Anyway, the point is this. Any trait of any organism is a manifestation of genetic characteristics in an environment. You can't do without either. Sexual behaviors are the resuly of the fact that wea re organism that reproduce sexually, but of course we do so only in an environmental -- and for humans that almost always meansa social --context. Therefore, sexual behaviors are the results of genes that create sexes and drives manifesting themselves in environments where the drivesa re shaped and directed in certain ways -- differently depending on the circumstances.
You cannot say, it makes no sense to ask, Is a behavior 75% (or something) genetic? If that means, not environmental. Genes only manifest themselves in environments,a nd they manifest themselves differently in different environments. They impose rough limits on variation -- I could not grow to be 9 feet tall whatever I ate, but I could have been a lot sorter than I am if I had lacked proper nutrition. But that does not mean that there are many interesting traits, if any, that rigidly manifest themselves the same way in all circumstances. They are codes that allow ranges of behavior thatr vary with the circumstances.
This point grasped, you cannot say, All sexual behavior is socially constricted. It would not be sexual, or indeed behavior, if it were not be behavior ofd an an organism, thus biological. Nor can you say, homosexual (or heterosexual) behavior is biologically determined, such that it is the fixed result of a genetic inheritance that is the same in all circumstances. Aint nos uch thing. Height is genetically determined if anything is,a nd my example shows that it isn't.
End of story. The usual way the debate is framed is not only wrong, it is nonsensical. It contradicts everything we know about biology. It is the result of a confusion. It is pure ideology.
Maybe I will try to publish my paper again.
jks
--- Thiago Oppermann <thiago_oppermann at bigpond.com>
wrote:
> Luke wrote:
>
> > I wrote a paper for my sociology of gender course
> that made many (if not
> > all) of the same points you make in this post.
> However, the
> > constructionists are at least as misguided as the
> essentialists: to discount
> > the possibility that genetic or hormonal
> differences have anything to do
> > with whether one becomes a homosexual is an act of
> faith.
>
> So, you see a middle course between these two
> positions, or another position
> entirely?
>
> I am curious - how is accepting one is partly
> determined by hormones not an
> act of faith? What is the meaning of 'hormone' for
> the person engaged in
> such self-determination? It's one thing to say 'this
> shape brain correlates
> with homosexuality' - it's another entirely to tell
> a story about yourself
> in which you cash homosexuality in terms of putative
> biological factors.
> Such 'essentialism' strikes me as the clearest form
> of 'constructivism'.
> (Sometimes in this dispute you find this weird
> notion that the building
> blocks from which one 'constructs' an identity must
> be false, ethereal,
> intangible, 'cultural' as opposed to 'real' - but
> that's a pretty serious
> bout of question-begging.)
>
> Maybe the issue is not properly stated as an
> opposition of essentialist and
> constructivist camps - or rather, there might be
> some substance to that
> dispute, but it is overlaid by a set of problems
> that have a far more
> direct connection to people's self-experience and
> sexual politics. That is,
> the matter of control and choice. It isn't clear to
> me how this is
> substantiated or refuted by essentialist or
> constructivist arguments - a
> hardcore cultural constructivist could argue that a
> person has no control
> over her sexuality because of social determination.
> Someone could take a
> conservative view of this and arrive at much the
> same point garden-variety
> essentialists do. Conversely, homophobic
> essentialists have argued in the
> past that a person is responsible for altering her
> behavior despite it being
> an organic 'sickness.' Such combinations of views
> are uncommon, but not for
> any basic logical reason - rhetorical and political
> factors probably account
> for their absence.
>
> Thiago Oppermann
>
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