[Phil153]

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Phil, I don't want to get too far off track, but based on our discussions the above statements seem very much at odds with your views on neurobiology and human behavior. For example, I'm very interested in why you attribute a big role for environmental influences in development of sexual attraction and none (or close to it) for intelligence, brain size, etc.

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Hey RDuke,

Firstly, I apologize for the length of this. I know you're a busy man but brevity isn't my strong point.

Regarding intelligence and biology: they're too different beasts. I'll tackle sexual preferences first. People have sex:

- Because they get horny when around specific triggers
- To feel powerful
- To feel loved/included/meaningful
- To scratch an itch
- For emotional/physical intimacy with a person
- To relieve boredom
- Because it's familiar way to gain pleasure

These things vary greatly from person to person. For example, some gays like to bottom, because they like the feeling of being dominated and being someone's "cumslut". That site I linked earlier that you deleted had plenty of that kind of discussion. Some straight males only have sex with women for power and the itch scratching. Some emo males have a naturally low libido and only do it feel loved. So you can see that these reasons are varied, and to present the dichotomy of "being gay" or "being straight" is kind of ridiculous. I've talked to a lot of gay people, and I know that many of them:

- [censored] purely for pleasure, for their respect of another man and wanting to be part of his coolness.
- Are scared of women
- Feel comfort and brotherhood with men, and most naturally form a relationship with them. Women seem like foreign creatures to them when it comes to intimacy.
- Are seeking novelty and experimentation
- Are brain or drug damaged or affection starved as children, and have problems with normal boundaries (in the clinical sense).
- Are self loathers who feel they deserve to do dirty stuff (some former Catholic molestation victims fit into this).
- Like a specific man's skin/hair/eyes/smile/voice/power, and get captivated and turned on by that specific trait, end up having some of their first sexual experiences with this person, and the preference gets wired in. This is similar to the fetish response that I talked about earlier.

I think where there is a predisposition for gayness, it's due to the way underlying personality traits (NOT a "gay gene") interact with social experience, to produce all kinds of sexual preferences which span the range of those listed, and more. Humans are also generally risk averse and creatures of habit, and are strongly influenced by friends, culture, and defining childhood experiences. University is a great place to see this - ask someone what first motivated them to follow their career path, and it's often a hero of some kind, a single experience or observation that occurred in childhood, or a continuance of what they know through their family. We're idealistic creatures, especially during younger years when the brain is forming and sexual preferences are getting wired in. Finally, if you look at what can and does go wrong with developing teenage brains, it shouldn't be any surprise that some will get wired into a odd fetish-like preferences.

So what I'm getting at is that even if everyone was born straight, some percentage would ultimately fall into an alternative lifestyle. We're uniquely capable of overriding and not recognizing our basic urges, and doing things for reasons that have little have to do with programming or biology. Simple crossed wiring and various kinds of personality and preference development in the young brain are adequate to explain gays and lesbians, in my opinion.

As for the intelligence bit, and the fact that there is evidence of a prenatal component, I need to go a bit deeper to explain what I mean.

I'm pretty sure, based on a no research at all, that many basic behavioral traits are the result of natural differences, such slightly differing brain structures, hormones, cellular energy levels, and so on. I think these things are responsible for much of basic personality. Examples would be reflectiveness, creativity, pleasure seeking, risk seeking, novelty seeking, libido, self control/willpower/stubbornness, degree of empathy, degree of emotional capacity, strength of emotional experience.
I think many of these things we call personality traits are properties of the mind itself - the sizes/neuron densities/connection qualities of various parts of the brain, the fineness of differentiation, the speed at which connections degrade, the repetitions required to build strong conduits, the natural levels of various neurotransmitters, and so on.

This isn't taking away from the fact that the brain is hugely malleable - far more than most think. But I think certain clusters of these traits will lead to a susceptibility to certain behaviors. It's something that's repeated in animal behavior and I think stands up, at least in every day observation.

I was going to write my thoughts on why intelligence is different - but this post is too long already and I don't want to hijack. I'll do it later. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]