Re: New Arvorec words

On Fri, 1 Jun 2001, Rik Roots wrote:

> Personally (and I speak from a biased point of view) I distrust the
> genetic theory of homosexuality, simply because sexuality is not a
> "this or that" situation.
Then you should reject all genetics, since most genetic traits are not
"this or that" situations.  The majority of heritable (what the popular
press calls "genetic") traits are polygenic (more than one gene),
polyallelic (each gene involved has more than two possible states) and
less than 100% heritable (the final phenotype is not 100% determined by
the genotype).

> Biologically, humans are a bit of a paradox, in that sex (and
> sexuality) has become a social tool over and above procreation. And
Not in the least bit paradoxical.  Decades of primatological observation
has shown that human sexual behavior fights nicely on one end of a
continuum of sexuality.  Essentially, the more social the primate, the
more sex is a social tool.  (Bees and ants are not social, they are
"eusocial"--a poor choice of term to mean "a species in which the
behavioral 'individual' is made up of multiple separate organisms".)