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Ted King
I don't think there is enough scientific information yet to answer that question. There are really interesting puzzles; e.g., there are examples of identical twins (about as near to genetic clones as there is) who were brought up in the same environments and yet one twin is homosexual and one is heterosexual. To me that indicates that there are probably multiple factors involved - both genetic and environmental. My hunch is that there are genetic factors that influence the predisposition to be homosexual or heterosexual and that the environment in the womb as the fetus develops can trigger those genetic factors to influence the fetus' development in a manner that mostly determines sexual orientation.

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$tevie
One of my best friends is the gay half of a set of identical twins. He has discussed the "environment in the womb" concept with me a couple of times and thinks it could have some validity. There is a third brother, born about a year and a half later, who is also gay. They would all probably be a great study for some researcher somewhere.

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Dennis S
I think testosterone levels in the womb have something to do with it. It is obvious a person's gayness is on a spectrum*, so testosterone and likely other hormone levels at a certain time in development would account for this.

* The spectrum also applies to relative masculinity of people who are straight.

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davester
J Marston hits the nail on the head. The premise of the thread is highly questionable. I don't think I've ever heard of any valid studies that unquestionably conclude that homosexuality is wholly genetic. Also, evolutionary adaptation can be quite complex, not necessarily favoring passing along of an individual's genes. The subject of group selection versus individual selection is a controversial one amongst biologists, but there is evidence that group or kin survival is part of the mechanism of evolution.

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J Marston
Two issues are getting confused here:

cbelt's original post assumed that homosexuality was genetic and maladaptive.

1) We don't know that it's maladaptive. Exclusively homosexual conduct would not, obviously, propagate an individual's genes, but might (as Black suggests) provide useful helpers who enable the society to survive. In this sense, it can be anti-Darwinian for the individual but profoundly Darwinian for the group.

2) We don't know that it's genetic. A lot of behavior is learned at an age before we can understand what learning might be. Consider shyness: how do shy children learn to be shy? If there's a genetic component, it's pretty hard to say what it might be. It makes more sense to assume that it's learned behavior: but if it's learned, it's learned in ways that tend to defy our understanding of what learning is (since, at a minimum, very few parents want their children to be shy).

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Chakravartin
Sixth issue: Not politically correct, but I'm certain that some small percentage of homosexuals are so by choice. I am friends with women who prefer men for sex, but stay with their female partners for love. This does not in any way stand to refute a genetic or environmental predisposition towards a particular gender-identity and I don't think that it's the norm among homosexuals, so please don't attack me for mentioning it.

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Kiva
With many human traits, "Genetics loads the gun, environment pulls the trigger."

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cbelt3
And no, I was not referring to 'studies' (thanks for the help there), but an upwelling in popular forums such as 'reddit' where same gender preference is deemed 'definitely genetic'. Not to mention the thesis that one is 'born gay', which implies a genetic link.

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Pam
Oh great. That'll start a new war on women. We're responsible for our kids being gay!

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Kiva
With many human traits, "Genetics loads the gun, environment pulls the trigger."

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rjmacs
'Homosexual' and 'heterosexual' as categories of human identity are very recent constructions, historically. Humans seem to have a ubiquitous impulse to take today's way of understanding the world and to project it backward onto all of history and infinitely into the future. It's a massively narcissistic gesture, but understandable for animals who barely live long enough to grasp what's happening around them before they die.

The question makes for good conversation, cbelt3, and i'm proud of the forum for handling it so well to this point. But it would be a mistake to pretend that you haven't 'essentialized' concepts that are deeply fluid and changing in the framing if your inquiry. I hate to revert to Foucault, because he's so abstruse and relatively unknown, but his History of Sexuality and writings on power in society help a lot here. He creates a 'genealogy' of our understanding of sex and sexuality that traces how being sexual has changed over history. Suffice it to say that 'being' a sexuality is a deeply modern phenomenon - people have been sexual creatures forever, but the compulsion to inhabit a 'sexual identity' was never a concern until the organization of society became thoroughly dependent on the productive reorganization of people by sex. This is something that accelerated rapidly during industrialization, when increasing urbanization leads to a rupture of the social order (the way people lived around factories is NOTHING like how they lived on the farm). What emerged was a new social ordering, highly medicalized and technical, that completely upended how education, public policy, correctional systems, the military, etc. related to individuals. Among these changes was a 'disciplined' approach to sexuality that required people to 'be' heterosexual, homosexual, etc.

To sum up, people weren't 'homosexual' or 'heterosexual' until the last few hundred years. Those concepts simply didn't exist. You can pretend that they did, and project a modern understanding backwards onto all of history. Then we can start asking questions like "Was Plato a neoliberal?" and "Was Epicurus a Christian?" It may make for interesting talk, but the discussions only hold up as long as we imagine that present-day worldviews are permanently and transcendently valid. Then, we can all look up the word 'hubris' together.

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Black

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rjmacs
'Homosexual' and 'heterosexual' as categories of human identity are very recent constructions, historically. Humans seem to have a ubiquitous impulse to take today's way of understanding the world and to project it backward onto all of history and infinitely into the future. It's a massively narcissistic gesture, but understandable for animals who barely live long enough to grasp what's happening around them before they die.

The question makes for good conversation, cbelt3, and i'm proud of the forum for handling it so well to this point. But it would be a mistake to pretend that you haven't 'essentialized' concepts that are deeply fluid and changing in the framing if your inquiry. I hate to revert to Foucault, because he's so abstruse and relatively unknown, but his History of Sexuality and writings on power in society help a lot here. He creates a 'genealogy' of our understanding of sex and sexuality that traces how being sexual has changed over history. Suffice it to say that 'being' a sexuality is a deeply modern phenomenon - people have been sexual creatures forever, but the compulsion to inhabit a 'sexual identity' was never a concern until the organization of society became thoroughly dependent on the productive reorganization of people by sex. This is something that accelerated rapidly during industrialization, when increasing urbanization leads to a rupture of the social order (the way people lived around factories is NOTHING like how they lived on the farm). What emerged was a new social ordering, highly medicalized and technical, that completely upended how education, public policy, correctional systems, the military, etc. related to individuals. Among these changes was a 'disciplined' approach to sexuality that required people to 'be' heterosexual, homosexual, etc.

To sum up, people weren't 'homosexual' or 'heterosexual' until the last few hundred years. Those concepts simply didn't exist. You can pretend that they did, and project a modern understanding backwards onto all of history. Then we can start asking questions like "Was Plato a neoliberal?" and "Was Epicurus a Christian?" It may make for interesting talk, but the discussions only hold up as long as we imagine that present-day worldviews are permanently and transcendently valid. Then, we can all look up the word 'hubris' together.

Good stuff, rj, and I certainly know better than to try to argue with Foucault, but-- I'm finding it odd that there's no mention of institutionalized "morality" (AKA the church) in all of that . . .

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Black
Hmmm . . . I undertstand the distinction between "the act" and "sexual identity" (in principal at least-- can't say it makes sense to me personally)-- but I'm not sure that discussion relates to cbelt's question . . . he could just as well have asked why it exists in animals other than humans; I guess it's possible but I don't think the animal's sexual identity plays much of a role, or if it does, then only very tightly bound to the instinctual drive towards same-sex llaisons.

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rjmacs
To sum up, people weren't 'homosexual' or 'heterosexual' until the last few hundred years. Those concepts simply didn't exist.

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Marc Anthony

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rjmacs
To sum up, people weren't 'homosexual' or 'heterosexual' until the last few hundred years. Those concepts simply didn't exist.

Yeah, I don't buy it. @#$%&/hetero isn't a concept, it's a preference, and those are part of your makeup, whether they're merely hereditary or actually genetic. Perhaps the defined label didn't exist, but even a caveman would have preferences toward cavemen or caveladies.

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rjmacs
There simply weren't any 'homosexuals' in the Middle Ages, for example. Or, if there were, there wasn't a word for it, and they didn't think of themselves as 'homosexual.'

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Marc Anthony

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rjmacs
There simply weren't any 'homosexuals' in the Middle Ages, for example. Or, if there were, there wasn't a word for it, and they didn't think of themselves as 'homosexual.'

Society might have been different, but not that different. Sexuality always influenced culture, social networks, and mores, from the beginning of recorded history. Look up William Rufus, he was a gay personality in the High Middle Ages. There are others... Edward II, Richard Couer De Leon, and William Longchamp. Naked men used to run around the Norman courts and wrote erotic poetry to each other at Charlemagne. People have thought of themselves as being gay for a long time.

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rjmacs

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Marc Anthony

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rjmacs
There simply weren't any 'homosexuals' in the Middle Ages, for example. Or, if there were, there wasn't a word for it, and they didn't think of themselves as 'homosexual.'

Society might have been different, but not that different. Sexuality always influenced culture, social networks, and mores, from the beginning of recorded history. Look up William Rufus, he was a gay personality in the High Middle Ages. There are others... Edward II, Richard Couer De Leon, and William Longchamp. Naked men used to run around the Norman courts and wrote erotic poetry to each other at Charlemagne. People have thought of themselves as being gay for a long time.

I'd like to hear more about what exactly you mean when you say, "thought of themselves as being gay," and the documentation thereof. These are all quintessential examples of 'backward-looking identification' that distort history to suit present-day understandings.

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michaelb
i am not going to pretend to know, but why cant being gay be a valid and effective reproductive strategy for some in a population.

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Filliam H. Muffman

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michaelb
i am not going to pretend to know, but why cant being gay be a valid and effective reproductive strategy for some in a population.

I remember a study from the mid 1980's where the number of male mice (rats?) that exhibited homosexual tendencies was partly due to population density. When there were very few other mice to interact with, the gay male mice decided it was better to mate with a female than not mate at all. Some sort of a natural pressure response to help curb overpopulation?

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Marc Anthony

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rjmacs
There simply weren't any 'homosexuals' in the Middle Ages, for example. Or, if there were, there wasn't a word for it, and they didn't think of themselves as 'homosexual.'

Society might have been different, but not that different. Sexuality always influenced culture, social networks, and mores, from the beginning of recorded history. Look up William Rufus, he was a gay personality in the High Middle Ages. There are others... Edward II, Richard Couer De Leon, and William Longchamp. Naked men used to run around the Norman courts and wrote erotic poetry to each other at Charlemagne. People have thought of themselves as being gay for a long time.

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$tevie

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Marc Anthony

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rjmacs
There simply weren't any 'homosexuals' in the Middle Ages, for example. Or, if there were, there wasn't a word for it, and they didn't think of themselves as 'homosexual.'

Society might have been different, but not that different. Sexuality always influenced culture, social networks, and mores, from the beginning of recorded history. Look up William Rufus, he was a gay personality in the High Middle Ages. There are others... Edward II, Richard Couer De Leon, and William Longchamp. Naked men used to run around the Norman courts and wrote erotic poetry to each other at Charlemagne. People have thought of themselves as being gay for a long time.

I really think that they did not think of themselves as being gay. They thought of themselves as having sex with men. Having sex with men was one sexual option. It's not like today when we have to overthink everything.

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Chakravartin
This is silly. It isn't worth debating. It's historical fact. There's no "backward looking identification" at issue.

Thomas Aquinas popularized the modern sexual categories and Christian sexual morality in the 13th century, stigmatizing homosexuality through the modern day. Plato's dialogues were full of rhetoric on sexual morality and homosexuality roughly 1600 years earlier. Hundreds of years before Plato, Homer praised buggery as a way to bond militias together and to alienate them from foreign troops.

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rjmacs

My point is NOT that no one in history has even commented on same-sex sexual activity. That would be preposterous. My argument is that it makes no sense to talk about 'being' homosexual or heterosexual across the span of history, because people simply didn't think of those sexual identities as fundamental identical traits - they weren't 'ways of being.'

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Ted King

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rjmacs

My point is NOT that no one in history has even commented on same-sex sexual activity. That would be preposterous. My argument is that it makes no sense to talk about 'being' homosexual or heterosexual across the span of history, because people simply didn't think of those sexual identities as fundamental identical traits - they weren't 'ways of being.'

I'm going to assume that in the last sentence you meant "fundamental identity traits" - you can correct me if that is an erroneous assumption.

I'm pretty sure I follow what you are saying, but I think there is some tension between your characterizations of "fundamental identity traits" and 'ways of being'. I'm sure that for at least a very long time there have been people who have felt pretty exclusively sexually attracted to only members of their own gender.

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Ted King
I think it would be odd not characterize that as a way of being. But I can see where in more ancient times it was possible that people who felt that way would not have thought of their basic identity in terms of those feelings. Actually, I think the notion of "fundamental identity trait" is nebulous enough that it probably needs some clarification. What kinds of traits not having to do with sexual attraction would ancient people have thought of as fundamental identity traits and in what crucial way are those traits different from feeling pretty much exclusively sexually attracted to members of the same gender?

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Marc Anthony
Modernity didn't suddenly create separate classes, it just gave a label to something that already was.

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Marc Anthony
It flies in the face of historical accounts—and good sense—to suggest that people didn't identify with their nature or that any form of attraction is something new under the sun.

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rjmacs

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Ted King

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rjmacs

My point is NOT that no one in history has even commented on same-sex sexual activity. That would be preposterous. My argument is that it makes no sense to talk about 'being' homosexual or heterosexual across the span of history, because people simply didn't think of those sexual identities as fundamental identical traits - they weren't 'ways of being.'

I'm going to assume that in the last sentence you meant "fundamental identity traits" - you can correct me if that is an erroneous assumption.

I'm pretty sure I follow what you are saying, but I think there is some tension between your characterizations of "fundamental identity traits" and 'ways of being'. I'm sure that for at least a very long time there have been people who have felt pretty exclusively sexually attracted to only members of their own gender.

Out of curiosity, why is it that you believe this? I'm not asking because i think you're wrong, i'm just asking you to interrogate the assumption.

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rjmacs

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Ted King
I think it would be odd not characterize that as a way of being. But I can see where in more ancient times it was possible that people who felt that way would not have thought of their basic identity in terms of those feelings. Actually, I think the notion of "fundamental identity trait" is nebulous enough that it probably needs some clarification. What kinds of traits not having to do with sexual attraction would ancient people have thought of as fundamental identity traits and in what crucial way are those traits different from feeling pretty much exclusively sexually attracted to members of the same gender?

Being a serf. Being a Greek. Being a mother. Being a Jew. Being a warrior.

The crucial differences are not of type, but of context. The reason that sexuality has not been a fundamental identity trait until recent centuries has to do with historical and cultural salience, not with discovery or sophistication. In every time and place in history, certain parts of being human are instantiated as more relevant, critical, and constitutive than others. This happens to lesser degrees over years and decades, and to greater degrees over centuries and millenia. What i'm arguing (and i realize that it's a subversive and unpopular idea) is that those historical exigencies are more than just filters or layers on top of some 'essential humanity' underneath. I'm saying that as far as social reality is concerned, those discursive regimes actually make us who we are, because they define how we define ourselves.

If you are in a society where skin color has little or no meaning, because what practically matters about you is overwhelmingly defined through your height, then what would it mean to say that you're Black or White or Red? The way you understand your place in the world, indeed the way you come to know yourself as a self, is much more about whether you're a Squat or Cloudie or Middler. Hundreds of years into the future, people in a skin-color-defined society may look back and talk about how Whites functioned in your era, but what does that mean? Does it make your Whiteness more real or valid, if you never even knew what a White was? How does that work?

If you're going to argue that people have always 'known' that they were 'heterosexual' or 'homosexual,' even if they didn't know those words, then i'm going to need to know not just how but WHY they 'knew' that about themselves. If the response is that it's something we just 'innately' know about ourselves, then i'm calling essentialist shenanigans, because there's no argument there, and clearly no need for evidence.