Gay Fitness (And Schizophrenia Genes)

Purely speculative time-waster post follows…

The push by evolutionary scientists to find an explanation for homosexuality is confounded by the seemingly obvious fact that homos don’t naturally reproduce (leaving aside lesbians and turkey basters for the moment). Many theories are then offered which supposedly account for the steady 2-4% rate of male gayness in most (all?) societies that don’t disobey the law of reproductive fitness. The most convincing of these theories that I have read include chimerism, multiple gene influence selecting for creativity that goes haywire, hormonal imbalance in the womb, and parasitical infection of the womb or early infant. The long-standing theory of the “gay uncle” who helps increase the fitness of his nieces and nephews has been debunked, from what I understand.

But what if the premise is wrong in a hairy male ass sort of way? What if gay men actually DO have higher reproductive fitness than straight men? Allow me to probe and unpack the issue. Say that, before the modern age of widely available contraceptives and social tolerance of openly DEDICATED gay men (not just tolerance of straight men getting their low status rocks off in young farmboy butt), gay men entered into relationships with women under heavy social and psychological pressure and bore more children than average with them than did straight men with their women. Say, too, that gay men have naturally tight game and thus attract the attention of more fertile babes than do straight men. Now posit that at some exquisitely sequined level of flaming gayness, the gay becomes so strong that the option to cavort with other men in a subterranean glory hole culture to the exclusion of having sex with women or marrying them as beards renders a certain percentage of gay men evolutionary dead ends.

Would this fitness dynamic not, over eons of selection, result in what we see today: a low, but steady rate of men born with the gay gene(s)?

If I’m right about this, then a gay gene or genes may actually exist and, ironically, the total acceptance of gays by wider society may result in the disappearance of the gay male population by relieving them of the external peer pressure and the internal guilt pressure to be with women, and thus to bear children with them and pass on their snarky DNA. Or: gay pride could mean gay extinction.

Again, just speculating… I happen to think Cochran’s germ theory is the most likely explanation, and if that’s the case, and the germ or parasite remains unidentified, the gay population will go on renewing itself for quite a few more generations. But once it is identified, and barring civilizational collapse it will be, you can bet your bottom dollar that all those right-thinking SWPL moms- and dads-to-be will, as per their usual MO in… ahem… delicate matters that directly impact their lives, hypocritically abort fetuses infected with the germ, or give the antidote to their newborns. Because, push comes to shove, parents want children who will give them grandchildren, or at least have the potential to give them grandchildren. The prime directives of human nature bow to no PC king.

On a semi-related note, is schizophrenia also fitness-increasing? That is, are schizophrenic or borderline schizoid men more attractive to women by dint of their charmingly aloof and intriguingly edgy personalities?

Koanic writes:

I’m skeptical of the whole mental illness thing. I think prolonged stress and depression, combined with dietary intolerances such as gluten common in Thals [ed: neanderthals, or neanderthal admixed Euro-descended peoples], can TOGETHER produce a severely bent mental state. And I think going “insane” in that situation can be partly a deliberate choice, and a worthwhile defense mechanism. E.g., adopting a Joker persona.

But that is not the same as being genetically predestined to “schizophrenia,” something I’m not even sure happens in a normal paleolithic environment.

I think the mainstream psychological consensus is bull. This whole “usual age for onset of schizophrenia thing” just strikes me as the age at which societally induced total despair sets in and people start cracking.

That I can definitely sympathize with. I meet a lot of Thals now that are under sick levels of despair and pressure. And I remember back in my blue pill days getting near cracking territory myself at times, what with health and social failure and threat of career failure, and trying to deal with all the conflicting messages about what I was supposed to be. It’s not a fun place to be, an interesting things start happening to your mind.

Readers may correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought alleles associated with schizophrenia have been found? Some schizoids may not be faking at all; their brains may be genuinely mis-wired, almost subhuman (or suprahuman, depending on your point of view).

An allelic connection to schizophrenia does not necessarily refute what Koanic wrote above; it could be the case that both alleles and societal despair push guys like Holmes to the edge. It could also be true that schizophrenia was not fitness-reducing in the cro-magnon environment (cro-magnons being the ones theorized to have bequeathed modern humans with mental illness genes; you may thank your local witch doctor for his gift) like it is today in the modern one.

Evidence for the latter contention is the DISTURBING fact that schizophrenics, particularly after they have snapped and gone postal, get lots of attention from young, fertile babes. While this is funny from the angle of watching the cognitive dissonance it elicits from feminists, it’s depressing to those white knights who can’t bear the thought that women they desire are apt to make some really horrible choices in mating partners (yes, mating; conjugal visits allow homicidal genes to spread). I mean, how the fuck do you write flowery poetry to the girl of your dreams when you strongly suspect she’d swoon for a mass murderer with orange hair?

So there’s your connection: schizophrenia and homosexuality — two genetic experiments that probably worked in the ancestral environment because men who inherited their characteristics were more attractive to women; but today, in the modern environment, are fitness reducing.

Discuss. And be sure to pepper your comments with lots of gay sex euphemisms. Top comments will get recognition for their creativity. You don’t want to be a bottom comment.

UPDATE

Looks like my theory that a little bit of gayness, not taken too far down the glory hole (i.e., not so gay that it drives the man to exclusive homosexuality), increases male reproductive fitness, has backup. Say hello to science!

Genetic factors predisposing to homosexuality may increase mating success in heterosexuals.

There is considerable evidence that human sexual orientation is genetically influenced, so it is not known how homosexuality, which tends to lower reproductive success, is maintained in the population at a relatively high frequency. One hypothesis proposes that while genes predisposing to homosexuality reduce homosexuals’ reproductive success, they may confer some advantage in heterosexuals who carry them. However, it is not clear what such an advantage may be. To investigate this, we examine a data set where a large community-based twin sample (N=4904) anonymously completed a detailed questionnaire examining sexual behaviors and attitudes. We show that psychologically masculine females and feminine men are (a) more likely to be nonheterosexual but (b), when heterosexual, have more opposite-sex sexual partners. With statistical modelling of the twin data, we show that both these relationships are partly due to pleiotropic genetic influences common to each trait. We also find a trend for heterosexuals with a nonheterosexual twin to have more opposite-sex partners than do heterosexual twin pairs. Taken together, these results suggest that genes predisposing to homosexuality may confer a mating advantage in heterosexuals, which could help explain the evolution and maintenance of homosexuality in the population.

I do say this is rather fascinating, Watson. A gay gene(s) might persist because heterosexual men who have, presumably, a recessive or single copy version of the butt pirate gene(s) have higher reproductive fitness (chicks dig them). My theory that gays in the past, when there was stronger social and psychological pressure to date women, had a leg up on straight men at attracting women and bearing more children with them because of their higher natural level of game, is buttressed by this study.

Here’s more evidence that a gene may be responsible for rusty star spelunking:

Male and female fruitflies have been engineered to switch courtship roles, through the manipulation of a single gene.

The study, which appears in Cell, shows how a simple genetic adjustment can cause a dramatic change in sexual behaviour. “It was quite something to see,” says Barry Dickson, who is one of the authors and is based at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna.

Humans aren’t fruit flies, of course, but these results are suggestive.