A while ago I mentioned something about the ‘Startle Response’. It was in this post (click), and it got me thinking more and more about the hard-wired nature of us human type people. Specifically, I was looking into areas of creativity …why some people express creative tendencies more so than others. I was also interested in how music affects our cognition on a primal level. Dan Levitin talks about this in his book (that I also referenced earlier and still have yet to post about) - discussing consonance and dissonance, then explaining how the tri-tone (the ‘halving’ of an octave) breaks down into an irrational number …then this got me thinking about Ray Tomes studies in harmonics …then this got me wondering about an order to ‘life’ based on sequences derived from over-tones and how maybe this sheds light on the ‘primal’ response we exhibit with music …and then so on and so on - lol. So to get back to my point, I stumbled across a page/document that mentioned how a measured startle response is different between hetero/homosexual men and women. I thought this was interesting because it regards homosexuality as a genetic propensity rather than something behavioral.
I remember listening to Dr. James Dobson on an episode of Focus on the Family (I tuned in to 4 hours of religious programming while at work for a complete year …a lot of interesting topics and characters - my favorite being J. Vernon McGee, the most enticing pastor by far “…may I suggest to you”) and he recalled an early episode in his youth when he made a conscious decision to ‘break his bond’ with his mother - and she reluctantly allowed him this choice, knowing that it would set him on the correct path to ‘manhood’ rather than keep him tied to mommy’s skirt strings (so to speak). The whole concept of ‘gayness’ (at its roots) being a matter/choice of behavior didn’t make any sense to me. I’m a self-professed ‘momma’s boy’ (with two sisters, no brothers and a Dad who was usually away) and never remotely encountered any such incident or situation in my childhood. My preference is for females - lol, at least judging from my past and my typical p*o*r*n yearnings (…and despite the lack of a current significant other), but for him to imply a ’special’ exchange between his mother and himself as some sort of defining moment that separates ‘being gay’ from ‘not being gay’ struck me as irresponsible and pretentious.
It seemed natural for there to be both male and female tendencies among people …the difference being in their amount. There’s ‘manly men’ and ‘girly men’, ‘manly chicks’ and ‘girly chicks’ (pardon my simplification) and the idea of these traits being genetically based makes sense from a simple visual/observational point of view. I’m not denying that ‘nurture’ is not responsible toward the character of people to some degree, but when you break things down, I feel your tendencies are your tendencies - and there doesn’t necessarily have to be a side of the fence to fall on, at least judging from this Scientific America article…
It’s a study done by Dr. Robert Epstein, and it charts sexuality as a smooth scale rather than a ‘one or the other’ approach. Interestingly, he finds that “fewer than 10 percent of subjects score as ‘pure’ heterosexual or homosexual…” The brief summary supports any general observations I’ve made (his full report is still forth-coming) although it does not speculate as to the cause of the behavior …just that it is what it is. There are other factors that support the genetic side of the debate, a few of these are summed up on this Religious Tolerance site. Of course I’m not going to deny that there are people who actually choose an orientation. And you can choose anything you like really - the hard part is balancing it between your ‘natural desires’ and the lives of those around you. The scientific debate is ongoing. Yet that’s the fun part about it …as long as it stays in a scientific realm that is.
Anyway, those are my thoughts on that. There’s another article about ‘the God spot‘ in the same SA magazine - but I’m gonna take a little time to consider my opinion on the matter. The presentation of the article is kinda ticking me off …so I want to make sure my thoughts are understandable, yet don’t contribute similarly and tick other people off. Lol, there’s an exercise in futility.
