female homosexuality
These thoughts come from an extension of a class I’m taking called “human social and sexual behavior.”
When human females orgasm, the back of the vagina lowers, allowing semen to pool. The cervical tent then contracts, dipping down into the pool of semen, drawing semen into the uterus, almost like a drinking straw, which increases the probability of conception.
When there is no semen present,the cervical tent draws up vaginal secretions into the uterus, acidifying it. This acidic environment is harmful to sperm, and the effect can last for several days. We can therefore assume that the female organism, when sperm is not present decreases the probability of conception at some later point.
You might expect that this would be disadvantageous to all, because if you decrease the probability of conception and of having offspring, you risk not spreading your design information, which is the ultimate goal of an organism’s proximate behaviors.
However, consider, that any child born of sexual reproduction is only 50% related to yourself. Therefore, in order to maximize the spread of genetic information, any organism would want to make sure their children are as fit (in the Darwinian sense) and successful as possible.
There are times when a mothering a child would be disadvantageous. For example, in a harsh environment, a mother will have to share resources with her child. When resources are scarce, this threatens the survival of both mother and child. Clearly, it would be bad to invest resources into a child, only to have both the mother and child die. In this case, the mothers design information would die with her. If a mother can delay childbirth to times when resources are plentiful, she can increase the chance of survival.
Now, especially in matrilineal human societies, there could be a conflict of interest between male and female partners. Males, who don’t necessarily expend as much resource looking after children, at least in comparison to the mother, could want to try reproduce, independent of resource availability.
Here’s where female homosexuality comes in. Females in a human ‘village’ have mutual interest, in that in a non-kin dependent social cooperating society, they would want all women in the village to be successful in childrearing.
If they can, by engaging in homosexual activities, give each other orgasms and increase the chances of delaying pregnancy during extended harsh conditions, then they would all benefit.
Of course, this speculation of mine wouldn’t make much sense for regular cyclic seasonal things, but more likely for longer periods of environmental stress, or perhaps during long migrations.
global RSS feed.
March 8th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
Is Kewl & im not just sayin that cuz my g/f`s bi :p
March 13th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
“Females in a human ‘village’ have mutual interest, in that in a non-kin dependent social cooperating society, they would want all women in the village to be successful in childrearing.”
Your wording here is confusing me a little bit, and I want to make sure I understand you.
A non-kin dependent social cooperating society would only function through the development of reciprocal altruistic relationships (since there is no kin selection to reinforce cooperation). In other words, each individual has to be able to achieve greater reproductive success through cooperation with other individuals, than they would be able to if they lived alone.
Is that what you mean?
March 13th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
Reciprocal altruism is half the story, yes. But, in human societies, you also have forced reciprocal altruism, in the sense that cheaters who take advantage of non-kin dependent social cooperation are ostracized, or coerced into doing so.
The data suggests that human brain development and slow infant growth was enabled by the development of large scale non-kin dependent social cooperation. The latter was only able to develop because of the cheap cost of coercive threat by cooperators against cheaters.
That being said, in this example, females would engage in kin-independent homosexuality in order to delay child birth, which would be reciprocally altruistic. However, individuals who refused to “give” wouldn’t be able to cheat and just “receive” the benefit of female homosexuality. Because there is the cost of coercion is low for the female cooperators (just throw a rock at the cheaters head).
March 14th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
To test this would you look at the ethnographic record and see if female homosexuality is more common in societies with strong female bonds and frequent resource shortages?
Thinking on the primatological data, it fits your hypothesis somewhat. Bonobos practice female homosexuality (quite frequently) and also have strong female social bonding. Who knows where the causation is, though.
March 14th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
I presume that would be one way, though I suppose that the effect could be more subtle than what I described.
This is just a speculation extending from a class discussion. I haven’t read any literature on the subject even.
March 16th, 2008 at 11:12 pm
“The data suggests that human brain development and slow infant growth was enabled by the development of large scale non-kin dependent social cooperation. The latter was only able to develop because of the cheap cost of coercive threat by cooperators against cheaters.”
Hmm. I would have to disagree that coercive threat was necessarily cheap. There is often a cost for punishing cheaters - the family of the cheater might retaliate, you might gain a less than positive reputation in your group for your violence, etc. If you look up collective action problems, this is considered a second order collective action problem. Religion is hypothesized to have developed as a solution to this problem. A supernatural being takes the responsibility of carrying out the punishment, even if it’s only promised punishment in the next life. This way, no individual in the group has to pay punishment costs but they all benefit from the cheaters being discouraged.
March 16th, 2008 at 11:39 pm
Well, compared to non-human animals, coercive threat is very cheap. That is because we evolved the ability to express threat at a distance AKA remote killers. While there is still a cost for punishing cheaters, the human village initially evolved because that cost is greatly (relative to proximal killers) suppressed in human populations.
While this doesn’t force every individual to play along - there are still aggressive individuals who take more than they give - it still does allow for non-kin social cooperation to develop, which allows for large social units to form.
This idea is the basis for the class I’m taking. And even if it’s not exactly right, I have to pretend to get full credit. :D
March 17th, 2008 at 1:34 am
remote killers? What are those?
March 17th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
organisms that can effectively exercise threat (kill) at a distance. Thereby reducing the cost of coercion.
Humans’ unique throwing ability has allowed for this.
March 17th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
Ah. I didn’t think it would be quite so literal. I must admit that I’m a little skeptical of the idea that our ability to bean each with rocks from a distance is the primary reason why we’re able to live peaceably with non-kin. I’m sure it could play a part, but I lean more towards reciprocity being the main driving force. Cooperative group living is successful because each individual can be more reproductively successful by cooperating with others than they can on their own. If you live in a group with the same individuals, you interact with them multiple times, and if you cheat in one of those interactions, your fellow group members may simply decide to end their cooperative relationship with you, which can be costly to you.
It would be interesting to compare the effect of actual physical punishment vs the loss of cooperative relationships. Perhaps neither one is sufficient and some elements of both are required? This makes me want to study game theory some more, haha.
March 17th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
Most of the terminology is from game theory anyway. I, too, would love to be able to study it.
However, the reason I’m skeptical about reciprocity being the determining factor, is that, if there’s no cheap cost of coercion, there’s no easy way to enforce the ‘reciprocity’ part.
There’s no incentive to help foreigners who might not stick around.
Cooperative group living can indeed be successful to the cooperators, but in almost every other non-human society, it doesn’t work with non-kin altruists.
This is because there is almost always some cheater who realizes that he can be very successful if he takes from the cooperators without giving anything back. Since a cheater is almost physically stronger, the cooperators will likely put up with the cheater rather than pay the cost of coercing the cheater.
If the frequency of cheaters is high, than cooperation is simply not worth it, especially with non-kin.
It is our ability to suppress cheating that makes altruism worth it. I wrote a new blog post on this topic, actually.
March 17th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
I’ll start posting my comments on that post, then.