Saturday, October 28, 2006
Kiting an Idea on a Sensitive Topic
A couple of days ago I had an ah-ha moment. It came while reading the novel "The Kite Runner". In it there is a homosexual rape scene. This got me thinking about circumstances where homosexual behavior emerges in individuals that are not naturally prone to homosexuality -- prison populations for instance. This all lead to seeing a possible role for passivity triggering receptive homosexual behavior as a survival mechanism and in some circumstances even a smart role to assume so as to be in a better position for reproductive mating opportunities (though less so in modern Western culture).
I had a fairly productive burst of writing last night fleshing out these ideas in my Slashdot.org Journal with a 1,200 word essay entitled Submissiveness's Role in Sustaining Homosexuality as an Evolutionarily Adaptive Trait
I have already gotten a couple of positive comments from the Slashdot crowd, or at least the very small subset that follows my journal. I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I got a small thrill from getting the feedback. I blog to improve my writing skill and to gauge my writings quality by whatever readership I am able to attract. My wife on the other hand blogs to chronicle her inner feelings. She had had another blog that was in a more easily found location in the Chinese blog-o-sphere, but abandoned it when it seemed to be attracting too many readers. I can't imagine wanting to walk away from an avid following, but Nian and I blog for completely different reasons, though she has allowed me to post a Google translated link to her blog on upper left of my blog here. She has never said so, but I also wonder if too many friends and family had found her blog, making it awkward to post frank ideas and honestly describe personal interactions.
Take my word for it, it's lucky I'm not competing with Nian for readership numbers as she could measure her readership in hundreds or even thousands per day if she wanted to.
BTW I highly recommend "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini. It is not a novel about homosexuality, for those that might be put off by my mentioning one brief traumatic incident that unfolds. I'm over 2/3 the way through it, but discovered it missing from my gym bag today. It seems likely I will have to repurchase the book to finish it.
