Delicious LiveJournal Links for 8-19-2008

[andrewducker]

• BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | Australian plea for 'ugly' women
  The mayor of a remote Australian mining town has come under fire after saying that female "ugly ducklings" might benefit from its shortage of women. John Molony told a newspaper last week that "with five blokes to every girl, may I suggest that beauty-disadvantaged women should proceed to Mount Isa". The council has since been swamped with complaints from both men and women.
  (tags: sexism gender australia feminism demographics)
• Bisexuality passed on by 'hyper-heterosexuals'
  Interesting result. As usual, needs a bigger study. Oh, to classify the whole human race. Oh, and finding which genes are actually involved would be handy too...
  (tags: genetics sexuality)

Comments

[pigeonhed.livejournal.com]

RE Bisexuality
Why do we need to know what 'causes' it? Might it not just be a matter of taste? Somedays I like Sausages, somedays I like Fish, who needs to know why I don't just eat Fish every day?

[andrewducker]

We don't _need_ to. But some people are interested in the reasons why people behave the way they do (me, for instance).

I would, to be honest, also be interested to know why people vary their diet so much.

[pigeonhed.livejournal.com]

The same reason I don't just listen to the same song over and over and over or finish a book and turn right back to page one and start over?

[andrewducker]

Interesting - I do get into patterns of eating where I eat the same thing for many days in a row.

[pigeonhed.livejournal.com]

Ah me too, and often listen to certain music on repeat for long spells until I suddenly feel like a change but many bisexual people are monogamous... until that relationship ends and then they may want something different?

[andrewducker]

Very true.

Widening it out slightly - I'm not bi, so far as I can tell. And it puzzles me why not. I'm not repelled by the thought of naked men, but it does nothing for me - whereas the thought of naked women does a _lot_. And I'm fascinated why that might be. So when I'm fascinated by why some people are bisexual (or homosexual), I'm actually largely fascinated as to why I'm not.

[pigeonhed.livejournal.com]

But presumably you aren't attracted to all women? You are selective? Doesn't that come down to taste?

[andrewducker]

Yup. I have taste within certain boundaries - but those boundaries are entirely solid. And it's not just me - this is common across a very large chunk of the population. When a particular taste is common across the entire planet, and seems less tractable to socialisation than other tastes, then it's worth investiging why.

[darkoshi]

"this unidentified genetic factor is likely to promote sexual attraction to men in both men and women. This would influence a woman's attitude rather than actually increasing her fertility, making her likely to have more children."

I don't see how they can jump from the fact that a group of women have more children, to the idea that those women are more sexually attracted to men than other women. Sure, it is a hypothesis, but that would need to be backed up by researching those women's sexual activity compared to other women, as well as the reasons for the sexual activity. It seems more related to fertility to me, or to a maternal instinct - wanting lots of children. If there were a large number of women who didn't have sex and didn't have children, then the hypothesis would be more believable, but since most women have sex and have children (based on my observations), the number of children they have doesn't seem to me to be necessarily directly related to sexual attraction.