If so, then her point is more specific: “people made heterosexuality up.” But I don’t see how this can be supported. Every human being who has ever lived came from a male-female sex act. That has to serve as a lower bound for how unusual and made-up heterosexuality is.
When giraffes mate in such a manner as to produce viable offspring, is that “heterosexuality?”
If yes, why do male giraffes frequently engage in same-sex behavior when nearby females are not in oestrus and receptive to their advances?
To clarify: the term “heterosexuality” doesn’t necessarily mean simply “male/female sexual contact.” Humans have been doing that for as long as there have been humans. Humans have also been doing same-sex sexual contact for as long as there have been humans (this is not a controversial idea given the huge number of animal species that do, inclusive of our near relatives), but the phenomenon of people being defined as, or identifying with the terms “heterosexual, homosexual and bisexual” is quite recent and cultural-contextual.
Mating such that offspring may be viably produced is a piece of the territory. “Heterosexuality” is a label on one particular map of that territory, and its boundaries and name don’t necessarily represent the reality accurately.
It normally comes up when claims are made of the form “homosexuality is unnatural!” with the implied or explicit “therefore it is wrong/sinful/evil/yucky”. Pointing to same-sex pairings in animals is intended as a response to this. The people making the response either don’t understand the naturalistic fallacy or consider it to be sufficiently abstract or harder to explain that they don’t bother with that line of response.
It is also interesting from a biological standpoint in that it isn’t that easy to explain from an ev bio perspective, so studying it makes sense.
It has to do with the fact that it was essentially ignored throughout most of the history of biology as a discipline. It’s not like this behavior is new; it’s been there the whole time, and so have the observations of the behavior, but the reaction within scientific culture has changed dramatically.
Stuff like interpreting active vs passive animals in a copulatory act as male and female respectively, assuming the animals had simply misidentified the sex of the other party, or assuming that the observing party was necessarily mistaken, publication and citation biases, and the frequently-opaque titles, abstracts and contents of those published studies that did manage to make it into the journals (“A Note on the Apparent Lowering of Moral Standards in the Lepidoptera”, W.J. Tenant, 1987, Entemologists Record and Journal of Variation).
It’s news to a whole lot of people, in other words.
When giraffes mate in such a manner as to produce viable offspring, is that “heterosexuality?”
If yes, why do male giraffes frequently engage in same-sex behavior when nearby females are not in oestrus and receptive to their advances?
Your second question is very interesting! I don’t know why asking it is contingent on a “yes” answer to your first question, which is tiresome.
the phenomenon of people being defined as, or identifying with the terms “heterosexual, homosexual and bisexual” is quite recent and cultural-contextual.
If you like, I’d be interested to hear what you mean by these phrases in more detail:
In the United States, dog meat is defined as “not food.” In other cultures, the definition of “food” includes dog meat. The meaning of “food” depends on context, specifically, the cultural context. Just to be clear, I think the brouhaha about whether it is acceptable to eat dog is strong proof that “food” is more narrowly defined than “material capable of being consumed for sustenance by humans.”
The assertion is that “homosexuality” is a word whose meaning is as culturally dependent as the word “food.”
Just to be clear, I think the brouhaha about whether it is acceptable to eat dog is strong proof that “food” is more narrowly defined than “material capable of being consumed for sustenance by humans.”
I don’t agree. I think “food” has a broad definition that is context dependent, not culturally dependent.
Every human culture has language for food. Yes sometimes people say “that’s not food” when they mean “there’s a taboo against eating that” and sometimes they say “that’s not food” when they mean “that’s not edible.” Perhaps sometimes they mean something else. But to tell what they mean depends on context, not culture.
Of course taboos vary across cultures, as does knowledge about what is and isn’t edible.
I’m not trying to play games with definitions—if taboo is a more intuitive label for you, then that’s the word I’ll use. The modern usage of the label “homosexual” invokes a substantial number of social taboos.
Those taboos vary from culture to culture. Because cultures change over time, that statement implies that the relevant taboos have changed over time. In short, the concepts intended to be invoked by the word “homosexuality” depend on the cultural context.
Further, the historical record isn’t clear that any cluster of taboos related to the current homosexuality cluster existed until fairly recently in history.
Further, the historical record isn’t clear that any cluster of taboos related to the current homosexuality cluster existed until fairly recently in history.
This doesn’t sound right to me, but maybe only because it’s vague. Famously, ancient jews forbade each other from male-male sex. I agree with the rest.
And the Bulgarian Cathars gave us the word “buggery”, which was a slur even back then. But the thing that keeps me from dismissing this all as wishful thinking on the part of queer-friendly sociology professors is that all those old prohibitions that I’ve been able to find refer to same-sex intercourse, the act (and usually only male-male intercourse at that), rather than homosexuality, the state. That doesn’t exactly prove that sexual identity as such is a modern invention—frank discussions of sexuality are rather thin on the ground in European culture between the Romans and the early modern period—but it does seem to point in that direction: if a concept of sexual identity existed, I’d expect homosexual identities to be condemned if homosexual acts were.
When giraffes mate in such a manner as to produce viable offspring, is that “heterosexuality?”
If yes, why do male giraffes frequently engage in same-sex behavior when nearby females are not in oestrus and receptive to their advances?
To clarify: the term “heterosexuality” doesn’t necessarily mean simply “male/female sexual contact.” Humans have been doing that for as long as there have been humans. Humans have also been doing same-sex sexual contact for as long as there have been humans (this is not a controversial idea given the huge number of animal species that do, inclusive of our near relatives), but the phenomenon of people being defined as, or identifying with the terms “heterosexual, homosexual and bisexual” is quite recent and cultural-contextual.
Mating such that offspring may be viably produced is a piece of the territory. “Heterosexuality” is a label on one particular map of that territory, and its boundaries and name don’t necessarily represent the reality accurately.
The map itself is part of a larger territory. Handshakes only occur in certain cultures; that does not mean there is no such thing as a handshake.
It does imply that assigning handshakes to the reference class of “things made up by humans,” is reasonable though.
Money is made up, but you can still starve to death without it. “Made up” doesn’t mean “fake and with no lasting impact.”
One more question: Why do people find it so interesting that some animals form same-sex pairings?
It normally comes up when claims are made of the form “homosexuality is unnatural!” with the implied or explicit “therefore it is wrong/sinful/evil/yucky”. Pointing to same-sex pairings in animals is intended as a response to this. The people making the response either don’t understand the naturalistic fallacy or consider it to be sufficiently abstract or harder to explain that they don’t bother with that line of response.
It is also interesting from a biological standpoint in that it isn’t that easy to explain from an ev bio perspective, so studying it makes sense.
It has to do with the fact that it was essentially ignored throughout most of the history of biology as a discipline. It’s not like this behavior is new; it’s been there the whole time, and so have the observations of the behavior, but the reaction within scientific culture has changed dramatically.
Stuff like interpreting active vs passive animals in a copulatory act as male and female respectively, assuming the animals had simply misidentified the sex of the other party, or assuming that the observing party was necessarily mistaken, publication and citation biases, and the frequently-opaque titles, abstracts and contents of those published studies that did manage to make it into the journals (“A Note on the Apparent Lowering of Moral Standards in the Lepidoptera”, W.J. Tenant, 1987, Entemologists Record and Journal of Variation).
It’s news to a whole lot of people, in other words.
Wild mass guessing: animals are incapable of sin?
Your second question is very interesting! I don’t know why asking it is contingent on a “yes” answer to your first question, which is tiresome.
If you like, I’d be interested to hear what you mean by these phrases in more detail:
“defined as, or identifying with”
“cultural-contextual”
In the United States, dog meat is defined as “not food.” In other cultures, the definition of “food” includes dog meat. The meaning of “food” depends on context, specifically, the cultural context.
Just to be clear, I think the brouhaha about whether it is acceptable to eat dog is strong proof that “food” is more narrowly defined than “material capable of being consumed for sustenance by humans.”
The assertion is that “homosexuality” is a word whose meaning is as culturally dependent as the word “food.”
I don’t agree. I think “food” has a broad definition that is context dependent, not culturally dependent.
Every human culture has language for food. Yes sometimes people say “that’s not food” when they mean “there’s a taboo against eating that” and sometimes they say “that’s not food” when they mean “that’s not edible.” Perhaps sometimes they mean something else. But to tell what they mean depends on context, not culture.
Of course taboos vary across cultures, as does knowledge about what is and isn’t edible.
I’m not trying to play games with definitions—if taboo is a more intuitive label for you, then that’s the word I’ll use. The modern usage of the label “homosexual” invokes a substantial number of social taboos.
Those taboos vary from culture to culture. Because cultures change over time, that statement implies that the relevant taboos have changed over time. In short, the concepts intended to be invoked by the word “homosexuality” depend on the cultural context.
Further, the historical record isn’t clear that any cluster of taboos related to the current homosexuality cluster existed until fairly recently in history.
This doesn’t sound right to me, but maybe only because it’s vague. Famously, ancient jews forbade each other from male-male sex. I agree with the rest.
And the Bulgarian Cathars gave us the word “buggery”, which was a slur even back then. But the thing that keeps me from dismissing this all as wishful thinking on the part of queer-friendly sociology professors is that all those old prohibitions that I’ve been able to find refer to same-sex intercourse, the act (and usually only male-male intercourse at that), rather than homosexuality, the state. That doesn’t exactly prove that sexual identity as such is a modern invention—frank discussions of sexuality are rather thin on the ground in European culture between the Romans and the early modern period—but it does seem to point in that direction: if a concept of sexual identity existed, I’d expect homosexual identities to be condemned if homosexual acts were.
This exactly.
(Tangentially: food is a great example of how culture impacts...well, so many things, but perception among them.)