The simplest way to promote heterosexuality

On this forum we keep hearing from some people who speak in favor of heterosexuality, or at least in opposition to the alternatives. Now to be sure, many of their ways of doing things are mean-spirited, totalitarian, ignorant, and above all, where you'd expect them to be concerned, ineffective. But that is not to say that an interested person can't shift people toward heterosexual behavior: they can... however, they have to understand and respect LGBT+ in order to do it.

Now bear in mind:
* Over 57% of LGBT+ are bisexual.
* Over 80% of bisexuals are in a heterosexual relationship.

This suggests that around 45% of all the relationships by LGBT+ people are heterosexual, and another 11% easily could be.

So how would you affect these relationships? You have to figure something out about bisexuality that bisexual people might not know. It may seem as if the potential for relationships is symmetrical: either sex would work, and the ratio roughly reflects which people are available for relationships. But there's a competitive issue. Basically, a bisexual man can see a woman who is absolutely lovely, abundantly female and fertile, and think that she is "way out of his league" ... yet in practice, what he may not realize, is she is being ignored by most heterosexual men and getting into relationships with men he thinks are nothing compared to her. All because of one small detail he might not even notice: she's tall. As if he had a tape measure in his pocket! I mean, a bi man isn't going to feel strange meeting a lover's level gaze. (To be sure, all the equivalents should apply to women who, if heterosexual, also place strong emphasis on a man's height)

So if there are some people here who for some reason are fixated on the quixotic quest to make the world a straighter place, it's time to do some matchmaking. Find the heterosexual people who are being slighted and ignored because potential heterosexual partners tend to identify some feature that seems to look too much like the other sex. Then try to make it easier for bisexual people to notice those people. The rest should be mutually satisfactory for all involved, even the busybodies.

In sheer numerical terms, I think this approach would be vastly (probably infinitely) more effective for promoting heterosexuality than all the bullying and snubbing and sniping at legal rights in the world. And it's not evil. Note that this may even be a reason why LGBT+ evolved: to make sure that reproductive potential isn't wasted due to everyone having too strict of a sexual preference.

No reason to promote either hetero or homo sexuality. Not in a free secular society at any rate.

bythoughts said:

On this forum we keep hearing from some people who speak in favor of heterosexuality, or at least in opposition to the alternatives. Now to be sure, many of their ways of doing things are mean-spirited, totalitarian, ignorant, and above all, where you'd expect them to be concerned, ineffective. But that is not to say that an interested person can't shift people toward heterosexual behavior: they can... however, they have to understand and respect LGBT+ in order to do it.

Now bear in mind:
* Over 57% of LGBT+ are bisexual.
* Over 80% of bisexuals are in a heterosexual relationship.

This suggests that around 45% of all the relationships by LGBT+ people are heterosexual, and another 11% easily could be.

So how would you affect these relationships? You have to figure something out about bisexuality that bisexual people might not know. It may seem as if the potential for relationships is symmetrical: either sex would work, and the ratio roughly reflects which people are available for relationships. But there's a competitive issue. Basically, a bisexual man can see a woman who is absolutely lovely, abundantly female and fertile, and think that she is "way out of his league" ... yet in practice, what he may not realize, is she is being ignored by most heterosexual men and getting into relationships with men he thinks are nothing compared to her. All because of one small detail he might not even notice: she's tall. As if he had a tape measure in his pocket! I mean, a bi man isn't going to feel strange meeting a lover's level gaze. (To be sure, all the equivalents should apply to women who, if heterosexual, also place strong emphasis on a man's height)

So if there are some people here who for some reason are fixated on the quixotic quest to make the world a straighter place, it's time to do some matchmaking. Find the heterosexual people who are being slighted and ignored because potential heterosexual partners tend to identify some feature that seems to look too much like the other sex. Then try to make it easier for bisexual people to notice those people. The rest should be mutually satisfactory for all involved, even the busybodies.

In sheer numerical terms, I think this approach would be vastly (probably infinitely) more effective for promoting heterosexuality than all the bullying and snubbing and sniping at legal rights in the world. And it's not evil. Note that this may even be a reason why LGBT+ evolved: to make sure that reproductive potential isn't wasted due to everyone having too strict of a sexual preference.

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There are a ton of things wrong with your post. First is you present statistics with no support. Statistics with no support are meaningless, so your bullet points are worthless. IF you want to be taken seriously, you have to support your claims with links.

Next is your claim that relationships are heterosexual or homosexual. They are not. People are hetero or homo, no relationships. Relationships can be with someone of the same sex, or opposite sex, or with multiple people at once. But the terms heterosexual and homosexual refer to a lifelong attraction to people of one gender or the other. Different things altogether. Gay people can have sex with someone of the opposite sex, and still be gay. The reverse is also true.

The third problem is your post reads like something an incel wrote hoping it might get someone to set them up. Kinda creepy.

Word salads:

bythoughts said:

Basically, a bisexual man can see a woman who is absolutely lovely, abundantly female and fertile, and think that she is "way out of his league" ... yet in practice, what he may not realize, is she is being ignored by most heterosexual men and getting into relationships with men he thinks are nothing compared to her.

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Why bother? Most people are hetero anyway.

The rest are something else or something between. Is that a problem for you or them?

Only if you choose to make it.

There are over 8 billion people in the world with a 70 million person net growth rate each year.

With that in mind, I'm not sure hetersexuality needs promoting as there seems to be no shortage of that activity.

NatMorton said:

There are over 8 billion people in the world with a 70 million person net growth rate each year.

With that in mind, I'm not sure hetersexuality needs promoting as there seems to be no shortage of that activity.

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My crackpot hypothesis - and strictly my own, without any scientific data whatsoever to back it up - is that non-hetero individuals increase within a population as population pressures decrease. By that, I mean that as populations grow and the threat of extinction decreases, there's less pressure for that population to procreate, which may in turn give rise to non-hetero individuals (gay/lesbian, trans, asexual, etc.).

I think we can kind of seeing this playing at today. What do we see in developed industrial societies now? Birth rates below replacement and higher life expectancy. In less developed societies, birth rates are still at or even well above replacement. Simultaneously, life expectancies in these societies are typically considerably lower.

The rebuttal to that is that many of these countries have total populations that are well beyond any sort of extinction risk, and that's certainly true; however, I think the carry-over effect from our evolutionary past persists. At the household level, people in these poorer countries with higher child mortality rates feel the evolutionary pressure to keep procreating so that their offspring survive to adulthood, which is how that dynamic would have played out in prehistory, a time when people lived in very small bands of 10-15 people (perhaps looser, larger bands of 50-100).

I guess my tl/dr bottom line is that 'non-heteroness' is, on some level, maybe a form of population self-regulation. I'd say that 'gayness' or 'trans' or whatever are probably more 'natural' than we think.

bythoughts said:

But there's a competitive issue. Basically, a bisexual man can see a woman who is absolutely lovely, abundantly female and fertile, and think that she is "way out of his league" ... yet in practice, what he may not realize, is she is being ignored by most heterosexual men and getting into relationships with men he thinks are nothing compared to her. All because of one small detail he might not even notice: she's tall. As if he had a tape measure in his pocket! I mean, a bi man isn't going to feel strange meeting a lover's level gaze. (To be sure, all the equivalents should apply to women who, if heterosexual, also place strong emphasis on a man's height)

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Well…except tall women don’t have any issue whatsoever dating men or finding men to date just because they are tall

bythoughts said:

On this forum we keep hearing from some people who speak in favor of heterosexuality, or at least in opposition to the alternatives. Now to be sure, many of their ways of doing things are mean-spirited, totalitarian, ignorant, and above all, where you'd expect them to be concerned, ineffective. But that is not to say that an interested person can't shift people toward heterosexual behavior: they can... however, they have to understand and respect LGBT+ in order to do it.

Now bear in mind:
* Over 57% of LGBT+ are bisexual.
* Over 80% of bisexuals are in a heterosexual relationship.

This suggests that around 45% of all the relationships by LGBT+ people are heterosexual, and another 11% easily could be.

So how would you affect these relationships? You have to figure something out about bisexuality that bisexual people might not know. It may seem as if the potential for relationships is symmetrical: either sex would work, and the ratio roughly reflects which people are available for relationships. But there's a competitive issue. Basically, a bisexual man can see a woman who is absolutely lovely, abundantly female and fertile, and think that she is "way out of his league" ... yet in practice, what he may not realize, is she is being ignored by most heterosexual men and getting into relationships with men he thinks are nothing compared to her. All because of one small detail he might not even notice: she's tall. As if he had a tape measure in his pocket! I mean, a bi man isn't going to feel strange meeting a lover's level gaze. (To be sure, all the equivalents should apply to women who, if heterosexual, also place strong emphasis on a man's height)

So if there are some people here who for some reason are fixated on the quixotic quest to make the world a straighter place, it's time to do some matchmaking. Find the heterosexual people who are being slighted and ignored because potential heterosexual partners tend to identify some feature that seems to look too much like the other sex. Then try to make it easier for bisexual people to notice those people. The rest should be mutually satisfactory for all involved, even the busybodies.

In sheer numerical terms, I think this approach would be vastly (probably infinitely) more effective for promoting heterosexuality than all the bullying and snubbing and sniping at legal rights in the world. And it's not evil. Note that this may even be a reason why LGBT+ evolved: to make sure that reproductive potential isn't wasted due to everyone having too strict of a sexual preference.

Click to expand...

I don't know why you think heterosexuality needs any help from you or anyone else. Frankly, I find it more interesting that you enjoy thinking about bisexual people as much as you do...

multivita-man said:

My crackpot hypothesis - and strictly my own, without any scientific data whatsoever to back it up - is that non-hetero individuals increase within a population as population pressures decrease. By that, I mean that as populations grow and the threat of extinction decreases, there's less pressure for that population to procreate, which may in turn give rise to non-hetero individuals (gay/lesbian, trans, asexual, etc.).

I think we can kind of seeing this playing at today. What do we see in developed industrial societies now? Birth rates below replacement and higher life expectancy. In less developed societies, birth rates are still at or even well above replacement. Simultaneously, life expectancies in these societies are typically considerably lower.

The rebuttal to that is that many of these countries have total populations that are well beyond any sort of extinction risk, and that's certainly true; however, I think the carry-over effect from our evolutionary past persists. At the household level, people in these poorer countries with higher child mortality rates feel the evolutionary pressure to keep procreating so that their offspring survive to adulthood, which is how that dynamic would have played out in prehistory, a time when people lived in very small bands of 10-15 people (perhaps looser, larger bands of 50-100).

I guess my tl/dr bottom line is that 'non-heteroness' is, on some level, maybe a form of population self-regulation. I'd say that 'gayness' or 'trans' or whatever are probably more 'natural' than we think.

Click to expand...

An interesting theory, but I don't think so. You're talking about innate behavior that would have to be a product of evolution, and the conditions you're describing (excess) are very much not the norm in the history of our species. For higher-order organisms, it takes 1000s of years of consistent environmental pressure for genetic traits to emerge, and I just don't think we've had sustain periods of excess required for that to happen.

bythoughts said:

Find the heterosexual people who are being slighted and ignored because potential heterosexual partners tend to identify some feature that seems to look too much like the other sex. Then try to make it easier for bisexual people to notice those people.

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You cannot promote heterosexuality. Either a person is born hetero. bi or gay, or they aren't. A persons sexual orientation is not a choice to be promoted.

95% of people are born hetero anyhow.

NatMorton said:

An interesting theory, but I don't think so. You're talking about innate behavior that would have to be a product of evolution, and the conditions you're describing (excess) are very much not the norm in the history of our species. For higher-order organisms, it takes 1000s of years of consistent environmental pressure for genetic traits to emerge, and I just don't think we've had sustain periods of excess required for that to happen.

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Perhaps you know this already, but homosexuality and lack of sexual interest are natural in the animal kingdom. Transgenderism isn't observed in the animal kingdom because gender is a human construct.

multivita-man said:

Perhaps you know this already, but homosexuality and lack of sexual interest are natural in the animal kingdom. Transgenderism isn't observed in the animal kingdom because gender is a human construct.

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Gender is not a human construct, and the proof is in your post. How do you define homo- or heterosexuality without a reference to gender?

NatMorton said:

Gender is not a human construct, and the proof is in your post. How do you define homo- or heterosexuality without a reference to gender?

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Language is a human construct - and the word “gender” is a human construct.

So yeah - gender is a human construct.

BirdinHand said:

Language is a human construct - and the word “gender” is a human construct.

So yeah - gender is a human construct.

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Because that makes perfect sense. Everything that can be referred to with a word must be human construct, right?

multivita-man said:

My crackpot hypothesis - and strictly my own, without any scientific data whatsoever to back it up - is that non-hetero individuals increase within a population as population pressures decrease.

Click to expand...

Yes, that sounds pretty baseless....

As you yourself noted, there's no indication whatsoever of any variance in sexual orientation based on "population pressures."

I'm not sure how you missed it, but: lesbians, gays and bisexuals can also have kids.

Infant mortality rates are much higher in sub-Saharan Africa than, say, South America. There's no reason to believe this also means there's a higher rate of straight people in Africa.

One reason why birth rates are lower in affluent societies is because birth control is more readily available. Is there any reason to believe that people using condoms and IUDs will increase the number of bisexuals in a society? Obviously not.

Another is that as societies become more affluent, raising children requires significantly greater resources, and aren't put to work at young ages. Is there any reason to believe that putting kids to work on the family farm at age 10 is more likely to make them straight? Obviously not.

I think you need a new theory.

bythoughts said:

In sheer numerical terms, I think this approach would be vastly (probably infinitely) more effective for promoting heterosexuality than all the bullying and snubbing and sniping at legal rights in the world. And it's not evil. Note that this may even be a reason why LGBT+ evolved: to make sure that reproductive potential isn't wasted due to everyone having too strict of a sexual preference.

Click to expand...

I don't know how you missed it, but: Lesbians, gays and bisexuals can - and do - have kids.

I'd also say that meddling in people's relationships, in order to basically compel them to do things they don't want to do naturally on their own (i.e. be in straight relationships and have kids) is, well, it's a bit evil.

Oh, and you're also missing the rather inconvenient fact that the reason birth rates are falling are primarily because straight people either want fewer kids, or don't want to have kids at all. I.e. don't pin this on LGBT people, kthx.

bythoughts said:

On this forum we keep hearing from some people who speak in favor of heterosexuality, or at least in opposition to the alternatives. Now to be sure, many of their ways of doing things are mean-spirited, totalitarian, ignorant, and above all, where you'd expect them to be concerned, ineffective. But that is not to say that an interested person can't shift people toward heterosexual behavior: they can... however, they have to understand and respect LGBT+ in order to do it.

Now bear in mind:
* Over 57% of LGBT+ are bisexual.
* Over 80% of bisexuals are in a heterosexual relationship.

This suggests that around 45% of all the relationships by LGBT+ people are heterosexual, and another 11% easily could be.

So how would you affect these relationships? You have to figure something out about bisexuality that bisexual people might not know. It may seem as if the potential for relationships is symmetrical: either sex would work, and the ratio roughly reflects which people are available for relationships. But there's a competitive issue. Basically, a bisexual man can see a woman who is absolutely lovely, abundantly female and fertile, and think that she is "way out of his league" ... yet in practice, what he may not realize, is she is being ignored by most heterosexual men and getting into relationships with men he thinks are nothing compared to her. All because of one small detail he might not even notice: she's tall. As if he had a tape measure in his pocket! I mean, a bi man isn't going to feel strange meeting a lover's level gaze. (To be sure, all the equivalents should apply to women who, if heterosexual, also place strong emphasis on a man's height)

So if there are some people here who for some reason are fixated on the quixotic quest to make the world a straighter place, it's time to do some matchmaking. Find the heterosexual people who are being slighted and ignored because potential heterosexual partners tend to identify some feature that seems to look too much like the other sex. Then try to make it easier for bisexual people to notice those people. The rest should be mutually satisfactory for all involved, even the busybodies.

In sheer numerical terms, I think this approach would be vastly (probably infinitely) more effective for promoting heterosexuality than all the bullying and snubbing and sniping at legal rights in the world. And it's not evil. Note that this may even be a reason why LGBT+ evolved: to make sure that reproductive potential isn't wasted due to everyone having too strict of a sexual preference.

Click to expand...

One does not catch some kind of "gay germ" or "bi germ" that "turns you" from hetero to gay or bi.
That's not now it works, that's not how any of this works.

NatMorton said:

Gender is not a human construct, and the proof is in your post. How do you define homo- or heterosexuality without a reference to gender?

Click to expand...

Sex is a biological construct; gender is a human social construct. Sex is what determines maleness or femaleness. It's chromosomes, sex characteristics (breasts, genitalia, body hair, etc.) Gender is our broader identity associated with sex. You're getting confused, which is understandable because we colloquially use these terms interchangeably.

bythoughts said:

On this forum we keep hearing from some people who speak in favor of heterosexuality, or at least in opposition to the alternatives. Now to be sure, many of their ways of doing things are mean-spirited, totalitarian, ignorant, and above all, where you'd expect them to be concerned, ineffective. But that is not to say that an interested person can't shift people toward heterosexual behavior: they can... however, they have to understand and respect LGBT+ in order to do it.

Now bear in mind:
* Over 57% of LGBT+ are bisexual.
* Over 80% of bisexuals are in a heterosexual relationship.

This suggests that around 45% of all the relationships by LGBT+ people are heterosexual, and another 11% easily could be.

So how would you affect these relationships? You have to figure something out about bisexuality that bisexual people might not know. It may seem as if the potential for relationships is symmetrical: either sex would work, and the ratio roughly reflects which people are available for relationships. But there's a competitive issue. Basically, a bisexual man can see a woman who is absolutely lovely, abundantly female and fertile, and think that she is "way out of his league" ... yet in practice, what he may not realize, is she is being ignored by most heterosexual men and getting into relationships with men he thinks are nothing compared to her. All because of one small detail he might not even notice: she's tall. As if he had a tape measure in his pocket! I mean, a bi man isn't going to feel strange meeting a lover's level gaze. (To be sure, all the equivalents should apply to women who, if heterosexual, also place strong emphasis on a man's height)

So if there are some people here who for some reason are fixated on the quixotic quest to make the world a straighter place, it's time to do some matchmaking. Find the heterosexual people who are being slighted and ignored because potential heterosexual partners tend to identify some feature that seems to look too much like the other sex. Then try to make it easier for bisexual people to notice those people. The rest should be mutually satisfactory for all involved, even the busybodies.

In sheer numerical terms, I think this approach would be vastly (probably infinitely) more effective for promoting heterosexuality than all the bullying and snubbing and sniping at legal rights in the world. And it's not evil. Note that this may even be a reason why LGBT+ evolved: to make sure that reproductive potential isn't wasted due to everyone having too strict of a sexual preference.

Click to expand...

I would ask why heterosexuality is not being threatened not at all.

Visbek said:

I'm not sure how you missed it, but: lesbians, gays and bisexuals can also have kids.

Click to expand...

Never argued they couldn't.

Visbek said:

Infant mortality rates are much higher in sub-Saharan Africa than, say, South America. There's no reason to believe this also means there's a higher rate of straight people in Africa.

Click to expand...

I honestly don't know what the data says, but I wasn't thinking of that example as direct evidence that my hypothesis is correct. It's more like an indirect example to show how human reproductive behavior can change depending on circumstances. The single most powerful drive that all living creatures have is the desire to reproduce and expand their population.

Visbek said:

One reason why birth rates are lower in affluent societies is because birth control is more readily available.

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But why do people seek birth control? Why do people have only one child or even no children or even never get married? I'm guess you'd argue that it's because it's expensive to raise children in developed countries, which is true. But for people living in countries with very limited economic resources, raising kids is taxing, too, even if that's not apparent in per capita GDP terms. Child mortality rates are strongly associated with fertility rates. That's true now and that's true historically.

Visbek said:

Another is that as societies become more affluent, raising children requires significantly greater resources, and aren't put to work at young ages. Is there any reason to believe that putting kids to work on the family farm at age 10 is more likely to make them straight? Obviously not.

Click to expand...

What in God's name led you to believe that I was suggesting this?

multivita-man said:

Sex is a biological construct; gender is a human social construct. Sex is what determines maleness or femaleness. It's chromosomes, sex characteristics (breasts, genitalia, body hair, etc.) Gender is our broader identity associated with sex. You're getting confused, which is understandable because we colloquially use these terms interchangeably.

Click to expand...

A perfectly acceptable definition of the word “gender” is sex, and that has been true for centuries.

Gender has definitions other than gender identity.

multivita-man said:

Never argued they couldn't.

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But you are arguing that they are responsible for a drop in birth rates... when it's pretty clear that is almost entirely a result of straight people making decisions about when to have kids, and how many.

multivita-man said:

I honestly don't know what the data says, but I wasn't thinking of that example as direct evidence that my hypothesis is correct. It's more like an indirect example to show how human reproductive behavior can change depending on circumstances.

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Oooooooookay

No one denies that "human reproductive behavior can change depending on circumstances." It's very obvious that, for example, birth rates change as societies become more affluent.

That doesn't license anyone to make up bizarre theories without evidence about the behavior of LGBT people as a result of "population pressures."

multivita-man said:

The single most powerful drive that all living creatures have is the desire to reproduce and expand their population.

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Or, not.

To start with, it seems pretty clear that most of the time, the most "powerful drives" are for things like survival, basic material comfort, housing, safety, and sex.

I'd even say that throughout history, women in particular have often wanted to avoid having children, as they knew that pregnancy and birth were extremely dangerous. I don't think there is any doubt that there was a significantly higher percentage of the female population that lived in convents than do today.

I'd also say that there is little indication that individual choices about reproduction or sexual orientation have anything whatsoever to do with national birth rates. If that was the case, why aren't we seeing Japanese people having more kids? There's even a big national effort, both by the government and society itself, to push younger people to have kids, specifically because the society is shrinking. If your theory was correct, then shouldn't Japan have a) a sudden surge in birth rates and b) a sudden decline in the LGBT population?

multivita-man said:

But why do people seek birth control?

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Because the desire for sex vastly outweighs the desire to reproduce. How is that not obvious?

multivita-man said:

Why do people have only one child or even no children or even never get married? I'm guess you'd argue that it's because it's expensive to raise children in developed countries, which is true. But for people living in countries with very limited economic resources, raising kids is taxing, too, even if that's not apparent in per capita GDP terms. Child mortality rates are strongly associated with fertility rates. That's true now and that's true historically.

Click to expand...

Yes.... That's because when you know that 2/3 of your kids are likely to die before they turn 5, you're going to want more kids.

You're missing that in those poorer societies, families are more likely to put kids to work at very young ages. They also don't feel the need to dedicate anywhere near as much resources into kids as in affluent societies. They see children as a working asset, not a liability.

E.g. if you live in a rural part of Kenya, social pressures are to have lots of kids, who will help you work on the farm. The kids may spend a few years in school, but they're likely to start working at a young age. In contrast, a child born to an affluent family in Manhattan is going to spend years sending their kid to school, paying for expensive medicines, buying them tons of clothes and toys, and sending them to expensive colleges before they can even start to earn money -- and those kids generally aren't expected to hand over their earnings to their parents.

multivita-man said:

What in God's name led you to believe that I was suggesting this?

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What led me to that attribution was, well, pretty much the entire concept of your post.

Just face it, your crackpot idea is a crackpot idea, and it's a silly one. I suggest you just drop it.