But what about homosexuality? Well, from this biological perspective, it's surely a disease. Disinterest in the opposite sex reduces reproduction quite a bit - around 80% in American conditions. Does it hit in early life? Sure. Has it been around a long time? Certainly. Do you find it in non-African populations, people who never lived with malaria? Yes.Several aspects of homosexuality are puzzling, the main one being its persistence in the face of huge selection pressure against it - gays just don't have many kids.
Update: TGGP has collected (here) many of Cochran's assorted musings on homosexuality, which make for fascinating reading. Cochran makes it clear that much thinking about it has been spectacularly off the mark.
Cochran's idea that a bacterium or virus may cause homosexuality may or may not turn out to be correct - but it is certainly not silly.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, Cochran's argument to back-up this idea is quite brilliant - as can be appreciated by those who have the relevant scientific knowledge to understanding these matters.
But - of course - not everybody does have this relevant knowledge...
I suspect that almost everything comes down to genes or germs, so I wouldn't rule out your germ theory. I see that Cochran hints at a role for ovisophilia. Is homosexuality particularly common in Wales or NZ?
ReplyDeleteGoogle does not know 'ovisophilia.'
ReplyDeleteWhat is it?
A whimsical made-up word for what drives those who are, um, attracted to sheep.
ReplyDeleteGoogle does not know 'ovisophilia.'
ReplyDeleteIt is an un-natural fondness for sheep. Dearieme is having a laugh.
Well, 'ovisophilia' is perhaps appropriate, since we know a lot about homosexuality, at least in sheep, and I suspect that the root causes are similar.
ReplyDeleteFrom an evo bio perspective, the only thing I can offer is something I realized about my own family: how strengthened we are by the one non-breeder. Picture it: a capable adult male, heavily invested genetically in his nieces and nephews, with no family obligations of his own. Available to support and fill in where needed. There's enough excess breeding to cover for him. If there's a gene for this, activated maybe 5%-10% of the time, the families with that gene would outdo the families without.
ReplyDeleteDennis, I’m a fan of your blog and of Greg Cochran. I am also both a reactionary and an old-fashioned sexual invert.
ReplyDeleteI’m happy to follow where evidence leads, but is it really more probable that homosexuality is an infectious rather than genetic pathology? What about the theory of those Italian fellows about the link between male homosexuality and female fecundity:
www.evcforum.net/cgi-bin/dm.cgi?action=msg&f=17&t=68&m=1 - 27k -
This explanation, perhaps augmented by the “good uncle” social hypothesis referred to by the above commentator, seems more convincing.
As for lesbianism- well, così fan tutte.
I can only state what Cochran says, and that is that homosexuality is so devastating a condition regarding reproduction, that if it somehow made up for it by promoting nieces and nephews, the latter effect would have to be huge, and we don't see that. In the link you gave, there's no mention of how many more children the female relatives had, and it seems to me that it would have to be a lot for that to work.
ReplyDeleteI’m happy to follow where evidence leads, but is it really more probable that homosexuality is an infectious rather than genetic pathology?
ReplyDeleteIt should be pointed out that the hypothesis here is not that homosexuality is infectious, but that it is the after-effect of an infectious condition early in development, perhaps pre-natal or in the first few years of life. Onve you are past a certain age, you would not be able to catch it.
Moreover, ther could still be a genetic component, but the genetic issue would be susceptibility to the pathogen, not directly causing homosexuality. This would be consistent with twin studies, which show that when one of a set of identical twins is gay, the other is much more likely to be gay (50/50 chance is the most popular number) but is not certain to be.
As for female fecundity, it should be pointed out that some studies have shown that when a woman has several male children, the later children have a higher probability of being homosexual, so this finding about a female fecundity correlation could just be due to this.
So what's supposed to cause Lesbianism? Do we have a virus too?
ReplyDeleteOvisophilia means that you enjoy baaa-aaa-aaa-aad sex.
ReplyDeleteI didn't collect them. I think Henry Harpending did. But his xmission site dissappeared and so I've preserved them.
ReplyDeleteCurrent conditions might not be the best place to look for a "Good Uncle" effect. It would be larger where families are larger.
ReplyDelete