At a slumber party, young girls, even teenaged girls, proceed from pillow fights to tickling sessions. Sorry, but no matter how you slice it, it always comes back to lots of gay men acting like young girls. Neotony.

Yes, Razib, I can read. I was going to quote this sentence, but feeble excuse though it is, I was in a hurry and so concentrated on Massa: "notes that adults and adolescents are seven times more likely to be tickled by members of the opposite sex." Nothing surprising, is it? Little girls do become big girls, and big girls date big boys, and big girls and big boys live together and/or marry one another and thus engage in the Big Tickle for the better part of their lives. Anyway, couldn't help myself--saw Massa's interview with Beck and was struck immediately that for a guy who was trying to hold on to a shred of believability on all sorts of issues, he seemed to have NO clue that the audience would buy his just-a-regular-ole-tickling-session-among-grown-straight men about as easily as they'd buy a concrete structure in Haiti. Yeah, shoulda put a LOL after the comment.

"but it seems that tickling is a more advanced stage of flirting in interactions between heteros." Of course. Girls are like your house cat pretending the spot on the carpet she has just attacked is a mouse. Young girls frequently practice their flirting techniques and plot strategies to ensnare guys when they get together, or don't guys know this? At the slumber parties I mentioned, girls discuss kissing and touching techniques at length, use each other sometimes and pillows often to demonstrate, or don't guys know this? Of course, on second thought, even George Costanza used a pillow to practice what he hoped would be his eventual conquest of Marisa Tomei so maybe guys practice this too although not in the company of one another as girls do?

No problem, Razib. "i assume the only guys who go to this level of detailed thought about the topic are pedophiles. am i wrong? what do others think?" I can't speak for guys, but I'd guess you're right. Guys do the hunting, girls the alluring, and both, I imagine, have ways of practicing what their evolutionary history has armed them with.

Thank you, Razib, and the same to you.  Thanks for the present of a great blog.

I guess we all have anecdotes that makes us lean in a certain direction. Not being a scientist, I don't have to feel guilty about that. 
 
I recall reading a few things about the likelihood of an infectious causation to mental illness. In fact, I think I had just read the article "Mind Germs" in which Paul Ewald is referenced and quoted, and I think I had read the Atlantic Mag article in which Ewald and Cochran are interviewed. Both articles were quite old by the time I read them. 
 
Not many days later, I had lunch with a good friend who told me of her niece's on-going struggle with bi-polar illness. Now in her late thirties, her niece had been forced to quit her teaching position. She just couldn't maintain emotional stability. 
 
The woman's brother, my friend's nephew, had committed suicide his senior year of high school many years earlier. No one saw it coming, the typical out-of-the-blue story of a kid who was, in hindsight, depressed, yet no one knew. Of course, in those days, teen depression was not the common topic it is today. 
 
Having just read about germs and mental illness and now thinking about this brother and sister who both suffered from mental illness, I asked my friend if her sister-in-law had been ill at all during her pregnancy with either child. 
 
"Are you kidding?" she spurted. "I spent my summer vacation taking care of her the first couple of months of her pregnancy. She had mono." 
 
Wow. I had just read about the possible connection between the Epstein-Barr virus and mental illness. I guess my eyes got really big, enough that my friend said, "Why? What's wrong? She delivered the baby just fine in the end. Everything was okay." 
 
The girl, the bi-polar victim, was the first-born. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like either came out "okay."

How many women going out to a nightclub even trust "a good looking" dude? 
 
Women 18-27? Waaaay too many 
Women 27+? Just about none but the most stupid

I know it's not uncommon among high school girls who run cross country for their periods to stop or to become irregular. Sometimes this happens with swimmers as well. I thought I read that extremes of exercise delay menstruation or cause it to stop.

There does seem to be some clustering of homosexuality in families, but I also remember Paul Ewald stating that it's not unusual for pathogens to cluster in a family, with carriers passing bugs along from one generation to another. Families share exposure and susceptibilities. Food for thought. 
 
I too am reminded of stories that anecdotally show the clustering, in this case, a friend of my mother. She had three sons, one straight, two gay (well, the youngest is bi, if we accept bi as a category--he does have daughters), but the two non-straight sons come from two different fathers. It was that which first made me interested in the subject. As a kid, I assumed that meant it was genetic, but now it appears it's not so simple as all that.

Can't see my post. I think I typed, "What's in a word?" Correction. "What's in a name?"  
Time for bed.

Does one have a hearing disorder if one can only hear out of one ear? If one is blind but is quite fulfilled living without sight, is his blindness a disorder? Are one's feelings about a condition or state of being the only determiner of what might be a disorder? That's pretty much why I said, "If we don't get too picky about terminology." 
 
To clarify, I'd say that if my ear doesn't hear, there is an auditory disorder. If my eyes don't see, I have a visual disorder no matter how much I might be quite happy and content with my state of being and others happy with me.  
 
A gay man wanting to have his own children w/out using clinical help requires he have sex with a woman. There are some gay men who can't achieve this.  
 
A gay friend and colleague of mine wanted kids desperately but two things prevented it: one, he didn't want to use insemination for a host of reasons, all of which seemed reasonable at the time; two, when he and his partner considered adoption, he argued endlessly with himself about whether a child should have both a mother and a father. I thought him quite unselfish for giving it the thought he did, but it didn't surprise me, for he was a very unselfish person.  
 
When his paternal desires kicked in, at that point, I wonder what word might he have thought fitting. I know he wouldn't have used "disorder" because he was quite the activist and of course he didn't feel there was anything wrong with being gay, but I do know he was full of conflict and doubt about adoption and full of longing for what wouldn't be.  
 
Having left behind the anxiety and hurts of his youth, a struggle it would seem almost all gay people faced during the years in which he grew up, he went through his twenties and very early thirties quite happy and carefree. Then as his future lay before him and the reality of age set in, according to him, he viewed his gayness in a bit of a different light, something he had not foreseen. He had thought the days of wishing he had been born straight were over long ago, but the child situation had caused fleeting thoughts that disturbed him. 
 
Turns out best that they didn't have the kids. Neither he nor his partner made it past the age of 35.  
 
"What's in a word?" some bard asked.

A few points-- 
 
"Without endorsing blockage of scientific research, this comment thread itself indicates one of the problems, in that people are moving "naturally" to the language of disorder." 
 
1. Don't know what you mean by the language of disorder. 
 
2. So far, yes, research seems to support that of those who have had same-sex experiences, men are more exclusively homosexual than are women. 
 
However, I don't think women have been studied very much, so it's hard to draw conclusions about them. After all, in one of the studies, women reacted to bonobos getting it on while neither gay nor straight males did. I can't account for that other than to say it comes as no surprise to anyone on this board that the male brain and the female brain are different. Who knows? Maybe something that makes us laugh causes a physiological reaction that got measured as a sexual reaction, or maybe something that makes us laugh--I think watching bonobos fooling around might make me laugh-- puts us in the mood. You know, there's a tip for the guys--humor indeed is a way to a woman's heart. Then again, maybe we women are just a bit more voyeuristic than the guys.  
 
3. I'd like an evolutionary biologist/anthropologist to tell me how likely it is that one reason women may not be as "visually" stimulated as quickly and to as great a degree as men is that we have had built into us a natural wariness, a guard that allows us to first size up the guy, to take measure of him, to decide if is he "safe." After all, think how vulnerable a woman is. She can't match even a small male in strength and guess what? Sex can hurt, you know? Hurt badly if she isn't ready for it, and/or if her partner doesn't take care (which means he must care enough to take care). Thus, she is physically in danger and is always aware of this. Put simply, we have defense mechanisms. Somewhere in our make-up must be the instinct to proceed carefully.  
 
4. I have read people who offer all sorts of comparisons of animal behavior to human homosexual behavior; they even include the fact that newly hatched birds can imprint on humans or inanimate objects. 
 
Anything I have read about imprinting that applies to birds doesn't apply to people, according to the experts I've read. 
 
Furthermore, I think someone said it above in a post--most animal "gay" behavior is not exclusive and some of what is perceived and labeled as "gay behavior" is not sexual at all.

I've had referees for PNAS suggest that there is probably no such thing as positive selection. 
 
OMG, I know you're serious. We ARE in trouble.

I forgot to add the most likely argument of the incest practitioner-- the very libertarian position of, "We're adults, we're consenting, and we're not hurting anyone, so it's nobody's business what goes on in our bedroom."

"What about exploring homophobia as a possible biological trait? That sounds like a fun way to irritate the far left." 
 
Chuckle. I've seen this asked before, but really it does raise an interesting question, and that is, "Are we hard-wired to be put off by homosexuality?" And, "Is that what is going on with the incest taboo as well?" 
 
While it's true that the taboo of homosexuality is not what it once was in this country, I find that while people are more accepting of homosexuality as they have come to know gay people and as they have come to accept that it is not the result of a choice, the acceptance is of the people themselves. In the old days, many would have shunned gays as friends. Not so today..well, in most enlightened places, not so today. 
 
However, let the topic of homosexuality come up when no gays are around, and even the most dyed-in the wool straight liberals often express their mortification about guys liking guys. It's the old "Ewwwww, OMG " factor, and such a reaction comes also from women who, it is often said, are more understanding than our male counterparts.  
 
Someone once pointed out that it might have to do with our image that a man who is penetrated is not a man. I think for sure that's part of it, but other images come to mind as well, so most straights try not to think of such things.  
 
I don't really think it's fair to label this reaction "homophobia." Perhaps we need a new word in the lexicon. There are, after all, just some thoughts that cause us naturally to recoil. So, yes, the idea of our feelings being hard-wired is interesting.  
 
Also interesting is our reaction to incest, even when it occurs between consenting adults. If incest practitioners, little by little, began fighting for their "rights,"(they'd need a martyr or an event that garnered some sympathy), if they presented their desires as a result of "natural variation," if they argued over the next few years that their attractions were natural or genetic or biologically caused, at least, not a choice, etc. would we come to view incest in the same way as we view homosexuality today?

Gee, Lorenzo, I do think evolution saw to it that *depositing* semen (rather than, as you phrased it, "exchanging" it) was a pretty effective way of seeing to it that there was a next generation. The thing is... that semen has to be deposited into something that can produce a new life. It's called a woman and her uterus. Gay guys don't seem much interested in the two. 
 
So, the cause? Hey, sure, I would like to know what specific neurons, neurotransmitters, etc. "cause" attraction, heterosexual attraction. Find that and you can find out what isn't functioning in the same way in the homosexual. 
 
Evolution works hard at producing fertile, not infertile beings. Homosexuality is akin to infertility.  
 
As for the hypothetical infection rate? We've no records to know if such rates have varied. Seems as if there are isolated places where homosexuality didn't exist until people from the outside visited, perhaps bringing with them the pathogens. (Gee, I wonder about that isolated Brazilian tribe they found last year, the one who'd not let anyone close to them.) 
 
I've always remembered Cochran's point about the polio virus--a fairly common gut virus that in a small % of people made its way out of there and wreaked havoc. Could be the same kind of virus, a virus that lost its way? It could be common and seemingly harmless in most, but in a few people might make its way into the brain where it zaps crucial cells. Probably it dead ends there. Lots of infections leave behind collateral damage.  
 
Same-sex orientation being a pathology? Well, yes, from nature's point of view, a guy who isn't turned on by a woman has something strange going on. From a fitness point of view, he might as well be w/out reproductive organs.  
Would you think that evolution would work to produce people who were w/out reproductive organs? Would that evolutionary strategy be part of your normal or somewhat flattened bell curve? 
 
Read some Greg Cochran and Paul Ewald. I woudn't worry about them being influenced by monotheism.

Birth months correlates must have been done, don't you think? Wouldn't someone start by looking at such an easy thing? Also, a candidate bug wouldn't have to strike when the child was born. 
 
What about HLA types? There's a Northwestern sibling study that should be about to come out. They got a million dollars. Wonder if they did HLA typing? I admit to not knowing how expensive such typing is.  
 
An in-progress UCLA study claims to be of a different sort--they're studying twins and trying to see if epigenetics is involved. What's your guess about that?

Sad that such researchers, microbiologists and such, I presume, are hard to find. I'd would have thought someone who was older and not worried about his or her future would have been up to the task. If nothing else, I'd have expected someone outside this pc country to take a good hard look at it. God, looks like too many scientists are like too many politicians, scared of their shadows. Pathetic.  
 
IIRC, I read that there are flu innoculations around the corner for the very young. If those get underway in a few years, I wonder if we just might not see a reduction in the number of boys who grow up to be gay. Just wondering--guess we don't know what pathogens might be in play.

Thanks, I did read the unpublished excerpts--somehow that's not what I was thinking he meant. 
BTW, sorry for the double post--didn't think the first one went through.

I just got mine (a copy, that is) as well. While I am certainly interested in the topics covered, I admit to great curiosity about Cochran's reference a few weeks ago on this very blog to the topics their publisher wouldn't allow in the book. Just guessing--suppose those topics might deal with race, gender, or sexual orientation? Anyone else care to hazard a guess? He did suggest he supposed we'd find out. Cryptic, as always. 
 
BTW, speaking of sexual orientation... anyone know if GC still subscribes to the pathogen theory? It's been a while, a couple of years, I think, since I read anything from him on this subject although it's true I certainly could have missed a post from him. Ever since I first read it, it seemed a great hypothesis, and considering all the recent research substantiating pathogenic triggers of a myriad of diseases, it seems even more likely today, but I've heard nothing from him. Anyone know if he is more or less convinced of it today?

I just got mine as well (a copy, that is). 
 
Interesting as it is, I am curious about what Greg C. cryptically referred to in another post--topics the publisher wouldn't let them put in the book. Taking a shot at it, I'd say such topics might be related to race or sexual orientation. Any guesses? 
 
BTW, is GC still a proponent of the pathogen theory of homosexuality? He's been silent on this for a time from what I can tell, anyway. It made sense years ago when he proposed it, and seems to make even more sense today, considering all the research revealing viral triggers to a myriad of afflictions, but...he has been silent, right? Or have I missed something?