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> men find fertile women more attractive Do they? How can they tell? Do they ask to see the eggs first? > Genes which caused men to find unfertile women more

> men find fertile women more attractive Do they? How can they tell? Do they ask to see the eggs first? > Genes which caused men to find unfertile women more attractive quickly died out. Die out? I don't think genes work that way. But maybe language is a stumbling block here. I will grant you that fertile women have been fertilized historically because tada - here we all are! But that does not in any way mean that all sex was for the sake of fertilization. Or even between semen- and egg-bearing people. And the amount of non-child-producing sex both today and historically seems to suggest that fertility is not the primary concern, let alone cause for non-childbearing sexual urges to "die out."

zdkl 5y ago
You're replying social sciences to a biology comment, where the mechanism described above can absolutely be shortened to "genes die out" in a given population pool.
kragen 5y ago
I can't tell if you just missed the point, lack the background knowledge to understand it, or are pretending not to understand it for some kind of political reason, so I'll try to explain it in a different way. Men who only sought sex with other men* or with postmenopausal women may have had a lot of sex, as you say, but they also have no descendants (unless a fertile woman raped them at some point, or they were born late enough to donate to a sperm bank). So their genes died out. Even a fairly small inclination in this direction is enough to produce a very large difference in gene prevalence after many generations. In only 200 generations, an allele that gives you an only 5% lower chance of having children will decrease in its relative prevalence by a factor of thirty thousand (0.95 ** 200 = 3.5e-5). That is the way genes work. Of course most sex among humans (and hominins in general) doesn't produce offspring, and in humans and bonobos (but not chimpanzees) most of it can't possibly produce offspring. That's fine. Sex isn't a limited commodity. Sex is abundant. But hominins, especially humans, are choosy about who they have sex with, and any alleles that can get them to be choosy in a way that will increase their chances of reproducing will become more abundant over time. Is 200 generations a long time? Hominins are about 300,000 generations old. Australopithecines are about 200,000 gnerations old. Homo is about 100,000 generations old. Homo sapiens is about 10,000 generations old. Agriculture and Catal Hoyuk are about 500 generations old. So I don't think it is. Does that help? ______ * Unless those other men they were having sex with were trans men equipped with a fertile uterus, anyway.
- amatic 5y ago
  So... gay men are descendants of gay men who were raped by fertile women? Edit: of course not. I'm just pointing out the conclusion coming out of this: >Men who only sought sex with other men [...] have no descendants (unless a fertile woman raped them at some point [...]). So their genes died out
  - kragen 5y ago
    That is not one of the leading theories, no: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_sexual_orientation#Sexual_orientation_and_evolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_sexual_orientation... Women rape men fairly rarely, and even a woman who raped thousands of men generally cannot have more than a dozen offspring as a result. By contrast, one in every 200 men today has Genghis Khan's Y chromosome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_from_Genghis_Khan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_from_Genghis_Khan This should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway: the fact that rape can produce offspring does not make rape morally commendable or tolerable. It's true that the stubborn existence of gay people poses challenges to any kind of simple ev-psych explanation of human sexuality, and it's tempting to conclude that although sexual behavior in sheep and partridges is instinctual, sexual behavior in humans is purely culturally constructed, because humans are rational beings not controlled by instinct, and this is why some humans are gay. This explanation runs into several big problems: 1. Lots of sheep and partridges are also homosexual. Also several hundred other species at least. 2. If you have ever met a human, you know they are not very rational, and cultural conditioning is in a constant pitched battle with human instincts. 3. For decades in the US the standard treatment of male babies born with deformed genitalia was to perform sex-reassignment surgery on them and raise them as girls. If human sexual behavior were purely culturally constructed, then as adults about 90% of them would have sought male partners, like 90% of other children raised as girls. Instead, most of them sought female partners. 4. Homosexuality seems to be a cultural universal. So, the evidence in favor of the "born this way" hypothesis is pretty overwhelming, especially for men. So, how did "gay genes" not get wiped out? Among the numerous theories mentioned in the WP article: "There was genetic material being passed down on the X chromosome which both promotes fertility in the mother and homosexuality in her male offspring." (Camperio-Ciani, Corna, and Capiluppi 2004) Another possibility is that being gay is biological and congenital, just not genetic, for example due to fetal hormone exposure or immune response by the mother's body. Historically, lots of gay men have been voluntarily married to women, had sex with them, and had children with them. This still happens today. I have known gay men who have never had sex with women, but they are very much the exception to the rule. (There are men who are exclusively attracted to postmenopausal women, too, just not very many of them.)
globular-toast 5y ago
> Do they? How can they tell? Do they ask to see the eggs first? They can't tell. They are just attracted to women who look a certain way. They are attracted to women who look that way because they are descended from men who were attracted to women that looked that way. It's similar to the old story about how giraffes got long necks so they could reach higher leaves in the tree. Giraffes don't look at each other and think "wow, he can reach a lot of leaves!" They look and think "wow, he's got a long neck!" Why are they attracted to long necks? Because they are descended from giraffes who were attracted to giraffes with long necks, and those giraffes were, on average, more successful at getting leaves from trees.

zdkl 5y ago

You're replying social sciences to a biology comment, where the mechanism described above can absolutely be shortened to "genes die out" in a given population pool.

kragen 5y ago

I can't tell if you just missed the point, lack the background knowledge to understand it, or are pretending not to understand it for some kind of political reason, so I'll try to explain it in a different way. Men who only sought sex with other men* or with postmenopausal women may have had a lot of sex, as you say, but they also have no descendants (unless a fertile woman raped them at some point, or they were born late enough to donate to a sperm bank). So their genes died out. Even a fairly small inclination in this direction is enough to produce a very large difference in gene prevalence after many generations. In only 200 generations, an allele that gives you an only 5% lower chance of having children will decrease in its relative prevalence by a factor of thirty thousand (0.95 ** 200 = 3.5e-5). That is the way genes work. Of course most sex among humans (and hominins in general) doesn't produce offspring, and in humans and bonobos (but not chimpanzees) most of it can't possibly produce offspring. That's fine. Sex isn't a limited commodity. Sex is abundant. But hominins, especially humans, are choosy about who they have sex with, and any alleles that can get them to be choosy in a way that will increase their chances of reproducing will become more abundant over time. Is 200 generations a long time? Hominins are about 300,000 generations old. Australopithecines are about 200,000 gnerations old. Homo is about 100,000 generations old. Homo sapiens is about 10,000 generations old. Agriculture and Catal Hoyuk are about 500 generations old. So I don't think it is. Does that help? ______ * Unless those other men they were having sex with were trans men equipped with a fertile uterus, anyway.

amatic 5y ago
So... gay men are descendants of gay men who were raped by fertile women? Edit: of course not. I'm just pointing out the conclusion coming out of this: >Men who only sought sex with other men [...] have no descendants (unless a fertile woman raped them at some point [...]). So their genes died out
- kragen 5y ago
  That is not one of the leading theories, no: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_sexual_orientation#Sexual_orientation_and_evolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_sexual_orientation... Women rape men fairly rarely, and even a woman who raped thousands of men generally cannot have more than a dozen offspring as a result. By contrast, one in every 200 men today has Genghis Khan's Y chromosome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_from_Genghis_Khan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_from_Genghis_Khan This should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway: the fact that rape can produce offspring does not make rape morally commendable or tolerable. It's true that the stubborn existence of gay people poses challenges to any kind of simple ev-psych explanation of human sexuality, and it's tempting to conclude that although sexual behavior in sheep and partridges is instinctual, sexual behavior in humans is purely culturally constructed, because humans are rational beings not controlled by instinct, and this is why some humans are gay. This explanation runs into several big problems: 1. Lots of sheep and partridges are also homosexual. Also several hundred other species at least. 2. If you have ever met a human, you know they are not very rational, and cultural conditioning is in a constant pitched battle with human instincts. 3. For decades in the US the standard treatment of male babies born with deformed genitalia was to perform sex-reassignment surgery on them and raise them as girls. If human sexual behavior were purely culturally constructed, then as adults about 90% of them would have sought male partners, like 90% of other children raised as girls. Instead, most of them sought female partners. 4. Homosexuality seems to be a cultural universal. So, the evidence in favor of the "born this way" hypothesis is pretty overwhelming, especially for men. So, how did "gay genes" not get wiped out? Among the numerous theories mentioned in the WP article: "There was genetic material being passed down on the X chromosome which both promotes fertility in the mother and homosexuality in her male offspring." (Camperio-Ciani, Corna, and Capiluppi 2004) Another possibility is that being gay is biological and congenital, just not genetic, for example due to fetal hormone exposure or immune response by the mother's body. Historically, lots of gay men have been voluntarily married to women, had sex with them, and had children with them. This still happens today. I have known gay men who have never had sex with women, but they are very much the exception to the rule. (There are men who are exclusively attracted to postmenopausal women, too, just not very many of them.)

globular-toast 5y ago

> Do they? How can they tell? Do they ask to see the eggs first? They can't tell. They are just attracted to women who look a certain way. They are attracted to women who look that way because they are descended from men who were attracted to women that looked that way. It's similar to the old story about how giraffes got long necks so they could reach higher leaves in the tree. Giraffes don't look at each other and think "wow, he can reach a lot of leaves!" They look and think "wow, he's got a long neck!" Why are they attracted to long necks? Because they are descended from giraffes who were attracted to giraffes with long necks, and those giraffes were, on average, more successful at getting leaves from trees.