping a beady eye on the rest of our functions if we want some advance warning of how we are going to change. I’m not saying we wont have further physically changes, but if we do I think they would be a more “downgrade” form of change a change that is secondary to accommodate a sensory/sexual/emotional change.
Tags: evolution, gay, gender, homosexuality, sexuality, society
We are one of the few creatures to have sex for pleasure rather than procreation (although check out the bonobo!). Human sex has evolved primarily a social and secondarily procreative function – so, therefore, the gender of one’s partner(s) isn’t actually that important.
As for over-population being the reason, I’m not so sure. Does homosexuality exist in the same proportions in low-population areas (which don’t have some kind of ban on such activities) or only in high population ones?
Personally, I think the rise in human sex-for-recreation has evolved along with culture, creativity and ease-of-living. Admittedly, these things also go along with city-living and therefore over-population but not necessarily.
Lou Hart (the bloody untraceable!) wrote a fascinating essay:
http://www.philhine.org.uk/writings/flsh_gendered.html
Here’s an interesting quote:
“It is important to note that there is huge variation in the names, functions and types of gender and attitudes towards them amongst different cultures and ethnicities e.g the Navajo apparently recognise three genders ; men, women and nadle (although there are three types of nadle) whilst the North Eastern Chukchee of Siberia recognize four genders: 1) gendered male who is sexed male; 2) gendered female who is sexed female; 3) gendered female who is sexed male; and 4) gendered male who is sexed female.”
Throughout the whole thing she refers to people of varying and complex gender-roles in different societies. This isn’t the same as modern sexuality, but it does show a way of looking at the sexualities of people in tribal cultures. The point she’s making is that binary gender roles lead to a binary view of sexuality, but in certain cultures older than our own the view of gender isn’t always so hard-and-fast as simple male and female.
The word “Berdache” is a good one to look up here, especially where native american tribal people are concerned.
Love,
Seán
I think there would need to be more investigative clarification of the difference between “chosen” gender and “genetic inclination”.
I am aware that there are multitudes of tribal cultures with some form of gender shift within it, but I do very much get the impression that it is a choice, often base don the pursuit of spiritual understand or even sexual understanding.
I think there is a distinct difference in western or more specifically extremem high population areas homosexuality reaches a far more prolific level. I think this is due to the combination of choice and “genetic” although I must add that I use the word genetic very dubiously, i’m really not ure what the factor would be other than “non-choice”
There are other types of this evolution – if you want to call it that,I can’t say for definite but whilst I was at school and studying population control I read somewhere that in certain eastern countries,the male sex organs where shrinking in size and more males being classed as infertile.This was seen to be one of natures ways to reduce population.
Also,I’m not too sure but I think it’s illegal to have more than one child in places like China,or at the very least they cut off all support financially for parents who have more than one,I don’t know how long this has gone on for,but surely after many years of this,maybe it would influence evolution.
I also remember reading stuff when I was pregnant with Dylan about how many more couples where diagnosed with unexplained infertility these days,so maybe that’s another evolutionary step or just another result of pollution and dietary factors.
I very much agree – there are many factors that are increasing our inability to over-populate. Like you say, could be dietary, could be evolutionary, could be all and none at the same time. Either way, factors other than self governance are working to control population….lets hope they work!