Snips and Snails and Puppydog's Tails

Tyler Cowen (and a whole slew of commentators) weigh in on a noteworthy proposition: liberals tend to think that homosexuality is hardwired and gender differences are not, while conservatives think just the other way around (link).

As a generalization, I suspect there is a good deal of merit to this view, but I don’t think either position does very well at describing me. At the very least, my views evolve: when I was young, I took it for granted that gender differences were hard-wired and I didn’t know enough about homosexuality to have an opinion. In the 60s and 70s, I submitted to the prevailing wisdom that gender differences were cultural (I think maybe I always had my fingers crossed but who knows). And once I began paying attention, I pretty quickly came to the view that homosexuality must be hard-wired.

On homosexuality, I still hold that view, but on gender differences, I’ve regressed: I think we were closer to right the first time. I’ll grant that there are a whole slew of differences that are “merely” (ha!) cultural, and it is maddeningly difficult to disentangle nature from culture, but I suspect that there is far more to the essentialist case than the 60s or 70s were willing to admit.

Mrs. B throws in a couple of wrinkles that I hadn’t thought of it. One, re homosexual “deprogramming.” Even if we could do it, she asks (not that she thinks we can), still, why would we want to? IOW, suppose it is a mere cultural choice—so what?

The other is on the matter of sado-masochism which, I admit, I do my very best not to think about. Mrs. B grants that she doesn’t know much about it either, but if there is an avenue for cultural intervention to reduce its prevalence in society, she’d be delighted to give the avenue a try. Granted there seems to be a lot of it going on between consenting partners. One might still want to be a moral absolutist about this sort of thing; consent or not, it’s just not what you want society to be about.