The Evolution of Same-Sex Attraction

The Evolution of Same-Sex Attraction PDF Author: Menelaos Apostolou
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030539253
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252

Get Book

Book Description
This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the evolutionary origins of same-sex attraction, evaluating multiple existing evolutionary theories. It combines empirical findings with theoretical arguments in order to review evidence on the prevalence rates of same-sex attraction and determine its genetic and environmental basis. Among the topics addressed: Attitudes towards same-sex attraction across human history Assessing the weak selection pressures hypothesis of attraction Assessing the male choice hypothesis of attraction Evolution of same-sex attraction in men versus women The Evolution of Same-Sex Attraction will be of interest to academics and students of evolutionary and psychological sciences, filling a gap in literature on the origins of specifically same-sex attraction.

The Evolution of Same-Sex Attraction

The Evolution of Same-Sex Attraction PDF Author: Menelaos Apostolou
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030539253
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252

Get Book

Book Description
This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the evolutionary origins of same-sex attraction, evaluating multiple existing evolutionary theories. It combines empirical findings with theoretical arguments in order to review evidence on the prevalence rates of same-sex attraction and determine its genetic and environmental basis. Among the topics addressed: Attitudes towards same-sex attraction across human history Assessing the weak selection pressures hypothesis of attraction Assessing the male choice hypothesis of attraction Evolution of same-sex attraction in men versus women The Evolution of Same-Sex Attraction will be of interest to academics and students of evolutionary and psychological sciences, filling a gap in literature on the origins of specifically same-sex attraction.

The Evolution of Same-Sex Attraction

The Evolution of Same-Sex Attraction PDF Author: Menelaos Apostolou
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9783030539245
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 250

Get Book

Book Description
This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the evolutionary origins of same-sex attraction, evaluating multiple existing evolutionary theories. It combines empirical findings with theoretical arguments in order to review evidence on the prevalence rates of same-sex attraction and determine its genetic and environmental basis. Among the topics addressed: Attitudes towards same-sex attraction across human history Assessing the weak selection pressures hypothesis of attraction Assessing the male choice hypothesis of attraction Evolution of same-sex attraction in men versus women The Evolution of Same-Sex Attraction will be of interest to academics and students of evolutionary and psychological sciences, filling a gap in literature on the origins of specifically same-sex attraction.

Straight Science? Homosexuality, Evolution and Adaptation

Straight Science? Homosexuality, Evolution and Adaptation PDF Author: Jim McKnight
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113472747X
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Get Book

Book Description
A genetic basis for homosexuality has been all but proved, yet Darwinism, the most widely accepted evolutionary theory, emphasises successful reproduction. How do we explain a lifetime preference for non-reproductive sex? Whilst social constructionism offers explanations in terms of social learning and cultural preferences, the body of evidence for a genetic predisposition to homosexuality grows. Social learning argues that homosexual sex is merely misdirected and therefore futile, but far from dying out it continues through the ages and is found in different cultures. What if there was an evolutionary advantage to homosexuality? Straight Science? Homosexuality, Evolution and Adaptation dares to ask such questions.

A Natural History of Homosexuality

A Natural History of Homosexuality PDF Author: Francis Mark Mondimore
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421401789
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 365

Get Book

Book Description
Selected by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title A terrible sin, a gift from the gods, a mental illness, a natural human variation—over the centuries people have defined homosexuality in all of these ways. Since the word homosexual was coined in 1869, many scientists in a variety of fields have sought to understand same-sex intimacy. Drawing on recent insights in biology and genetics, psychiatrist Francis Mondimore set out to explore the complex landscape of sexual orientation. The result is A Natural History of Homosexuality, a generous work that synthesizes research in biology, history, psychology, and politics to explain how homosexuality has been understood and defined from ancient times until the present. Mondimore narrates tales of love and courage as well as discrimination and bigotry in settings as diverse as ancient Greece and Victorian England, early America and fin de siecle Vienna. He also tells fascinating stories about societies which accepted, incorporated, or institutionalized homosexuality into mainstream culture, stories illustrating that same-sex eroticism was often accepted as a normal aspect of human sexuality. In twentieth-century America, researchers first recognized that homosexuality might not be "pathological" when Alfred Kinsey and Evelyn Hooker conducted the first studies of sexuality not biased by preconceived notions of "normal" sexual behavior. After exploring sexual development in the human fetus, Mondimore reviews current biological research into the nature of sexual orientation and examines recent scientific findings on the role of heredity and hormones, as well as Simon LeVay's 1991 brain studies. He then turns to a very important focus: on people and their individual experiences. He explores "what happens between childhood and adulthood in an individual that makes him or her come to identify himself or herself as having a sexual orientation." He also explains our current understanding of bisexuality and the transgender phenomena of transsexualism and transvestism. Finally, Mondimore analyzes the circumstances of such prominent scandals as the anti-homosexual trials of Oscar Wilde and Philip von Eulenberg, and recounts the Nazi persecution of homosexuals during the Holocaust. This far-reaching discussion includes a description of the ex-gay ministries and reparative therapy as well as the Stonewall riots and AIDS, ending with the emergence of gay pride and community.

Conundrum

Conundrum PDF Author: N. J. Peters
Publisher: Author House
ISBN: 1467812048
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 212

Get Book

Book Description
A pro-gay, pro-science look at a vexing issue … evolutionary biology suggests that individual living things are designed to reproduce. So why does homosexuality exist? Wouldn’t a gay gene ensure its own demise? Conundrum pulls together information from biology, anthropology, and recent lesbian and gay history, and suggests that both nature and nurture are involved in the evolution of homosexuality.

Homosexuality and Civilization

Homosexuality and Civilization PDF Author: Louis Crompton
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674030060
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 652

Get Book

Book Description
How have major civilizations of the last two millennia treated people who were attracted to their own sex? In a narrative tour de force, Louis Crompton chronicles the lives and achievements of homosexual men and women alongside a darker history of persecution, as he compares the Christian West with the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome, Arab Spain, imperial China, and pre-Meiji Japan. Ancient Greek culture celebrated same-sex love in history, literature, and art, making high claims for its moral influence. By contrast, Jewish religious leaders in the sixth century B.C.E. branded male homosexuality as a capital offense and, later, blamed it for the destruction of the biblical city of Sodom. When these two traditions collided in Christian Rome during the late empire, the tragic repercussions were felt throughout Europe and the New World. Louis Crompton traces Church-inspired mutilation, torture, and burning of sodomites in sixth-century Byzantium, medieval France, Renaissance Italy, and in Spain under the Inquisition. But Protestant authorities were equally committed to the execution of homosexuals in the Netherlands, Calvin's Geneva, and Georgian England. The root cause was religious superstition, abetted by political ambition and sheer greed. Yet from this cauldron of fears and desires, homoerotic themes surfaced in the art of the Renaissance masters--Donatello, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Sodoma, Cellini, and Caravaggio--often intertwined with Christian motifs. Homosexuality also flourished in the court intrigues of Henry III of France, Queen Christina of Sweden, James I and William III of England, Queen Anne, and Frederick the Great. Anti-homosexual atrocities committed in the West contrast starkly with the more tolerant traditions of pre-modern China and Japan, as revealed in poetry, fiction, and art and in the lives of emperors, shoguns, Buddhist priests, scholars, and actors. In the samurai tradition of Japan, Crompton makes clear, the celebration of same-sex love rivaled that of ancient Greece. Sweeping in scope, elegantly crafted, and lavishly illustrated, Homosexuality and Civilization is a stunning exploration of a rich and terrible past.

Sexual Fluidity

Sexual Fluidity PDF Author: Lisa M. Diamond
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674026247
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Get Book

Book Description
Is love “blind” when it comes to gender? For women, it just might be. This unsettling and original book offers a radical new understanding of the context-dependent nature of female sexuality. Lisa M. Diamond argues that for some women, love and desire are not rigidly heterosexual or homosexual but fluid, changing as women move through the stages of life, various social groups, and, most important, different love relationships.This perspective clashes with traditional views of sexual orientation as a stable and fixed trait. But that view is based on research conducted almost entirely on men. Diamond is the first to study a large group of women over time. She has tracked one hundred women for more than ten years as they have emerged from adolescence into adulthood. She summarizes their experiences and reviews research ranging from the psychology of love to the biology of sex differences. Sexual Fluidity offers moving first-person accounts of women falling in and out of love with men or women at different times in their lives. For some, gender becomes irrelevant: “I fall in love with the person, not the gender,” say some respondents.Sexual Fluidity offers a new understanding of women’s sexuality—and of the central importance of love.

The Evolution of Human Pair-Bonding, Friendship, and Sexual Attraction

The Evolution of Human Pair-Bonding, Friendship, and Sexual Attraction PDF Author: Michael R. Kauth
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000226522
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Get Book

Book Description
The Evolution of Human Pair-Bonding, Friendship, and Sexual Attraction presents an evolutionary history of romantic love, male-female pair-bonding, same-sex friendship, and sexual attraction, drawing on sexuality research, gay and lesbian studies, history, literature, anthropology, and evolutionary science. Employing evolutionary theory as a framework, close same-sex friendship is examined as an adaptive trait that has harnessed love, affection, and sexual pleasure to navigate same-sex environments for both men and women, ultimately benefiting their reproductive success and promoting the inheritance of traits for friendship. Chapters consider the desire to form close same-sex friendships and ask if this is embedded in our biology, concluding that most humans have the capacity to form loving, meaningful, and sexual relationships with men and women. This book takes on a unique interdisciplinary approach and is essential reading for those studying and working in sexuality research, anthropology, sociology, evolutionary psychology, and gay and lesbian studies. It will also be of interest to marriage and family therapists as well as sex therapists.

The Evolution of Human Sexuality

The Evolution of Human Sexuality PDF Author: Donald Symons
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199878471
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Get Book

Book Description
Anthropology, Sexual Studies, Psychology, Sociology, Gender and Cultural Studies

Handbook of the Evolution of Human Sexuality

Handbook of the Evolution of Human Sexuality PDF Author: Michael R. Kauth
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136455191
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 408

Get Book

Book Description
Expand your knowledge—with theories and concepts that may challenge your assumptions about sexual attraction Human sexuality can be better understood by knowing how sexual psychologies may have evolved throughout the ages. Handbook of the Evolution of Human Sexuality presents a detailed examination of human sexuality, the assumptions about concepts and terms pertaining to sexuality, and the latest theories on the evolution of human sexual attraction. Leading experts explore various aspects of evolutionary theory, with a focus on Evolutionary Psychology (EP). Discussions include mate preferences, mating behavior, mate signaling, pheromones, and same-sex attraction. This comprehensive source also presents three groundbreaking theories of the evolution of same-sex attraction. Handbook of the Evolution of Human Sexuality takes current assumptions about human sexuality, explains each in turn, and then offers fresh perspectives on conventional concepts of sexual orientation. This extensive resource provides ample evidence to argue that researchers should investigate sexual relationships based on a person’s characteristics such as personal traits, complementary roles/status, sexual acts, or situational context rather than simply the sex of the partner. The book provides a discussion of evolutionary theory, evolution of human sexual culture, evolution of sexual pleasure, and detailed analysis of assumptions about sexual orientation. The text is carefully referenced. Some of the topics explored by Handbook of the Evolution of Human Sexuality include: links to non-human primate sexual behaviors and the emergence of human (sexual) nature EP research on consensual adult human sexual behaviors studies of evolved male and female mating strategies, mate preferences, and sexual psychologies a brief history of the theory of evolution ancient culture, archeology, and an overview of premodern human sexuality evolutionary history of sexual pleasure human mating strategies development of mate preferences sexual signals, such as distinctive physical features, material wealth, etc. theories of the evolution of same-sex sexual attraction and behavior Primatologist Paul Vasey’s observations of female Japanese macaques and their female-female sexual encounters—with an examination of human male-male behavior evolutionary history of female-female affectional bonding with a new theory on the behavior evolutionary history of male-male sexual behavior—with intriguing thoughts on why it happened evolutionary history of pheromones as chemical messengers much more Handbook of the Evolution of Human Sexuality is an important, thought-provoking resource perfect for evolutionary psychologists, sexologists, educators, researchers, scholars, and graduate students.