From: Matt Gingell (mjg223@is7.nyu.edu)
Date: Wed Dec 01 1999 - 16:12:40 MST
I'm curious - do we know what the biological basis for gender-specific
attraction might be? It seems to me that gender is a learned
distinction. We aren't born with the ability to distinguish males from
females, in contrast, for instance, to the ability to distinguish
between foods that smell edible verses those that smell spoiled.
Indeed, young children often seem to have very peculiar ideas about
the nature of sexual difference.
The preponderance of heterosexuality across different societies, and
especially across different species, suggests that there is some
underlying biological predisposition. To play the devils advocate
though, perhaps it's significance has been overstated. I'm more
attracted to tall thin women than short fat women, which is certainly
cultural, just as I salivate at the smell of beef and recoil at the
thought of eating dog. Perhaps the fact I'm more sexually attracted to
girls than boys is just as learned.
Memes like 'men shall not lie with men' have historically made sense
from a public health point of view - in just the same way memes for
monogamy did. There are obvious epidemiological reasons to minimize
the non-essential exchange of bodily fluids, whichever way they're
flowing. I see an analogy to injunctions against pork. I'm certain the
incidence of homosexuality would be dramatically higher than ~10% in a
society where there wasn't such a stigma attached, Ancient Greece
being the canonical example.
-matt
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