The Future of Love. was Re: [extropy-chat] Gay marriage in Spain, a world of change, biology, last post, post, etc.

[The Avantguardian]

--- Damien Sullivan <phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:

> Yet have strikingly different social structures and
> behaviors.  And humans are
> more different still.

Relative differences in sophistication aside,
behaviorly it seems humans are in between chimps and
bonobos. That is to say the majority act as chimps and
a minority act as bonobos with a bunch of additional
details that add to the complexity but not the
over-all nature of the behavior. 

> No, more like a third species of chimpanzee;
> sub-species implies interbreeding
> and not too much difference.

Well ok. Still rumors abound of manpanzees.

> As far as the two
> chimps go, both have a particular highly visible
> female estrous (which lasts
> much longer in bonobos (the signal, not the actual
> fertility)).  But it's not
> obviously a matter of humans losing it, since the
> other apes don't have that
> either, AFAIK, though they probably have other ways
> of signalling being in
> heat, unlike humans.

Well the female bonobos run things, they are the
dominant sex, and they are in heat MOST of the time.

 > 
> Different kind of sex, though, if I recall De Waal's
> book.  Lots of
> brief stimulation without going to orgasm, and none
> or little of the dedicated
> homosexuality we see in humans.

No their homosexuality isn't dedicated in the sense
that they form monogamous homosexual relationships.
But they are pretty dedicated to sexually pleasing
members of their own sex to avoid conflict and
reinforce social bonds. Thus they engage in penis
fencing, oral sex, and labial-labial stimulation with
each other.

> I'm not sure "mystery X evolved at the root, then
> got heavily modified 3
> times" is more parsimonious than "mystery X evolved
> a couple of times".

Well I am not certain it is necessarily parsimonious
either, but either way, the biology is there in both
bonobos and humans, and it my hypothesis is that both
adaptations were EVOLVED to serve a similar function
but may have been adapted to other uses in man since
the advent of civilization. Just like my fingers were
not evolved to operate this keyboard, but they serve
to do so quite admirably. Nature is full of traits
that evolve to fulfill one purpose and end up serving
another. Any way, this holistic approach to biological
under-pinnings of homosexuality, seems a bit more
plausible than a "gayness gene" or the size of
someone's hypothalamus. Although if a gayness gene is
sought, I would concentrate on the genes that DIFFER
between chimps and bonobos and then test those genes
against those of gay and straight humans. After all
without some manner of experimentation, all this
speculation is mere hand-waving.



   


> 
> > bonobos, homosexuality became the rule, with every
> > member of bonobo society being homosexual (yet
> still
> > having enough heterosexual sex to reproduce). In
> 
> You used bisexual earlier, which seems more
> accurate...

Homosexual sex is homosexual sex regradless of how
exclusively one performs it as opposed to heterosexual
sex. After all, quite a few openly gay men are
sometimes married and have children. And I am
reasonably certain many heterosexual men have
experimented with homosexuality and then stopped. The
labels of homosexual and bi-sexual are just different
points along this continuum of behavior.
 
> 
> It didn't just persist, it became the dominant mode
> for some people.  There's
> a big difference between social lubricant and "I am
> strongly attracted to my
> own sex and not to the one I could actually make
> babies with."

No, they are not that big of a difference, they are
just points on the continuum of gayness.


The Avantguardian 
is 
Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"The surest sign of intelligent life in the universe is that they haven't attempted to contact us." 
-Bill Watterson


		
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