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Dec. 11th, 2007 06:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackApparently, Desmond Morris proposes that men are gay when they fail to leave the "boys together" phase of development.
The articles read like odes to the "make plausible declarative statements telling stories about what might happen in [field of "soft" science] and pretend the fact that the conclusions accord with reality is evidence for the stories".
The comments are full of people objecting that what he says in no way accords with their experience.
My main reactions were to the first sentence, pointing out that by the theory of natural selection, heterosexual males are favoured by evolution. That this is so, I think *is* clear. And you can [edit:] tell this is the *only* case from evidence such as the extinction of honey bees (where all but one female bees in a hive are non-sexual) and the breeding out of sickle-cell anaemia (being a single-gene controlled contra-survival trait) in all of the human population.
And to the title. I don't know if male and female homosexuality are related or not. But an explanation that claims to explain one of them smacks of suspiciciosity to me.
I'm afraid I couldn't read further. Does anyone actually know any details? Presumably his book actually says something, you can't dismiss a theory based on its title, even if that would be fun :)
The articles read like odes to the "make plausible declarative statements telling stories about what might happen in [field of "soft" science] and pretend the fact that the conclusions accord with reality is evidence for the stories".
The comments are full of people objecting that what he says in no way accords with their experience.
My main reactions were to the first sentence, pointing out that by the theory of natural selection, heterosexual males are favoured by evolution. That this is so, I think *is* clear. And you can [edit:] tell this is the *only* case from evidence such as the extinction of honey bees (where all but one female bees in a hive are non-sexual) and the breeding out of sickle-cell anaemia (being a single-gene controlled contra-survival trait) in all of the human population.
And to the title. I don't know if male and female homosexuality are related or not. But an explanation that claims to explain one of them smacks of suspiciciosity to me.
I'm afraid I couldn't read further. Does anyone actually know any details? Presumably his book actually says something, you can't dismiss a theory based on its title, even if that would be fun :)
no subject
Date: 2007-12-11 09:36 pm (UTC)I suppose it's possible that male and female homosexuality have completely different causes; if that were the case studying only one could make sense. But it gives no reason to believe that.
For that matter, the whole "four types" thing sounds like pop psychology rather than science. Quite possibly the book justifies it, but I'm automatically suspicious. If someone whose opinion I trusted was telling me this, it'd sound plausible, but in these fields everything sounds plausible. And I no longer trust science books or newspapers without a reason. Do men really segregate into those types? If so, shouldn't that research have been published already, before anyone can base conclusions on it? And if not, then where's the foundation for this stuff?
I think my favourite comment was: "There are so many flaws in this theory because the premise is an invalid sterotype of gay men. There are plenty of gay men that are as dull as a box of rocks." Totally true, but has a "friends like this" vibe :)
I can't help feeling that a species consisting only of these two male types would not have much evolutionary success :-)
:) Sometimes evolution happens really quickly
Actually, the article (or the one in the paper paper) *also* had a section about, soon would female couples be able to reproduce without needing any man at all? It didn't say much about it, but it inspired the rather humorous picture at the top of page, of the traditional ape-to-(male)-man evolutionary picture, with the final transition of the man turned into a woman...
no subject
Date: 2007-12-12 01:15 pm (UTC)