Sometimes the conversations in the family mailing list become more than your basic squabbles between relatives (I tend to ignore those, much like you ignore yours — unless you happen to be a squabbler yourself, in which case, I don’t really care what you tend to do). Sometimes a link to a joke can provoke an overly-sensitive reaction, sometimes the joke might actually be offensive if you are sensitive, and here you have something small defining our problems in the large: culture is a bitch. So anyway, somehow or other, homosexuality comes up and you see the old battle lines drawn, and much like any other cultural problem, those lines tend to depend on who was president when you were born, or however else you want to define your decade.
Imagine how surprised those little bacteria-analogs would be, if they found out that their invention of biological gender for the purpose of survival has led to behaviorial issues after a millenia of development.
Survival of species is a loaded term. Many reduce it to a biological form, where homosexuality can clearly be seen as deviant as it does not involve procreation.
But what is procreation? In its simplest form, seen in the simplest organisms, it is basic mitosis; cellular duplication. Why then, was sex ever evolved? That’s an easier one to solve: diversity. Mutations in genetically identical organisms, while stable, is slow and prone to complete and total eradication. Think of homogenous crops that were wiped out by a single disease (the banana we eat today is not the banana that conquered the world). So, sex is good. Meiosis is good. Genetic diversity is insurance that the species has a much better chance of survival.
But this insured genetic diversity does come at a price. A cell can no longer stand alone, it can no longer simply divide and divide as fast as it can to survive. Cooperation is required. From that very basic beginning evolution has placed a requirement on interaction.
Over time, interaction has progressed through a variety of forms. We accept that the alpha dog rules the pack. We accept that the bees have a queen, and that more than one means deadly war. We accept that increasingly complex organisms now need to develop outside the womb, and so there is a need (be it days or years, depending on species) for parental care. We accept all sorts of behaviors that we believe to be part of nature.
Yet when homosexuality is brought up, many immediately say that it is not part of nature, that it is an aberration.
You say that human society is to blame, that there is nothing natural about it. Human society is a direct natural outcome of our genetic development, much like bees and dogs. So homosexuality, even if blamed on human society, is quite natural.
Of course, the argument is false. Homosexuality and bisexuality exists in other organisms. Sexuality itself is not 100% dependent on the biology of the organisms. Some organisms define sexuality based on social need. Jurassic Park is entertaining fantasy, but the comment about certain amphibians changing their gender if there is a disparate ratio is completely true. Will a frog that was male but now female due to the lack of females be called gay? Ah, but you will argue that this is natural, because it is dependent on procreation.
Yes, and for simpler organisms, flipping biological gender is the correct behavior. What about complex organisms? Organisms so biologically complex that biological shifts are impossible? What if a gender role is needed but lacking? How does that complex organism cope? How does a complex organism that has developed enough complexity that its genetic code includes requirements for increased social cooperation cope?
Let’s be obvious: how does humanity, which has developed culture beyond any other organism, beyond alpha dogs and queen bees, deal with social pressures that require gender shift?
The answer is easily. We are biologically open to all sorts of required gender shifts. It is in our nature. Homosexuality is natural. As is bisexuality and heterosexuality. Certain populations tend towards one or the other and very few for both beyond experimentation and fun. Strict exclusivity, however, is more a cultural phenomenon than anything else. The truth is that complex organisms define gender as needed, irregardless of biology.
So why the fuss? The problem is culture.
Culture tends to be mitosis-like, where change is slow and a direct response to outside pressure. It resists diversity. What worked before will work again. We like to call this tradition.
Sparta is a classic and used far too often, but it certainly explains quite a bit. The entire Greek culture, I suppose, was an aberration of nature. Pity that we respect them so, and that they, above all others, are the primogenitors of Western civilization (imagine if Persia did conquer Greece). We love their democracy, we love their philosophy. But damn it, they were just plain wrong about that whole man-boy thing.
Social structures are in place to assure cooperation of the masses. The problem is that most social structures are inflexible, while the human condition is flexible. The Greeks didn’t develop their concept of love out of some need to go against nature. We may not fully understand, but to them it was perfectly obvious. The division between our understanding and theirs is sharpened by thousands of years, but I’m pretty sure that if you include the cultural perceptions of each and every year inbetween, the gradient will be pretty obvious.
So about Sparta… Sparta was an extreme even in Greek culture because it needed a military that worked efficiently — their society was based on being a minority elite surrounded by a majority rebellious slave population and beyond, city-states who feared them solely because of that military. I can develop this to the point of explaining why their homosexual tendencies were necessary, much like a frog biologically changing its gender, for the sake of cultural preservation, but I’ll leave it as an obvious statement. This isn’t a thesis.
But there is the rub! You see, once culture is introduced, it is now no longer survival of the species — it is also survival of the culture. Ant colonies fight other ant colonies. Dogs mark their territory. They are fighting and competing amongst themselves — how is this biologically productive? In the end, it isn’t. But the genetic need to survive has now been templated with culture, and culture needs to survive.
So. Western culture, whose ancient source was pretty damn gay, is now homophobic but opening itself up to the ideals of plural democracy and cultural diversity. The world is coming together. Polyandrous tribes in the Himalayas are viewed with disdain while they think, what’s the big deal, leave us alone. Homosexuality, a natural occurrence in nature and one that has always existed in all human populations, is attempting to enter acceptance in a heterosexually-oriented culture as part of this attempt at plurality. And the mitotic-minded people are up in arms and inventing any number of ridiculous ideas of the natural order of things — because culture will resist change, even if it will inevitably change, even, and this may sound harsh, if it means waiting for the older culture to die of.
You can argue all you want about homosexuality, but always realize that all your arguments are part of the ever developing social behavior we require as complex organisms that need to cooperate with one another to survive.
Or you can be a brute and believe that all you need to do is procreate — then you can go ahead and do a barbarian-style raid on a village and rape all the women then go die because you’ve fulfilled your duty.
Don’t count on them caring much about you, though, genetic code or otherwise. Because culture’s part of the design now, and you just fucked up.
February 4th, 2007 at 8:48 pm
i am so happy and excited! does this mean that the minstrel file can be made into a file that can be read by my PC? it was such a special gift and i really would love to see it again!!!
February 15th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
Hmmm. Mac Plus, that goes back awhile! I remember when you were using this and the Apple II. Sorry, this will be off-topic but have you seen your interpid high school history teacher in the news lately? Check out the California section of the LA Times today and the front page of the Times yesterday (though you may not have access unless you are monitoring this daily). I’ve been trying to e-mail him but can’t find his address!
Take care