I wrote this for my philopshy class based on a lecture...probably wont make sense to anyone, but I'm hoping to God maybe I can attract at least one intellectual to tell me their theories too it's an interesting subject.
P.S. not ment to offend ANYONE.
Extra Credit: Reproductive Social Behavior: Old and New Theories
By: Joan Roughgarden
April 28, 2008
The focus of P. Roughgarden’s lecture was about exploring the gender and sexual variety in the animal kingdom and disproving the set principles of gender role according to Darwin’s Sexual selection theory.
Darwin originally theorized that genders of animals have set sex roles that are, besides only a few exceptions, equally shared throughout the animal kingdom. Males were generally as the “passionate” ones, or the ones with more drive to reproduce, and females were the “coy” ones, or the ones who would do the selection for natural selection. This theory was later altered slightly to have males cast as the “promiscuous” characters that whose goal was to spread their genes, and females were “constrained.” The theory being that there are more sperm to spread genes for and therefore less valuable, the goal being mostly to spread genes as much as possible and the female’s eggs were not as easy to expend and therefore the female gender was selective.
Yet P. Roughgarden pointed out the big flaws with this theory in three categories. First, many species have sexual interests that differ, secondly the “poster-child” or normal category animals for the sexual selection theories were failing the outlined principles of the experiment. Thirdly there were logical contradictions within the theories themselves.
Her lecture went on to point out specific examples of each of the contradictions to the theory.
One example was that some animals in fact change genders, they are hermaphroditic, or could switch their genders throughout their lives. Examples like this are Hamlet Fish whom possess both male and female sex organs and use them interchangeably. Also sea horses, whose sex roles were reversed, in which the males were in more demand and the primary caregivers, showed a contradiction to the primary “sexual interests” of each gender. She also then addressed the formation of the idea of sexual conflict with the changing sizes of the sperm gamete vs. the egg gamete, which while technical basically showed that while both originally were the same size, at one point the sperm became smaller and then became numerous to compensate, and the egg became bigger and had to become fewer to compensate for size. While it is originally believed this was done because of somehow competition to the other, P. Roughgarden believes it was done out of necessity for germination and therefore adaptation to each other for better survival.
All in all the professor’s speech, while complicated and technical, it raises up the point of what is the instinctual “norm” for the genders. As a biologist P. Roughgarden’s research could argue that there really are no “norms” or set rules of sexual roles in biology, that a variety of animals in the animal kingdom function without the need to be purely Darwin in their sexual selection. Yet at the same time it could also be argued that these animals in general perform these behaviors or types of sexual conditions out of an easier way to produce young. They’ve evolved or conditioned into using these strategies to insure the survival of their young. Why the sea horses have the males care for the young, why the hamlet fish have both organs to insure a ready supply of whatever gender functions are needed. Yet if these theories that the sexual behavior in humans can also not be defined as normal, then the question can be raised of what these say, homosexual couplings biologically can attribute themselves for. What is the biological purpose of them? Obviously there is no reproduction as a result, so can a deviation from the majority of human sexual selection behaviors be attributed to biological factors, or purely environmental, social and behavior factors such as learned gender roles? I am not trying to say that being gay is something that goes against nature, but I feel that stressing the point that it is purely biological is stretching what is really known. I personally have nothing against someone who does not practice the common heterosexual behaviors instinctively, yet I feel that telling me it is purely biological that they don’t ignores the definition of behavior. Attributing some reasons for these decisions as biological factors…sure, but pure biological cause…that isn’t giving much credit to the human species of being comprised of more than just instincts and species specific compulsions.
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