Thanks for another interesting piece, Jesse. One hole in the preparation hypothesis that you kind of nod toward but don't really unpack here involves lesbians' non-response to the bonobos in Chivers' research. After all, lesbians are women and if the response is due to natural selection and genetic transmission, why would it be transmitted to female infants who turn out to be straight but not female infants who turn out to be gay? In the Hobbesian sexual past upon which that theory rests, all women would have been subjected to rape, not just the straight ones. And presumably, all lesbians have straight mothers (or raped lesbian mothers), so I don't see why or how natural selection could have resulted in the situation we currently have.
Another point worth considering, bonobos often have sex face to face, with eye contact and kissing, whereas chimps are rear-entry only. If Chivers used images of bonobos that featured eye contact, perhaps it was the intimacy straight women were aroused by, rather than the thrusting?
Great points. The lesbians as outliers in the earlier studies is definitely puzzling here, although from a developmental systems perspective it *could be explainable in terms of a "gender shift" hypothesis, with prenatal hormones masculinizing these females' brains to become more male-typical in their eventual sexual responding. (Although that also raises the question of why gay men wouldn't respond in a more female-typical way to such stimuli. I'm not convinced of that explanation myself, but I think it's plausible.)
And the more human-like sexual behaviors of the bonobos may well be a factor here. I'm not sure why they didn't include bonobos in this study, comparing to the effects of chimps.
Thanks for another interesting piece, Jesse. One hole in the preparation hypothesis that you kind of nod toward but don't really unpack here involves lesbians' non-response to the bonobos in Chivers' research. After all, lesbians are women and if the response is due to natural selection and genetic transmission, why would it be transmitted to female infants who turn out to be straight but not female infants who turn out to be gay? In the Hobbesian sexual past upon which that theory rests, all women would have been subjected to rape, not just the straight ones. And presumably, all lesbians have straight mothers (or raped lesbian mothers), so I don't see why or how natural selection could have resulted in the situation we currently have.
Another point worth considering, bonobos often have sex face to face, with eye contact and kissing, whereas chimps are rear-entry only. If Chivers used images of bonobos that featured eye contact, perhaps it was the intimacy straight women were aroused by, rather than the thrusting?
Great points. The lesbians as outliers in the earlier studies is definitely puzzling here, although from a developmental systems perspective it *could be explainable in terms of a "gender shift" hypothesis, with prenatal hormones masculinizing these females' brains to become more male-typical in their eventual sexual responding. (Although that also raises the question of why gay men wouldn't respond in a more female-typical way to such stimuli. I'm not convinced of that explanation myself, but I think it's plausible.)
And the more human-like sexual behaviors of the bonobos may well be a factor here. I'm not sure why they didn't include bonobos in this study, comparing to the effects of chimps.