>Miles writes:
>
>>This is wild extrapolation from correlational data!
>
>And this is holiday homophbia as only Miles can serve.
Brian! Miles's point is a good one, and there's nothing homophobic about it. I can't say I recall Miles having a history of homophobic remarks, either. What's this about?
I'd be really wary of any biological explanations of sexual preference - or biological explanations of almost anything. Though Butler goes a bit far when she rejects the sex/gender distinction, saying that sex itself is social, she is right to ask why biology is being invoked in a particular instance - it's usually to defend the status quo. (Like, as Keynes said, ideas of a "natural" rate of interest.) Some pro-gay people want to cite biological causes because they make same-sexers innocent, because they didn't "choose" their preference, it chose them. (Like people who want to biologize psychopathologies.) But bigots will use biology to make arguments about genetic inferiority or the like. We may never know exactly why people have the sexual urges they do; it's probably some mix of biology and biograpny, but who knows in what proportion?
Doug