homosexual thoughts an essential part of human evolution

[MikeW]

Not a closet case -- just a straight guy in touch with and honest about his progesterone. When was the last time you met a straight guy under 30 with access to the internet who didn't eventually get around to sampling some gay porn? This all goes back to the thread I started months ago about the Kinsey scale for labeling human sexuality being an outdated two dimensional concept for the dark ages.

I was joking you knew that, just as you know I agree with you about the Kinsey scale.

Gee, can't say a damn thing around here without sum1 getting all n T lectuawl 'bout it.

[MikeW]

I agree that all men should form and reinforce social relations with other men through sex.

Well, like DUH!

[ChadCoxRox]

Well, like DUH!

Some of my very BEST social and sexual bonding came from these types of preliminary interactions.

[meridannight]

Having some degree of attraction to the opposite sex is a type of adaptive behaviour, and in any adaptive behaviour you will see extremes of the spectrum, hence some people will only be attracted to members of the same sex.

well this one makes sense. i'm not adaptive at all.

[Virge]

I was joking you knew that, just as you know I agree with you about the Kinsey scale.

Gee, can't say a damn thing around here without sum1 getting all n T lectuawl 'bout it.

Sorry Mike... I instinctively jumped to defend Ray. It's just instinctive. I apologize. If we start teasing him about possibly being a closet case he might quit cooking and cleaning the way he does and that would screw up my daily life in a big way! hahahahahhahaha!

[Camfer]

It sure helps me understand some friendships I have with a few straight guys.

Awww Vergie luvs his Sting-ie. Sweeet! He's getting all progesteroney on us.

[Virge]

Hey I admit it. I get progesteroney about a bunch of guys I don't get a chance to swap slobber with. I meant to post that article in the forum with all the gyrines and GIs and see where they'd run with it. I'll do that Friday. I bet that will start some full blown denial.

[MikeW]

....Sorry Mike... I instinctively jumped to defend Ray. It's just instinctive. I apologize. If we start teasing him about possibly being a closet case he might quit cooking and cleaning the way he does and that would screw up my daily life in a big way! hahahahahhahaha!

Sounds like you'll be having a truly great thanksgiving. mile:

I'm sure you understand no harm was meant. True, I was teasing a bit, but more on the ironic end of the spectrum than meanness. The whole "closet case" concept is rife with the very things we need to be unpacking: How is it we come to feel shameful -- and thus secretive -- about our sexual desires, whatever they may be?

[Virge]

Virge>>> I read the article to Ray while he's cooking for tomorrow. He nodded and agreed. He's one straight guy with zero issues being honest about his sexuality... the world needs more like him. He's admitted he thought about having sex with me back in the day.... And he admitted to me some guy he works with that he's thought about it with.

MikeW>> Lordy, what's this forum coming to when our one and only demonstratively straight member turns out to be a big ol' closet case!

Virge>>> Not a closet case -- just a straight guy in touch with and honest about his progesterone. When was the last time you met a straight guy under 30 with access to the internet who didn't eventually get around to sampling some gay porn? This all goes back to the thread I started months ago about the Kinsey scale for labeling human sexuality being an outdated two dimensional concept for the dark ages.

MikeW>>> I was joking you knew that, just as you know I agree with you about the Kinsey scale.
Gee, can't say a damn thing around here without sum1 getting all n T lectuawl 'bout it.

Virge>>> Sorry Mike... I instinctively jumped to defend Ray. It's just instinctive. I apologize. If we start teasing him about possibly being a closet case he might quit cooking and cleaning the way he does and that would screw up my daily life in a big way! hahahahahhahaha!

MikeW>>> ]I'm sure you understand no harm was meant. True, I was teasing a bit, but more on the ironic end of the spectrum than meanness. The whole "closet case" concept is rife with the very things we need to be unpacking: How is it we come to feel shameful -- and thus secretive -- about our sexual desires, whatever they may be?

Get ready for this, Mike. An endocrinologist & his wife came to T-day eat-a-thon at my parents. Nice guy but a geek. Getting my plate right behind him in line he passed up the southern style sweet potato casserole Ray made that's loaded with pecans and walnuts. I told him I didn't like them either. He did a geeky trivia info drop and said all three ---- sweet potatoes, walnuts and pecans are loaded with progesterone. I told him about the article I found. He read it and that led to a long talk about the article and it's implications. He wants to do some small tests before and after groups of male friends get together and do whatever guys do before doing it on a bigger scale. I told him I'd be glad to help.

I'll keep you posted. This could be real interesting, huh?

[meridannight]

okay, here's the information i wanted to post. it's a long read, but should be interesting for anyone wandering about homosexuality's biological/genetic background. the book is called The Missing Myth, and it's written by Gilles Herrada who has worked as a research scientist at Columbia and Harvard universities in the fields of reproductive biology and neuroscience.

i start from where he describes the physiology of pheromones and their role, because that plays into the main point.

how does the olfactory system affect sexual behavior in animals? it happens that in most of the animal kingdom the sense of smell is in fact twofold. smells come in two very different sorts. the first class of chemicals encompasses everything we commonly call odors – the smell of rose, vanilla, wet dog, garbage, gas leak, sweaty armpits, as so forth.

pheromones account for the second class of chemical that animals can detect. pheromones are little known molecules in bodily secretions such as sweat, urine, saliva, and anogenital emissions, whose primary function is to inform individuals about the sex, fertility status (i.e. in heat or not), and social rank (essentially among males) of other individuals in the same species. but while the signal resulting from the detection of common odors is transmitted to the brain's cognitive centers, pheromones activate discrete areas in the limbic system instead, primarily in the hypothalamus. the hypothalamus is not only essential in the formation of innate behaviors, such as hunger, thirst, sex, and maternal behavior, but it also orchestrates key neuroendocrine responses associated with emotions and reproduction.

it was known that eliminating pheromone sensitivity by means of surgery completely abolishes sex drive in virgin animals (typically done in rodents). but genetically engineered impairment of the pheromone recognition pathway in mice produced even more striking results: male mutants no longer showed any particular sexual preference. they attempted to mate with any cage mates regardless of their sex and no longer displayed aggressive behavior toward strange males introduced in the cage by the experimenter (regular males would commonly attack). impairing the pheromone system in mice led to a loss of sexual discrimination.

still evidence of a connection between bodily secretion and sexual preference remains meager, let alone compelling. however, the spectacular development of brain imaging techniques have recently allowed the team of Ivanka Savic to show that the hypothalamus of female volunteers lit up in a PET readout when the volunteers sniffed androgen-like compounds, male pheromone candidates. symmetrically men's hypothalamus responded to estrogen-like substances. Ivanka Savic and Per Lindström later demonstrated that these activation patterns depended upon sexual orientation. pheromonal hypothalamic responses presented a similar pedigree in male-attracted individuals (heterosexual women and homosexual men) and in female-attracted individuals (heterosexual men and homosexual women). yet, which comes first – sexual orientation or hypothalamic activation patterns – still constitutes a mystery.

however i now have a chance to refine my theory of the ''loose switch'': a sexual orientation/preference switch could be generated by altering the neural connections that link pheromonal signals to areas in the brain involved in sexual arousal. this would happen during embryonic life, well before sexual desire actually emerges. genetic information would ensure that, in the majority of cases, regions in the hypothalamus responsible for the adult sexual drive get wired so as to predominantly respond to pheromonal cues from the opposite sex. the same genetic information would also allow that in a significant number of individuals sexual orientation is not exclusive but instead broader or malleable, and in a reduced number (around 2-3%) the polarity would be reverse with individuals responding more strongly, if not exclusively, to pheromonal cues from partners of their own sex. remember that this switch is not merely random, in which case one would expect symmetry between the demographics of heterosexuals and homosexuals. the switch is clearly biased toward heterosexual pairing.

after birth, pheromones would help the brain to associate someone's sex with a myriad of other sensory cues: body odors, the pitch of a voice, the shape of the body, the texture of skin, the body hair, and so on, and later, with sex-specific behaviors and increasingly complex cultural norms, this would progressively turn the originally simple information into an elaborate assessment of one's human social environment.

when at the onset of puberty sexual hormones elicit a sudden burst of sexual desires, the particular conformation of the hypothalamic switch that resulted from early imprinting would be progressively awakened and reinforced with experience. the notorious pan-sexuality of adolescent which is to say their ability to enjoy sex without much consideration for their partner's sex would result from a delayed or slow activation of the sexual orientation/preference switch compared to sexual desire inducing a phase when sexual behavior remains little constrained. eventually a more defined sexuality crystallizes.

it is by no means unreasonable to conceive that mothers could alter the sexual orientation of their sons, not through some hypothetic antibodies suggested elsewhere, but instead by sending particular pheromonal cues in utero. the fetus drinks 400 mL of amniotic fluid a day, and olfactory neurons in the nasal cavity are constantly exposed to the mother's womb chemicals. recent studies have demonstrated that children's preference for certain flavors (carrot, garlic, fruits, etc) is strongly affected by the type of food that their mothers absorbed during pregnancy and breast feeding. children clearly favor substances to which they have been exposed during uterine life and shortly after birth. …not only chemical communication between the mother and the fetus occurs through amniotic fluid, but also that it has a lasting effect on the child, most likely by reinforcing particular neuronal circuits in the fetus's brain.

similarly, prenatal activation of the pheromonal olfactory pathway by maternal pheromones released in the amniotic fluid could influence the patterning of the hypothalamus of the fetus by gently favoring neural connections consistent with a homosexual orientation/preference. by activating a particular set of sensory neurons and not others, the mother's pheromones released in the amniotic fluid would enhance (or alternatively inhibit) some neural pathways versus others.

this model, if proven true, could provide a solid and basic rationale to explain the core reality of human sexual diversity.

long ago when i first heard of the pheromones and their proposed role in human behavior i didn't really buy it much, but this research actually makes a lot of sense.