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I know gay is natural, but does it make sense?

Discussion in 'Sexual Orientation' started by zeecoop, Nov 10, 2015.

  1. zeecoop

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    Soryry if this is posted in wrong section or if its a repeated post!


    So, I'm gay, 21 and ive known im gay for the best part of the last year... i slowly came out to myself throughout this year. Im a little straight-curious, but not experimented with opposite sex.

    I am pretty sure that being gay is a natural thing to happen. Enough acclaimed scientists have said its natural and given hypotheses on why they think animals might be homosexual.One that I heard was that the mother give each subsequent male less of the "straight" hormone. Another is just that the sexual desire can manifest in different ways depending on environement as well.

    But yeah, hopefully you readers will be a bit more clued up on that side of things.


    The other night thought I was just trying to figure out what the point of my arrousal/sexual energy is. Up until now I have just concentrated on being happy and true to myself. ITs been difficult and confusing to accept myself but Ive had to force myself to just accept myself. A lot of internalised homophobia has prevented me from doing this and my awareness of this made me ignore any negative thoughts on homosexuality. I now am happy to accept being gay and I see the benefits I get from homosexual sex. It makes me happy, its stress-relieving, feel connected to others (spiritual), more than anything its just an urge that is a good past-time.

    But practically, there is no purpose for my arrousal. For what reason do I have for ejaculating seamen? Why does my body feel arroused from seeing guys? What is my body trying to achieve by getting sexually charged when I think or come into contact with other guys bodies. At the end of the process your just left with two cocks and a shit load of seeds. It just seems bizarre and I cant get my head round it.

    Im not saying homosexual is wrong. But surely something has gone wrong here evolutionary?
     
  2. Lalayajen

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    Evolutionary speaking, Human population needs some fabulous people so some people are gay.
    and lots of heterosexual sexes end in seeds dying so sex is not only for reproduction.
     
  3. Confuseddude

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    Two quotes that really made me smile! :slight_smile:

    Anyway, to your question. It's something that I've wondered myself. In fact, thinking about it, I have no real input :grin: I look forward to hearing some opinions though.
     
  4. Chiroptera

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    Hello,

    First of all

    .

    That's probably wrong. I've never heard of a "straight hormone".
    That is a possibility, sure.

    Anyway,

    When talking about biology, you have to be very careful if you are going to use the word "why".

    First of all, and i can't stress this enough: Evolution means "change". It doesn't mean "things are changing to be better". It just means "things change".

    Nature isn't a thinking, sentient being. There is no "why", in the sense of "that species need to do something. Therefore, they need X, for that purpose".

    Things happen at random, and, during an evolutionary period of time (lots and lots of years), life changes at random. Some changes are discarded (mostly, changes that result in death, like a bird that is born without wings and therefore can't look for food), and some are passed on, for example, the eye. It is difficult, at first, to imagine that a complex structure, like an eye, has randomly appeared, but, in a geological period of time, that slowly happened, and the organisms that could identify light, and after that, images, did better than the ones that couldn't see, at least above ground, and it was passed on.

    The important thing here is to remember that there isn't a reason. Things randomly change, and, if it helps, then it is passed on. If not, then the organism is probably dead (in humans, this doesn't really work 100% anymore, because, with medicine, we can fix lots of things. For example, an animal that is born without legs will probably die. A human can use a prosthesis. But we natural selection also worked normally on us in the past).

    But i may be complicating things. If you have in mind that things happen randomly and doesn't need a reason, then to your question.

    Why do gays exist? We don't know for sure. But, we have some ideas and theories.

    Dr. Dawkins explains a bit of this in the following video:

    [YT]v=MHDCAllQgS0[/YT]

    So, as you can see, there are many possibilities (and many others, apart from this video) that can explain why we, LGBT, feel what we feel (and remember that homosexuality is also present in other animals).

    Also remembering, things doesn't happen in nature for a reason, for a purpose. Nature isn't a conscience, and there is no "purpose" for anything, biologically speaking (you could say "reproduction", but that's not consciously decided by nature).
     
  5. Fandom obsessed

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    I don't think it needs to make sense.
     
  6. zeecoop

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    I totally agree with what you're saying here and i get where your coming from with the evolution POV. and the "why" gays happen being a silly question"

    but i mean as an individual I lack something which is crucial to my survival as an animal. I dont have a sexual urge to be with the opposite sex so my genes wont survive in any children id have. So, this means as an individual, I wont carry on evolving as an animal. I was literally the last of my kind and died out. If my family all died and I was the last of my family name left - We'd die out. Biologically speaking at least!

    It just feels wierd to be a mammal who doesn't re-produce yet produces seeds :s
     
  7. littleraven

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    I can relate to how you feel. (*hug*)
     
  8. Kaiser

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    Some people do hold to the idea, homosexuality is a means of population control.

    Does it make sense? Is it right? Does it even work out like that?

    You can make the case for anything, really. The only thing that matters here is you, and how you believe it.
     
  9. Manitoban

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    I have often wondered this myself. I've also wondered why the gay genes, hormones from mother etc... Why do they persist?

    Is it because we actually did make children due to societal pressure in the past and with acceptance we will ironically be some of the last in existence?

    Or is it because we provide an evolutionary advantage somehow?

    I would like to know. But know its probably never going to have a reason :/.
     
  10. Steve FS

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    I heard from somewhere (I can't for the life of me remember from where), that there is a theory on hyperfertility. It's kind of a balancing act: one offspring of a mother will be hyperfertile and have lots of babies, and the other offspring of the same mother will be gay/uninterested in developing offspring. They would balance each other out.

    It's just a theory, but I thought it was interesting.
     
  11. PatrickUK

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    The comment about ejaculating semen for no purpose is rather tenuous and it's somewhat debasing to our purpose as human beings if we only regard sex as a vehicle for procreation. Sexual intimacy is so much more than that -- it should be enjoyable, it should be an expression of love and if a child happens to be conceived as a result of that experience then it's something to be celebrated, but it's not a necessity.

    Consider the fact that a completely infertile man would still be able to ejaculate and enjoy sexual intimacy, without ever producing offspring. Would we deny him the enjoyment of the process?

    Not having a go, just trying to offer a different perspective. :slight_smile:
     
  12. Contact1111

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    I've thought about that myself. The thing is I think it does actually have a purpose. I think that in the past, the sexes tended to be separated more than they are today. Women tended to take care of raising children and gathering fruits/vegetables. Men fought in wars and hunted. Some people were probably unable to handle the lack of sex, and they had to have sex whoever it was. So, to avoid going bonkers, they likely just started having sex with each other sometimes out of desperation.

    The people who were genuinely into it and not just acting out of pure desperation may have been thought of well back in caveman times, because they naturally would have been seen as more desirable when the opposite sex was unavailable. Plus, a lot of the people who were really into it were probably also really into the opposite sex too. This just kept the genes for it going and going. That's my guess on why it has evolved, and given this I feel that it has had a very clear cut purpose. My guess is that there probably are researchers that would agree with this theory, but I'm not sure.
     
    #12 Contact1111, Jan 4, 2016
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  13. BicuriousGayGuy

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    Yes, this is something I've wondered about too. Sometimes when I have sex with a man it hits me and I wonder why I'm penetrating a man's asshole and not a woman's vagina. I think about how my male body evolved to mate with a woman's body, how my penis is perfectly shaped to penetrate a vagina, how the vagina is just the right fit and feel for a penis and has all the right muscles to pleasure a penis, how my semen is meant to fertilize a woman...and I wonder what I am doing having sex with a man. When I have anal sex with a man it takes a lot of preparation, but when I watch straight porn it's always so obvious to me how a penis will slide inside a pussy so easily. Penis in vagina, it's the perfect fit. Sometimes I will have a fantasy about using my male body for its natural purpose and sleeping with a woman, but I've never done it and don't know if I could go through with it. I love straight porn and it's extremely arousing to watch other men have sex with women, but I'm not sure if I could pull it off.
     
  14. suchconfusion

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    If your saying what's the point of homosexual attraction, I've always seen it as naturally we need heterosexual attraction to reproduce since that's our ultimate prerogative as a species. Everything we do is pretty much a way of ensuring that we have offspring and the race lives on, and everything else like romance just kind of goes with having sex and protecting our babies until they're functioning humans for our species specifically. I dunno if it's true, but I've heard from one person that homosexuality happens because during a fetus' development, the brain is for whatever reason oriented attraction wise as though you were the other sex. So then, there is no evolutionary point to it. In the grimmest sense, I guess it's an "accident". But if you mean how such a gene actually continues to exist if it has no good means or evolutionary purpose of being passed on, and this could be completely wrong because I'm guessing, it could be a mutation preserved in a gene for something else that actually does have evolutionary purpose. Maybe it's a little blip in a sequence for something in the brain and because it's preserved for those reasons, the "gay gene" is perpetually in our population randomly. Actually that doesn't make much sense but I dunno. Maybe it's that its a very vulnerable part of a neuro brain sequence that easily mutates, so it frequently and without any family pattern, just pops up and BOOM child is homosexual. BUT DONT TAKE MY WORD FOR THIS. I'm really just a sham.
     
  15. CharacterStudy

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    As someone who knows about this stuff...

    As someone above said, nature doesn't have a purpose, species as a whole can't have a wish to survive - that's all a very common misunderstanding of evolutionary biology. Evolutionary success for an individual = producing fertile offspring. But it's more complicated than that.

    There are very very many animals which exhibit 'gay' behaviour. Humans are animals. Therefore wishing to mate with your own sex can be considered a normal, though not the most frequent, behaviour, for animals. As a trained scientist I can tell you that it is completely natural.

    Obviously it does seem counter-intuitive and has therefore been the target of investigations by evolutionary biologists. Like the apparently bizarre behaviour of bees, it turns out to be the kind of 'exception' which helps prove the evolutionary rule.

    Now, there are various factors involved, and different species may exhibit homosexuality as a result of different factors, but examples include:

    - The accidental advantage. Have you ever heard of sickle cell anaemia (SCA)? It's quite an unpleasant hereditary disease of the blood. If you have both copies of the SCA gene then you develop SCA. Not good. However, the SCA gene, if you just inherit one copy, also brings with it a nice side helping of resistance to malaria - nice. So inheriting the SCA gene from one parent (and becoming a carrier) is actually going to increase your chances of survival (and producing offspring to inherit your genes, including the SCA gene). Some people unfortunately (as in this case we're talking about a disease), get both. As a result of the unexpected advantage (malaria resistance), this otherwise not-useful gene has survived in the population and is most prevalent today in areas with high incidences of malaria. Does that make sense?

    So what about in gay people? There is some evidence that there is something associated with the genes which probably code homosexuality, that is actually sometimes useful. Off the top of my head, I remember a study on a gene that causes greater facial symmetry. This gene in women increased their attractiveness to future mates, but the same gene could also cause their brothers to be gay. So one part of the family is more likely to survive and reproduce successfully, and the same gene means another part of the family is less so.

    What else? Well I haven't looked into it for some years but I remember something about male gay crows. In their case the gay pair bonding occurred more in younger male crows which hadn't found a mate that season, or had a lower chance of finding a mate because they were younger or lower in the hierarchy or something. These males often formed pair bonds with other male crows. They built nests and everything. On subsequent years they might mate with a female instead. One explanation could be they were practising, which would make them better providers and nest builders in subsequent years, so when they do get a female crow their offspring are more likely to survive. Alternatively it could be a low-key sexual attraction attempt - show the mated females what they're losing out on. "Hey woman, look at me, I can build a better nest than that guy you've got. Pick me next time." Alternatively the pair bonding between two unattached males could increase their chances of survival (food, warmth, noticing predators), so they are more likely to survive and mate with a female next year. That's crows though, doesn't mean exactly the same thing is going on in humans.

    Go and hang around in a field full of farm animals. Before too long you will see a bull mount another bull. Often youthful, not sure if they're practising, confused, or what, but both gay sex and gay pair bonding (weren't there some penguins?) happens in nature.

    There are other studies I can't remember well at the moment.

    Anyway assuming that there are probably more bi people than gay people, the majority of people, whatever their orientation, have been under social pressure to reproduce in the past. Therefore there have been plenty of opportunities for inheritance, and of course there's also random mutations too. Maybe in the last 30 years or so there has been less of this as it has become more socially acceptable to remain in a gay couple, but no technique to have your own children. However, with the advent of IVF etc I would imagine that gay couples are increasingly likely to have children genetically related to one of the couple, therefore again the gene may well be passed down.
     
  16. suchconfusion

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    That actually makes so much sense, I feel like I learned all this in my AP Bio class
     
  17. acguy12

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    Well remember there is a difference between sexual orientation and sexual behaviour. just because you are gay does not mean you can't have sex with a women. You may not be attracted but you still could physically. My dad is gay and had me and my sister. He married a women because of societal pressure before coming out. In humans we have sex for pleasure and bonding and sex for reproduction is only done by couples when they want kids. And some straight people don't want kids too. Bonobos and dolphins are actually 100 percent exclusively bisexual. In many civilizations men would only have sex with women for kids but have sex with guys for pleasure. Remember that labels are new concepts and before people would just have sex wth who they are attracted to and in most societies that was accepted. Only Christian and Muslim societies persecuted gay people.


    The same thing could be for infertile people as they can't reproduce at all. epigenetics passed down reccesvily could be a reason why someone is gay. I've read that hormones and brain structure is a reason too. Homosexuality does have some evolutionary advantage in many species and research has shown this. I've read that 1 in 20 ducks are in same-sex couples and single females will lay her eggs in their nest because they can raise better than a hetero couple. Ive read that hormones would cause someone to be gay because they could look after young instead of reproducing their own. Apparently is two-sex species like humans there are bound to be same-sex couples.

    Nature is very random and non-binary, heterosexual reproduction is not as common as we think in nature and many other species produce differently.

    If you want kids in the future with your husband then you can always use surrogacy, it is something many straight people use as well.


    don't feel ashamed of yourself. you are who you are and you can't change and that's ok. homosexuality obviously has its place in nature as its been present since the beginning of time and of course its very prevalent in nature. Throughout history around 5-7 percent of humans have had exclusive same-sex attraction. sexuality is a spectrum that we land all over the place but sex is just a physical act that can be used to reproduce but that sex can be meaningless and be done with your eyes closed.


    Being gay or any other sexuality on the spectrum are all natural variations. Its just part od nature randomness!
     
  18. Benway

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    That is so inaccurate it makes my head spin. Jews literally wrote the book on persecuting gay people. Leviticus is part of the Torah, the first five or so books of the Jewish bible and it details in depth in there on how to properly dispose of homosexuals. For some reason, Christianity, a religion that bases itself on Judaism though does not share its fundamentals, constantly cites the text from Leviticus and Deuteronomy even though their central figure completely negated it.

    I'm so sorry, I know nobody wants to hear it, but as pretty and nice as they try to make themselves be, the Jewish community is the reason we have modern homophobia. They've been trying to hide this by presenting themselves as "progressive" and "liberal" when they are in fact one of the most backwards, bigoted religions there are. They worship, according to their own book, a bloodthirsty god who calls for the death of any and all homosexuals by stoning.
     
  19. Fighter694

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    Like 'Character study' says a lot of animals are actually bi! So there was a study conducted in rams. They observed that often rams are homosexual and they have sex or what is equivalent to sex with each other and only occasionally , during the mating season they engage in coitus with females! Now what's surprising is there was no gender segregation ! Rams just chose other rams all the time till they felt the need to mate !
    Now the story of crows! There are many birds who show specific homosexual behavior so much so that they share a nest , rasie the young together and even migrate together! Apparently black swans have a very typical behavior of male pairing. So what they do is two males are always together (sexually and as companions) and when they feel the need to mate they engage in a threesome with a female and after she lays eggs they drive her away! The two males then raise the young! They are also known to steal nests from females and raise the egg in them ! It's like the two male swans are in a committed monogamous relationship for a life time!
    So what this shows is that yes sexual attraction and pleasure derived from sex was the instinct to copulate in lover and less cerebral animals. but in higher animals it has become more than a need for procreation , because the animal kinda knows the difference and as we have seen how animals exhibit homosexuality most of the time and occasional heterosexual instincts arise when the need to procreate is felt ! This has resulted from evolution! As the others here said pair bonding , romance and sexual attraction brings together two individuals which results in a lot of advantages socially beyond just sex! The need for companionship is as important or rather more important than just the need to procreate! This is tru even among heterosexuals ! Homosexuality is just a transparent example of such an evolutionary advancement! Furthermore it has been viewed as an evolutionary adjustment due to increase in population beyond Sustainability and the whole " gay uncle being a better provider " theory came up!
    Like it was said previously , its not that homosexuals cant procreate ! Of course they can! Moreover a lot of us gays desire children for what ever reason that maybe. Science has evolved enough for us to attain this without needing us to have occasional heterosexual relationships like the black swans or the rams need to :grin: personally I also feel that we are here to help out those orphans who are a result of heterosexual carelessness ( both in terms of the reason of occurance and cause of insufficient adoption rates).
     
    #19 Fighter694, Feb 2, 2016
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  20. beastwith2backs

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    Actually, I feel like that's a kindof unfair take on (othrodox) judaism's stance on homosexuality. From what I know, the (written) part of the torah, which is the first five books in the bible, isn't exactly bent on persecuting gay people. It's literally only two verses in two different chapters in leviticus, it barely goes into detail. It says stoning to witches and gays, but from what i know, those passages talking about capital executions in general were only meant to be taken theorectically, and were almost never implemented, like ever. There's even a qoute from the Talmud thay says " a court that does one execution in 70 years is a bloody court" signifiying how rare executions were back in ancient israel and roman occupied judea. I honestly think that modern violent homophobia comes from christianity and islam, not judaism. Even then, those verses in the christian scriptures and quran have easily bern explained away by LGBT friendly groups, so yeah.

    From what i've researched on my own (for fun, yes, i know, i'm wierd :roflmao::confused:)
    Othrodix judaism doesn't consider BEING gay a sin, just having anal sex. The punishment in leviticus is for anal sex, not for being gay. Even at that, it wasn't like you could just catch to guys having sex, abd then get them both dead. The process, i believe, went something like this: the witnesses had to be two people who were considered righteous( tzadikkim) in the community. If they were known to be bad, their counsel wouldn't be taken at all seriously. Anyways if two righteous individuals caught to men having anal sex, they had to tell them to stop, and if they did, they were safe, but if they went back to doing it IMMEADIATLEY and only immeaidately, then they would get in trouble. They would first be thrown of a cliff, if that didn't kill them, then a big rock would be put on their chest, if that still didn't work it being pelted with stones to death. Not that this ever occured. The curcumstanves to make it happen were to slim. This goes for most ounishmenta in jewish law. They were all theoretical and rarely ever taken place. Based on this, i disagree with you saying that judaism is the root of modern homophobia, because the religion basically outlaws homophobic violence from ever really happening! Wierd huh?

    Also, that's the orthrodox interpretation, other sects of judaism have different opinions. But i digress.

    I think modern homophobia comes from conservative christianity and islam because, well since they don't have much except the bible itself to go with, the interpret verses in leviticus and the new testament and the quran as saying "kill all gays" which is why we have stuff like gay hangings in Iran, or the westborough baptist church. And this was never the way judaism interpreted that verse. Also, of the three (major, there's actually more) Abrahamic religions, i personally think judaism is the least homophobic of them.

    Just my two dollars and twenty-two cents,
    Beastwith2backs
     
    #20 beastwith2backs, Feb 2, 2016
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