Natural Homosexuality
Posted by Tulse on Apr 06, 2004 at 02:40
(4.242.15.248)Re: Finally! Little Beau Sheep, for Peep! (Amaranth Rose)
Try as I might, I find only one thing to quibble over in your post, and that’s regarding pair bonding in birds. Monogamous pair bonding in birds is, I gather, most often temporary and not lifelong. It’s my understanding that few bird species really mate for life. Most of the bird data we have is for marine birds like ducks, and marine birds do indeed tend to mate for life. But many more birds are more transitory, making their mating habits hard to know; often birds will rejoin a mate in a given location, but mate frequently with other birds elsewhere, a difficult thing to track. Indeed, some birds have never been observed mating. (My hubby is a birder, very well-versed in all things bird, and I get much of my bird info from him.) I’ll bet you observed many bird couples at home on the farm, but how would you know who they mated with in the next county, or over the winter? Those rascals can be as promiscuous as, well, humans.
Here’s my own assessment of the overall issue. As you mention, there’s ample data to prove that homosexual behaviors are extremely common throughout the natural world, and in human societies recur in expectable proportions (in the range of 4-12% according to my recollection of studies published over the last half-century) in generation after generation irrespective of culture, and that this has been going on for as long as we know. Various homosexual behaviors in various nonhuman species range from no recorded observation all to very nearly ubiquitous appearance - I think 80% of one bird species were observed to engage in homosexual activity, and of course bonobos will have sex with anyone and anything.
The subject needs much more study before anyone can begin to assert that homosexuality has or hasn’t some cause or purpose, but I believe that based on empirical evidence we can say 1) it’s likely that homosexuality has a genetic component, 2) all sexuality is likely to be impacted by many factors (including but certainly not limited to pheromones), 3) homosexuality is prima facie of direct or indirect evolutionary value to the species that exhibit it, and 4) homosexual behavior is quite natural in every respect (unless of course one defines "natural" as "not homosexual").
Since homosexual behavior has been documented in hundreds of species, from insects and lizards to birds and primates, it is self-evidently not "indicative of existing physiological abnormalities, chemical imbalances", and since it occurs in generation after generation in consistent proportions it must either confer some direct benefit to species or be an integral byproduct of some other direct benefit.
The definitive text is "Biological Exuberance: Animal homosexuality and natural diversity" by Bruce Bagemihl, PhD, St. Martin’s Press, NY, 1999, 752 pp. The book is an exhaustive meta-analysis of published, peer-reviewed journals and observations by professionals throughout the life sciences. It utterly explodes many persistent myths and stereotypes, and has been extensively reviewed without (to my knowledge) any significant dispute of the book’s findings or its underlying data. The book’s conclusion is very much as you say, that homosexual behavior being widely present throughout nature is most appropriately viewed as one of a range of diverse behaviors naturally present in a biological universe teeming with vitality and abundance. The abundance of behaviors available to and engaged by species in their natural habitat is almost certainly itself a primary evolutionary tool, helping species cope with all manner of environmental change. A species that wants to survive is more likely to maximize its behavioral options, not limit them.
Anyone truly interested in the possible evolutionary value of sexual diversity should simply read the book, as it presents virtually all the data currently available to 1999. If your library doesn’t have a copy, you should insist that they get one. Readers will find ample evidence of all sorts of polysexual behaviors. To speak only of one aspect of animal sexuality, some animals never bond monogamously at all, and few bond for a lifetime (humans aren’t really one of them, although the culture of romantic love that purportedly dates from the courtly tradition of the late medieval and early Renaissance would have us believe we are), while most fall somewhere between these extremes. Far from ratifying any bonding configuration (such as the "nuclear family", the abundance of variability in nature strongly encourages us to believe not only that no single bonding configuration is superior to another but that any unnatural attempt to enforce a particular bonding strategy for theoretical, political or religious purposes (not that there’s any real difference between these three) could constrain and limit a species’ "free market" abundance of behaviors to that species’ detriment. One example of such a self-evidently detrimental constraint might be preventing same-sex couples from adopting children, particularly for hard-to-place children, when it is transparently obvious that such couples often do a much better parenting job than the state or, in many cases, heterosexual couples.
For some animals, homosexual pairs bond for life while heterosexual pairs do not. For some animals, homosexual pairs are quantitatively more successful at child-rearing, whether they copulate with the opposite gender and then return to the homosexual pair to rear the young or take in orphans or steal the young of others. The only generalization we can make is that few if any behavioral arrangements are truly anomalous. It would be helpful to study these matters more fully, but a certain element of American society generally opposes studies of human or even animal sexuality, presumably because the results may not conform to unexamined presuppositions.
Here are some excerpts from the book, which "offers a survey of the full range of homosexual activity found in the animal world, organized around five ,major behavioral categories: courtship, affection, sex, pair-bonding, and parenting." (p.12) They pretty much ratify what you wrote.
"The traditional view of the animal kingdom - what might call the Noah’s ark view - is that biology revolves around two sexes, male and female, with one of each to a pair. The range of genders actually found in the animal world, however, is considerably richer than this. Animals with females that become males, animals with no males at all, animals that are both male and female simultaneously, animals where males resemble females, animals where females court other females and males court other males - Noah’s ark was never quite like this! Homosexuality represents but one of a wide variety of alternative sexualities and genders. Many people are familiar with transvestism or transsexuality only in humans, yet similar phenomena are also found in the animal kingdom. Although this books focuses primarily on homosexuality, it is helpful to compare this with related phenomena that are often confused with homosexuality [discussion follows concerning hermaphroditic species, parthenogenetic species, mimicry of the opposite gender, transexuality and intersexuality (combining characteristics of both sexes)]. P.37
"A particular example of homosexual activity - whether animal or human - is in reality a unique amalgam or ‘blend’ of multiple factors, any one of which may be shared with other forms of homosexual activity without necessarily conferring identity between the overall patterns they represent. Comparisons of homosexuality in animals and humans that fail to recognize such complexities are simply misleading."It is helpful in this regard to think of homosexuality in terms of a number of independent axes, each of which is a continuum joining two ‘opposite’ ends of a particular category (as suggested by researchers Stephen Donaldson and Wayne Dynes, who developed a typology for human sexuality based on this framework). For example, one axis might represent the degree to which the homosexual interaction is gendered or role-based [examples given] ... Another axis would represent the age relationship of the partners involved (ranging from no age difference to a clearly age-differentiated interaction); another represents sexual orientation of participants (homosexual <-> bisexual <-> heterosexual); another consensuality (forced or nonconsensual <-> freely chosen or consensual); another genetic relationship of partners (incestuous <-> unrelated); social status or position of same-sex activity (socially sanctioned <-> socially condemned); and so on." P.45
"As primatologist G. Gray Eaton suggests, sexual versatility as both a biological and a cultural phenomenon in animals may be directly responsible for a species’ success, in ways that challenge conventional views of evolution: ‘The macaques’ sexual behavior includes both hetero- and homosexual aspects as part of the "normal" pattern. Protocultural variations of some of these patterns have already been discussed but it is well to remember the extreme variation in behavior that characterizes individuals and groups of primates. This plasticity of behavior has apparently played a major role in the evolutionary success of primates by allowing them to adapt to a variety of social and environmental conditions.... The variability and plasticity of the behavior ... suggests an optimistic or "maximal view of human potentialities and limitations" ... rather than a pessimistic or minimal view of man as a biological machine functioning on the basis of instinct. This minimal view based on the fang-and-claw school of Darwinism finds little support in the evidence of protocultural evolution in nonhuman primates.’" [In the footnote, Baghemil notes that Vasey’s Homosexual Behavior in Primates suggests that "homosexuality may not be adaptive itself, but may represent a neutral behavioral ‘byproduct’ of some other trait that is adaptive, such as behavioral plasticity."] P.251
"Traditionally, scarcity and functionality have been considered the primary agents of biological change. The essence of Biological Exuberance is that natural systems are driven as much by abundance and excess as they are by limitation and practicality. Seen in this light, homosexuality and nonreproductive heterosexuality are "expected" occurrences - they are one manifestation of an overall "extravagance’ of biological systems that has many other expressions." P.215
Follow Ups:
- Re: Natural Homosexuality Amaranth Rose 06/4 08:00 (0)