Evolution of Homosexuality in the Human Males: Improved Mixed-Team Performance Hypothesis

Male homosexual preference (MHP) is present in many human societies, making up a small but significant cohort. Because homosexual mate preferences are associated with lower fecundity, many evolutionary explanations have been advanced to account for the persistence of this trait. After reviewing a number of these hypotheses and finding room for additional explanations, we propose a new hypothesis that depends on the observed greater empathy and reduced hostility of men who express MHP. This gives them a central role in the performance of groups or teams (all male and mixed) where cooperation and intra-team coherence are at a premium. In this view, teams that contain men with MHP will outcompete teams without such men, other variables being similar. The links between personality traits and team performance do not require homosexual activity within the group. The hypothesis is supported by observations of the personality traits associated with MHP, such as increased agreeableness, which is linked to the literature on team cohesion and performance in sports and other kinds of teams and groups. This novel hypothesis could be examined through direct study of team performance. The proposed hypothesis may also have relevance to better performance among the diverse teams whose efficient performance is so important in modern society.

“他無法面對身體”：東尼、克許納劇作《美國天使》中的肉體顛覆

<p>東尼、克許納的普立茲得獎作品《美國天使，國家議題的同志幻想》探討同性戀、宗教、政治、同志恐懼症、和身份等重大議題，亦激發意識型態、畏懼、及焦慮等種種意見衝突。然而，探討本劇的學術研究，無論為關於政治、宗教、或文化的意識型態戰爭，都不經意地透露出某方面的忽略或迴避──肉體。肉體在本劇中不僅舉足輕重且一再地帶給觀眾深痛的衝擊。《美國天使》中無所不在的肉體展現，尤其是感染愛滋病的男同志病體，在在證實了劇中具強烈身體感官的言語、意象、和行動的重要性。本文深究《美國天使》中運用肉體的意識型態和䇿略意涵，並論述克許納將肉體政治化，透過展現怪誕醜陋的男同志愛滋病體、疾病敍述、及性暴露的方式，為男同性戀者和愛滋病患爭取平權，並激發同情心與善解的人性光輝。</p> <p>&nbsp;</p><p>Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Angels in America, A Gay Fantasia on National Themes (1992) brings ponderous issues such as homosexuality, religion, politics, homophobia, and identity together in a fascinating and profound clash of warring beliefs, ideologies, fears, and anxiety. However, the plethora of scholarship which the play has inspired on the wars of ideology, be they political, religious, or cultural, has betrayed an unwitting negligence or avoidance in one regard&mdash;corporeality, which not only abounds in the play but also insistently makes poignant impressions on the audience. The pervasiveness of corporeality in Angels in America, specifically the AIDS-infected male homosexual body, attests to the centrality of visceral language, imagery, and action in the play. This study delves into the ideological and strategic implications of corporeality in Angels in America and postulates that Kushner politicizes corporeality to strive for equity for homosexual males and AIDS patients and to inspire sympathy and understanding humanity through the AIDS-infected male homosexual grotesquery, illness narratives, and sexual explicitness.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p>

HIV Is a Story First Written on the Bodies of Gay and Bisexual Men

Whatever else it may be, AIDS is a story, or multiple stories, and read to a surprising extent from a text that does not exist: the body of the male homosexual.1 (Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print June 10, 2021: e1–e3. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2021.306348 )

Homophobia and Antisemitism in Otto Julius Bierbaum’s Prinz Kuckuck (1907/08)

Starting from existing scholarship on the relationship among masculinity, sexuality, and Jewishness in the German-language cultural sphere, this article analyzes the connection between antisemitism and homophobia in Otto Julius Bierbaum’s fin-de-siècle novel Prinz Kuckuck. By tracing the respective paths of the Jewish protagonist and his male homosexual counterpart, the article elaborates on the specific versions of Jewishness and male homosexuality that Bierbaum’s novel creates. It can be shown that the novel exposes both the Jewish and the homosexual character as deficient and harmful. The novel, however, does not restrict itself to mere parallelization but establishes an intrinsic connection between the Jewish and the male homosexual character by integrating homosexual codes into the Jew’s “parasitic” repertoire. The article concludes by offering an explanation of this connection that draws on Moishe Postone’s critique of modern antisemitism. Antisemitism and homophobia are shown as two complementary and intrinsically connected ways of dealing with two dimensions of the experience of modernity: capitalism and social contingency.

The Ambivalence of Gay Liberation

This book explores ways of thinking, feeling, and talking about homosexuality in the 1970s, an influential decade sandwiched between the partial decriminalization of sex between men in 1969, and the arrival of the HIV/AIDS crisis in the early 1980s. Moving beyond divided Cold War Berlin, this book also shines a light on the scores of lesser-known West German towns and cities that were home to a gay group by the end of the 1970s. Yet gay liberation did not take place only in activist meetings and on street demonstrations, but also on television, in magazine editorial offices, ordinary homes, bedrooms—and beyond. In considering all these spaces and individuals, this book provides a more complex account than previous histories, which have tended to focus only on a social movement and only on the idea of ‘gay pride’. By drawing attention to ambivalence, this book shows that gay liberation was never only about pride, but also about shame; characterized not only by hope, but also by fear; and driven forward not just by the pushes of confrontation, but also by the pulls of conformism. Ranging from the painstaking emergence of the gay press to the first representation of homosexuality on television, from debates over the sexual legacy of 1968 to the memory of Nazi persecution, The Ambivalence of Gay Liberation is the first English-language book to tell the story of male homosexual politics in 1970s West Germany. In so doing, this book changes the way we think about this key period in modern queer history.

Evolution of Homosexuality in the Human Male: Improved Mixed-Team Performance Hypothesis

Male homosexual preference (MHP) is present in many human societies. Because homosexual mate preferences are associated with lower fecundity, many evolutionary explanations have been advanced to account for the persistence of this trait, with varying degrees of success. After reviewing a number of these hypotheses and finding them lacking, we propose a new hypothesis that depends on the observed greater empathy and reduced hostility of men who express MHP. This gives them a central role in the performance of groups or teams of males and/or females where cooperation and intra-team coherence are at a premium. Teams that contain men with MHP will, we propose, outcompete teams without such men. The links we propose between personality traits and team performance do not require homosexual activity within the group. Our hypothesis is supported by observations of the personality traits associated with MHP, such as agreeableness, which we link to the literature on sports and other kinds of teams and groups. Our hypothesis could be examined through direct study of team performance, enabling the topic to move beyond evolutionary theorizing. We note too that although we set out to develop an additional account for the evolutionary maintenance of MHP, our hypothesis may also have relevance to better performance among the diverse teams whose efficient performance is so important in modern society.

The Bicha Louca (Crazy Fag) Character and the Construction of a Network of Actorial Work in Brazil during the Civil-Military Dictatorship (1964-1985)

ABSTRACT The article proposes the existence of an actorial network that created a character-type of the male homosexual, which could be called the bicha louca (crazy fag). Actors such as Nestor Montemar, Raul Cortez, Ítalo Rossi and Emiliano Queiroz participated in this network, contributing to the theatre being a space of visibility for the LGBT population and of resistance to the moral and political repression in the period of the Brazilian civil-military dictatorship (1964-1985).