” That “gay” comes from a complex system that is nonetheless real and natural means that they’re never going to find one factor to attack that would eliminate homosexuality, which is what you know the fundie nuts would try to do if there was a singular cause for something that is not a problem to sane and decent people.”

I don’t know.  Even though what Darwin did was basically explain how the world works and if wasn’t him there would have been someone else later on doesn’t stop them from treating Darwin as basically an agent of Satan with mystical powers.  My guess, given their proclivities, is to blame women for the hormone imbalance in the womb.  Especially if they can find any sort of way to turn that into being about the women working outside the home.

I read Darleen’s article looking for anything that might even remotely resemble evisceration and found nothing. She didn’t even seem to really understand the point of Amanda’s article, which would make arguing the opposite perspective difficult. Also, when she says “Vagina Warriors”, I bet she totally means “vulva”. She just seems like the type.

They only think they “eviscerated” something because they are too shallow and superficial about everything they pretend to discuss to see that a fingernail scrape is only a flesh wound.

Gene for gay? Maybe so.

This may only be anecdoatal evidence, but my sister pretty clearly declared herself homosexual at four years old—over 50 years ago, when I can promise you that there were damn few cultural constructs encouraging, or even admitting, that such a sexual “choice” existed.

Even then, sis was what was then called a “tomboy”: athletic, would hand off her Christmas dolls to me in exchange for my brother’s trucks, and when time for Kindergarten came, it took us a week to fight her into the dress required of all little school girls a half century ago.

But one day sis defiantly declared her inner reality to me, “When I grown up, I’m going to be a boy.” As the older sister by four years, I tried to inform her about the way the world, and biology would limit her “choices,” “No, when you grow up, you’re going to be a woman.”

At which point, sis picked a fight with me, fists and all, which I won only by dint of body weight and size.

In the end, sis won her point, coming out in the early ‘70s when that sexual “choice” was finally culturally available. But it was obvious that in the 1950s, she’d used a child’s limited vocabulary and imagery to reveal who she was, and is.

IIRC, the term “biological clock” initially referred to the fact that women’s fertility ENDS at a certain point. As in, “your Biological clock is ticking, young lady!”.

Over time, I concur that it has come to (sloppily) refer (sometimes) to the trope that one starts to feel an “urge” to have a baby (a la Liz Lemon). But that “urge” is practically synonymous with “PANIC” ! as in, “the window is CLOSING!  AHHHHH!!! If I ever want to have children I need to do it in the next three years and I don’t even have a boyfriend!!!”

If women were free to actually delay childbearing until they FEEL like having a child, I think many would wait until the forties or fifties (You know, in Star Trek World) But although there are women who have borne children at these advanced ages, fetility starts to decline after thirty, and in many cases is totally gone by forty (without extremely expensive medical intervention that is).

And oh how those wingnut men lurve to scold us about our “sell-by” dates !!

And oddly enough, while in a longterm Lesbian relationship, in her early forties sis gave birth to a son conceived through artificial insemination—while I, nominally a heterosexual, have chosen not to have children.

Biological clock? Who had it, who didn’t—but although the birth control pill may have been available 20 years earlier, I don’t rememeber the term “biological clock” being used until the 1980s.

“I blame evolutionary psychology for the growing folk belief that something isn’t real unless it’s genetic. “

THANK YOU! I really really hate this idea so much. I, and most people, are a hell of a lot more than our genes.

I don’t rememeber the term “biological clock” being used until the 1980s.
judybrowni on 02/08 at 10:03 AM

I said this on the prior thread on the subject—I think the term came into common use as part of the whole “OMG career women are ruining their lives! media frenzy Susan Faludi documented in Backlash. I certainly remember the weekly newsmagazines coming out with synchronized headlines about the (bogus) study that said that women who remained unmarried into their thirties allegedly faced precipitously dropping chances of ever getting married.

This was a time in my life when I was becoming sensitive to the media’s tendency to move in swarms to feeding frenzies on the “fear of the week.” But darn if a lot of those fears didn’t center on women getting out of their traditional place one way or another, and lots of other types of fear had some bearing on that as well.

I’d say that first of all, this kind of thing is always going on, more or less—though there is plenty of evidence too that as people like Faludi and Betty Friedan document, antifeminist backlash comes in waves. Second, people conforming to gender roles is a pretty important pillar of the system and challenges to that aspect of the system have ramifications throughout.

Third and most important, society as we know it is based very fundamentally on fear, and that alone is sufficient reason to want to change it.

Thanks for the story, judy.  I do think one thing that confuses people is that young children know that they’re gay.  But that, to my mind, could easily be evidence that we learn more and faster than people admit.

There’s a very real chance that they may find that male homosexuality has a genetic component but female homosexuality doesn’t.  I don’t think that should matter—-you are who you are and rights are rights, period—-but I fear that it will matter, and lesbians will face more pressure than gay men to go against who they fundamentally are.

I don’t know Amanda; I don’t think that there is a ‘biological clock’ as the wingers call it, but if one accepts the biological fact that all organisms have two primary goals: survival and reproduction then would it not logically follow that on some cellular level we all have a ‘drive’ that impels us to reproduce? Granted, nature has made sex pleasurable to insure that we will want to reproduce but wouldn’t the desire and/or choice not to have offspring put us up against one of the primeval forces in nature? Not being a biological scientist, I do not know if other species use contraception. If they do, I wonder how that is equated with the biological need to reproduce. The use of contraception among humans could be, I suspect, both a cultural and rational negation of the biological urge to reproduce. But it doesn’t negate the need.

The clock imagery, I agree, is ludicrous.

“Gay” is a social construct, but so is “straight”. Both are terms invented in the the 19th century by the medical system to control human sexuality for the state, etc.. Back in Ancient Rome, people weren’t “gay” or “straight”, they had another concept of their sexuality altogether. (This is pretty much a basic and simplified version of some Foucault ideas) This of course doesn’t mean that there is nesc. anything wrong with identifying within this cultural construct now or that we are all inherently bisexual (I identify as 100% homo) but I think it does mean that we really have no way of separating our cultural programming from “genetic truth”. Are women and men really different or are those differences almost entirely constructs of the patriarchy? The biological clock does appear to a very obvious tool of the patriarchy to oppress women.

No one with any sense would seriously suggest that when men wish to use their bits they are wanting to reproduce, every time, all the time.

When you want to get off, you want to get off.

So why is it that having a vagina and uterus magically changes this to an intentional reproductive act that might be thwarted by BC?

Why is history filled with examples of women either trying to avoid pregnancy or get rid of pregnancy?

Why is it that (too many) people consider seeking to avoid pregnancy, but still have sex, a culturally-driven violation of nature’s “natural” instincts, but getting societal pressure to have a child (or 3 or 8) is an expression of a perfectly natural, genetically-programmed, biological instinct to reproduce?...

“I blame evolutionary psychology for the growing folk belief that something isn’t real unless it’s genetic.”

Definitely. I think it’s also an outgrowth of all the old “scientific” methods of determining why women and blacks weren’t human enough to be treated as equals that lost more and more ground to actual biology and sociology research in the 60s and 70s pointing out that it just wasn’t the case. I suspect that that which we call evo psych is both the last retreat position of those old racist, sexist shills as well as an attempted means to sabotage all of the cultural examination that was revealing that, biologically speaking, there weren’t meaningful differences between most existing groups.

On orientation and biology. It’s at least partially genetic. This is fairly well documented by this point. No one has found the specific gene or hormone factors that specifically “cause” it in publicly digestible soundbites leading to easy headlines like “Gay Gene Found?”, but the evidence is pretty solid. Cross-culturally, and cross-species, the incidence has been non-negligible and naturally occurring. As such, hardly strictly cultural. Penguins don’t crave The Office or have “biological clocks” and the cross-species thing prevents the evo psych problem that comes from witnessing one specific animal behavior in a limited group and asserting its de facto naturalness.

Of course, as you say, it’s besides the point. It is always interesting though the two-sided traps the status-quo supporters set up. We can’t have equal sexual reactions and equality between races or sexes, because “of course, it’s biological destiny, we have no choice, must enforce it rigidly” and yet when it becomes obvious that something is pretty much immutable like one’s specific race, orientation, or sexual appetites they trot out the “collapse of society if we give into base natures” crap. All while ignoring things like religion that are obviously cultural, constantly revised, and yet of course the stalwart reference point for proper human behavior and yet are also somehow immune to the “grilling” given all the other far less immutable groups.

It’s almost like all of this is merely the desperate attempt of those who used to benefit from social inequities to delay the inevitable change long enough to finalize their profit off them. But that would, of course, be crazy talk…

“There’s a very real chance that they may find that male homosexuality has a genetic component but female homosexuality doesn’t. “

Huh? Based on what? If there’s a gay gene, if our sexuality is determined by biology, why the hell wouldn’t that apply to lesbians as well?

My sister knew she was a lesbian at 4, before the word was used in everyday common culture (and certainly never used within the hearing of a young child), forty years and more before “Will and Grace” or other pop culture references to homosexuality. In any case, before she could read, even.

As it turns out, my brother is gay, too. His prediliction, less obvious except for the cliches of not giving a damn about sports, and being good at art (which, at the time, disenheartened my father.)

But my brother says he knew at an early age, too, which way the wind blew for him. So why the hell would he have the gay gene, and NOT my sister?

Oh, also, the homosexuality research shows that it’s both sexes, male homosexuality only seems more privileged and “proved” because we as a culture simply selectively favor the most privileged of any minority. Thus the history of gay gets focused on male and white and gay rather than female and white and gay and much much less female, brown, and gay. There is also the fact that male homosexual relationships are so much visually easier to spot especially when they mount. That and the incidences of rape in the animal kingdom make “pure” lesbianism a much harder thing to observe. But amphibians, various mammals, dolphins, etc… have had non-negligible bisexual and lesbian means of interacting and occurrences and strict lesbians have had similar incidences leading to famous myths including that of the amazons and some of the Japanese ghosts. As well as the cultural documentation of lesbian and bisexuals even in hostile or deliberately ignorant cultures.

For a real challenge, I’m currently saluting the incredible biologists who have begun to document animal cases of asexuality in the wild (mostly in sheep research) and transsexuality in the wild (a couple of cases including a hen that was convinced it was a rooster and displayed the same rooster traits such as crowing of a morning and protecting the other hens from other predators and rival roosters). Now there’s some intriguing new ground confirming the old ground on sexuality while also documenting things not expected to have been easily found or even at all.

Certainly the case is much stronger overall that the spectrum of sexualities would have biological backing rather than things like the biological clock which based around the beginning of supposed “onset” of the issue, took less than a single generation to magically erupt fully formed and completely pervasive in our society. That would almost be strong evidence for a guiding hand in evolution. Or it could be bullshit.

Yeah, another point on the weird new push to say that male sexuality is rigid, female is fluid that seems to be driving the whole male homosexuality genetic, female homosexuality cultural. It’s possible it’s true, but it’s highly improbable. All the sexualities seem to be partially genetic and as far as the spectrum is concerned the Kinsey scale is currently the best tabulation for humans. There’s little evidence that there’s somehow only 0s and 6s in males while women are 1-5 or whatever is being argued, but the arguments themselves echo the 1990s arguments that “ok, ok, women and men are equally smart on average…but, wait, maybe it’s cause men are super-geniuses or idiots and women are all closer to average thus men have more extremes and women are more fluid and clumped in the middle”. This turned out to be a pathetic excuse for why women were locked out of the best jobs and teaching positions despite the statistical similarities in ability.

Similarly, the current weird sex-split in sexualities, seems to be a weird attempt to compensate for how it is culturally more fraught to be a bisexual of the Kinsey 1-5 variety as a man than as a woman due to Girls Gone Wild style sexism. Also, I suspect there may be a weird sexist thing going on where there is some push to regard homosexual men as the real gays and try and disappear lesbianism as somehow being more “straight or bi”. I imagine this would serve both gay men in power as well as opponents who want their “straight” male followers to think of nasty gay sex while allowing the fantasy of the “lesbian” threeway with themselves. Again, even the culturally fraught landscape of Kinsey’s studies pointed out a fairly even spread of sexual desire if not self-labeling. What’s in the bi camp is probably way more extensive than we admit and our struggles to fully define our own sexualities for want of self-examination is the origin of the whole oddly popular “fluid” myth to begin with.

Seriously, why is the women’s sexuality is fluid myth so suddenly popular? I’ve been seeing it everywhere in the alternative media lately without any critical examination? How did something so counterintuitive and unsupported suddenly become sexual gospel? Did I miss a Savage Love where he said something stupid or something?

@AdamN: That’s definitely a very good point you make about gay and straight being social constructs, not these well defined traits that are essentially unchangeable. It’s very fascinating, for instance, to read about cases like the Travestis and the gender/sexual identity system they set up. In that culture, whether you’re gay depends on which position you take during the sex act, and travestis themselves occupy a space between transexual and transvestite -they are male-born and identify as feminine, but not female, they modify their body but do not opt for genital surgery. In western culture, there’s no real space for that, so it’s hard to say what these individuals really are, or how they’d identify in a different society.

This is also why it is a minor pet peeve of mine when people say “I am straight” or “i am gay” (note: this is only when I’m in an especially pedantic mood). It’s really more accurate to say “I identify as straight” or “I identify as gay” because that allows both for the fact that sexuality can be changeable for some people and that your ability to identify as straight or gay is a result of a culture which created and defined those terms for you.

In addition, I want to comment on the genetic/environment thing. I absolutely hate this debate, because I feel that it’s such a false dichotomy that doesn’t tend to get at the real issues and real science, and it gives people a false sense of how biology works. This debate suggests that you walk around with some traits absolutely fixed from birth, and others you picked up entirely from the environment. The real answer to a lot of these questions is that you may or may not be born with a predisposition toward one end of the spectrum, but lifestyle and environment affect whether that trait is ever expressed, and to what degree (i.e., higher genetic likelihood of heart disease which you can control somewhat by diet, or a pheylketonuric who can avoid brain damage by not ingesting phenylalanine.) In other cases, like Huntington’s disease, your fait is pretty much sealed(right now anyway, with current medical science). In most other cases, we just don’t know, and there are lots of complicated biological pathways that affect what kind of person we are. So it doesn’t really make sense to trot out the nature/nurture thing all the time, it’s not a cut and dry thing. Also, there’s so much we don’t know about relative contributions of genes or environment that asking someone what they think the percentage is of each doesn’t give you any real information.

Seriously, why is the women’s sexuality is fluid myth so suddenly popular?

‘Cause two women making out is “hawt”. You seriously didn’t think that a woman’s sexuality was for her enjoyment, did you? It’s all about what the boys want.

Best I can figure, anyway.

@covert vector

I disagree about most of that, but yeah, the deliberate ignorance about biology is definitely fueling the debate (and gee whillikers, how did biology education in this country become so toothless and cursory?). People have the weird GATTACA idea that your fate is somehow determined by genes and percentages of onset. Most if not all of what makes us work and function is determined less by “what” genes are active and more by “how much”. The full complement is what causes aging degradation, pathway failure, and “chemical imbalances” (hint imbalance doesn’t mean deprived). It would be much better for everyone if we didn’t need specifically simple definitions of genetic or not to understand something.

Especially in how it affects your life. There can be a Kinsey 1 or even 0 who exhibits every single cultural signifier of what gay looks like or likes to live fully immersed in gay culture just as someone can be Kinsey 5 or 6 and deeply in the closet *cough* Ted Haggard *cough*. It says nothing about “fluidity” that people seem to “change” orientation quickly and unexpectedly. It says everything about our cultural framework for the larger likely human height range of human sexualities as well as the cultural additions that serve to make it more complex.

Our sexuality can’t define whether we like bondage or vanilla, acting out on homo or repressing it, calling it even if you’re closer to one “sexuality” or the other or calling a spade a spade, or even if you yourself will be fully aware of it, and it has zero, nada to say on the differences between love and sexual attraction (and yes, they are separate, I have irrefutable proof in the fact of my existence) which are often culturally inflated, nor anything about the construction of femininity/masculinity which are fully cultural, nor about the grouping of stereotyped “queer” behaviors or interests that end up culturally defining the queer community and which people may use as a brain shortcut from actual full examination and especially most of all:

It does nothing about the messed up repression of our culture that prevents any honest and open communication about actual sexualities thus letting myth define canon rather than actual experiences. I imagine the “fluidity” is thanks to hard effort by activists to loosen up the culture enough to allow more flexibility beyond the weird 100% straight, 100% gay, 50/50 bi categories that had sprung up and pointing to the more natural spread that became more and more visible the fewer social pressures there were to conform or bond together for literal survival. Its the same reason the queer subculture is no longer dominated by strict butch/femme relationships and how they’re frankly becoming anachronistic. Cultural relaxation cultivates human honesty and freedom. This is what seems fluid and culture driven in the same fallacious way there were somehow no gays or gay organizations before the 19th century (there were rather a lot actually).

Anyways, short answer, it’s our lexicon that’s breeding the interpretation. Even though, yes, it wouldn’t matter even if it weren’t partially genetic or rigid. No one disputes cultural rights like religion, but suddenly gays have to be 100% and unchangeable in order to just have to fight to the death for basic rights. No wonder there’s seeming amounts of “fluidity”. Who could separate out honesty under that much social pressure towards one or the other?

Some of the female sexual fluidity stuff comes from the research on female arousal that shows that females are supposedly aroused by a greater range of material than males. 

As for the two basic human drives—it seems to me that driving a wedge between cultural and biological when it comes to any human behavior is impossible.  Both survival and reproduction are filtered through cultural and social circumstance so separating out raw biological drives is impossible.  And, of course, the variation among individuals is pretty broad.  While a female of another species in heat may have a biological drive to reproduce it is unclear to me that there is any similar sort of biological drive in human women that is not filtered, managed, whatever by cultural forces

Anyway, it is funny to me how the right-wingers who decry the teaching of evolution nonetheless fall back on some sort of evolutionary argument about why men and women have to do certain things.  Indeed, a lot of fundie literature is just EvoPsyFi with a little God thrown in.

...if one accepts the biological fact that all organisms have two primary goals: survival and reproduction then would it not logically follow that on some cellular level we all have a ‘drive’ that impels us to reproduce? ...
caliban on 02/08 at 10:38 AM

Nope. At best, that reasoning suggests that if there is a plausible mechanism to instill such a drive, it would be favored. Perhaps. If it didn’t give rise, as a side effect, to detrimental behaviors.

For instance, such a sophisticated species as our own doesn’t survive infancy without a lot of care from adults (and older children) after being born, so if a monomanical urge to push out baby after baby led some hypothetical subpopulation of our (potential) ancestors to neglect the care and raising of the already-born, then their neighbors who had a weaker version of that compulsion (or lacked it altogether) would actually be at an advantage, particularly if they had some other drive (like a strong urge to heterosexual sex acts among a sufficient number of their population, say) that resulted in a satisfactory number of pregnancies leading to live births.

The first thing to remember is, the Darwinian paradigm assumes nature is mindless—there is no secret, hidden mystical track laid down, no Prime Directive. There are just the phenomena that arise from the fact that self-replication can occur.

Evolution doesn’t “optimize,” it works on a “satisficing” principle. A population acts according to “drives” instilled by prior evolution, but they increase or diminish in response to a complex and ever-changing environmental situation. In order to make an abstract concept like “it is imperative to produce offspring” concrete, either simple mechanisms that have that effect in one environment are developed—but then those same mechanisms might be a liability in another context, so it is not clear at all that some one-size-fits-all “drive”, particularly on a “cellular” level, whatever that implies for multicellular organisms, can exist as some definable mechanism.

Or, it would require a rather high degree of intelligence, that could evaluate the existing environment and determine which behaviors should be followed to carry out an abstract command. Which brings us to:

Second, plants and even quite sophisticated animals are also “mindless” from the point of view of such an abstract drive. We can visualize this general imperative, and presume it somehow applies to all lifeforms, but to suppose it exists in nature is to suppose that some kind of abstracting intelligence comparable to ours has been lurking around the Earth at any rate for a billion years or so.

Which is why Amanda titled this post, “They’re all Creationists.” There are other versions of this idea floating around—one can be a Gaianist, and suppose that the interacting life forms have somehow formed a global information processor that aids the biosphere in seeking life-maximizing equilibrium. But that, or for that matter the old Christian idea of God, actually removes the whole point of supposing that there is some inbuilt reproductive drive—neither God nor Gaia would need that when these entities could simply influence life-forms to raise or lower their reproduction by remote control , as it were.

In order to have a generic drive to reproduce, one needs to propose a generic mechanism then. As Amanda points out, mammals have this sex drive thing, that is probably quite sufficient; a sufficient mechanism relieves the evolutionary pressure and thus forestalls the development of some alternative mechanism. In many species much simpler than ours—fruit flies, for instance—reproduction is apparently more mechanical and hard-wired, and insofar as we can meaningfully speculate on whether sex is “fun” for a fruit-fly, I gather the data suggests the answer is “no.” They just robotically do certain things when the situation—their own maturation, plus environmental cues—triggers them.

(more)

(cont’d)
Metaphorically speaking, I suppose you can lump all these types of behavior and the drives apparently behind them as a generic “drive to reproduce,” but I gather Amanda’s point is that we already know how that works specifically for us—men and women want to get laid, and for most women and men this means running the risk of pregnancy if they want to fully explore the pleasurable impulses their bodies cry out for. Until that is we were so clever as to develop condoms, hormonal BC, safe abortions, etc. There just hasn’t been time to evolve an alternate mechanism that would guarantee that women seek pregnancy regardless of their sex drive being satisfied without it. Obviously, even if you suppose our most primitive ancestors had some kind of BC strategy, we have nevertheless reproduced quite sufficiently without a need for some other drive.

As I’ve said in other iterations of this subject, once you throw human intelligence into the mix it becomes a whole new ballgame. Now we have the ability to link our sexual behavior with the outcome of pregnancy and childbirth, and I think it is quite possible that the strong desire some women here report to have a child might be a simple logical outcome of the observation that children can be good to have around, coupled with said individual woman’s knowledge that she can after all have one or more of these herself. Since this awareness would come to quite a little girl, and since it does after all resonate with a whole lot of clearly cultural imperatives, it might well feel like a biological “drive.” And proving that it is or isn’t is really beside the point to me in any individual case—I totally support any woman’s choices for herself in these matters, and it’s none of my business, unless she chooses to share, why she decides as she does.

Now if in fact there is some extra “urge to reproduce” that operates in some of us and not others, and it is linked directly to genetics, than that might become an ominous matter in the future, if in fact the objective crowding of our world leads all people who lack this drive to forgo having children and future humanity is increasingly descended solely from those who have the drive. This is one reason why I would rather that the situation is pretty much as Amanda suggests, that all apparent drives to have children are actually the outcome of some combination of social manipulation and individual free choice; I’d rather it was not the case that our species is doomed to expand like yeast under this mindless drive until we destroy whatever environments we can access.

But give me hard evidence of such a drive and I will accept it exists—then presumably we can analyze its mechanism, and offer freedom from it as a compulsion. Presumably we can operate as a civilization limiting the play such a drive has to drive us to extinction.

But for now I’m much happier supposing we don’t really face such stark necessities as that.

Convert Vector,
Personally I don’t have anything against people saying “I’m gay” or “I’m straight” in any kind of mood. (I say “I’m gay” all the time) On a day to day basis, saying “I’m gay” is still a positive political social stance in our current social system. One can see sexuality as a construct but still adopt into aspects of that construct in a positive way. Plus I really don’t want to feed into the “sexuality is fluid” idea of sexuality since it reinforces certain anti-gay agendas. I’m not secretly bisexual and I don’t think that I have the potential to be. That’s a reality for me if not for other people.
“Also, I suspect there may be a weird sexist thing going on where there is some push to regard homosexual men as the real gays and try and disappear lesbianism as somehow being more “straight or bi”. I imagine this would serve both gay men in power”
I don’t about this Cerberus. Gay men are victims of the patriarchy too because they break gender codes in ways heterosexual men find just as threatening, if not more, then lesbians. (Like the male gaze turned back on itself, etc..)
However I do think the myth of fluid female sexuality has colored many sexist gay men’s opinions into questioning the authanticty of lesbian sexuality.

Even then, sis was what was then called a “tomboy”
...
But one day sis defiantly declared her inner reality to me, “When I grown up, I’m going to be a boy.”

I’m sure someone has already responded to this, but I’m just going to throw this out there just in case -

Not all lesbians are butch.  Not all lesbians were tomboys as children.  Expressing a desire to do things commonly associated with boys has basically nothing at all to do with which gender you will want to have sex with when you are older.  It also has little or nothing to do with the kind of person you’ll be as an adult, outside of sexual orientation issues. 

I was an absolute priss as a child.  I wore dresses every day.  I desperately wished for long hair.  I had barbies and my little ponies and sparkly princess everything practically coming out of my ears.  I had a love bordering on obsessive fetish for all things ballerina.  I had a pink bike with a banana seat and pastel streamers.  I was a frackin’ GIRLY GIRL.

And then I went through puberty.  And became pretty much androgynous.  And bisexual.  And nope, I don’t consider myself “femme”, either. 

If I hadn’t already rambled on for several paragraphs, I would also relate to you the large number of women I know who were tomboys who frequently expressed the desire to grow up into men, but who are now 100% heterosexual, and stereotypically gendered female down to the romcoms and sissy drinks.  I suppose some tomboys grow up to be lesbians, but in my experience it’s a total crapshoot.  Childhood awareness of gender has basically nothing to do with adult sexual orientation.

then would it not logically follow that on some cellular level we all have a ‘drive’ that impels us to reproduce?

Yep.  It’s called “sex”.  Look it up. 

No, in reality there’s a solid, biological reason that the sex urge is there and the procreation urge is not (outside of the culturally cultivated one)—-procreation is HARD.  It sucks resources.  The urge to survive is actually pitted against the desire to procreate, because sharing resources with a child means less for yourself.  That’s why nature uses sexual desire to lure us into it. 

Also, and I think people forget this, human beings are the only creatures that know that sex makes babies.  And even then, the realization is a recent one compared to the great expanse of our evolutionary history.  For most animals, humans included until a few thousand years ago, you have sex and babies come, and the two aren’t necessarily related.  How would the specific biological genetic urge to procreate even evolve in that kind of environment?  You can’t have an urge to do something that you don’t even know how to go about doing. The urge is sexual release.  Everything that follows after that is the result of it.

It’s amazing how the invention of contraception has remade our understanding of procreation so vividly that people have trouble comprehending how it must have been throughout all of history to have sex and procreation completely linked.

Huh? Based on what? If there’s a gay gene, if our sexuality is determined by biology, why the hell wouldn’t that apply to lesbians as well?

Don’t get mad at me.  That’s what the research I’ve read is showing.  Some genes are in fact expressed in one gender and not the other, such as male pattern baldness.

That male homosexuality is 25% genetic and female homosexuality is 0% genetic—-if true—-should only unnerve people who don’t really, in their heart of hearts, believe fully and 100% in the right of people to be themselves and be free.  Who cares what causes sexual orientation?!  I don’t.  Genetics, environment, choice—-you have the 100% right to be who you are, regardless of the cause.

Our sexuality can’t define whether we like bondage or vanilla, acting out on homo or repressing it, calling it even if you’re closer to one “sexuality” or the other or calling a spade a spade, or even if you yourself will be fully aware of it, and it has zero, nada to say on the differences between love and sexual attraction (and yes, they are separate, I have irrefutable proof in the fact of my existence) which are often culturally inflated, nor anything about the construction of femininity/masculinity which are fully cultural, nor about the grouping of stereotyped “queer” behaviors or interests that end up culturally defining the queer community and which people may use as a brain shortcut from actual full examination and especially most of all:

It does nothing about the messed up repression of our culture that prevents any honest and open communication about actual sexualities thus letting myth define canon rather than actual experiences.

Yes.  This.

You can’t have an urge to do something that you don’t even know how to go about doing.

Not to mention, of course, that you can have all the sex you want, but if you don’t get pregnant, you don’t get pregnant.  It’s not something you can actually control.  There is no biological urge, for example, to start having nothing but heterosexual PIV missionary (or whatever position is strategically best for conception) sex.  There is no biological urge to throw your pills away, or pierce holes in all the condoms. 

You can, via knowledge, decide to do these things because you have decided you would like to have a child, and you know what sorts of sex acts are most likely to result in that.

I was surprised at the number of Pandagonians trumpeting the “It’s Genetic! It’s Biological!” line.

We should not diminish the severity and depth of our choices by declaring that we had no choice in the matter. The choice, whether it’s how many children we have or who we decide to love, may have a basis of natural inclination to it, but we still have a very real higher brain that resolves a great number of the details for us.

When I married my husband, I didn’t stand at the altar and declare that I was giving in to a system of genes and hormones and he just happened to be around when it happened. It was a declaration of the beauty of our union, of our choice, and the conscientious understanding that we decided we were right for each other. To say that people are born gay, that they can’t help being gay is a very heteronormative way to put things—gay becomes a disability—after all, if they could help it, wouldn’t everyone choose not to be gay?  I can’t imagine some of my gay friends in any other capacity but with the person who is the love of their life. It wasn’t settling as a result of some sort of damaged genetic, it was working within a framework and coming consciously and deliberately to a beautiful union, and the decision and the choice is every bit as real and valid as my own.

This choice, this determination of discovering your life partner, or making decisions about how you want your life to be, is an amazing thing and should be celebrated. All of these evo psych dipshits who want to talk about the pheromones of sports cars and the waist-hip-ratio completely miss the countless stories of people who find one another despite every biological and evolutionary rule that says they should die alone.

opoponax, no, being a tomboy doesn’t mean you’re gay automatically. but the point of the story was that judy’s sister IS gay, and says she knew so at an early age. that’s the story. i don’t see her trying to suggest all tomboys are gay…just that her sister turned out to be.

Judy seemed to be saying that her sister “came out” at an early age by being a tomboy.  Which, uhhh, no. 

I’m glad Judy’s sister is able to be herself, and I’m glad Judy is supportive of that, but the “girl who likes to get dirty = future lesbian” meme annoys the shit out of me.  Especially when it’s framed as “I always knew so-and-so was a lesbian because she liked to climb trees/play in the mud/wear grubby sneakers/get in fights as a kid”.  That’s as reductive as deciding that a man must be gay because he knows the difference between teal and chartreuse.

Oh, and especially if such stereotypes are used as “evidence” that homosexuality is genetic. 

I remember having crushes on girls at the age of 6.  Still doesn’t make homosexuality genetic.

But teal and chartreuse are way different…

It’s a definition war. Sticks and stones, meet the Overton window.

Re KMTBERRY:

IIRC, the term “biological clock” initially referred to the fact that women’s fertility ENDS at a certain point. As in, “your Biological clock is ticking, young lady!”.

Over time, I concur that it has come to (sloppily) refer (sometimes) to the trope that one starts to feel an “urge” to have a baby (a la Liz Lemon). But that “urge” is practically synonymous with “PANIC” ! as in, “the window is CLOSING!  AHHHHH!!! If I ever want to have children I need to do it in the next three years and I don’t even have a boyfriend!!!”

Trust Douglas Harper:

Biological clock first recorded 1955.

The ability for a person to understand the time limit placed upon their fertility, and their own lifespan, is what was originally meant by biological clock. It’s a definition of the comprehension of mortality based on its only known method of circumvention: reproduction.  While technically a social construct, this awareness has been apparent since at least the Neolithic (one artifact from the era is a lunar calendar in the shape of a uterus), and probably since mankind achieved sentience.

In this regard the “biological clock” is entirely “real”.

Amanda is correct that the term has come to be used as a bludgeon to women—but as usual, such use merely defines the bludgeoner, who turns any nearby word-construct into a blunt instrument. Cf. politically correct and how much damage was done with that.

Also note that the need for gay awareness underscores this:  Jeremy Bentham, utilitarian progressive radical known for his precision in adopting and creating societal definitions, believed paederast to be a fair and accurate term to apply all homosexuals in the early 1800s. The term lesbian did not apply to female homosexuality until the late Victorian era.

How much therefore did the word lesbian help create a social construct where an ancient behavior could be accepted as a norm instead of a state of depraved insanity?

Take back the “biological clock”. It’s happened to words before.

Amanda, I love your blog, but the research simply isn’t showing that sexual dimorphism except through socially influenced methods such as the poorly laid out “horniness” studies that seem to more point out problems in culture (such as public notions of what is sex) and have vague and sometimes problematic study design. It is not helped by media pushing “studies” and interpreting studies to support cultural assumptions and assuage white dude culture. It is very much in keeping with culture that women are all bi and men are set in sexuality because this fits cultural stereotypes in porn about men and women. The actual studies and field of evidence, whether sociological, historical, or biological (and yes, I tend away from radical claims by neuroscience owing the scattershot approaches to methodology with not enough basic research) shows that for both sexes it’s partially genetic or natural and that it’s frequent and that bisexuality is relatively frequent in both sexes.

Now, you’re right. If it was true that there was really dimorphism of sexuality in the genetic component or even if it was really a weird sociological side-effect of listening to Madonna songs or some other conspiracy theory, it wouldn’t affect the basic humanity of the participants.

However, that does not mean that bad science trumps good science. The actual studies in the field seem to show again and again that there has to be some genetic component for both sexes for all sexualities. The mountain of evidence growing is comparable to that of global warming or the lack of meaningful dimorphism in academic ability among race or sex. It doesn’t matter culturally, but it matters in whether or not science is valued more than media representations of science. Quite frankly, the fact that there are gay penguins and lesbian marmots combined with the impossibility of ex-gay programs combined with the incidence of fully gay or lesbian individuals in similar amounts in every culture no matter how repressive sort of demonstrate that. There is currently a lot of waver on the specific numbers as culturally we allow more people to demonstrate honest sexuality in society and as we seek a truly culture-free incidence test for humans (short answer, it’s really hard, which I’m sure has troubled the Kinsey Institute since it was formed).

But the research isn’t showing a wild sexual dimorphism between the sexes and furthermore such a switch would be biologically and sociologically unsupportable (what, lesbian animals suddenly lost that gene before humans so that recent bisexual porn could retroactively train women in same-sex love throughout history?). It’s bad science. If it turns out to be good science and can resolve those conflicts, then so be it, it’ll be a fascinating mystery, but right now, it’s like trying to resolve evolution by trying to look at it in terms of why god wanted a tailbone.

Sorry for the snarky post. I love your posts, I just get wound up about biological research as its my actual field.

Oh and for a few of you. Let me summarize GATTACA or better yet my favorite part of The Selfish Gene:

We are not ruled by our genes. We humans have the wonderful ability to understand these impulses and resist and shape them for our benefit.

What we are born into defines shit about what we live. You can be born with a 95% chance of a deadly childhood disease and be healthier than any kid you know or born with a 5% chance of it and be struck down. You can be born 100% immutably gay and live a closeted life. You could be born barely gay and live out as the queerest queer out there and faithful to your same-sex life-partner for 50 years. And you could be 100% straight or asexual and fall deeply in love with a person of the same sex, having to negotiate the sexual compatibility from there. It defines little other than what is immutable about you.

Genetic factors can determine likelihood of onset of diseases, your height, skin color, physical sex, more evidence each day that it has a significant hand in mental sex, sexual orientation, and certainly your starting framework of genes. The cultural stuff is ladled onto that. Can your skin color pass as something else, what are the options or your reaction to the disconnect of your mental sex and physical sex, how do you square it with cultural ideas of man and woman, how do those cultural ideas affect your acceptance or performance of your sexuality, do you overstate more towards one absolute based on how well you can culturally pass, who do you fall in love with, do they fit your sexual orientation, how do you meet your needs if not, how do you fulfill your basic needs of food, shelter, sex, are you even able to, what about financial restrictions, familial restrictions, cultural restrictions, is honesty punishable, can you even find honesty after familial abuse, do you only have a rough idea, can you even discern reality from fantasy in the first place?

The sexual orientation is most likely, fairly set, though it may have wiggle-room with respect to culture (certainly the difference in male and female incidences of asexuality in humans points more likely to loss of sexual appetite due to abuse more than genuine asexuality, the animal studies likely show a better rough sketch of likely incidence rates: 1%). What that says about what you do with it? Yeah, that shit is sure as fuck going to be railroaded by culture. Because just because it’s in you don’t mean shit because we are human beings and we are crazy motherfuckers. We have the intelligence to see the little gears that guide the motion. We are not mindless brutes to follow only signals. We can comprehend them, filter them, and use them and that shit is most certainly influenced and affected by culture. What we are (biological) and what we are (cultural) combine to form our identity.

It doesn’t eliminate choice. It just says what you can’t change…easily. I mean after all, biological sex was pretty immutable…And that’s why I get why we don’t want to rely on the biological as an excuse. I get that. I even have two horses in that ring. One, dating a bisexual, who is under threat of the “well, YOU can choose” line of homophobe attack and Two, being an asexual, where there was rumors that it was a “hormone imbalance” and if so “we should be fixed” and about what to do about that and about pressure if it was “true”. It turned out to be false, it looks to work about the same as any other orientation as best anyone can figure currently, but the debate was had in resistance to easy answers to “fix” the “problem” to disappear those who are exactly the same.

But that doesn’t mean going full hog other direction. We are what we are, all of us, even 100% straight people, because everything true of the other sexualities is of course, naturally true of them and it could very well be the case that much like what caused the “superiority of whiteness” could very well be the deficient one (in the whiteness case, lack of melanin proteins chiefly). And in any case, will likely only be a large combination of levels interacting with a vastly complex series of interactions even possibly nudged and influenced by cultural or environmental factors (there are some womb factors that seem to nudge the probabilities a little).

Man…I’m really sorry everyone for posting this much. I definitely forgive anyone who tl;dr me.

in other news: itilian admits women’s entire value is in their uterus
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/02/she_is_in_the_condition_to_hav.php

Actually Yamara, lesbian, and the older word tribade predate the victorian age. There was a great book which I can’t seem to google and which I left back in the States on lesbianism in british literature and culture from the beginning of wide-scale print to the victorian age. It did a great job of going beyond the narrow scope to show that pretty much from the time that people had means to mass-describe things, lesbians have snuck in as have gay men. That they have existed and existed in such number as to be described and have words used to define them, to even have circles and clubs for sexual intimacy even in an exceedingly hostile culture to female sexuality at all.

Ah, found it:

Passions Between Women: British Lesbian Culture 1668-1801. Emma Donoghue

But although there are women who have borne children at these advanced ages, fetility starts to decline after thirty, and in many cases is totally gone by forty (without extremely expensive medical intervention that is).

I’m kind of curious about that cut-off at 40.  The impression that I always got was that 45 was closer to the absolute cut-off, and that many of the cases of women between 40 and 45 being unable to get pregnant had a lot more to do with STI-related infertility (like undiagnosed chlamydia) than a biological restriction.  IIRC, women in their 40s have the second-highest rate of unintended pregnancies (after teenagers) because they assume they’re infertile as soon as their periods start be become irregular.  Turns out, not so much.

I accept that, Cerebus, but I think we all agree on the most important thing—-once science has really and truly come up with a more comprehensive understanding of human sexuality, and if we find that men on average are in fact a little more ingrained than women on average, this doesn’t take away one bit from one’s right to feel like or be a lesbian.  The rest is, to my mind, just interesting.

If progressives stake out gay rights on biology, we could very well be fucked. We need to stake it out on rights and freedoms and diversity.

Mnem, you’re quite right that one reason that’s almost never admitted that fertility declines on average after a certain age is the possibility that undiagnosed STIs are causing infertility.  But the fix for that problem is feminist—-women should be encouraged to use condoms, not to have babies earlier.  And condoms reduce the chance of getting trapped in an early marriage due to unplanned pregnancy.

As said, sex and procreation are different and distinct. What I was saying is that the urge to reproduce is a biological urge. Sex is not always needed in nature- though reproduction is. For example, one can look at the number of organisms that can conceive asexually (I seem to recall recently some female shark(s) in captivity have reproduced without the presence of a male) and the ones that change their sex in relation to the number of available males/females (certain African frogs for example) or organisms that in essence clone themselves or even gay animals that seek to steal eggs ala the most recent article about the gay penguins stealing eggs at the zoo.. The changes in genetic make-up, if I recall my Darwin correctly, exist to perpetuate the species in the most successful manner. We see that at the most basic level in our race to construct better antibiotics to combat the ever changing viruses around us.

Obviously, humans can differentiate between sex and procreation. This has made us a more successful species because if everyone was reproducing constantly, we would have long ago over-whelmed the earth and like all species that are too successful, we would have suffered a massive population reducing disease or such. To me, the more interesting questions are one, will our species remove procreation entirely from sex- create young outside a womb and two, will we evolve to the point that like some species, women will not need men to reproduce at all. One of the biggest early worries from the wingnuts when in=vitro fertilization came out was that it ‘removed’ the sexual act from creation. Another biggie was the fear by some men that they would be rendered ‘unneeded’.

“As for the two basic human drives—it seems to me that driving a wedge between cultural and biological when it comes to any human behavior is impossible.”
Mostly because they CAN’T be seperated. We’re the primates most reliant on learned behavior, and that’s saying a lot!

Amanda-

Yup, 100% agreement.

Interestingly, she doesn’t seem to know that “no where” is actually “nowhere,” as you do.

“As said, sex and procreation are different and distinct. What I was saying is that the urge to reproduce is a biological urge. Sex is not always needed in nature- though reproduction is.”

...and all Amanda is saying is that (in humans at least) the urge/drive is for sex, with reproduction merely a fortunate circumstance for our DNA — which, after all, we only exist to propagate. 

Having children and raising them is an acquired taste.  Having orgasms, OTOH, is instantly attractive.  Female covert fertility, constant sexual receptivity, constant sexual drive (in most circumstances) all play up the urge to have sex.

Given our intelligence, it’s hard to imagine how it could be any other way.  If we didn’t enjoy sex, it many/most cases why would we want to do it?...

For some reason I’ve always equated reproducing with the old phrase “gone to seed”.  It’s how I feel about the whole scenario.

the “girl who likes to get dirty = future lesbian” meme annoys the shit out of me.  Especially when it’s framed as “I always knew so-and-so was a lesbian because she liked to climb trees/play in the mud/wear grubby sneakers/get in fights as a kid”.

Acting like the stereotypical opposite sex from an early age is in some circles associated with being trans rather than being gay, fwiw. (I knew one trans person who was convinced, in fact, that many gay men and lesbians were just closeted or underfunded transexuals—go figure.)  And even at early ages (and even in relatively “liberal” venues) gender expectations are incredibly strong, and have to have a serious effect on people’s own understanding of what “kind” they might be.

My memoir kind of addresses this issue of being forced to adopt a masochistic feminine role (in a very different culture) that went against the grain.

There’s a very real chance that they may find that male homosexuality has a genetic component but female homosexuality doesn’t. 

I’ve read that research, and I think the problem could be noise in the data. Basically, it might be much, much easier to torture women into becoming gay than it is to torture men into becoming gay, because women don’t rape little boys at nearly the rate that men rape little girls.

*Some* female homosexuality appears to be a learned response—or, at least, lesbians report higher rates of having suffered childhood sexual abuse at the hands of men than either straight women, gay men, or straight men. However, take this with a caveat—out lesbians are more likely to be identified as feminist, and educated on subjects such as not feeling shame or blaming themselves for sexual abuse they suffered, and out lesbians are probably more willing than straight women on average to rock the boat and upset the family by revealing the truth (simply because, in order to be an out lesbian, they probably had to), so out lesbians may be more willing to report sexual abuse that happened to them. Also, it is conceivable that lesbians, as children, may have suffered more sexual violence from men who were trying to use rape as a tool to force them to conform to typical feminine behavior. So it is certainly possible that the finding doesn’t indicate that male sexual abuse causes female homosexuality… however, if that *is* true, it would create enough noise in the data that evidence of genetic lesbianism might disappear. (In other words, if both gay men and lesbian women can be created by the presence of a gene, but lesbian women can also be created by abuse by men in childhood, you’ll more easily be able to see the influence of the gene in the gay men.)

I also suspect that it’s harder for women to realize that they are gay than it is for men to realize it… I’m not talking about *accepting* it, because prejudice against gay men is stronger than against lesbians, but about realizing it in the first place, because female understanding of our own sexuality is *so* suppressed in our culture (and not having the visual signal of an erection, our understanding of our own sexuality may be more inherently suppressible. It may be easier to confuse a woman into thinking arousal is something else, when she’s not allowed to learn much about sex and taught not to think about it much.) I have known too many women who came to the conclusion that they were gay *very* late in life, like their thirties, whereas everything I’ve heard from gay men indicates that men who have homosexual desires *know* it very young, they just might deny it to themselves. My friends didn’t have problems with lesbians or lesbianism, they just didn’t realize that they were hot for women until well into adulthood. So there may be many invisible lesbians in our culture as well, women who are so closeted *they* don’t even know they’re gay.

And I always wonder what the role of bisexuality is when I hear of these studies…

Alara, I think your primary thesis is pretty much meaningless, because it ignores the degree to which little boys and little girls are tortured into becoming ostensibly straight. Any deviation from assigned gender roles attracts abuse from parents and peers. The “heterosexual” orientation produced by such abuse, even in those who are naturally (ahem) attracted to the opposite sex is a weird, stunted mindset laced with opposite-sex violence and openly closeted homoeroticism. (And meanwhile, of course, gender-“inappropriate” behavior has only a very sideways relationship to actual sexual preference.) The noise level on both sides is through the roof, but most of the research has been done on men.

I don’t see how cultural differences could possibly have anything to do with whether women feel the need to have children. For example, the fact that women in Africa and South American societies are more likely to hear the ticking of the biological clock than women in, say, Japan or Scandinavia, can be attributed to genetic differences and drift. Sexual orientation and sex drive vary wildly among individuals. Same thing with the biological clock. For whatever reasons, similar individuals selected each other and moved en mass to specific parts of the globe. And that same genetic determinacy also explains why so many Chinese women want only male children. It’s in their genes. And there are peoples all over the world who simply do not want to fuck. They typically call themselves religious, but it’s genetic, obviously. Culture has nothing to do with it.

yES, yes, OF COURSE not all tomboys grow up to be lesbians, and some little girls say they want to grow up to be men, when what they actually want is the opportunites they see for men.

But geez louise, why the hell does that invalidate my sister telling me she knew she was a lesbian at 4, even though at the time she was limited by a four year old’s vocabulary in expressing that realization?

You may be a girly lipstick lesbian, how nice for you, but it ain’t all about you, you, you.

chuckling on 02/09 at 12:24 AM

For example, the fact that women in Africa and South American societies are more likely to hear the ticking of the biological clock than women in, say, Japan or Scandinavia, can be attributed to genetic differences and drift.

What evidence do you have for this? Women in Africa and South America will have more children because of higher infant mortality and needing someone to care for them in old age due to inadequate social security systems.
The fact that when populations are prosperous and have access to good medicine and contraception they tend to have less children undermines the idea of some biological clock. Increased wealth would give people the freedom to satisfy any putative urge. Or are you positing that this ‘biological clock’ is sophisticated enough to switch itself off once some number of children have exited the womb?

And that same genetic determinacy also explains why so many Chinese women want only male children. It’s in their genes.

Poppycock. Cultural pressures explain this. Again, you are asserting something without evidence.

And there are peoples all over the world who simply do not want to fuck. They typically call themselves religious, but it’s genetic, obviously.

Who are you referring to here? Catholic priests?

Childe, I was going to go all whoop-ass on chuckling myself, but I had this nagging notion that there were invisible sarcasm tags around the piece, precisely because the claims were so fatuous on their face.

Chuckling—I’m afraid you obviously did need visible sarcasm tags, because there is no depth of stupid that a troll won’t sink to.

Call it a tone thing—if I read your piece as irony it is kind of hilarious; reading it straight, teh stupid is a bit too sincere and completely unselfaware. But that, alas, proves nothing.

Either way we laugh; the question is, are we laughing with or at you?

Mark, If you’re right about it being ironic (and I hope you are) I have to hold my hand up and admit I was totally blind to it. In which case I can only laugh at myself.
My only defence at being so dense would be that I am so used to meeting people with such a wrong-headed take on genetics I’m often left gob-smacked.
As a parody it is quite funny.

I’m guessing chuckling is joking.

judybrowni, your sister sounds exactly like me when I was young, yet I’m definately straight. I don’t think being a tomboy or declaring you want to be a man when you grow up (especially when it’s easy to see that it’s a “man’s world”) is declaring you’re a lesbian, nor is it evidence that lesbianism is genetic.

even to this day I’m still “tomboyish” and am even mistaken for gay by ppl that don’t know me because I don’t dress girly and I have a cropped haircut.

“But geez louise, why the hell does that invalidate my sister telling me she knew she was a lesbian at 4, even though at the time she was limited by a four year old’s vocabulary in expressing that realization?”

Because, Judy, there is no evidence to suggest that your sister’s tomboyism was caused by the same things that caused her homosexuality.  On the other hand, there is evidence to suggest that tomboyism and female homosexuality develop independently: the existence of tomboys who grow up to be straight, for example.

So until you find a causal link - genetic, environmental (or supernatural, for all I care) - Opoponax will be arguing from a stronger position than you.

Your sister’s feelings are probably very important to her own personal sense of identity.  She may be strongly emotionally invested in the idea that she has been gay since age 6.  But that doesn’t necessarily make it so.

I was specifically attacking the recent cultural invention of a fake biological urge called the “biological clock”, which is this weird belief that women have genetic programming that tells them to freak out if they haven’t given birth by age 30 or 35 or 25, whatever you want it to be.  The “biological clock” was created to intimidate the willfully childless, sure, but mostly it’s there to strike out at women who do want children.  It’s an attempt to pressure women into accepting marriage and childbirth before they’ve established themselves in their careers both to make them dependent on their husbands and to permanently hurt their ability to compete with men in the workplace on a more equal plane.

Okay, I’m going to admit up front that when I first heard the expression, I was much less aware of sexism than I am now. So, take what I say with a grain of salt.

When I first heard it, if I’m recalling correctly, it was about how certain women who wanted children “felt their biological clocks ticking” and wanted to get married and have children. They were aware that there were limits on childbearing and felt that they were starting to push against them. It was not some kind of unconscious drive, it was more of a stressful awareness of the situation… “I’m (such-and-such) age, I expect to spend (x-time) in courtship, I’m not seeing anyone, I want children, there’s more risk in having children after (such-and-such+not_much_more) age…”.

It seemed to be more of a description of a (not necessarily large scale) cultural phenomenon than a tool of oppression.

I think that the use of it in the manner you mention is more of a seizure and perversion of the original idea.

Herm. Long and short of it: sure, you’re right to be pissed off at how it’s used, but I’m not sure the invention was a tool of oppression; I think the seizure and perversion of the idea was a tool of oppression. (And maybe an inevitable result.)

But it’s also possible I’m putting on rose-colored glasses before engaging in hindsight.

Just to toss out some extreme outliers here—at 54, my mom has yet to go through menopause, and her mother accidentally got pregnant at 40. If there is any sort of innate biological clock, wouldn’t it be subject to the woman’s individual fertility, (which can vary widely), as opposed to some arbitrary cut-off age?

Alara, I think your primary thesis is pretty much meaningless, because it ignores the degree to which little boys and little girls are tortured into becoming ostensibly straight.

If both little boys and little girls are tortured into becoming ostensibly straight, but only little girls are sexually abused in large numbers by members of the sex they are “supposed” to grow up to be attracted to, then the boys and girls still cancel each other out when you’re trying to compare men to women in terms of what affected their homosexuality or heterosexuality. The effect on girls still isn’t balanced out by any equivalent effect on boys (and for that matter, given that adult women and men have power over boys and girls, but in adulthood, adult men have power over adult women, boys who are sexually abused by women are more likely to grow up to abuse their power over women than girls who were sexually abused by men are likely to abuse power over men, given that they don’t *have* power over men.)

“Some of the female sexual fluidity stuff comes from the research on female arousal that shows that females are supposedly aroused by a greater range of material than males.”

I think that there are also some major connections to the progress of “acceptable” social interactions between to people of the same sex.  For example*:

In my grandmother’s generation it is perfectly appropriate for women to comment on another’s clothing and make superficial comments on one’s general look.  “That dress looks beautiful.” “You’re so pretty.”  Most men of that generation never really comment on one another unless it’s something to the effect of “You’re looking well.” Which is more health related than looks.

My mother’s generation was able to show more appreciation towards the looks of others.  Free to say that another woman looks attractive or even “hot”.  My own mother has an unabashed affection for Halle Berry even though she is “straight” and it’s perfectly acceptable to discuss Halle’s “hotness” with her girlfriends or even her own husband.

And of course women of my own generation can freely speak of that time they “went lesbian” in their wild teens or college days, even though they are sure to assert that it was “just a phase”.

Men however haven’t really traveled on the same arch.  Many are still very uncomfortable about complimenting a fellow man a new haircut let alone saying that they think Brad Pitt** is an attractive man.  And if they went through a gay phase they certainly aren’t telling anyone about it. (I know way too many bi-sexual men who were either in gay relationships or worked as prostitutes who decided to get themselves wives and delete that section, along with anyone who knew about it, from their lives.)

I think socially there is a big conflict between the qualities the patriarchy has ascribed to “a man’s man” and homosexuality whereas the ascribed feminine qualities don’t really conflict, assuming of course that a woman eventually returns to the lockstep of wife and mother.  It’s not threatening because a) men can ‘control’ it a la threesome fantasies etc. and b) it’s a temporary that silly girls do just for fun because they don’t know any better a la Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl”.

* Everyone’s experience will differ of but I think everyone can agree the standards for women have become a lot more relaxed then men over the same periods of time.
** Apparently he is attractive.

Oh, also, the homosexuality research shows that it’s both sexes, male homosexuality only seems more privileged and “proved” because we as a culture simply selectively favor the most privileged of any minority. Thus the history of gay gets focused on male and white and gay rather than female and white and gay and much much less female, brown, and gay.

There is also the fact that (in the history of the UK, at least), male homosexuality was criminalised but female homosexuality wasn’t. Since gay men therefore got dragged through the courts, written about in newspapers, etc., we have a whole lot more information about them than we do about lesbians, who (from a researchable historical records point of view) left very few traces. I have no doubt that this in a factor in the vague popular perception that there were no lesbians around before the 20th century.