All: Do men and women need each other beyond purposes of reproduction?

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[–]MarkTwainiac 15 insightful - 1 fun15 insightful - 0 fun16 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

I still struggle to understand the purpose of same-sex attraction since it doesn't facilitate biological reproduction which seems to be our biological purpose as human beings. It would seem useless at best and harmful at worst.

A fundamental, driving purpose of all plants & animals species is the perpetuation of the species, which involves the species reproducing and evolving. But this doesn't mean that every single individual member of a plant or animal species must or will reproduce. Only some members need to reproduce to keep a species going & evolving.

In nature there are and always have been individual plants & animals that can't reproduce, or don't reproduce for one reason or another. And homosexuality is seen amongst many animal species other than humans. Male-to-male and female-to-female sex acts are natural occurrences & homosexuality as a sexual orientation amongst homo sapiens is a natural variation.

Moreover, it's to the benefit of the long-term survival & betterment of the human species that some people don't reproduce. Raising, worrying & financially supporting children consumes a lot of time and resources. It's always good that some people aren't bound up in such activities so they can focus on & accomplish other things - things that the rest of society will benefit from in various ways.

Look, for example, at the contributions made by the Bronte sisters, Jane Austen, Emily Dickinson, Louisa May Alcott, Susan B Anthony, Simone de Beauvoir, Germaine Greer and Gloria Steinem. Thank goddess, I say, that they didn't get bogged down having kids. (And I say that as a woman who has had kids.)

The question of what our purpose is as human beings is a different topic, one for theologians & philosophers rather than biologists. Some say our purpose is to obey & love god. Some say it's to love one another. Some say it's to prepare for the afterlife. Some say it's to make the world a better place. Some say it's to be fruitful & multiply like the Bible says. Some say there's no purpose or point to it at all, it's all a cosmic joke.

The claims that homosexuality is useless & harmful strike me as very homophobic statements reminiscent of yesteryear.

What's useless about people of the same sex connecting, loving, comforting, pleasuring, supporting and caring for one another? Does everything human beings do have to be "useful"? Who decides what's useless & useful - and what's the criteria?

Why is homosexuality harmful? To whom? And how?

Although I happen to be mostly heterosexual & nearly all my sexual relationships have been conventionally het, my own life would be much diminished if I hadn't had the chance to know all the lesbians and gay men who have been my close friends, colleagues, acquaintances, neighbors, business owners, bartenders, restauranteurs, gym operators, hairdressers, architects, doctors, therapists & all sorts of other integral members of the communities I've lived in my whole life. I truly owe my life to several persons who happen to be homosexual - the psychotherapist I saw for 17 years until her untimely death, lesbian friends who took me into their home and cared for me when I was very ill & could not care for myself, and several gay male friends who have always been there for me when life has taken a bad turn. As I've been there for them.

The entirety of Western culture would be much diminished without gay men & lesbians too.

I don't get what you are trying to say in the rest of your OP, so I can't address your larger point. But it occurs to me that maybe you're confused coz you're getting too many of your views about sex, biology, sex stereotyping and human society from

Watching historical fiction shows and films

Instead of cracking books about anthropology, history, biology, sexual politics and so on - or watching nature & science documentaries.

[–]VioletRemihomosexual female (aka - lesbian) 12 insightful - 1 fun12 insightful - 0 fun13 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

The claims that homosexuality is useless & harmful

This also means that infertile people (and kids, and women after menopause) or childfree people are harmful and useless as well.

strike me as very homophobic statements reminiscent of yesteryear.

Like those societies, where infertile and gay men were considered "less men" and were put into separated low class group (like hijras or kathoey). At same time in those societies lesbian women were forced to have kids and infertile women were murdered.

[–]MarkTwainiac 12 insightful - 1 fun12 insightful - 0 fun13 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Yes, Violet, OP is conflating homosexuality with not reproducing. Which ignores that a) lots of lesbians & gay men do have children, and always have done so; and b) lots of other people who weren't/aren't homosexual through human history have not reproduced for a wide variety of reasons - infertility, poor health & disability, early death, choice/preference, never got the chance, no interest in sex & coupling up, dislike of children, tokophobia (a real problem for women that is quite understandable under any circumstances, but especially when there was/is high rates of maternal mortality in/after childbirth), membership in religious orders that require swearing off sexual partnerships, marriage & family life... and so on.

Moreover, OP seems to think that everyone who experiences "same-sex attraction" is homosexual, which is certainly not the case.

Finally, OP seems to think that most human beings who walk the earth are the result of consensual coitus between males & females engaged in romantic pair bonding. When, in fact, many of the earth's human inhabitants historically were & still are the result of rape in and outside marriage - including child rape by fathers, brothers & uncles - as well as of forced & arranged marriages & other coercive, abusive situations in which the sexual attraction & orientation of the girls & women who became/become pregnant did not factor in at all.

In warfare, mass rape & impregnation of girls & women has been commonly employed (as happened in Nanjing China when the Imperial Japanese invaded in WW2, in Bosnia in the 1990s, & in Germany when the Soviet forces headed to Berlin in the spring of 1945). But even in situations that are far less violent, the fact remains that many girls & women become pregnant in the context of relationships that they did not enter or stay in by choice and in which they have little agency or say, and their own sexual attractions, urges & orientations are not factors in what sex acts they engage in or determinants of whether they become mothers.

Seems the historical fiction shows and films OP spends time watching don't include the likes of Tess of the d'Ubervilles, Eastern Promises, Rob Roy, Lost in Bejing, The Color Purple, The Magdalene Sisters, Sin and Redemption and many, many more.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 4 fun2 insightful - 3 fun3 insightful - 4 fun -  (0 children)

Yes, Violet, OP is conflating homosexuality with not reproducing. Which ignores that a) lots of lesbians & gay men do have children, and always have done so; and b) lots of other people who aren't homosexual through human history have not reproduced for a wide variety of reasons - infertility, poor health & disability, choice/preference, never got the chance, no interest in sex & coupling up, dislike of children, tokophobia (a real problem for women that is quite understandable under any circumstances, but especially when there was/is high rates of maternal mortality in/after childbirth), membership in religious orders that require swearing off sexual partnerships, marriage & family life... and so on.

I deeply sympathize with others who can't reproduce but who may want to. I myself can't, and I have a lot of friends and family who have been unable to for various reasons, and I would never believe they are harmful or useless. Many of my friends don't want to have children, and I would never believe they are harmful or useless, either. I quite love all of these people dearly and would feel the world would be missing some very important people if they weren't here.

Moreover, OP seems to think that everyone who experiences "same-sex attraction" is homosexual, which is certainly not the case.

I know that's not true, but I omitted bisexual people because they could be in a healthy heterosexual relationship and possibly reproduce in that context.

Finally, OP seems to think that most human beings who walk the earth are the result of consensual coitus between males & females engaged in romantic pair bonding.

I would hope that most people are, but I understand that's a fantasy and far from the truth.

[–][deleted] 5 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

It's probably an old-fashioned view that itself is harmful, not homosexuality. What I said maybe doesn't sound very kind, but I'm asking from genuine curiosity.

I suppose my larger point is about the need humans have for each other beyond reproduction, or about the purpose of being a human being when having children appears to be what humans are supposed to do. When looking at reality as plainly as it appears, it seems like biologically that is what our purpose is.

But I like that you bring up the ways that plants and animals have non-reproducing members, and somehow that all fits into the natural order of things.

You're almost certainly right though that I should probably be spending more time learning from more academic sources rather than fiction.

[–]MarkTwainiac 13 insightful - 5 fun13 insightful - 4 fun14 insightful - 5 fun -  (1 child)

Fleurista, I don't say this to be mean, but it's really become apparent to me that even though you "identify as" a woman and claim you "live as" a woman, you really have no idea about the reality of the vast majority of girls' & women's lives, particularly outside the contemporary West and but also for many within the West even today. Initially, I thought it was just that you were uninformed about female biology and the vast array of physical differences between male & female human bodies that go beyond the reproductive systems and the implications & consequences of all these differences. But it seems you also have little sense of what girls & women experience through our lives in the context of male-dominated, male-centric, male-supremacist human societies, families, clans/tribes, religious traditions, legal systems, economies, power structures, political movements, forms of government and so on.

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

You're probably right. I grew up rather sheltered and my worldview is probably small. I'm ignorant of a lot of things, so it would be quite fitting for me to be ignorant of that, too, which I obviously am.