I honestly hate when you meet people who say being open is “mature, evolved” like shut up. Sometimes a lot of the people I’ve met in open relationships have so much trauma and commitment issues. The friend I had most cheated or lied a lot so idk how it makes them mature 😂
Totally. What is mature is building authentic nourishing relationship, that allows you to explore some other aspects of life rather than fucking around. I am sure there are some mature people in open relationships as many as ones that run away from themselves using sex as overcompensation
I felt the emotional nuance was left out in this discussion because generally speaking neither monogamy or open relationships are better. Cheating is more than just sleeping with someone else. Lying, dishonesty, manipulation, etc. It's important for each relationship to define the boundaries internally and lay out expectations over time. Treating monogamy as a template is where many couples get in trouble and treating open relationships as free reign blurs trust. Even though All relationships ultimately end, they don't need to end on a bad note. All to say, communicate thoroughly and respect the relationship you are in.
Most people in my opinion-based on a variety of convergent forms of evidence- are going to be most interested in monogamy. There is no culture we know of where no one falls in love or where nobody gets jealous. We see it across all different societies and cultures. If you look at cultures where men are allowed to have multiple wives, they generally don't. Something like 90-95% of men in non-monogamous cultures where they are allowed multiple wives only marry one woman. Jealousy a mate-guarding emotion is a very strong psychological signal that we are interested in monogamy, at the very least stopping our mates mating with other people. I'm not saying infidelity is not natural as well, but the fact we have these monogamous unions and pair-bonds is evidence that it's natural. Looking at our species and what they naturally do generally is form relationships. Falling in love seems to have existed in humans for as far back as we remember. if monogamy is socially constructed many people claim, it's a big coincidence that it was socially constructed in every society and culture in humans on earth as far as we know. I also think monogamy works better in societies than polygamy. There's less male-male competition when there is less dimorphism in a species and higher monogamy. In virtually every mammalian species there is male-male competition. in most mammalian species most males who reach reproductive age never get to copulate even once, while virtually every female that reaches reproductive age will find someone to donate sperm to her. Also in many mammalian species mothers can cooperate in rearing offspring at little cost. Sexual dimorphism predicts differences in mating strategies and species like humans with less dimorphism tend(at least in primates) be more monogamous. The fact we feel romantic love at all and pair-bonding emotions is not a coincidence, nothing is a coincidence in biology. Humans today express only slight differences in body size by sex compared to closely-related promiscuous and polygynous species. Human females lack obvious visible signals of ovulation, particularly in comparison to the conspicuous sexual swellings of, for example, chimpanzees and baboons. Concealed ovulation and constant sexual receptivity of human females facilitates social monogamy. Limiting information available to males regarding fertility, thereby promoting monogamy through mate guarding and/or paternal care . Specifically, given that humans live in multi male/multi female groups, concealed ovulation is argued to minimize male-male competition and allow for stable, monogamous unions. Penis configurations across primate species are generally much more interesting than the human penis. The penises of other primate species commonly have lumps, ridges, kinks, spines or flanges, whereas the straight and smooth human penis lacks such features (unless you are rather unfortunate!). Bland characters such as the human penis are usually found in monogamous animal species. Also, DNA studies of male to female breeding ratios in Homo sapiens indicate about two women to every procreating man. This ratio is within the range for societies described as monogamous. Humans fall within the range of variation typical of pair-bonded species. The lack of exaggerated sexual dimorphism or testis size seems to rule out a history of elevated reproductive skew typical of highly promiscuous or polygynous mating systems. Instead, biological indicators suggest a mating system where both sexes form a long-term pair-bond with a single partner. And while polygyny was likely present in the human past, as it is across contemporary human societies, the weight of evidence seems to support social monogamy. Monogamy is natural because fathering is natural in the human species and fathering only evolves with sufficient sexual exclusivity to allow for paternity certainty for men and sufficient resource provision certainty for women. The human life history pattern (i.e., short birth intervals, relatively high child survival, and a long period of juvenile dependence) means that mothers are often in the position of supporting multiple dependents of various ages simultaneously. Because infants, juveniles, and adolescents each require different kinds of time and energy investments, mothers are posed with an allocation problem throughout much of their reproductive career: how to care for infants and small children without compromising time spent in activities that provide food and other resources for older children. How mothers resolve this trade-off to support a rapid reproductive pace has long been theoretically tied to monogamy and the cooperation of fathers, siblings, and others to help mothers raise dependents. In all known cultures, men have engaged in fathering their children. A cross-species analysis suggests that fathering only evolves when there is monogamy. Paternity certainty only adds to a male’s reproductive success if he can be reasonably confident that he is raising his own children rather than another male’s children. So, for fathering to evolve at least the females need to be faithful so the males possess paternity certainty. It only pays for females to be monogamous if females possess some certainty that the males will stick around to help nurture and protect the offspring. There’s no benefit for females being sexually exclusive when the males are practicing a mating strategy of "love them and leave them," requiring single mothers to fend for themselves without paternal assistance. Bi-parental care would only evolve if both males and females were willing to practice monogamy. Given the universality of fathering and bi-parental care among humans, it would seem that humans have evolved in a monogamous direction. There is an innate tendency towards monogamy; to engage in sexually exclusive romantic pair-bonding for bi-parental care. Human babies are completely helpless at birth and need parental care for years afterward. Ergo, in the case of Homo sapiens, two parents are better than one. People who are securely attached, authentic, and high in empathy with good communication skills tend to be better at monogamy. Our ancestor Ardipithecus ramidus, who lived 4.4 million years ago. Ardipithecus walked on two legs, freeing the hands, thereby allowing males to carry food to females. One can conjecture that females would favour males who offered them food, indicating how natural selection could introduce monogamy. And monogamy offered an obvious attraction to lower-ranking males. Monogamy is also a much more energetically economical arrangement than polygamy which is wasteful of time and energy as males fight over females. Polygamy tends to cause social problems, leaving many angry men without wives and inclined to behave in risky ways. This increases conflict and lowers productivity. Humans are typically described as cooperative breeders, which in addition to male parental investment, is a key defining aspect of human sociality, cognition, and demographic success Several recent phylogenetic analyses provide compelling evidence that cooperative breeding in bird, insect, and mammalian taxa was preceded by an ancestry of monogamy . Under certain circumstances, monogamy can increase male fitness more than deserting a partner and remating. Once biparental care becomes established, specialization of care tasks by males and females may serve to stabilize the pair-bond. The modal pattern cross-culturally is a life history characterized by specialization in child care by females (i.e., direct investment) and resource provisioning by males (i.e., indirect investment). This specialization can result from and further lead to synergistic fitness benefits tied to offspring success. These payoffs both constrain the behavioral options available to a parent and decrease sex-biased asymmetries in the costs of performing a parental investment task. Thus, task specialization can serve to strengthen biparental care once it emerges against invasion by other strategies. Monogamy ensures relatedness between fathers and their purported children, and permits for both the paternity confidence and relatedness necessary to favor investment by fathers and often care for multiple children at the same time. Also, DNA studies of male to female breeding ratios in Homo sapiens indicate about two women to every procreating man. This ratio is within the range for societies described as monogamous.Testosterone is an androgenic steroid hormone that supports many aspects of male mating effort, including the development and maintenance of sexually dimorphic musculature and bone structure as well as courtship and male-male aggression. Levels of circulating testosterone in males are thus reasoned to reflect the evolved hormonal regulation of investment in mating vs. parenting effort. Married men have lower testosterone levels than unmarried men, and that married men with children have the lowest levels. These results suggest that partnered men, and in particular fathers, are hormonally primed to invest more time and energy into parenting rather than mating effort.
We have not yet severed our modern-day sexual behavior from its history. It’s a system that has served us quite well, considering that we exist today. From an evolutionary psychology standpoint a woman usually looks for signs of commitment and that a man has the means to provide for her. The act of sex comes with a greater cost to women, due to the possibility of becoming pregnant and having to take on related responsibilities-giving birth, breastfeeding, raising the child, and ensuring his or her survival. By comparison, for men, sex requires an investment of several minutes. As a result, the female sexual system evolved to account for this discrepancy, because women who made good mating choices were the ones who succeeded at passing on their genes. This is why women, on average, are more selective about their sexual partners, preferring those who possess status and resources that will benefit them and their future offspring. Back in the day, if these resources were of poor quality or inconsistent, this would threaten a woman’s survival and the survival of her children. Being less choosy about sexual partners could also result in raising a child without the help of the father, who could otherwise provide material resources in addition to emotional support and physical protection. In response, men have evolved to be highly competitive in order to be attractive to the choosiest (and, therefore, highest value) sexual partners. Individuals who are well adapted to their environment are more likely to survive and reproduce than those who are less well adapted. The mate preferences of one sex will determine the characteristics that are passed on in the other sex. Successful mating consists of attaining a partner with good genes so that one’s offspring will survive and be successful at passing on their lineage. male sexuality is concordant. This means when a man is turned on psychologically, he’s also turned on physically, down below. Female sexuality, on the other hand, is much more context-dependent, and is lower in sexual concordance. Women may be psychologically turned on, but not physically, and vice versa. It can take a bit of extra time for a woman to get warmed up. From an evolutionary perspective, this ties into women’s greater selectivity when choosing their mates. For instance, a woman’s brain processes sexual cues differently, depending on where she is in her ovulatory cycle. A recent study using functional MRI demonstrated that women possess increased efficiency in inhibitory brain function when they are potentially fertile. This is adaptive because it allows a woman to be more cautious when evaluating a potential partner at times when it is more likely that she will become pregnant. An organism exists to propagate its genetic material, and this is the sole “meaning” of its existence. In all human societies across all cultures, uncivilised tribes and cavemen the vast majority of men and women are heterosexual because of biology. Social influences cannot override biology and the underlining preferences. The way the brains evolved and structured the primal urges and instincts are going to kick in before the more evolved regions of the brain do and be stronger because it's the biggest part and at the centre of the brain. To survive and procreate are two of our biggest drives. Our primal brain is in charge of our basic, primal drives, such as self-preservation, preservation of family, and reproduction. This is all biology is concerned with, and in some species the males die right after they copulate and impregnate a female. Some even develop features on their body for sexual selection that can be detrimental to their own survival, but the positives outweigh the negatives because it makes the male more likely to attract and be chosen by a female to procreate and pass on their genes. It might sound like I'm saying gay people don't fit into all this an evolutionary perspective, especially since they have less fitness to reproduce because they are same sex attracted, but they definitely do. science has many good theories on why they have still survived in the gene pool and how it's related to our survival and fitness of relatives to continue on the families genes and linage. for example genes being selected for female fecundity which have a byproduct of causing a certain amount of same sex behaviour among males, a sexually antagonistic effect. Their is also many other great theories and it's believed not all homosexual people are homosexual for the same reasons, but it's always about the survival and fitness of close relatives to carry on the genes and aids their relatives to reproduce more or have more reproductive success, although there is still no definitive answer. It might just be a normal variation( like intersex conditions are a natural biological variation even though most cannot reproduce) or different factors young maternal age, maternal weight gain, genetic conditions, sensitive immune system response to testosterone in women, and hormonal treatment during pregnancy. It could also be an epigenetic reaction to severe pre-natal stress. For example if a woman were to show signs and signals of some illness or health problem during pregnancy she is going to need that child to have more female typical traits to help with her and other offsprings survival. Male homosexuality is no just an isolated trait but rather part of a package of gender variant traits, If a man inherits a few of these genes, he will have some feminine characteristics, which might include increased empathy and kindness, decreased aggressivness and the like, These genes increase his attractivness to women, permitting him more sexual access and thus offering him the likelihood of having more offspring. If a man inherits all of these genes, however, he will be feminized to the point of homosexuality, and his reproductive success will drop markedly. Because each feminizing gene is present in many more straight men than gay men(straight men are the vast majority of the males) it only has to raise each straight man's reproductive success by a small amount to compensate for the lowered reproductive success of gay men. The association between sexual orientation and other gendered traits arises because all these traits differentiate under the influence of a common biological process-the sexual differentiation of the brain under the influence of sex hormones. Neuroscientific studies have shown that the brains of lesbians are partially masculinized and gay mens partially feminized. The mind of the average gay individual is a patch work of gendered traits, some indistinguishable from same-sex peers, some shifted past way toward the other sex, and others typical of the other sex. Sexual orientation is an aspect of gender that emerges from the prenatal sexual differentiation of the brain. Whether a person ends up gay or straight depends in large part on how this process of biological differentiation goes forward, with the lead actors being genes, sex hormones and the brain systems that are influenced by them. It's believed that gay men, during some point in fetal life, were exposed to unusually low levels of androgens, which allowed their hypothalamic circuits to develop in a female-typical direction. If testosterone levels during a critical prenatal period are high , the brain is organized in such a way that the person is predisposed to become typically masculine in a variety of gendered traits, including sexual attraction to females. If testosterone levels are low during that same time period, the brain is organized in such a way that the person is predisposed to become typically feminine in gendered traits, including sexual attraction to males. Gendered interests are predicted by testosterone exposure in utero. The organisational effects of hormones on the brain prior to birth have permanent effects.
I honestly hate when you meet people who say being open is “mature, evolved” like shut up. Sometimes a lot of the people I’ve met in open relationships have so much trauma and commitment issues. The friend I had most cheated or lied a lot so idk how it makes them mature 😂
Totally. What is mature is building authentic nourishing relationship, that allows you to explore some other aspects of life rather than fucking around.
I am sure there are some mature people in open relationships as many as ones that run away from themselves using sex as overcompensation
Conversation was deeply triggering, yet very eye opening.
I felt the emotional nuance was left out in this discussion because generally speaking neither monogamy or open relationships are better. Cheating is more than just sleeping with someone else. Lying, dishonesty, manipulation, etc. It's important for each relationship to define the boundaries internally and lay out expectations over time. Treating monogamy as a template is where many couples get in trouble and treating open relationships as free reign blurs trust. Even though All relationships ultimately end, they don't need to end on a bad note. All to say, communicate thoroughly and respect the relationship you are in.
Most people in my opinion-based on a variety of convergent forms of evidence- are going to be most interested in monogamy. There is no culture we know of where no one falls in love or where nobody gets jealous. We see it across all different societies and cultures. If you look at cultures where men are allowed to have multiple wives, they generally don't. Something like 90-95% of men in non-monogamous cultures where they are allowed multiple wives only marry one woman. Jealousy a mate-guarding emotion is a very strong psychological signal that we are interested in monogamy, at the very least stopping our mates mating with other people. I'm not saying infidelity is not natural as well, but the fact we have these monogamous unions and pair-bonds is evidence that it's natural. Looking at our species and what they naturally do generally is form relationships. Falling in love seems to have existed in humans for as far back as we remember. if monogamy is socially constructed many people claim, it's a big coincidence that it was socially constructed in every society and culture in humans on earth as far as we know.
I also think monogamy works better in societies than polygamy. There's less male-male competition when there is less dimorphism in a species and higher monogamy. In virtually every mammalian species there is male-male competition. in most mammalian species most males who reach reproductive age never get to copulate even once, while virtually every female that reaches reproductive age will find someone to donate sperm to her. Also in many mammalian species mothers can cooperate in rearing offspring at little cost.
Sexual dimorphism predicts differences in mating strategies and species like humans with less dimorphism tend(at least in primates) be more monogamous. The fact we feel romantic love at all and pair-bonding emotions is not a coincidence, nothing is a coincidence in biology. Humans today express only slight differences in body size by sex compared to closely-related promiscuous and polygynous species. Human females lack obvious visible signals of ovulation, particularly in comparison to the conspicuous sexual swellings of, for example, chimpanzees and baboons. Concealed ovulation and constant sexual receptivity of human females facilitates social monogamy. Limiting information available to males regarding fertility, thereby promoting monogamy through mate guarding and/or paternal care . Specifically, given that humans live in multi male/multi female groups, concealed ovulation is argued to minimize male-male competition and allow for stable, monogamous unions.
Penis configurations across primate species are generally much more interesting than the human penis. The penises of other primate species commonly have lumps, ridges, kinks, spines or flanges, whereas the straight and smooth human penis lacks such features (unless you are rather unfortunate!). Bland characters such as the human penis are usually found in monogamous animal species. Also, DNA studies of male to female breeding ratios in Homo sapiens indicate about two women to every procreating man. This ratio is within the range for societies described as monogamous. Humans fall within the range of variation typical of pair-bonded species. The lack of exaggerated sexual dimorphism or testis size seems to rule out a history of elevated reproductive skew typical of highly promiscuous or polygynous mating systems. Instead, biological indicators suggest a mating system where both sexes form a long-term pair-bond with a single partner. And while polygyny was likely present in the human past, as it is across contemporary human societies, the weight of evidence seems to support social monogamy.
Monogamy is natural because fathering is natural in the human species and fathering only evolves with sufficient sexual exclusivity to allow for paternity certainty for men and sufficient resource provision certainty for women. The human life history pattern (i.e., short birth intervals, relatively high child survival, and a long period of juvenile dependence) means that mothers are often in the position of supporting multiple dependents of various ages simultaneously. Because infants, juveniles, and adolescents each require different kinds of time and energy investments, mothers are posed with an allocation problem throughout much of their reproductive career: how to care for infants and small children without compromising time spent in activities that provide food and other resources for older children. How mothers resolve this trade-off to support a rapid reproductive pace has long been theoretically tied to monogamy and the cooperation of fathers, siblings, and others to help mothers raise dependents. In all known cultures, men have engaged in fathering their children.
A cross-species analysis suggests that fathering only evolves when there is monogamy. Paternity certainty only adds to a male’s reproductive success if he can be reasonably confident that he is raising his own children rather than another male’s children. So, for fathering to evolve at least the females need to be faithful so the males possess paternity certainty. It only pays for females to be monogamous if females possess some certainty that the males will stick around to help nurture and protect the offspring. There’s no benefit for females being sexually exclusive when the males are practicing a mating strategy of "love them and leave them," requiring single mothers to fend for themselves without paternal assistance. Bi-parental care would only evolve if both males and females were willing to practice monogamy. Given the universality of fathering and bi-parental care among humans, it would seem that humans have evolved in a monogamous direction. There is an innate tendency towards monogamy; to engage in sexually exclusive romantic pair-bonding for bi-parental care. Human babies are completely helpless at birth and need parental care for years afterward. Ergo, in the case of Homo sapiens, two parents are better than one. People who are securely attached, authentic, and high in empathy with good communication skills tend to be better at monogamy.
Our ancestor Ardipithecus ramidus, who lived 4.4 million years ago. Ardipithecus walked on two legs, freeing the hands, thereby allowing males to carry food to females. One can conjecture that females would favour males who offered them food, indicating how natural selection could introduce monogamy. And monogamy offered an obvious attraction to lower-ranking males. Monogamy is also a much more energetically economical arrangement than polygamy which is wasteful of time and energy as males fight over females. Polygamy tends to cause social problems, leaving many angry men without wives and inclined to behave in risky ways. This increases conflict and lowers productivity. Humans are typically described as cooperative breeders, which in addition to male parental investment, is a key defining aspect of human sociality, cognition, and demographic success Several recent phylogenetic analyses provide compelling evidence that cooperative breeding in bird, insect, and mammalian taxa was preceded by an ancestry of monogamy . Under certain circumstances, monogamy can increase male fitness more than deserting a partner and remating. Once biparental care becomes established, specialization of care tasks by males and females may serve to stabilize the pair-bond. The modal pattern cross-culturally is a life history characterized by specialization in child care by females (i.e., direct investment) and resource provisioning by males (i.e., indirect investment). This specialization can result from and further lead to synergistic fitness benefits tied to offspring success. These payoffs both constrain the behavioral options available to a parent and decrease sex-biased asymmetries in the costs of performing a parental investment task. Thus, task specialization can serve to strengthen biparental care once it emerges against invasion by other strategies. Monogamy ensures relatedness between fathers and their purported children, and permits for both the paternity confidence and relatedness necessary to favor investment by fathers and often care for multiple children at the same time.
Also, DNA studies of male to female breeding ratios in Homo sapiens indicate about two women to every procreating man. This ratio is within the range for societies described as monogamous.Testosterone is an androgenic steroid hormone that supports many aspects of male mating effort, including the development and maintenance of sexually dimorphic musculature and bone structure as well as courtship and male-male aggression. Levels of circulating testosterone in males are thus reasoned to reflect the evolved hormonal regulation of investment in mating vs. parenting effort. Married men have lower testosterone levels than unmarried men, and that married men with children have the lowest levels. These results suggest that partnered men, and in particular fathers, are hormonally primed to invest more time and energy into parenting rather than mating effort.
We have not yet severed our modern-day sexual behavior from its history. It’s a system that has served us quite well, considering that we exist today. From an evolutionary psychology standpoint a woman usually looks for signs of commitment and that a man has the means to provide for her. The act of sex comes with a greater cost to women, due to the possibility of becoming pregnant and having to take on related responsibilities-giving birth, breastfeeding, raising the child, and ensuring his or her survival. By comparison, for men, sex requires an investment of several minutes. As a result, the female sexual system evolved to account for this discrepancy, because women who made good mating choices were the ones who succeeded at passing on their genes. This is why women, on average, are more selective about their sexual partners, preferring those who possess status and resources that will benefit them and their future offspring. Back in the day, if these resources were of poor quality or inconsistent, this would threaten a woman’s survival and the survival of her children. Being less choosy about sexual partners could also result in raising a child without the help of the father, who could otherwise provide material resources in addition to emotional support and physical protection. In response, men have evolved to be highly competitive in order to be attractive to the choosiest (and, therefore, highest value) sexual partners. Individuals who are well adapted to their environment are more likely to survive and reproduce than those who are less well adapted. The mate preferences of one sex will determine the characteristics that are passed on in the other sex. Successful mating consists of attaining a partner with good genes so that one’s offspring will survive and be successful at passing on their lineage.
male sexuality is concordant. This means when a man is turned on psychologically, he’s also turned on physically, down below. Female sexuality, on the other hand, is much more context-dependent, and is lower in sexual concordance. Women may be psychologically turned on, but not physically, and vice versa. It can take a bit of extra time for a woman to get warmed up. From an evolutionary perspective, this ties into women’s greater selectivity when choosing their mates. For instance, a woman’s brain processes sexual cues differently, depending on where she is in her ovulatory cycle. A recent study using functional MRI demonstrated that women possess increased efficiency in inhibitory brain function when they are potentially fertile. This is adaptive because it allows a woman to be more cautious when evaluating a potential partner at times when it is more likely that she will become pregnant.
An organism exists to propagate its genetic material, and this is the sole “meaning” of its existence. In all human societies across all cultures, uncivilised tribes and cavemen the vast majority of men and women are heterosexual because of biology. Social influences cannot override biology and the underlining preferences. The way the brains evolved and structured the primal urges and instincts are going to kick in before the more evolved regions of the brain do and be stronger because it's the biggest part and at the centre of the brain. To survive and procreate are two of our biggest drives. Our primal brain is in charge of our basic, primal drives, such as self-preservation, preservation of family, and reproduction. This is all biology is concerned with, and in some species the males die right after they copulate and impregnate a female. Some even develop features on their body for sexual selection that can be detrimental to their own survival, but the positives outweigh the negatives because it makes the male more likely to attract and be chosen by a female to procreate and pass on their genes.
It might sound like I'm saying gay people don't fit into all this an evolutionary perspective, especially since they have less fitness to reproduce because they are same sex attracted, but they definitely do. science has many good theories on why they have still survived in the gene pool and how it's related to our survival and fitness of relatives to continue on the families genes and linage. for example genes being selected for female fecundity which have a byproduct of causing a certain amount of same sex behaviour among males, a sexually antagonistic effect. Their is also many other great theories and it's believed not all homosexual people are homosexual for the same reasons, but it's always about the survival and fitness of close relatives to carry on the genes and aids their relatives to reproduce more or have more reproductive success, although there is still no definitive answer. It might just be a normal variation( like intersex conditions are a natural biological variation even though most cannot reproduce) or different factors young maternal age, maternal weight gain, genetic conditions, sensitive immune system response to testosterone in women, and hormonal treatment during pregnancy. It could also be an epigenetic reaction to severe pre-natal stress. For example if a woman were to show signs and signals of some illness or health problem during pregnancy she is going to need that child to have more female typical traits to help with her and other offsprings survival.
Male homosexuality is no just an isolated trait but rather part of a package of gender variant traits, If a man inherits a few of these genes, he will have some feminine characteristics, which might include increased empathy and kindness, decreased aggressivness and the like, These genes increase his attractivness to women, permitting him more sexual access and thus offering him the likelihood of having more offspring. If a man inherits all of these genes, however, he will be feminized to the point of homosexuality, and his reproductive success will drop markedly. Because each feminizing gene is present in many more straight men than gay men(straight men are the vast majority of the males) it only has to raise each straight man's reproductive success by a small amount to compensate for the lowered reproductive success of gay men.
The association between sexual orientation and other gendered traits arises because all these traits differentiate under the influence of a common biological process-the sexual differentiation of the brain under the influence of sex hormones. Neuroscientific studies have shown that the brains of lesbians are partially masculinized and gay mens partially feminized. The mind of the average gay individual is a patch work of gendered traits, some indistinguishable from same-sex peers, some shifted past way toward the other sex, and others typical of the other sex. Sexual orientation is an aspect of gender that emerges from the prenatal sexual differentiation of the brain. Whether a person ends up gay or straight depends in large part on how this process of biological differentiation goes forward, with the lead actors being genes, sex hormones and the brain systems that are influenced by them.
It's believed that gay men, during some point in fetal life, were exposed to unusually low levels of androgens, which allowed their hypothalamic circuits to develop in a female-typical direction. If testosterone levels during a critical prenatal period are high , the brain is organized in such a way that the person is predisposed to become typically masculine in a variety of gendered traits, including sexual attraction to females. If testosterone levels are low during that same time period, the brain is organized in such a way that the person is predisposed to become typically feminine in gendered traits, including sexual attraction to males. Gendered interests are predicted by testosterone exposure in utero. The organisational effects of hormones on the brain prior to birth have permanent effects.
"Build a bear, wait that um... somebody write that down" dying
i love this
💜💜
Who’s the gorgeous jock on the right? My god he’s perfect
Idec i stan chris pratt and guardians of the galaxy 3 was the best movie to come out within this past year.