Monday, November 23, 2009
Why Some Animals (and People) Are Gay
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We have known for at least a decade that hundreds of animal species - including birds, reptiles, mollusks and, of course, humans - engage in same-gender sexual acts. But no one is quite sure why. After all, same-sex couplings don't usually result in offspring. (I say usually because when male marine snails pair with other males, one partner conveniently changes sex, allowing for reproduction.) Evolutionarily speaking, homosexuality should have disappeared long ago.
A yearlong study just completed at the University of California at Riverside offers several fascinating competing theories about why same-gender sexual behavior has endured. And although it's gay-pride month - and the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots that sparked the gay-rights movement - not all the theories will give same-gender-loving humans a reason to celebrate. (See the top 10 animal stories of 2007.)
One particularly charged finding is that in most species besides humans, same-gender pairings rarely lead to lifelong relationships. In other words, when one attractive bonobo male eyes another in a lovely patch of Congo swamp forest, they occasionally kiss and then move on to other oral pleasures, but they don't bother anyone afterward about trying to legalize their right to an open-banana-bar ceremony. In fact, they are likely to move on to girl bonobos: most animals that engage in same-gender sex acts do so only when an opposite-sex partner is unavailable.
And yet the study's authors, Nathan Bailey and Marlene Zuk of UC Riverside's biology department, report some exceptions, like the laysan albatross. Last year, researchers studying a Hawaiian colony of albatrosses found that nearly a third of all the couples involved two females who courted and then shared parenting responsibilities. (Albatrosses don't have U-Hauls, so no lesbian jokes, please.) Male chinstrap penguins also form long-term relationships, at least in captivity. And some male bighorn sheep will mount females only after the females adopt male-like behaviors. (Watch a gay marriage wedding video.)
What explains all these variances? Here are some hypotheses I collected from Bailey and Zuk's paper as well as from some of their original sources:
1. The boys-in-the-locker-room theory. Any guy who played sports in high school knows that homoerotic jokes and towel-snapping are an underlying part of the subculture. Similarly, male bottlenose dolphins use same-sex sexual behavior to maintain and strengthen their social relationships — although dolphins are far more explicit about their homosexual play, regularly mounting one another and (hide the kids' ears here) sticking their noses into certain boy-dolphin parts. (Very regularly: roughly half of male dolphin sex occurs with other males.) Among bonobos, same-sex sexual behavior is also thought to ease social tension and facilitate reconciliation. And among garter snakes, male-on-male contact may allow some solitary males to thermoregulate and, therefore, survive.
2. The emasculation theory. Some male animals might mount other males as a way of denying them access to the ladies. For instance, as the Journal of Natural History noted in 2006, male dung flies often must compete violently to impregnate females. In those situations, "the most sensible strategy for beating a competitor in the race to an arriving female would be to mount him and remain in situ for as long as possible." Then, when the lady dung fly finally sails by, the aggressor male can pull himself out from the dominated male and — because he is on top — get above to the female faster.
3. The "oops" theory. Among insects, same-sex sexual behavior is usually a case of mistaken identity. Male fruit flies, for instance, may romance other males because they lack a gene that enables them to distinguish between sexes. Even more surprising, male toads can't tell the difference between girl toads and boy toads, so males will routinely embrace other males, although the subordinate ones are equipped with a call that quickly results in the dominant male releasing. In other species, the "straight" males get tricked by other wily straight males who dress in animal drag: male goodeid fish, for instance, sometimes have a black spot that resembles a spot that females get when pregnant. Dominant males then court them rather than fight with them. While the dominant guys are busy courting the subordinate, ladylike fish, the latter are able to "sneak copulations with females," as Bailey and Zuk write. I'm going to dub this the Hugh Grant Theory: it's not always the most masculine guy who gets the most girls.
4. The let's-see-how-this-thing-works theory. Younger animals (particularly males, and including humans) sometimes engage in same-sex sexual behavior as practice, which may improve their reproductive success when they are ready for a heterosexual relationship later. Fruit flies who experiment with other members of the same sex as youngsters may have more baby fruit flies later on than those who don't experiment.
5. The two-plus-one theory. Among flour beetles, males routinely force themselves on other males. According to Bailey and Zuk, there's some evidence that sperm deposited during this male beetle rape is sometimes transferred to a female later on, increasing the chances that she will have offspring.
What all these theories have in common is that same-sex sexual activity is either an accident or a quirky genetic method of helping males impregnate females. Which raises the evolutionary question of why men and women who are exclusive gay and lesbian exist. One answer is that exclusive gays and lesbians are a relatively new creation: the concept of exclusive homosexuality barely existed before modernity; even a century ago, most same-sex-attracted men and women got married and had kids.
As Bailey, Zuk and many others have pointed out, no one has offered an adequate evolutionary explanation for the relatively recent development of exclusive homosexuality among humans. In January, the journal Evolution and Human Behavior published a paper exploring the idea that certain alleles increase the likelihood of homosexuality by blocking the effect of androgens during fetal development. Having all those alleles hampers the masculinization of some parts of the brain that affect personality, making you gay, the theory goes. Brothers of gay men who have only some of the alleles would turn out straight but less aggressive than typical guys. And because those brothers exhibit less psychopathology, they would attract more women and therefore have more kids. It was a provocative theory, but it turned out not to be proved: gay men's brothers don't actually have more kids than straight men's brothers do.
So we're stuck at square one. As the 40th anniversary of Stonewall approaches, the question that Alan Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa ask in their 2007 book about evolutionary psychology, Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters, has never been more relevant: Will "the liberation of homosexuals, which allows them to come out of the closet and not pretend to be straight" actually turn out to "contribute to the end of homosexuality?" We may not know for a thousand years, but it's a great question.
By John Cloud, Time.com
Labels: free sex education, gay
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Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Am I Gay?
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This article is aimed at the young but will be of help to anyone who may be questioning their sexuality and wondering if they might be gay.
Am I Gay? I guess this is a question a lot of young men will have asked themselves during their confusing adolescent years; it's certainly one that every gay man will at some time have had to tackle, and come to terms with on discovering the true answer.
Of course, there are the lucky ones - the majority - those people for whom their sexuality has never been in any doubt. They are the very people who, by their heterosexual appetite and acknowledged prowess with the opposite sex, may have initiated that desperate question in other minds.
But to not be one of that majority, to not have the same appetite for the opposite sex, does not immediately make anyone gay.
Times are changing slowly, perhaps too slowly, for most children still grow up in an overwhelmingly heterosexual world - a world that will by its very existence from an early age have instilled expectations and preconceived ideas in every boy's mind - so should the time come that he reaches puberty, and his juvenile years, and he finds that those expectations are not being met as they are by his friends, he becomes concerned.
He begins to suspect that he is different to the mates that he grew up with - and it troubles him. But trouble is too weak a word. At this stage of human development to suddenly not be ranked along with one's peers can be devastating. The questioning and gnawing fears in a boy's mind may remain closely guarded secrets - because they have to be.
Faced with this feeling of being different, young men may react in many different ways. Only a few will cope with the situation easily. Some may become reclusive; some may turn to bullying others; some to drink and drugs; and some may undoubtedly turn towards criminal behaviour to gain their much needed kudos - however, most will try to maintain an act: an appearance of being perfectly "normal".
This act, and the feeling of a need to prove themselves to their family and friends, will often only exasperate the problem. And when thoughts for the same sex enter their minds, thoughts that they may believe to be bad or wrong, a great feeling of guilt can engulf them.
It can be a very desperate time in a young man's life. It is a time when some may even come to consider suicide - and that, purely the result of the failings, the teachings and the expectations of a mainly ignorant heterosexual world, should never be!
Puberty, and the working of the sexual equipment, arrives at different times for different people. There is nothing wrong or untoward about being a late developer - many races are won by those who had a poor start. And even once everything is found to be in working order, it is quite normal for the feelings and the desires that arrive around this time to be "strange", to say the least!
The sudden explosion of hormones the body has to try to make some sense out of can for some bring forth quite peculiar urges, fascinations, and attractions. At this time it is not uncommon for those who will later be "normal" heterosexual men to have "a crush" on someone of the same sex. It may be a schoolmaster; it may be a friend - it could be anyone, there are no rules, and it may not just be the one person - it may be many.
There is nothing wrong, and this is not the time to fear one's sexual orientation; more a time to consider its possibilities.
For most who have arrived at this stage, they will have had no preparation for the alternative sexual orientations that life can deal out. Such is the failing of society, for around one in ten males will turn out to be gay, and around one in five males will at some time in their lives have gay sex. Each one of these people will be some proud parent's son. They could be anyone's son. These are facts that may be hard to accept by some people, but to life itself they are the "normal".
Sexual orientation is not hereditary, neither can it be instilled by corruption, persuasion, lifestyle or by any other means - and no matter what anyone may tell you, or claim, it most definitely cannot be changed. It is what you are.
Were it to be any different, then in a vastly heterosexual society, and with few gay people actually reproducing, by long before now there would have been no gay people left in the world.
But it is a known fact that the percentage of homosexual people in the world has varied little throughout all history, and although we may yet not understand the reason for it, nature has seen fit to maintain this status quo.
We now come to the crunch question: how do I know if I am gay?
I suppose the simple answer is - you just know. But you do need to wait until all those hormones have settled down a bit before asking the question. Once that has happened the sexual desires and urges will be noticeably better fed and nourished by the thoughts and fantasies of either one or the other of the two sexes.
Crudely put: whatever makes you "cum" the easiest and the best will give you the answer. For just a few people this may be equal, or it may alternate continuously throughout their lives, and they are what we term as being: bisexual.
Gay, straight or bisexual, it matters not - you are you, and you are unique. Whatever sexuality you may be, no two people are ever exactly the same - not even identical twins. Be proud of who and what you are, and if you find that you are gay or bisexual then remember that that is quite normal in the great scheme of things, it is only some areas of society that still have a problem with this - and the problem is theirs, not yours.
One of the biggest mysteries in the world today is why some people have a problem with another person's sexuality when you consider all the great names there have been throughout history that have been known not to be heterosexual.
Great emperors, kings, war-lords, painters, writers, poets, musicians, composers, pop singers, fashion gurus, astrologers, philosophers, architects, engineers and many, many others all enjoying pride of place in history have been either gay or bisexual - the list is almost endless, and it even includes a pope or two! Their sexual orientation never hampered these people - it need not hamper you.
Judy Garland is reputed to have said: "Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else." There could be no better advice. Another quote I love came from the late, great, and still sadly missed Dusty Springfield: "My sexuality has never been a problem to me but I think it has been for other people."
There is nothing at all wrong with being gay, however it does come with some burdens that heterosexuals never have to face.
There is the gay scene - known by all to be notoriously promiscuous - and although it is representative of less than a quarter of all gay people it is what a gay person will always be seen as being a part of by many uninformed heterosexual people.
Then there is the whole "coming out" saga. Should you come out to family and friends, at work, to all and sundry, or not do it at all?
Facing up to this issue can be traumatic for some people - and whatever you finally decide on as being best for you, even staying "in the closet", it will not be without some implications.
Am I Gay? I guess this is a question a lot of young men will have asked themselves during their confusing adolescent years; it's certainly one that every gay man will at some time have had to tackle, and come to terms with on discovering the true answer.
Of course, there are the lucky ones - the majority - those people for whom their sexuality has never been in any doubt. They are the very people who, by their heterosexual appetite and acknowledged prowess with the opposite sex, may have initiated that desperate question in other minds.
But to not be one of that majority, to not have the same appetite for the opposite sex, does not immediately make anyone gay.
Times are changing slowly, perhaps too slowly, for most children still grow up in an overwhelmingly heterosexual world - a world that will by its very existence from an early age have instilled expectations and preconceived ideas in every boy's mind - so should the time come that he reaches puberty, and his juvenile years, and he finds that those expectations are not being met as they are by his friends, he becomes concerned.
He begins to suspect that he is different to the mates that he grew up with - and it troubles him. But trouble is too weak a word. At this stage of human development to suddenly not be ranked along with one's peers can be devastating. The questioning and gnawing fears in a boy's mind may remain closely guarded secrets - because they have to be.
Faced with this feeling of being different, young men may react in many different ways. Only a few will cope with the situation easily. Some may become reclusive; some may turn to bullying others; some to drink and drugs; and some may undoubtedly turn towards criminal behaviour to gain their much needed kudos - however, most will try to maintain an act: an appearance of being perfectly "normal".
This act, and the feeling of a need to prove themselves to their family and friends, will often only exasperate the problem. And when thoughts for the same sex enter their minds, thoughts that they may believe to be bad or wrong, a great feeling of guilt can engulf them.
It can be a very desperate time in a young man's life. It is a time when some may even come to consider suicide - and that, purely the result of the failings, the teachings and the expectations of a mainly ignorant heterosexual world, should never be!
Puberty, and the working of the sexual equipment, arrives at different times for different people. There is nothing wrong or untoward about being a late developer - many races are won by those who had a poor start. And even once everything is found to be in working order, it is quite normal for the feelings and the desires that arrive around this time to be "strange", to say the least!
The sudden explosion of hormones the body has to try to make some sense out of can for some bring forth quite peculiar urges, fascinations, and attractions. At this time it is not uncommon for those who will later be "normal" heterosexual men to have "a crush" on someone of the same sex. It may be a schoolmaster; it may be a friend - it could be anyone, there are no rules, and it may not just be the one person - it may be many.
There is nothing wrong, and this is not the time to fear one's sexual orientation; more a time to consider its possibilities.
For most who have arrived at this stage, they will have had no preparation for the alternative sexual orientations that life can deal out. Such is the failing of society, for around one in ten males will turn out to be gay, and around one in five males will at some time in their lives have gay sex. Each one of these people will be some proud parent's son. They could be anyone's son. These are facts that may be hard to accept by some people, but to life itself they are the "normal".
Sexual orientation is not hereditary, neither can it be instilled by corruption, persuasion, lifestyle or by any other means - and no matter what anyone may tell you, or claim, it most definitely cannot be changed. It is what you are.
Were it to be any different, then in a vastly heterosexual society, and with few gay people actually reproducing, by long before now there would have been no gay people left in the world.
But it is a known fact that the percentage of homosexual people in the world has varied little throughout all history, and although we may yet not understand the reason for it, nature has seen fit to maintain this status quo.
We now come to the crunch question: how do I know if I am gay?
I suppose the simple answer is - you just know. But you do need to wait until all those hormones have settled down a bit before asking the question. Once that has happened the sexual desires and urges will be noticeably better fed and nourished by the thoughts and fantasies of either one or the other of the two sexes.
Crudely put: whatever makes you "cum" the easiest and the best will give you the answer. For just a few people this may be equal, or it may alternate continuously throughout their lives, and they are what we term as being: bisexual.
Gay, straight or bisexual, it matters not - you are you, and you are unique. Whatever sexuality you may be, no two people are ever exactly the same - not even identical twins. Be proud of who and what you are, and if you find that you are gay or bisexual then remember that that is quite normal in the great scheme of things, it is only some areas of society that still have a problem with this - and the problem is theirs, not yours.
One of the biggest mysteries in the world today is why some people have a problem with another person's sexuality when you consider all the great names there have been throughout history that have been known not to be heterosexual.
Great emperors, kings, war-lords, painters, writers, poets, musicians, composers, pop singers, fashion gurus, astrologers, philosophers, architects, engineers and many, many others all enjoying pride of place in history have been either gay or bisexual - the list is almost endless, and it even includes a pope or two! Their sexual orientation never hampered these people - it need not hamper you.
Judy Garland is reputed to have said: "Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else." There could be no better advice. Another quote I love came from the late, great, and still sadly missed Dusty Springfield: "My sexuality has never been a problem to me but I think it has been for other people."
There is nothing at all wrong with being gay, however it does come with some burdens that heterosexuals never have to face.
There is the gay scene - known by all to be notoriously promiscuous - and although it is representative of less than a quarter of all gay people it is what a gay person will always be seen as being a part of by many uninformed heterosexual people.
Then there is the whole "coming out" saga. Should you come out to family and friends, at work, to all and sundry, or not do it at all?
Facing up to this issue can be traumatic for some people - and whatever you finally decide on as being best for you, even staying "in the closet", it will not be without some implications.
Labels: advice, bisexual, free sex education, gay, help, sexuality
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According to Robert Kiyosaki of Rich Dad Poor Dad
Click this now to the Perfect Global Business Video
|
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Business Marketing by Aredconsult
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