CHAPTER 11
The Queering of Homo sapiens
For decades, those iconic New Yorker couple-in-bed cartoons portrayed exclusively heterosexual couples. Like many American cultural institutions, however, The New Yorker has slowly begun to acknowledge the existence of gay and lesbian couples and to include them in occasional couple-in-bed cartoons. The first ones have been quite prim in comparison to the frequent depictions of postcoital heterosexual couples under rumpled sheets, and, indeed, one of the earliest gay-couple-in-bed cartoons insightfully explored the anxiety surrounding the awkward intercultural negotiation required to bring the simple fact of gay couples sharing a bed into the public conversation. In a brilliant 1999 cartoon by William Haefeli, two men, fully clothed in winter overcoats, are lying next to each other on a smallish, bare mattress among many in a big department store showroom. One man comments to his partner, “I still think we should get a queen-sized mattress—despite the obvious jokes it will invite among the sales staff.”
Like traditional New Yorker cartoons, the previous chapters on the evolution of human sexuality in this book could be viewed as reinforcing a heteronormative concept of “human nature”—the idea that heterosexuality is the only “natural” human sexual behavior, the only one that is somehow sanctioned by evolutionary science. However, diversity of sexual preference is a profoundly human characteristic that must be accounted for in any natural history of human desire.
Sexual diversity poses distinct challenges to evolutionary explanation. How can evolution account for sexual behavior that is not directly related to reproduction—sperm meets egg? One of the most exciting aspects of this emerging theory of aesthetic evolution is the possibility that it sheds light on this enduring mystery of variation in human sexual desire. Understanding the origin of variations in sexual desire requires that we focus specifically on the evolution of the subjective desires of individuals—that is, the individual aesthetic experiences of sexual attraction.
I will not be talking here about the evolution of sexual identity—that is, the conceptual categories of heterosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality, and so on. The idea that sexual behavior is a marker or definition of a person’s identity is actually a quite modern, cultural invention—perhaps only 150 years old. Because we live in a society that is accustomed to conceiving of sexual behavior in terms of sexual identity, we tend to think that sexual identity categories are biologically real and, therefore, require scientific explanation. The problem is that scientific research on the origin of “homosexuality” seeks to explain the evolution of a social construct. As David Halperin, professor of English at the University of Michigan, explained to me, “Proposing a theory about the evolution of homosexuality is like proposing a theory of the evolution of hipsters or yuppies!” Sure enough, an ample scientific literature on the “evolution of homosexuality” gets this issue mostly wrong and has undermined itself as a result.
Rather, here I will explore the biological and evolutionary history of human same-sex sexual behavior, or same-sex behavior for short. Specifically, I want to investigate evolutionary changes in the diversity of sexual desire and behavior in humans after our common ancestry with the chimpanzees and before the modern cultural construction of sexual identity (evolutionary context 2, see fig. 2, this page). Throughout this discussion, however, it will be important to remember that just like many nonreproductive sexual acts—kissing, caressing, oral sex, and so on—same-sex behavior is still sex, even if it doesn’t involve sperm meets egg.
Human sexual preferences form a continuum—from people who engage in exclusively same-sex behavior, to people who engage in such behaviors usually, sometimes, or rarely, to people who engage in exclusively opposite-sex behavior. As with many other complex human traits, any genetic influences on human sexual preference come from many different genetic variations at many different genes, which interact with each other and with the environment in complex ways during development. As a result, the breadth and specificity of the resulting sexual preferences, attractions, desires, and behavioral responses will vary greatly. Where individuals land on the continuum of variation will depend in part on the combined effects of these many small genetic influences, and many social, environmental, and cultural influences as well.
An even more basic problem with most of the current scientific literature on the evolution of human “homosexuality” is that it begins with the assumption that there is an evolutionary conundrum. However, prior to the introduction of modern concepts of sexual identity, it is not at all clear that same-sex preferences were associated with lowered reproductive success at all. Humans have evolved to engage in sex more frequently, for greater duration, with greater pleasure, and in a greater variety of ways than did our ape ancestors, and many of the resulting sexual behaviors do not contribute to reproduction directly, yet they are perfectly consistent with reproductive success. Do heterosexuals who engage in oral sex have lower reproductive success than those who don’t? Obviously, that is a pretty silly question, and there is no reason to think so. But the issue is nearly the same when considering same-sex behavior. By trying to find an evolutionary explanation for something that is a cultural category, instead of investigating the evolutionary origins and maintenance of variation of the subjective experience of sexual attraction—sexual desire itself—much of this previous evolutionary research has simply missed the boat.
Until now, most theories of the evolution of same-sex behavior have tried to explain it by proposing adaptive solutions to the proposed loss of reproductive success. For example, it has been widely hypothesized that individuals with same-sex preferences could contribute to the survival and reproductive success of other related individuals from within their extended families. This kin selection hypothesis proposes that same-sex behavior persists because nonreproductive individuals with same-sex preferences contribute substantially to the care of their younger siblings, nieces, nephews, cousins, and so on. Because these “Helpful Uncles” or “Aunts” share genes with their kin, it’s possible that copies of the genes that contribute to same-sex preferences will be passed on indirectly to the next generation through these other family members.
The problem with the “Helpful Uncle” hypothesis is that there is no obvious correlation between same-sex attraction and the inclination to help raise one’s relatives’ children. And the kin selection hypothesis entirely fails to account for the most salient fact requiring an evolutionary explanation—the variation in human sexual desire.
In short, there is no evidence that same-sex behavior per se contributes to making a reproductive investment in related offspring. A more direct route to such investment would be to evolve asexual individuals who engage in no sexual behavior at all—as in female worker castes in ants and bees. But the absence of sexual desire is the exact opposite of the phenomenon needing to be explained in same-sex behavior. Kin selection arguments fail to answer the core question of how variations in sexual desire itself could have evolved and persisted.
Here, I propose that human same-sex behavior, like many of the sexual traits and behaviors discussed in the preceding three chapters, might have evolved through female mate choice as a mechanism to advance female sexual autonomy and to reduce sexual conflict over fertilization and parental care. According to this aesthetic hypothesis, the existence of same-sex behavior in humans is another evolutionary response to the persistent primate problem of male sexual coercion. Although I think that all human same-sex behavior might have evolved to provide females with greater autonomy and freedom of sexual choice, I address the evolution of female same-sex behavior and male same-sex behavior separately because I think that their evolutionary mechanisms differ substantially in detail.
To start off, we need to understand that the social and sexual behavior of primates is greatly influenced by which sex leaves the social group into which it is born when it reaches the age of sexual maturity. The movement of young adults out of one social group into another is necessary to prevent genetic inbreeding. Many primate species accomplish this by the traditional mammalian pattern in which it’s the males who disperse among social groups at sexual maturity, while the females stay at home in their natal groups. However, African apes and a few other old-world monkeys have evolved the opposite pattern, of female dispersal among social groups. Female dispersal is the ancestral condition for humans, and it continues in many human cultures in the world today. A fundamental consequence of female dispersal is that young female apes must disconnect from their natal social networks when they go out into the world to join their new social groups. Thus, all primate females within female-dispersal societies begin their sexual lives at a profound social disadvantage because of the lack of social support of developed social networks to help them combat male sexual coercion and social intimidation. After dispersal, females must forge new social networks to help them mitigate the various dangers of sexual coercion.
Even when females stay in their natal groups, they have to construct protective social networks. In baboons, for example, the primatologist Barbara Smuts and others have shown that male friends help protect the females’ offspring from marauding infanticidal males. More recently, the bio-anthropologist Joan Silk and colleagues have shown that female-female friendships contribute to protection of each other’s offspring against infanticide and other threats.
Because female primates use friendships to construct these mutually supportive, protective social networks, I hypothesize that female same-sex behavior in humans evolved as a way to construct and strengthen new female-female social alliances and make up for the ones that were lost when the females left their original, natal social groups. Natural selection on female preferences for same-sex sexual behaviors would result in females who have stronger social bonds with each other, allowing them to exert more effective defenses against male sexual coercion, including infanticide, violence, and social intimidation. According to this hypothesis, female same-sex behavior is a defensive, aesthetic, and adaptive response to the direct and indirect costs of coercive male control over reproduction. It’s defensive in that it functions to mitigate the costs of sexual coercion to female reproductive success directly. It’s aesthetic because it involves evolution of female sexual preferences. And it’s adaptive because it would evolve by natural selection on female preferences to minimize both the direct costs of sexual coercion, in the form of violence and infanticide, and the indirect costs, in the form of restricted female mate choice and coerced fertilizations.
Male same-sex sexual behavior in humans might also have evolved to advance female sexual autonomy, but by a different evolutionary mechanism, I think. I propose that human male same-sex behavior evolved through an extension of the process of the aesthetic remodeling of maleness that we discussed in chapters 6, 7, and 10. This aesthetic evolutionary proposal maintains that female mate choice has acted not only on male physical features but also on male social traits, in such a way as to remodel male behavior and, secondarily, to transform male-male social relationships. In other words, selection for the aesthetic, pro-social personality features that females preferred in their mates also contributed, incidentally, to the evolution of broader male sexual desires, including male same-sex preferences and behavior.
Once male same-sex behavior evolved within a population, it would advance female sexual autonomy in a number of ways. I suggest first that even if relatively few males within a social group had same-sex attractions, this could result in substantial changes in the social environment. As some males evolved same-sex sexual preferences, the increased breadth of male sexual outlets could lessen the intensity of male interest, and investment, in sexual and social control over females and diminish the ferocity of male-male sexual competition. Because male sexual competitors might also be sexual partners, this could further minimize their competitiveness with each other without necessarily producing any loss in their reproductive success. In fact, I’m proposing that the evolutionary changes in male sexual preferences occurred specifically because males with traits that are associated with same-sex preferences were preferred as mates by females. So, there is no reason to believe that their reproductive success would be compromised at all. Once the majority of human sexual behavior has evolved to be nonreproductive and unhinged from the confines of the female’s brief fertile period, then same-sex attraction can be seen as just a further broadening of sexual behavior and its social functions.
Second, male same-sex behavior could have fostered the subsequent evolution of less aggressive, more cooperative social relationships among males outside the context of sexual behavior. These same-sex relationships could have contributed to the development of collaborative hunting, defense, and other mutually and societally beneficial behaviors—exactly the suite of social behaviors that the human “self-domestication” hypothesis was designed to explain (see chapter 10).
Third, as female aesthetic preferences continued to coevolve with male traits associated with broader male sexual preferences, the process of aesthetic remodeling could have resulted in a minority of males with predominantly, or even exclusively, same-sex sexual preferences. These males could have then contributed to supportive and protective nonsexual relationships with females. (Of course, the exclusivity of sexual preference prior to the invention of the concept of sexual identity is an open question.) If the genetic influences on sexual preference are, like other complex human traits, a result of many variations of small effect at many different genes, then some male offspring will inherit a larger than average number of the diverse genetic variations involved in the social behavior traits that females find attractive. These individuals would end up at one end of the sexual preference continuum with predominantly or exclusively same-sex preferences and would be available for nonreproductive, noncompetitive, and noncoercive social alliances with females in their social groups. In baboon society, male-female friendships function in this way to defend females from physical attack, prevent infanticide, and advance the social interests of the female and her offspring within the group social network. Thus, I suggest that social alliances between males with predominantly same-sex sexual preferences and females—what we would call gay-male-straight-female friendships—may be not an accidental, or purely cultural, feature of human variation in sexual preference but an evolved function of human sexual variation.
Any losses to male reproductive success resulting from the evolution of same-sex preferences do not create an evolutionary conundrum, because female mate choice necessarily results in variation in male reproductive success. There are always winners and losers in the mate choice game. Any possible losses in male reproductive success merely demonstrate that male same-sex preferences have evolved not as an adaptation for males but to advance female sexual autonomy.
In the previous chapter, I proposed that human evolution has been greatly influenced by female aesthetic remodeling of maleness in ways that advanced the progress of female freedom of choice. Here, I am suggesting that male same-sex behavior has evolved by an extension of this same process. Again, this hypothesis does not imply that male same-sex behavior evolved through female preferences for weaker, subservient, feminized, or emasculated males that females can socially or physically dominate, though these female mating preferences will reduce the ability of males to dominate females of future generations. Rather, this female choice mechanism will lower the total effectiveness of coercive male sexual control and thereby increase the proportion of future fertilizations that occur due to mate choice. Ever-lower rates of sexual coercion will be associated with an ever-higher likelihood of the success of female choice, which will result in a sexual autonomy snowball.
The aesthetic theory of the evolution of male same-sex behavior does not imply that men with a predominantly same-sex orientation have any physical or social personality traits that differ from those of other males. Exactly the contrary, in fact. The hypothesis maintains that there is nothing distinctive about such men, because the features that evolved along with same-sex preferences have become a typical component of human maleness in general. Therefore, individuals with exclusively same-sex sexual preferences are distinctive only in the exclusivity, not in the existence, of their same-sex desires.
These aesthetic theories of the evolution of human same-sex behavior are, of course, highly speculative. However, I think that this speculation is responsible and warranted because of the fundamental importance of the question, the failure of current adaptive explanations to address the evolution of same-sex desire directly, and the unfortunate impact the current adaptive theories have already had on the public and cultural discourse on human sexuality, especially by reinforcing the tendency to view ourselves merely as (flawed) sexual objects rather than as autonomous and deserving sexual subjects. Clearly, there is a need for a new evolutionary theory on this question. We can, however, put these aesthetic hypotheses to the test by examining both their plausibility and their congruence with current data on sexuality in both human and nonhuman animals. To begin, I will evaluate their plausibility first by examining their assumptions.
For example, these aesthetic evolutionary theories assume the existence of heritable genetic variations in sexual preference and in behavior traits related to sexual preference. Like many other social behavior traits in humans, there is good evidence that predominantly same-sex sexual preference—that is, self-identified homosexuality—is strongly heritable.
In the case of the evolution of same-sex sexual behavior in females, the plausibility of the evolutionary mechanism of natural selection for female social alliances is well established in general. So, this proposal merely requires the application of a well-known evolutionary mechanism in a new context.
However, the hypothesis that female mate choice can result in the evolution of male social behavior in ways that expand female sexual autonomy is a new idea. Sam Snow and I are developing a mathematical, genetic model that will establish the efficacy of the aesthetic remodeling mechanism as proposed in bowerbirds, manakins, and humans. Such models establish that an evolutionary mechanism could occur under certain realistic assumptions.
The aesthetic theory proposes that female mate choice can also transform male social behavior in ways that extend beyond males’ social interactions with females, which is exactly the kind of process we’ve seen in lekking birds. Female mate choice in manakins has transformed the nature of male social competition so that bromance is key to success in romance. Same-sex behavior in human males may be another form of this female-driven aesthetic remodeling of male social relations, another evolutionary solution to the problem of male sexual coercion.
Strong evidence in support of the proposed anti-coercion, social functions of same-sex behavior in humans comes from the bonobos, who are among our closest relatives on the Tree of Life. Bonobos are well-known for having frequent, promiscuous, mostly nonreproductive sex, including extensive same-sex behavior. Sex in bonobos mediates social conflicts of various kinds (especially conflicts over food). As a result, bonobo society is remarkably egalitarian and peaceful. Bonobos are notable for the nearly complete absence of sexual coercion, even though male bonobos have a greater physical size advantage over females than do human males. Thus, bonobos demonstrate that same-sex behavior can function to undermine male sexual hierarchy and coercive sexual control in primates, that female same-sex behavior can strengthen female social alliance and reduce sexual and social competition among males, and that male same-sex behavior can lower competition and enhance group social cohesion. Despite these similarities in social function, however, same-sex behavior in bonobos has evolved independently of humans and by a very different mechanism.
The aesthetic hypothesis for the evolution of same-sex behavior is also congruent with what we know about the evolutionary elaboration of human sexuality since our common ancestry with bonobos and chimpanzees. Gorillas and chimpanzees pursue all available sexual opportunities with females, but only during their brief fertile periods; by contrast, human males are both sexually choosy and interested in sex outside the context of the narrow window of female estrous. Similarly, other female apes exercise little in the way of mate choice, but human females have evolved to be highly selective.
Human evolution has also involved many other changes to sexual behavior. There has been not only an increase in the frequency of sexual behavior beyond the limited period of female fertility but a broadening and deepening of its sensory and emotional content. As sexual behavior among humans evolved to serve social as well as reproductive functions, it could have expanded to function in same-sex relationships. The evolution of concealed ovulation and the expansive aesthetic evolution of sexual pleasure would also have furthered the process of decoupling sexual behavior from reproduction in humans.
Previous theories about the evolution of human same-sex behavior have either focused only on male same-sex behavior or lumped female and male same-sex behavior together as a single phenomenon. By contrast, these hypotheses propose that there are different evolutionary mechanisms for same-sex behavior in the two sexes. Because these mechanisms are distinct from each other, we can predict, accordingly, that there should be differences in the frequency and social function of these same-sex behaviors.
For example, because male same-sex behavior evolves via sexual selection for the advantages it provides to females, not to males, the possibility of evolving nonreproductive individuals is not an evolutionary conundrum but an expected outcome of sexual selection. In contrast, natural selection for alliance-building same-sex preferences in females should not result in any significant losses to female reproductive success. Accordingly, the frequency of individuals with exclusively same-sex preferences should evolve to be much higher among males than in females. Indeed, this prediction is borne out by the evidence that exclusive homosexual identity is about twice as frequent in men as it is in women. The aesthetic remodeling mechanism hypothesizes that the physical and social personality features that are associated with male same-sex preferences have evolved precisely because these traits are preferred by females. Consequently, even though the evolution of same-sex preferences could result in losses to individual reproductive success of some males, these losses will arise because of the exclusivity of their same-sex preferences, not because these males would fail to succeed in attracting female mates. As noted earlier, there is nothing distinctive about such males, because the features that evolved along with same-sex preferences will have become a typical component of human maleness in general. This prediction is consistent with the data (discussed in chapter 8), which indicate that women generally prefer men who have physical features that are somewhere in the middle of the “masculinity” spectrum. This prediction is also consistent with the observation that most men with predominantly same-sex preferences would be perfectly successful at obtaining female mates if they preferred them.
The sexual autonomy hypothesis also predicts that the capacity for broad, nonexclusive, same-sex sexual attraction should be quite common in humans, if not ubiquitous. This prediction is difficult to test because of the long history of moral and social condemnation of same-sex behavior in many cultures. We cannot yet say how most people would behave in the absence of such strong cultural discouragement. However, there is ample reason to believe that same-sex attraction is quite common. For example, in the 1940s and 1950s, Alfred Kinsey found that 37 percent of men and 13 percent of women, based on samples of over five thousand each, had some experience of same-sex behavior culminating in orgasm. We know that Kinsey’s samples were not representative of the American population as a whole. Nevertheless, Kinsey presented clear evidence that same-sex attraction and sexual experience are much more frequent in occurrence than is represented by the relatively tiny percentage of people who identify as having exclusively same-sex preferences. The biological capacity for same-sex attraction appears to be broadly distributed in human beings of both sexes.
Furthermore, same-sex behavior is a common occurrence in certain cultures and institutions in which it is not condemned or suppressed. For example, fascinating work by the feminist cultural anthropologist Gloria Wekker in the urban, working-class, Creole culture of Paramaribo, Suriname, has documented that an estimated three-quarters of women have engaged in enduring same-sex sexual partnerships that were simultaneous with long-term sexual relationships with the men who fathered their children. The women in these relationships were deeply engaged in providing cooperative child care, emotional support, and sexual pleasure to their female partners. We also know that the frequency of same-sex behavior may go way up in same-sex populations such as one finds in prisons and boarding schools, in which the cultural sanctions against same-sex behavior may be loosened.
The aesthetic theory also hypothesizes that females can advance their sexual autonomy through their friendships and social alliances with males who have predominantly same-sex sexual preferences. It is hard to investigate this observation given the complex social construction of gender, sexual identity, and social relationships in contemporary human cultures. However, we do know that such friendships are commonly acknowledged in our culture as a special sort of social relationship in a way that “straight-male-lesbian” friendships are not. At the heart of the long-running NBC hit television show Will & Grace was the enduring friendship between the housemates Will, a gay lawyer, and Grace, a straight interior designer. This phenomenon is not unique to Western culture, however. The 1992 Japanese movie Okoge tells the story of a straight young female office worker’s friendship with a gay friend and his lover. The title for the film comes from a Japanese slang use of the word for “sticky rice,” which refers to straight women with close gay friends. The fact that this slang even exists suggests that this is as well recognized a phenomenon in Japan as it is in Western cultures.
I do not, however, know of any example of an iconic relationship between a lesbian woman and a straight man. Will & Grace has not been followed by a show with a contrasting pair—say Rosie & Rocky starring the garrulous housemates Rosie O’Donnell and Sylvester Stallone. Nor are there any evolutionary hypotheses about the advantages that might accrue to either the males or the females in such relationships. However, to pursue these observations further, we would need to conduct serious sociological and psychological research into the nature of gay-straight relationships and their roles in the lives of real people.
Last, the aesthetic hypotheses about the evolution of same-sex behavior as a mechanism for reducing sexual violence also predict that male same-sex behavior should be associated with lower levels of sexual coercion, sexual violence, and domestic partner violence than male heterosexual behavior. The data available on this question are promising. The 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey reported that lifetime incidence of all categories of sexual partner violence (including rape, physical partner violence, and stalking) were significantly lower for men in same-sex relationships than for women in heterosexual relationships.
The evolutionary models I’m proposing assume the existence of a genetic variation for same-sex attraction, preferences, and behavior. To many people, however, the mention of genetics and sexual preference conjures up the prospect of identifying the “gay gene” and the possibility of genetic screening by health insurance companies or expectant parents. However, given what we know about the genetics of other complex human traits, such fears are unfounded.
Genomic studies are establishing that most complex human traits—from heart attack risk, musical ability, social personality, and shyness to autism—are influenced by the interactions of many genetic variations with individually small effects at many different locations, or genes, in the genome. As a result, even though these complex traits may be highly heritable, each instance of these traits is the result of a unique combination of genes, gene interactions, and the developmental environment. For example, a recent study of thousands of human genomes has shown that 82 percent of the simplest DNA sequence variations (called single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNiPs) occur at frequencies of less than 1/15,000, or less than 0.006 percent. An individual human would only need three or four of such variations to be genetically unique among all the world’s seven billion people. However, your genome actually has many thousands of such variations. Thus, it is hard to overestimate how truly unique each human being really is.
In this way, modern genomics has discovered the overwhelming fact of human individuality. Because there are myriad unique and distinct genetic combinations that influence each of these complex traits, including sexual preferences, we can be highly confident that there is no such thing as the “gay gene.” Any genetic influences on individual sexual preferences are likely to be virtually unique. Genetics will not produce a reductive science of human sexual attraction. Its causes are simply too diverse.
In summary, the hypothesis that human same-sex behavior has evolved through natural and sexual selection for the expansion of female sexual autonomy is congruent with a great deal of the evidence on variation in human sexual preference and behavior. However, this hypothesis may seem inconsistent with the observation that in many cultures—such as ancient Greece and various indigenous peoples in New Guinea—male same-sex behavior occurs along with highly restricted social and sexual autonomy of women. However, these cultural examples may be exceptions that prove the rule. Such cultures construct male same-sex behavior within highly age- and status-structured relationships, usually involving an active, penetrating, socially dominant, older male and a passive, receptive, socially subordinate, younger male. The rigid hierarchical structuring of same-sex behavior appears to be a cultural mechanism to co-opt same-sex behavior into a coercive male hierarchy and thereby control the inherently autonomy-enhancing impact of same-sex behavior.
Although these proposals on the evolution of same-sex behavior are still speculative, I think they demonstrate that there is a productive new research area to be explored at the interface of aesthetic evolution, sexual autonomy, and human sexual diversity. In surprising ways, the evolutionary hypotheses I’ve outlined are strongly consistent with, and supportive of, some of the basic elements of contemporary gender theory. For example, aesthetic theories of the evolution of human same-sex behavior support elements of both sides of one of the most important contemporary debates within the lesbian, gay, bisexual (LGB) communities. On the one hand, some LGB rights advocates have argued that LGB people are essentially just like heterosexuals except for their sexual desires and partners. This school of thought—represented eloquently by Andrew Sullivan in his 1995 book, Virtually Normal—has made a major contribution to the achievement of same-sex marriage in the United States and in many other developed countries. Aesthetic evolutionary hypotheses provide support for the Virtually Normal view, because they predict that same-sex attraction is an evolved feature that is broadly shared by a large proportion of humans. Homosexuals are indeed fundamentally “just like everyone else.” They differ only in the exclusivity and specificity of their same-sex preferences, not in having them.
However, many LGB people take issue with this assimilationist perspective, for they view variation in sexual orientation, desire, and behavior as inherently—and healthily—disruptive to heterosexual society. This opinion, well represented by Michael Warner’s The Trouble with Normal and David Halperin’s How to Be Gay, maintains that there is something about same-sex desire that is intrinsically subversive to normative heterosexual culture, hierarchy, and power. Interestingly, the aesthetic explanation for the evolution of human same-sex behavior comes down strongly in support of the inherent subversiveness of same-sex behavior. According to my proposals, the evolved function of same-sex behavior is, quite specifically, to subvert male sexual control and social hierarchy. Thus, the evolutionary queering of the human species likely proceeded through female sexual desire to escape coercive male control.
Furthermore, if same-sex desire evolved as a means of subverting coercive male sexual control, this could explain why many patriarchal cultures have adopted such fervent moral and social sanctions against same-sex behavior. From this perspective, prohibition of same-sex behavior constitutes another means of reinforcing male capacity to exert sexual and social control over women and reproduction.
I hope, therefore, that aesthetic evolution and sexual conflict theory will provide a productive new intellectual interface between evolutionary biology, contemporary culture, and gender studies. After decades of reductionist, adaptationist arguments from sociobiology and evolutionary psychology that either ignored same-sex behavior as an aberration or misinterpreted it as a form of nonsexual behavior, who could have imagined that evolutionary biology and queer theory could be on the same page about anything? Actually, I think there will be many more productive commonalities to explore in the future.