Reddit reviews Evolution's Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People

Evolution's Rainbow. even written by a trans girl.

> but I still believe that homosexuality isn't 'natural'

Is it observed in nature? Yes, among all kinds of animals, including all of our closest relatives. Therefore it's natural.


> I believe that the main purpose of life is to reproduce

I think you have the wrong idea about what you think life is "for" — namely that it has to be "for" anything. It can just be, without operating toward any purpose.

Evolution doesn't work to any end. It's not a guided process with the goal of reproduction. That's where I think a lot of people get messed up. There is no goal for evolution, and it's not an ordered logical process. It's a series of genetic and biochemical accidents that pile up on each other slowly over millions (billions?) of years.

The process of evolution is driven by reproductive "fitness", but that's a very narrow thing. If you're even a little more likely to reproduce or have surviving offspring, your genetic material is more likely to propagate. If a random, accidental mutation occurs that increases this likelihood, it tips the scale. If it hurts it; it tips the scale the other way.

Evolution doesn't drive anything; it is driven by natural processes. It's an emergent behavior, not a concept or rule absolutely inherent to life.

There's no logic to it. If you sat down to design a human (or any other animal), there are so many flaws you wouldn't have introduced. Cancer, diabetes, exceptionally exposed major arteries and veins, little bits like the appendix that can get infected and explode and kill us, dementia and altzheimers, etc., etc. They're not there because they're good, necessarily; they're just not bad enough to collectively doom us.

And then you have some traits that help some people and hurt others. Sickle cell anemia is a good example. It's a recessive gene, but if you're a carrier for it, with one "correct" copy, you actually get protection from malaria because of the same gene that harms people who get two copies of it. The fact that it makes some people much less likely to reproduce doesn't change that fact that it has huge survival/reproductive benefits for carriers.

We actually have some scientific evidence which indicates that male homosexuality may, in part, be something similar called a "sexually antagonistic trait" — a trait which makes one sex more likely to successfully reproduce even while it reduces the likelihood of a member of the other sex. There seems to be material on the X chromosome which increases female fertility while also increasing incidence of male homosexuality in those with the gene(s).

If you're interested in gender and sexual diversity in nature, you might want to check out Evolution's Rainbow.