Will Wilkinson takes apart the hypothesis that homophobia is in our genes
So, okay. This is a fine hypothesis. Is there any evidence for it? Well, no. There isn’t. This is not to say that Gallup conducted no studies in the attempt to test his hypotheses. He did a bunch of them fifteen or so years ago. Bering lays these out in detail, resurrecting what had been a dormant line of argument in the hope that “it might spark new research.” Noting that Gallup’s “studies are imperfect, ” he goes on to praise Gallup for his courageous willingness to do science that is “exceedingly rude—unpalatable, even,” implying, it seems, that there has been little follow-up on this question due to the weak-kneed liberal fear that experimental confirmation would help “antisocial conservatives to promote further intolerance against gays.”
But it could also be that Gallup’s hypothesis lacks merit in the way that hypotheses in evolutionary psychology so often do.
Beating up on Ev-Psych is a favorite hobby of Will’s, however, there is a intriguing question to be answered: why is homophobia so widespread and why does it exist in such varied cultures? Its not obvious why this should be. If there was a widespread violent vitriol against freckles, wouldn’t you wonder why?
Indeed, in admittedly amateurish speculation, I wondered if homophobia evolved in order to increase the prevalence of homosexuals. Or, more to the point, to increase the prevalence of genes linked to homosexuality. Presumably, those carry some benefit as there is a heritability component yet an obvious reduction in reproduction.
Do I have any evidence for this whatsoever, no. However, unlike Will I do think its useful to encourage folks to dig down these lines.
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Saturday ~ March 19th, 2011 at 7:24 pm
Lorenzo from Oz
The short answer is monotheism. All the monotheisms — Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Zoroastrianism — agree that the “appropriate” penalty for two men having sex is to put them to death. It is to do with the sexual logic of monotheism — sex separates us from the divine, except through procreation. Hence all the hatred of nakedness, ferocious sexual taboos, etc. (It also connects to the misogyny of monotheism, but that is a whole ‘nother level of complication.)
Criminal sanctions against homosexual acts either follow monotheist conquest (the British spread them all over their empire) or trying to “keep up with the monotheists because they represent modernity” (late C19th Japann) or are post-monotheist (Leninism, Fascism, Nazism).
I am aware of no animist society which sanctions homosexual acts as such. Many of them took same-sex attraction to be a sign of being a future shaman or similar role. Many had various forms of same-sex marriage.
Polytheisms generally took similar views, except they sometimes developed angst about not subverting masculine roles. Even in those cases, they usually had “third gender” priests. In both animism and polytheism, sex connects us to the divine and they often have myths with same-sex activity by divinities.
Animists live embedded in nature and are aware of the extent of same-sex activity in the natural world. This understanding carried through into polytheist myths, but not always polytheist societies. (Plato has The Athenian in The Laws claim there were no same-sex acts in nature: quite false.)
There is no documented case in other species of same-sex activity resulting in punishment or exclusion by other animals: the only documented case vaguely like it is of a gender variation among deer being excluded by other males — I am taking this from memory, it is somewhere in Bagemihl’s Biological Exuberance, which I review here.
Queer hatred is nothing to do with biological evolution. It is everything to do with cosmological worldviews.
Monday ~ March 21st, 2011 at 2:06 am
Hyena
Here’s a theory: rumors that you are homosexual are inherently damaging in sexual competition. First, rumors about homosexuality always take the form of being in a submissive position, no one seems to spread rumors of dominance. This rumor is damaging because it endorses another man in sexual competition. Not only do his friends think he’s the best, you have endorsed him as well. Your relative standing has to decline because your (rumored) position adds to the consensus in favor of another’s move up the ladder.
From this basic sketch alone we can infer that homophobia would exist, that it would be nigh-universal and that it would have precisely the characteristics we actually see in the world. Moreover, it meshes perfectly well with the self-reports of homophobes
A really simple explanation would be this: if you’re in a homosexual relationship, there’s a chance that you’re “taking it like a woman”. This would signal to other women that your partner, not you, is the better choice because even you think so. Hence homosexuality, or rumors of it, diminishes your relative sexual prowess by implicating someone else.
Monday ~ March 21st, 2011 at 2:06 am
Hyena
Gah, edits on the fly, last paragraph should be deleted.
Monday ~ March 21st, 2011 at 10:13 am
teageegeepea
What do you think of Greg Cochran’s pathogenic theory? The “Red Queen” logic behind it makes it the only theory that makes any evolutionary sense to me.
Monday ~ March 21st, 2011 at 3:43 pm
Sister Y
One thing I think few people realize these days is that “gay” does not equal “doesn’t have sex with opposite-sex folks.”
People seem to be able to (subconsciously) tell just from looking at a face if a man is gay. The authors of that study say it must be “biologically adaptive for women to know which men aren’t worth the trouble and for men to know who’s not really a sexual competitor.” I think this ignores the “sneaky male” mating strategy found throughout the natural world – which strategy tends to correlate with feminine characteristics.
Gay and bisexual men are more attractive to me as a mostly-hetero female. They tend to be more beautiful and sexier than their heterosexual counterparts. I haven’t found any data on gayness specifically correlating with facial symmetry/beauty, though.
I seem to remember somebody (TGGP?) looking at the GSS data and finding really high numbers of offspring in men who have sex with males, but I can’t find it at the moment.
Tuesday ~ March 22nd, 2011 at 10:24 am
teageegeepea
I looked up on the Inductivist, here is data on children (MIDUS rather than GSS), and here is female partners for gay guys. He discusses Gordon Gallup’s theory referenced above here.
Wednesday ~ March 23rd, 2011 at 9:47 am
teageegeepea
I have a comment awaiting moderation. This is a notification to the admins. Feel free to delete this notification after reading it.
Monday ~ March 21st, 2011 at 7:29 pm
An exercise in mental gymnastics » Can't Win For Losing - Sometimes life just ain't fair
[...] Over at Modeled Behavior Karl Smiths’ reaction to the same article is to ask why homophobia is so widespread across cultures and posits that perhaps it’s so that traits associated with homosexuality are kept in the gene pool. Which seems to me like a stretch as well. [...]
Tuesday ~ March 22nd, 2011 at 10:30 am
bjvl
What we can’t forget here — and I think this is a problem with most evolutionary psychology theory — is that correlation does not equal causation. I suspect that most studies are very blinded by the fact that homosexuality is a sexual behaviour — therefore it’s assumed that its survival in the human animal must carry a sexual or reproductive benefit.
This is not necessarily so.
Monday ~ March 28th, 2011 at 5:21 pm
Parsimony « Occluded Sun
[...] recent post regarding Will Wilkinson’s opinions of some of Gordon Gallup’s hypotheses regarding homosexuality and its stigmas – [...]
Monday ~ March 28th, 2011 at 10:31 pm
Executing adaptations « Entitled to an Opinion
[...] haven’t done a GSS analysis in a while, and since Sister Y assumed I had, that provides the angle. The initial post was about Gordon Gallup’s theory for the evolution [...]
Tuesday ~ March 29th, 2011 at 8:24 pm
Ajay
Dr. Drew used to say that they did functional MRI studies, where they actually peer into the blood flow in your brain, years ago and found violent negative reactions towards gay sex, even for men who outwardly claimed not to care. I checked the original linked posts and nobody mentioned this data, seems pretty good evidence for a genetic basis to me.
Wednesday ~ March 30th, 2011 at 2:23 am
Lorenzo from Oz
When I said ‘sanctions’ I meant in sense of ‘anathematise’ not in the sense of ‘approve’.
Most of this discussion involves the standard problem of evolutionary psychology. It assumes the patterns of one’s own society and time are some human universal.
For example, MRI patterns do not tell us much unless taken from a wide variety of cultural contexts. Similarly, that folk may be good at picking sexual preference does not tell us anything about patterns of reaction to them. The reality is, human societies have had enormously varied reactions to same-sex activity and affection. The Spanish, for example, were horrified at the openness and acceptance of same-sex and transgender identity among Amerindian societies. The patterns of our time, and our societies, are not human universals unless one has the data to back such a claim up.
Wednesday ~ March 30th, 2011 at 7:05 am
Ajay
Lorenzo, perhaps if we ran fMRI studies on the descendants of the Amerindians, we’d find that their genes don’t impart the same negative impulse. I’m open to whatever the evidence shows, but regardless of the genetic basis, these studies certainly wouldn’t sanction outward negative reactions toward homosexuals. It would help explain the negative reaction of many hetero-leaning folk, but it certainly wouldn’t exculpate the ones who act on it.
Wednesday ~ March 30th, 2011 at 7:57 am
Lorenzo from Oz
Ajay: your point about not exculpating behaviour is well taken. The historical evidence is, however, one can get shifts in outlooks which are too large and quick for genetic mechanisms to be driving them.