Reddit reviews Evolution’s Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People
We found 12 Reddit comments about Evolution’s Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
I love scientific investigations like this where the study of animals is done in a wild (or near-wild setting), rather than in laboratories.
His research reminds me of Joan Roughgarden's Evolution's Rainbow, which looks at homosexual behavior in animals.
This presumption of black-and-white gender in the animal kingdom is likely caused by us looking at animals through biased lenses. Perhaps early biologists believed in gender essentialism/realism, and so observed animal behavior through these lenses. But closer looks reveal there is a wide diversity of sex, sexuality, and gendered behavior in the animal kingdom, and at a relative volume possibly larger than human gender diversity. An evolutionary biologist even wrote a book about it, which looks pretty interesting. From an article discussing the book, which also explores some of this gendered diversity, the author says:
> The result was her 2004 book Evolution's Rainbow, which examined the multitudinous ways that sex is expressed in nature. It goes far beyond our black-and-white definitions of "male" and "female".
> "As a biologist, you think there may be a couple – maybe as many as a dozen – of cases that depart from heteronormative binary," says Roughgarden. "But when I got into it I was astonished by just how much variation there is."
You are aware that there is HUGE variation in the way organisms reproduce? That there is HUGE variation in the way sex operates in different species?
Another book recommendation: http://www.amazon.ca/Evolutions-Rainbow-Diversity-Gender-Sexuality/dp/0520260120
Yeah, homosexuality is not uncommon in the animal world
I'm a mathematician for what it is worth. There is some serious flaws sometimes in the way we do science, especially from a logical point of view.
> but the biological sex still is there in real life.
Yes it is. The problem however is the oversimplification, the pigeonholing, and the ostracizing of data points, that point to we have an incomplete definition of sex. Did you happen to read the link I posted above Sex Redefined in the journal Nature?
See in mathematics, I don't get to cut away examples and just define things on a majority. It seems in the past, not so much the present, biology has defined "sex" by cutting out examples that make the definition more complicated. Which I'm sure you know a slew of intersex conditions. But for those we cut out of the definition and call them "abnormalities" because they're a tiny minority, we fail to have a complete definition of sex. What is Evolution but not a sequence of ever evolving abnormalities? There's a book called Evolution's Rainbow that I haven't read, but know of and know the premise of, that speaks to how Nature and Evolution are not this simple "fixed binary of sexes" that we humans like to project upon the data and then throw out the data points that don't support our "definition."
And that's exactly what we've done. We took an oversimplified definition of sex because it applied to the majority, and then discarded all the examples that say the definition is incomplete. That's just bad science, terrible logic, and honestly intellectually weak. It's like me saying "all manifolds are spheres" because giving a more rigorous definition is too hard, and the examples are too complex, so I'm just going to throw them out and label them freaks and abnormalities - not even worthy of discussion or exploration, because I just defined all manifolds as the ideal, and very easy example to understand.
The problem with saying XX = female and XY = male and saying that is universal law is that is not the case. That is the simplification that makes it easier because it fits a majority, and from my point of view as the mathematician and the person who uses logic all day, that's just sad. Because majority does not equal universality, and the definition of sex we give people and shove down their throats is purported to be a universality, and it's not. We should be moving past pigeonholing and cutting out examples that don't support our outdated and outmoded definitions, but we're not. When it comes to sex and gender, even scientists are heavily influenced by the dogmas and taboos surrounding gender and sex.
Sex just isn't a simple binary. That data overwhelmingly points to this. And it's such an intellectually weak thing to do to oversimplify the data to fit archaic definitions. I'm not saying you're doing that. I'm pointing out how that's still being done in a lot of places.
As far as:
> remaining in the 'two gender' model?
You're on Reddit. This community skews to what is called a "binary trans person." If you think of gender something like a continuum, from say the point 0 to 1, then some of us actually are the end points (0,1). It just so happens this community is heavily skewed that way. If you go elsewhere on the web you'll find all the non-binary people. Reddit tends to be hostile to non-binary people.
"The actual reality is that nature pervasively defies your simplistic assumptions and expectations."
https://www.amazon.com/Evolutions-Rainbow-Diversity-Gender-Sexuality/dp/0520260120
Check out sources 7-20 or so on this Wikipedia article.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_society
Edit: Also, my reason for citing evolutionary biology is this book: https://www.amazon.com/Evolutions-Rainbow-Diversity-Gender-Sexuality/dp/0520260120
Yeah, I think it will shut them up. Another study I saw suggested that the effect was particularly strong in people who had experienced strict, authoritarian parenting so bring that up if they are conservatives.
Edit: This is a major work on animal homosexuality.
Dr Joan Roughgarden is another expert in this field.
>I think you’re conflating gender and sex, they’re two different concepts
Are they? Or are you assuming the human animal is outside evolutions reach as a special creature, like Peterson does?
>Sex is biological while the concept of gender and gender roles and scrips are a societal construct. I do agree that with what you’re saying though. But gender and sexuality are separate entities.
I think both are social constructs. Genetically, and evolutionary scales, we're all of the above and often it's dependant on the environment.
https://www.amazon.com/Evolutions-Rainbow-Diversity-Gender-Sexuality/dp/0520260120
On the second point of it being a choice or not, I can't believe that nobody's yet mentioned the mountains of scientific data that exist on the topic. This doesn't work for every person who proffers the "choice objection", but if they have any respect for the scientific method, all of these are important. Plus, it's important for you to be literate in these matters. Hell, it's important for everyone to be literate in these (and similar) matters of science, in my opinion, since topics like genetics and epigenetics are coming up more and more in legal contexts.
Sorry if this gets a bit long. There is a wealth of material on this. Which in and of itself is an important thing to note: this has been the subject of a lot of study, and we have gleaned information from that study, even if we don't understand it fully.
In short, give this sort of information to your sister, and her dick of a doctor. Let him dismiss this as "your feelings".
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GENETICS
The data are on the side of it being closely (but not exclusively) tied to genetic factors. They don't indicate that it is solely tied to these factors, but just a quick look at twin studies gives a pretty clear indication that there is a genetic factor to it (the rate of monozygotic twins who have the same orientation is far, far higher than the rate of any two PBAC (edit: particular but arbitrarily chosen, sorry, forgot that's not a common acronym) people from the population). The fact that the rate isn't approximately 100% is an indication that some other factor, epigenetic or environmental (which includes the prenatal environment), has some impact.
EPIGENETICS
On the epigenetic front there are also studies which seem to indicate some correlation.
PRENATAL ENVIRONMENT
There are multiple studies that have found this to be a major factor as well. Their findings are commonly called the older brother effect:
> The fraternal birth order effect is the strongest known biodemographic predictor of sexual orientation. According to several studies, each older brother increases a man's odds of having a homosexual orientation by 28–48%. The fraternal birth order effect accounts for approximately one seventh of the prevalence of homosexuality in men. There seems to be no effect on sexual orientation in women, and no effect related to the number of older sisters.
If you want to read the studies (or at least reports on the studies—not sure how many of the actual studies are published beind paywalls) more in-depth, just check the sources on the Wiki article.
OTHER ENVIRONMENTAL CAUSES
All of the above tend to fall into the area of what average people think of as "nature" when talking about "nurture vs. nature". As you can see, as usual, there's more than a bit of a grey area in between that choice that's presented as a binary. That's not to say that there is no room for any of the environmental factors we tend to think of as strictly "nurture", i.e., human interactions and early childhood development, but generally studies seem to indicate that after about three years of age, there is little to nothing that seems to have any effect on sexual orientation, and I think most people would have trouble arguing that a child of that age consciously chooses a sexual orientation.
FURTHER READING
There's a lot out there, but here are a few that I'd recommend on various fronts:
Virtually Normal — Andrew Sullivan - A serious of four common cultural positions on homosexuality, then a fifth synthesis of them (Sullivan's personal view). Helpful for understanding the various arguments made.
What the Bible Really Says About Homosexuality — Daniel A. Helminiak — A (semi) former Caholic Priest and multiple Ph.D.-holder discusses the pertinent verses in the book in cultural and linguistic context. A good book for religious parents, though it will probably hold more weight with mainline protestants and Catholics who generally don't go in for so-called "literal" readings of English Bibles.
Sex at Dawn — Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá — A mostly anthropological (as far as I know) investigation of human sexuality over history and prehistory. Not exclusively about homosexuality. I have not read this one yet, but I've heard the authors interviewed several times about it, and it seems like it would be worth it. It's on my to-read list.
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HOMOSEXUALITY IN ANIMALS
Another frequent objection brought by those who use the objection of "it's a choice" is the "it's not natural" objection. I don't want to go too far into that, but to anyone paying attention, it's pretty clearly and definitively natural.
For more reading on the topic, see Evolution's Rainbow, which is basically a field guide to gay sex in the animal kingdom. It is a fairly thick book.
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EDIT:
TL;DR
Well, I'm not going to be so self-important as to say you should read every word I've written (though I think you should read my sources). There is a cartoon that sums a lot of this up. This is taken from a longer film called For the Bible Tells Me So.
Evolution's Rainbow by Joan Roughgarden is (somewhat?) related -- it does an excellent job of comparing different societal/cultural expectations of sex, gender, and orientation vs. actual instances of sex/gender/orientation in hundreds of species, including humans, chimps, and bonobos. it's definitely biology-aimed, but you don't need much of a bio background to follow it.
and many organisms do in fact have multiple well-defined genders, even vertebrates; scientists discover more all the time now that people are more willing to look past the male/female paradigm (and I'm speaking as a biologist).
A book on the subject: https://www.amazon.com/Evolutions-Rainbow-Diversity-Gender-Sexuality/dp/0520260120