Newsgroups: soc.men
Subject: Re: The Gender Lie
From: mzener@eagle.wesleyan.edu
Date: 8 Apr 92 16:40:49 EST
Organization: Wesleyan University

jim@netlink.cts.com (Jim Bowery) writes:
> Max Zener writes:
>  
>> But we before us here a provable theory -- homosexuality has a 
>> genetic basis.
>  
> I agree.  It is probably a genetic potential that exists within 
> all males to a greater or lesser extent.  Maybe it is nothing
> more than a vestigial feminine component like male breasts, but
> I doubt it.
>  
   I also doubt that homosexuality comes from a vestigial female portion of the
brain -- no such studies have found any such areas.  Males do have vestigial
portions of female anatomy, such as the glands and tubes to produce and
distribute milk -- but never, as far as I know, are these activated.
   Brains do display sexual dimorphisms, and if any genetic factors contribute
to homosexuality, they will doubtlessly be found in these areas.  I maintain
this claim due to the results of research in developing rats' brains.  There
is a short window of opportunity during which time the brain is sensitive to
the presence of testosterone.  If it is present in either a female or male rat,
then the brain becomes male, as far as mating practices go.  That is to say,
when the rate is in heat it displays male mating behavior.  If testosterone is
abscent from either a male or female rat, the brain develops into a sexually
female one -- the rat displays female mating responses.
   
> The idea that its expression is blindly congenital or blindly genetic 
> is politically convenient for gay politicos but it is not consistent 
> with what we know about genetic self-interest -- not even taking 
> take kin selection into account.  
>  
   Homosexuality in the rest of the animal kingdom aside, to discuss human
sexuality solely on the basis of genetics or experiments like the one cited
above is overly simplistic;  to do so would be to deny that the human psyche is
molded to a large degree by _learning_, or, in other words, environment.  
   A good deal of our unconscious responses come from what we have learned. 
The role of genetics in the learning process of humans is most likely to be
that of determining the bias of new information.  What that means as applied to
the question of congenital homosexuality is that each individual brain at birth
does not have a truly set sexuality;  it can be pulled one way or the other by
various stimuli.  Which way any particular piece of stimuli moves the brain's
sexuality is due primarily to how the brain is predisposition (of course, later
in a human's emotional development, the primary factor would be previous
stimuli, but those would be initially slanted by the brain's predisposition).
   An interesting theory is that a brain is formed with a certain amount of
bisexuality, and the degrees to which the different sides of that sexuality are
expressed come from the initial balance and from later learning.

>>By the way, hormones _do_ affect developmental paths, but only before 
> birth.
>  
> This is false.  
>  
> Hormones exert both short term and long term developmental pressures 
> throughout life, but particularly during childhood and adolescence.  
> In the case of sexuality, the most likely place homosexual divergence 
> takes place is at adolescence since that is when secondary sexual 
> characteristics diverge based on hormonal influences.
>
   Perhaps I should have been more specific.  Hormones only affect CEREBRAL
development during a short period in the fetal stage.  The brain does not,
indeed cannot, develop (i.e., grow and physically change) after birth.  The
later presence of sex hormones does cause development of secondary sexual
characteristics, but it does not alter the brain, and it is there that the
concept of sexuality lies.

								Max Zener
Newsgroups: soc.men