trogs wrote:

Zwaarddijk wrote:

trogs wrote:What's interesting is that homophobia is almost certainly significantly more genetic than male homosexuality:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2292426/

Which actually makes excellent evolutionary sense.

Thinking a bit deeper about this, it seems females should be just as homophobic OR MORE than men are if it were to make evolutionary sense!

A female having sex with a bisexual or homosexual male would be more likely to get diseases than a female restricting her selection to heterosexual men, a female having sex with a bisexual or a homosexual man might be less likely to pass on her genes beyond one generation - both being fairly deleterious problems.

Or maybe evolution has found that females are having sex enough left and right anyway so a slight bit more risk of STDs doesn't matter?

Yeah, I think it's fairly uncontroversial that the average lady-human tends to be unimpressed by gay-seeming men. So, your theory aligns to anecdote.

But, this might just be a part of women's generally reduced attraction to males perceived as victimised and wussy. Effeminate guys who might be mistaken for gay in the wrong setting, but are unmistakably powerful and unvictimised (Captain Sparrow, Legolas, Mr. sparkle-vampire) are famous for cresting on waves of ladyboners.

Not being impressed with gay men is not the same thing as being homophobic. The very first source you posted states:

Results show that, in accordance with literature, males have significantly more negative attitudes toward homosexuality than females and non-heterosexuals are less homophobic than heterosexuals.

Is your source worth anything? Are you just spewing bollocks and pretending to have read sources?

Here, I have a source you referred to as supporting one of your contentions saying the exact opposite of another one of your contentions. Funny how that works out.

Zwaarddijk wrote:Not being impressed with gay men is not the same thing as being homophobic.

For the mechanism you describe in your theory, what's operative is that the woman isn't attracted to the man and gets the STD. Whether this is described as being "unimpressed" or being homophobic in functionally identical in terms of your STD theory. I'm more inclined to use the term "unimpressed", as not wanting to boink a gay-seeming man is a bit early to describe a lady as a homophobe, much as a woman isn't a misogynist if she doesn't do women, or a racist if she isn't into Chinese guys.

In terms of the conjecture I described before, there's no evidence I know of that aggressive women who pick on/murder the vulnerable have more reproductive success than their peers.

Zwaarddijk wrote:

Results show that, in accordance with literature, males have significantly more negative attitudes toward homosexuality than females and non-heterosexuals are less homophobic than heterosexuals.

Is your source worth anything? Are you just spewing bollocks and pretending to have read sources?

Here, I have a source you referred to as supporting one of your contentions saying the exact opposite of another one of your contentions. Funny how that works out.

The contradiction rests in your own choice of language.

trogs wrote:

Zwaarddijk wrote:Not being impressed with gay men is not the same thing as being homophobic.

For the mechanism you describe in your theory, what's operative is that the woman isn't attracted to the man and gets the STD.

You really do love that correlation = causation fallacy don't you?

trogs wrote:

Zwaarddijk wrote:Not being impressed with gay men is not the same thing as being homophobic.

For the mechanism you describe in your theory, what's operative is that the woman isn't attracted to the man and gets the STD. Whether this is described as being "unimpressed" or being homophobic in functionally identical in terms of your STD theory. I'm more inclined to use the term "unimpressed", as not wanting to boink a gay-seeming man is a bit early to describe a lady as a homophobe, much as a woman isn't a misogynist if she doesn't do women, or a racist if she isn't into Chinese guys.

In terms of the conjecture I described before, there's no evidence I know of that aggressive women who pick on/murder the vulnerable have more reproductive success than their peers.

Zwaarddijk wrote:

Results show that, in accordance with literature, males have significantly more negative attitudes toward homosexuality than females and non-heterosexuals are less homophobic than heterosexuals.

Is your source worth anything? Are you just spewing bollocks and pretending to have read sources?

Here, I have a source you referred to as supporting one of your contentions saying the exact opposite of another one of your contentions. Funny how that works out.

The contradiction rests in your own choice of language.

It quite clearly rests just as much or even more in yours! If 'not being interested in having sex' with homosexuals is a form of homophobia, you've really skewed the definition quite strongly!

Zwaarddijk wrote:
Thinking a bit deeper about this, it seems females should be just as homophobic OR MORE than men are if it were to make evolutionary sense!

A female having sex with a bisexual or homosexual male would be more likely to get diseases

You're the one who describes it, in your language, as homophobic. I don't.

Like I said, I don't agree with you that not being attracted to gay guys implies that a woman is a homophobe.

This is for the same reason that her not being attracted to Indian men doesn't imply that she's a racist. People with sexual preferences aren't all ipso facto undercover bigots. Women can find gays unsexy without hating them.

trogs wrote:

Zwaarddijk wrote:
Thinking a bit deeper about this, it seems females should be just as homophobic OR MORE than men are if it were to make evolutionary sense!

A female having sex with a bisexual or homosexual male would be more likely to get diseases

You're the one who describes it, in your language, as homophobic. I don't.

Like I said, I don't agree with you that not being attracted to gay guys implies that a woman is a homophobe.

This is for the same reason that her not being attracted to Indian men doesn't imply that she's a racist. People with sexual preferences aren't all ipso facto undercover bigots. Women can find gays unsexy without hating them.

You are quite misconstruing what I am saying here.
Look at what you said early on:

trogs wrote:What's interesting is that homophobia is almost certainly significantly more genetic than male homosexuality:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2292426/

Which actually makes excellent evolutionary sense.

My comment was that it would make even more evolutionary sense for the women to be homophobic, (yet the source you link to say they in fact are less homophobic). From this on, your argument makes almost no sense whatsoever.

Zwaarddijk wrote:My comment was that it would make even more evolutionary sense for the women to be homophobic, (yet the source you link to say they in fact are less homophobic). From this on, your argument makes almost no sense whatsoever.

You extrapolate that it would make evolutionary sense for women to be homophobic, because it's in their interest to not be attracted to gay men, due to their higher average STD rates, and that female homophobia would reduce female disease risk.

I'm saying that, while I anecdotally agree that women are less attracted to gay men than straight men, I disagree that this appears to be facilitated via homophobia, or for that matter would be expected to be via homophobia if your conjecture has merit.

Women probably wouldn't do well if they were engaged in homophobic attacks on gay men. That's risky, expensive behaviour, with no obvious fitness advantage for the woman - in traditional societies, female murderers don't enjoy high status in the way that male murderers enjoy high status. At least, I've seen no data suggesting that female murderers have more children, and I'd be very surprised if a study output such a result. If your conjecture has merit, it would be less perilous and more parsimonious for the woman simply not to desire to have sex with gay men, while not endangering herself with risky, homophobic behaviour.

trogs wrote:

Zwaarddijk wrote:My comment was that it would make even more evolutionary sense for the women to be homophobic, (yet the source you link to say they in fact are less homophobic). From this on, your argument makes almost no sense whatsoever.

You extrapolate that it would make evolutionary sense for women to be homophobic, because it's in their interest to not be attracted to gay men, due to their higher average STD rates, and that female homophobia would reduce female disease risk.

I'm saying that, while I anecdotally agree that women are less attracted to gay men than straight men, I disagree that this appears to be facilitated via homophobia, or for that matter would be expected to be via homophobia if your conjecture has merit.

Women probably wouldn't do well if they were engaged in homophobic attacks on gay men. That's risky, expensive behaviour, with no obvious fitness advantage for the woman - in traditional societies, female murderers don't enjoy high status in the way that male murderers enjoy high status. At least, I've seen no data suggesting that female murderers have more children, and I'd be very surprised if a study output such a result. If your conjecture has merit, it would be less perilous and more parsimonious for the woman simply not to desire to have sex with gay men, while not endangering herself with risky, homophobic behaviour.

Actually, the main reason I think females would be at advantage from not mating with gay people is reducing the chance that their own offspring is gay too. By avoiding this, the woman increases the chance that her offspring produces offspring.

Homophobia is not restricted to violence in the literature you linked to, but is a specific set of attitudes. You compare apples and oranges when it suits you to do so.

Zwaarddijk wrote:Actually, the main reason I think females would be at advantage from not mating with gay people is reducing the chance that their own offspring is gay too. By avoiding this, the woman increases the chance that her offspring produces offspring.

Don't be silly, your previous position is recorded in the preceding page of a written debate. There's no point in phrasing as if this was not your argument.

Zwaarddijk wrote:Thinking a bit deeper about this, it seems females should be just as homophobic OR MORE than men are if it were to make evolutionary sense!

A female having sex with a bisexual or homosexual male would be more likely to get diseases than a female restricting her selection to heterosexual men, a female having sex with a bisexual or a homosexual man might be less likely to pass on her genes beyond one generation - both being fairly deleterious problems.

That being said, your new conjecture is basically of the same cloth, and also has some merit. It would again make sense, in that case, to avoid sex with the gay male in question. But this again need not be moved by homophobia. Lack of attraction works fine for males who are sick, ugly, weak, or young/old, without the need of outright bigotry. Why should the female adopt homophobia?

Homophobia is not restricted to violence in the literature you linked to, but is a specific set of attitudes. You compare apples and oranges when it suits you to do so.

"Merely" having a moderate attitude of homophobia is not parsimonious, for the same reason that extreme acts of homophobia are not parsimonious. "Merely" having a hostile demeanour toward a gay man is less risky than attacking him with a rock, sure. But there's still no incentive for it, while it removes a potentially advantageous relationship, and places the female at risk of gaining unnecessary enemies. Why should the female exhibit homophobia? What's the point, what is the adaptive value?

A woman may find gay men unsexy, yet not hate them. There's no reason for you to insist otherwise.

A woman's position is precarious enough as it is, without needlessly antagonising men who can hurt her.

As to violence, the males measured in the study need not be violent either, the study is quantifying their attitudes using the same metric. And you forget the reason why we involved the extreme example of homophobic violence in the first place: one of two conjectures in the thread for why homophobia might be adaptive (1. pleiotropy, 2. status-seeking) involves the adaptation of violence against comparatively defenceless marks. This status-seeking would work to make homophobia adaptive in men, but not in women.

trogs wrote:

Zwaarddijk wrote:Actually, the main reason I think females would be at advantage from not mating with gay people is reducing the chance that their own offspring is gay too. By avoiding this, the woman increases the chance that her offspring produces offspring.

Don't be silly, your previous position is recorded in the preceding page of a written debate. There's no point in phrasing as if this was not your argument.

Zwaarddijk wrote:Thinking a bit deeper about this, it seems females should be just as homophobic OR MORE than men are if it were to make evolutionary sense!

A female having sex with a bisexual or homosexual male would be more likely to get diseases than a female restricting her selection to heterosexual men, a female having sex with a bisexual or a homosexual man might be less likely to pass on her genes beyond one generation - both being fairly deleterious problems.

That being said, your new conjecture is basically of the same cloth, and also has some merit. It would again make sense, in that case, to avoid sex with the gay male in question. But this again need not be moved by homophobia. Lack of attraction works fine for males who are sick, ugly, weak, or young/old, without the need of outright bigotry. Why should the female adopt homophobia?

NOTICE THE FUCKING COMMA. It is a list - a short list - of two elements, this being especially evident by "both being fairly deleterious problems". I grant the other one was stated unclearly - simply because it's so fucking obvious in the first place (but apparently not to you.)

Your turn.

Zwaarddijk wrote:NOTICE THE FUCKING COMMA. It is a list - a short list - of two elements, this being especially evident by "both being fairly deleterious problems". I grant the other one was stated unclearly - simply because it's so fucking obvious in the first place (but apparently not to you.)

Your turn.

I didn't say otherwise.

But, if your only point is that you've already made 2 (as I've already said, meritorious) arguments that women should be expected to find gay men unsexy - to avoid their higher STD rate, and to avoid having gay children - but don't disagree that homophobia and bigotry would not be expected for women to find gay men unsexy... then you've just changed your conjecture to be in agreement with me (and the observed data...).

Victory for science, I guess. Just too bad you had to suggest that I was spewing bollocks before ending up just vaguely agreeing with me.

Anyway, we're done.

trogs wrote:

Zwaarddijk wrote:NOTICE THE FUCKING COMMA. It is a list - a short list - of two elements, this being especially evident by "both being fairly deleterious problems". I grant the other one was stated unclearly - simply because it's so fucking obvious in the first place (but apparently not to you.)

Your turn.

I didn't say otherwise.

But, if your only point is that you've already made 2 (as I've already said, meritorious) arguments that women should be expected to find gay men unsexy - to avoid their higher STD rate, and to avoid having gay children - but don't disagree that homophobia and bigotry would not be expected for women to find gay men unsexy... then you've just changed your conjecture to be in agreement with me (and the observed data...).

Victory for science, I guess. Just too bad you had to suggest that I was spewing bollocks before ending up just vaguely agreeing with me.

Anyway, we're done.

Fuck you. You keep distorting what I've been saying and what you've been saying. Your rhetorics are the least honest I've seen from any newcomer here in quite some time.

Zwaarddijk wrote:

trogs wrote:

Zwaarddijk wrote:NOTICE THE FUCKING COMMA. It is a list - a short list - of two elements, this being especially evident by "both being fairly deleterious problems". I grant the other one was stated unclearly - simply because it's so fucking obvious in the first place (but apparently not to you.)

Your turn.

I didn't say otherwise.

But, if your only point is that you've already made 2 (as I've already said, meritorious) arguments that women should be expected to find gay men unsexy - to avoid their higher STD rate, and to avoid having gay children - but don't disagree that homophobia and bigotry would not be expected for women to find gay men unsexy... then you've just changed your conjecture to be in agreement with me (and the observed data...).

Victory for science, I guess. Just too bad you had to suggest that I was spewing bollocks before ending up just vaguely agreeing with me.

Anyway, we're done.

Fuck you. You keep distorting what I've been saying and what you've been saying. Your rhetorics are the least honest I've seen from any newcomer here in quite some time.

Oh really. Want to narrow in on what your position actually is, then? Are you now saying that you do think that homophobia would be necessary to reduce female attraction to gay men?

(hint: you don't really know, do you? )

In an attempt to get this discussion a little back on track...

I think it should be pointed out, and recognized by everyone talking here, that there is currently no known reliable way to be sure that ANY human behavior of ANY kind, is completely, or even mostly due to DNA, or to environment. All studies of human behavior are handicapped by both the predispositions, both genetic and experiential, of the people conducting the surveys; and by the inability to be sure that even the most honest of people, are both accurately and knowledgeably reporting why they thought or did whatever they did.

Take the hostile behavior of some of the anti-homosexual people for example. There is not yet enough information available to discern whether such people are just more high-strung than others (i.e. the Nature side of things), or that they have been influenced by social pressures or bribes, to the point where they will behave more violently for purely conceptual (i.e. Nurture) reasons.

And finally, the fact that we CANNOT, at this time, prove anything conclusively, does not support either side of the argument.

And by the way, kudos to those who are repeatedly pointing out that correlation=/=causation. That fallacy is at the bottom of a veritable plague of destructive arguments currently infesting our world.

Thanks for getting us back on track, Igor.

I agree generally with your thrust, but let me focus on what we may disagree about.

There's no reliable method for estimating the heredity of a trait, even a Mendelian one. For complex polygenic traits, there's only the most well-understood, often difficult to arrange, but gold-standard-when-you're-lucky-enough-to-get-them methods which are available at present, and which are responsible for the current progress of the brave young science of genetics, such as it is.

One of those is the twin study, involving the contrasting of MZ and DZ twins. It's not perfect, and it's often very hard to find enough twins (the homophobia and homosexuality studies are quite fortunate, in that regard), but it's valuable when you're lucky enough to have the data. Imperfect as they are, the best methods of genetics have proven themselves to be among the very most reliable of methods in "the imperfect science" of biology.

As the study I mentioned cites:

There is considerable support for the existence of generalized prejudice (see Ekehammar et al. 2004). Different types of prejudice (e.g. racism, sexism and prejudice toward homosexuals) have been shown to be highly correlated (e.g. Bierly 1985; Ekehammar and Akrami 2003), implying that people who reject one out-group will also tend to reject others. As Ekehammar et al. (2004) describe in their article, two major theories have risen to explain why some individuals are more prejudiced than others. In the first theory, individual differences in prejudice are considered to be due to stable factors within the individual (their personality characteristics); in this case prejudice is seen as an expression of personality (Ekehammar and Akrami 2003; Heaven and St. Quintin 2003). The second theory implies that individual differences in prejudice are caused by factors linked to the outside world, like intergroup relationships and social life (see e.g. Guimond et al. 2003; Guimond 2000; Reynolds et al. 2001).

Earlier twin studies have demonstrated that individual differences in personality are substantially heritable (e.g. Jang et al. 1996; Loehlin et al. 1998), and therefore, it is possible that there are genetic influences on homophobia as well.
...
The MZ twin pair correlations are significant higher than the DZ twin pair correlations (χ12 = 15.64, P < 0.001), suggesting that genetic effects are a source of familial aggregation in attitudes toward homosexuality.
...
Subsequently, a common effects sex-limitation model is fitted, by fixing the genetic correlation for DZ opposite sex twins at 0.5. Results show no significant deterioration of model fitting (χ12 = 1.43, P = 0.23), consistent with the same sets of genes influencing homophobia scores for males and females.
...
Under the general ACE model, additive genetic and common environmental effects together account for between 48% and 59% of the variance in homophobia (see Table 5). It is impossible to distinguish between AE and CE models, as removing the effects of either A or C causes significant deterioration in model fit.

The same can be said of MSM itself. The genetic and environmental factors can be roughly estimated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_an ... in_studies

Not only are such studies inconclusive, there isn't a definition of "conclusive" out there. Only progressively less rough, less inconclusive estimates. Even a 100% gene/trait correlation isn't "proof" of causation...

... on the other hand, our best scientists, doctors, and agriculturalists 100% sure do treat sufficiently high quality correlation as proof in everyday, life-and-death reality. Because it's all science can do. And it's not bad.

Confounding does not reduce our best methodology to dismissable, know-nothing guesswork, either. Especially not when they are performed with the highest standards of double-blinding and anonymity-shielding, as in this case. To the extent that any such knowledge must be taken seriously, and we are not to abandon empiricism in favour of solipsism, this type of data should be accorded due respect, unless one notices error in the study design (?).

Properly controlled association research is "merely" estimation, yet also some of the hardest scientific knowledge in biology, and "merely" the best of what science can realistically deliver, at present. Life-or-death medical treatment decisions, and agricultural economics policies governing billions of dollars, are made on much less every day, because genetics is - though ostentatiously humble - still exceedingly substantial, and unlikely to get conservative numbers like P < 0.001 wrong without a glaring methodological error. In the cases of both homosexuality and homophobia, the data does speak substantively about their genetic heritability, as the authors of the studies to which I link are bold enough to state outright, under peer review by the greatest minds of their field.

Genetics is "just correlation" in somewhat the same sense that evolution is "just a theory".

While my education has been more general, and I therefore have no expertise in the details you cite, I don't find any disagreement with what you've stated as being factual. My concerns and disagreements with people arguing in these sorts of discussions, is usually over whether they appear to me to be applying the facts and the reasoning appropriately and in the context in which it belongs.

A potential example of this, derived from what you just posted (and note I'm not saying you did this, I'm using your stuff to build a representative example), has to do with the fact that all sorts of people, especially including me, use uncertain approximations and or 'best guesses' every day, in order to make important decisions. This is ideally done, based on the recognized ability to reverse course, should the decision prove faulty.

However, the fact that we do this, lends absolutely no support to whether what we are basing out moment to moment actions on, is factual or not. In other words, the fact that a contingency assumption we've made, permitted us to accomplish some task of the moment, lends no factual support to rigorous logical proof of the assumption. Nor does the fact that we "guessed," in any way reduce the reliability of our other data, provided we follow best practices, by keeping track of where we've "guessed," and where we have not.

I know a little about calculating reliability and so forth. I'm all for according due respect to apparently sincere efforts, just cautious because I recognize that many times an underlying mathematical model is being applied to the situation, which may or may not be accurate. My primary area of study is History, and not hard sciences, but in History we do often end up discovering instances where all the best science was THOUGHT to have been applied to a situation, but some fundamental cultural assumption caused it to veer off anyway.

I like the gist of the wiki link you posted, for the most part. I do note that it says

Self reported zygosity, sexual attraction, fantasy and behaviours were assessed by questionnaire and zygosity was serologically checked when in doubt.

That sort of statement implies potential holes. Any time anything is assessed via questionnaires, I am extra wary. A pair of identical twins (MZ) who have reached an age where reasonably trustworthy questionnaire answers can be taken, will have an unknowable amount of difference in their emotional and social experiences, which could cause differences in their answers. I am aware from within myself, that I can experience a single emotion in two different situations, and one time I will deduce that I am in love, and the next time I feel exactly the same way, I will deduce that I am suffering an anxiety attack.

I note as well, that these particular people conducting their explorations, did not hold to a single set of procedures. Sometimes they trusted that the twins really were MZ, and sometimes they tested to confirm. That alone, weakens their study results significantly.

As well, sexuality itself is not described as being measured in any carefully defined way. Lots of people interpret their sexuality based upon how they feel, and what they deduce or assume, based on that. I've directly witnessed people who misinterpreted their own orientation, or at least the strength of it.

In short, I respectfully have little faith in the stated numbers provided in that one article, even though the results are relatively close to what I think is probably true.

Well, darn, we don't have much to disagree on, then. Your thoughts seem entirely sensible, I find little in them with which I'm not aligned.

One thing from the homophobia study, about zygosity:

According to Ooki et al. (1990) and Martin and Martin (1975), concurrence on zygosity between discriminant analyses of questionnaire scores and DNA typing is at least 95% and telephone clarification will have increased accuracy. In the present study the zygosity of the twin pairs was premarked on their questionnaire and the twins were asked whether they did or did not agreed with the assessment.

Some of these zygosity estimates are doubtless still wrong - they're just A) likely to have been a modest, 5% or less fraction, if Australians are not entirely different from Brits, and B) likely to have leaned towards misclassifying MZ's as DZ's, a flaw which would tend to underestimate nature, and overestimate nurture, rather than vice versa.

As for self-report of homosexuality, I agree completely. There is no proper, psychometric standard which has undergone peer review, and which is widely applied. And these questions asking people to remember when they decided they identified as gay/straight, or how gay/straight they "always" have been, also strike me as particularly vulnerable to the biases you allude to.

In the case of the homophobia study, they apply the same study to the whole cohort, and the questions appear to pertain only to immediate attitudes of the moment - I do believe there is a case for reliability within that one cohort, since it's the same team administering the same test to everyone. And the questions are attitudinal:

The most apparent factor for both sexes, explaining 16% of the total variance for both sexes, was a factor regarding attitudes to homosexuality, comprising all 10 items of the Attitudes to Homosexuality scale created by Klassen et al. (1989). Each item showed a high factor loading for both males and females (between 0.55 and 0.87).

Accordingly, in the present study homophobia was measured using the 10 items of this Attitudes to Homosexuality scale, which comprised statements like ‘Homosexuality is obscene and vulgar’, and ‘Homosexual men should be allowed to work as schoolteachers’ (see Appendix A for the total scale). Twins were asked to either tick YES if they agreed with the statement or NO if they disagreed. If a participant filled out both answers on an item (both YES and NO), the item was coded as missing. To enhance unbiased answering, a preamble to the section explained that there are no right or wrong answers and no trick questions and they were encouraged to work quickly and not to think too long about the exact meaning of questions.

Contrast that to the wikipedia link on the heritability of homosexuality: that's a meta-study of different cohorts, using different methodologies, and I'm in full agreement with you that it's much harder to unite them. There is not an established literature establishing the correlation between different psychometrics of homosexuality, as there is with IQ or (big five) personality.

These weaknesses increase the bars of error. But the error bars definitely ain't infinite. The remarkable thing is that the MSM studies, though disparate in method, all arrive at the same orders of magnitude for the architecture of the phenotype. So, we're unlikely to be completely out of the ball-park. Like the early estimates of the size of the Earth or the age of the universe, we're at the stage of narrowing the (substantial...) error downwards with improved data.

I have no idea of why other people in this thread find the evolution of these traits threatening, and seek to cast evolutionary explanations for homophobia as advocating homophobia, much as creationists cast theories on the evolution of homosexuality as advocating infecting all their kids with The Gay Disease. These traits evolved, sometimes for creepy or scary reasons, that's just how nature is.