Oh, they went there first, actually; in fact, the paper I was initially quoting is a group selectionist argument for homosexuality being beneficial. He just hasn't gotten there yet in those few sentences.
No, the thing I have the grouchy irritation about is the assumption that homosexuality is inherently evolutionarily costly and so has to be explained. Humans have a whole lot of sex for a whole lot of reasons, some of which are not under any individual person's exact control (women especially here), and having sex with reproductively incompatible people does not preclude the possibility of at least occasionally having sex with compatible ones. So much of human survival rests on what happens after the sprog gets born that I just... don't see preferences as being all that evolutionarily visible, not when there are so many things potentially hindering human reproduction.
That being said, there are a lot of weird adaptationist arguments for why homosexuality out there, some of which have been more or less debunked and some which are under active study and academic fighting.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2018-12-22 05:51 pm (UTC)No, the thing I have the grouchy irritation about is the assumption that homosexuality is inherently evolutionarily costly and so has to be explained. Humans have a whole lot of sex for a whole lot of reasons, some of which are not under any individual person's exact control (women especially here), and having sex with reproductively incompatible people does not preclude the possibility of at least occasionally having sex with compatible ones. So much of human survival rests on what happens after the sprog gets born that I just... don't see preferences as being all that evolutionarily visible, not when there are so many things potentially hindering human reproduction.
That being said, there are a lot of weird adaptationist arguments for why homosexuality out there, some of which have been more or less debunked and some which are under active study and academic fighting.