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This article in my reading caught my eye.
May. 13th, 2020 09:14 amwww.economist.com/science-and-technology/2019/11/28/a-new-theory-argues-same-sex-sexual-behaviour-is-an-evolutionary-norm
Wherein I find that our chaps have been making category mistakes even in framing the question. I quote liberally. I hope that's ok.
"The mainstream explanations in evolutionary biology for these behaviours are many and varied. Yet they all contain a common assumption: that sexual behaviours involving members of the same sex are a paradox that does indeed need explaining. Reproduction requires mating with a creature of the opposite sex, so why does same-sex mating happen at all?"
And we traditionally framed the answer in two ways:
"The first is that the cost of same-sex behaviour is high because energy and time spent engaged in it do not contribute to reproductive success. If that were true it would indeed mean that maintenance of same-sex behaviour over the generations requires some exotic explanation whereby such activity confers benefits that outweigh the disadvantage. The second assumption is that same-sex activity evolved separately in every species that exhibits it, from an ancestral population that engaged exclusively in different-sex behaviour."
However, when we put it this way
"Ms Monk and her co-authors question the first assumption by pointing out that many animals seem to mate at a frequency far higher than looks necessary merely to reproduce—meaning that the proportional costs of any instance of sexual activity which does not produce offspring must be low. If this is true, it reverses the burden of proof. The cost of the sensory and neurological mechanisms needed to identify another’s sex, and thus permit sex-discriminating mating behaviour, is high. Sometimes, that will be a price worth paying, especially if a long-term relationship is involved in reproduction, as it is in most birds and some mammals. But it is the evolution of sex-discrimination for which special-case exemptions must be sought, not the evolution of same-sex behaviour.
The second assumption is even easier to challenge. Typically, evolutionary biologists assume that traits shared widely across a related group are likely to have evolved in an ancestral population, not repeatedly and separately in each lineage. Ms Monk and her colleagues argue that cognitive biases in the subject’s practitioners have pushed them to look for fantastic explanations for the evolution of same-sex behaviours in a range of animals, rather than considering the perhaps more reasonable explanation for its persistence, that it is a low-cost ancestral trait that has little evolutionary reason to disappear."
Now we have to ask why we made those category mistakes. If gay folk started lynching religious extremists I suppose I'd have to speak out against them doing so... eventually. Even our basic scientific questions have been influenced by our stupid, bigoted, small-minded, superstitious religions, because so many of our cultural assumptions derive from them.
I suppose we have to be forgiving, unless that's another cultural and religious assumption that is essentially mad.
But it isn't mad. Each case on its own merits.
However, a weregild always needs paying. And gay folk are owed a weregild; just as black folk are, and women are too.
Wherein I find that our chaps have been making category mistakes even in framing the question. I quote liberally. I hope that's ok.
"The mainstream explanations in evolutionary biology for these behaviours are many and varied. Yet they all contain a common assumption: that sexual behaviours involving members of the same sex are a paradox that does indeed need explaining. Reproduction requires mating with a creature of the opposite sex, so why does same-sex mating happen at all?"
And we traditionally framed the answer in two ways:
"The first is that the cost of same-sex behaviour is high because energy and time spent engaged in it do not contribute to reproductive success. If that were true it would indeed mean that maintenance of same-sex behaviour over the generations requires some exotic explanation whereby such activity confers benefits that outweigh the disadvantage. The second assumption is that same-sex activity evolved separately in every species that exhibits it, from an ancestral population that engaged exclusively in different-sex behaviour."
However, when we put it this way
"Ms Monk and her co-authors question the first assumption by pointing out that many animals seem to mate at a frequency far higher than looks necessary merely to reproduce—meaning that the proportional costs of any instance of sexual activity which does not produce offspring must be low. If this is true, it reverses the burden of proof. The cost of the sensory and neurological mechanisms needed to identify another’s sex, and thus permit sex-discriminating mating behaviour, is high. Sometimes, that will be a price worth paying, especially if a long-term relationship is involved in reproduction, as it is in most birds and some mammals. But it is the evolution of sex-discrimination for which special-case exemptions must be sought, not the evolution of same-sex behaviour.
The second assumption is even easier to challenge. Typically, evolutionary biologists assume that traits shared widely across a related group are likely to have evolved in an ancestral population, not repeatedly and separately in each lineage. Ms Monk and her colleagues argue that cognitive biases in the subject’s practitioners have pushed them to look for fantastic explanations for the evolution of same-sex behaviours in a range of animals, rather than considering the perhaps more reasonable explanation for its persistence, that it is a low-cost ancestral trait that has little evolutionary reason to disappear."
Now we have to ask why we made those category mistakes. If gay folk started lynching religious extremists I suppose I'd have to speak out against them doing so... eventually. Even our basic scientific questions have been influenced by our stupid, bigoted, small-minded, superstitious religions, because so many of our cultural assumptions derive from them.
I suppose we have to be forgiving, unless that's another cultural and religious assumption that is essentially mad.
But it isn't mad. Each case on its own merits.
However, a weregild always needs paying. And gay folk are owed a weregild; just as black folk are, and women are too.
