{"id":359,"date":"2005-07-15T12:56:19","date_gmt":"2005-07-15T07:26:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/2005\/07\/15\/would-you-find-a-she-gorilla-attractive\/"},"modified":"2005-07-15T12:56:19","modified_gmt":"2005-07-15T07:26:19","slug":"would-you-find-a-she-gorilla-attractive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/classic\/200507\/would-you-find-a-she-gorilla-attractive\/","title":{"rendered":"Would you find a she-gorilla attractive?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Or, if you are a human female, consider the question amended to &#8220;Would you find a male gorilla attractive?&#8221; (&#8220;Of course! Why else would  I get married?&#8221; will not be considered an answer.) <\/p>\n<p>Yes, by &#8220;attractive&#8221; I mean attractive in <i>that way<\/i>. If your answer to this question is a shocked or a somewhat bemused &#8220;No&#8221;, let me remind you that I am not asking you &#8220;<i>Do<\/i> you find her attractive&#8221; My question is <i>would<\/i> you find her attractive if you were brought up in a different culture. Suppose that you were a feral child brought up by gorillas, or if you were brought up by some sort of cult which considered gorillas distant cousins of humans, and hence accepted sexual relations with them as normal. Would you ever be <i>attracted<\/i> to a gorilla?<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nI suspect that your answer would be &#8220;No&#8221; and science would back up your answer. Human sexual attraction towards other humans of the opposite sex (and occasionally, of the same sex) has a strong genetic component built into it  and cannot be easily altered. Chances are, it cannot be altered at all. <\/p>\n<p>What then, about  milder preferences that we display? I am talking of little things like the preference for a curly-haired girl over a straight haired one (or vice versa), or a woman with black hair over a blonde (or vice versa), or a woman&#8217;s  preference for a tall man over a short one (or vice versa). Are <i>these<\/i> preferences genetically influenced? <\/p>\n<p>If I simply assert that if you hold the first belief, you must also hold the second, one could legitimately call such an assertion fallacious. (I can&#8217;t think which one. Ask <a href=\"http:\/\/www.madmanweb.com\">Madhu<\/a> or something)  But I am not simply asserting. But I have thought through the argument and I think the conclusion is inescapable. If you a) believe in the theory of evolution and b) believe that the human preference for other humans over gorillas is a genetic trait, then there is no way to escape the conclusion that atleast <i>some <\/i> of the preferences I described must be genetically influenced. The proof of this flows almost with mathematical inevitability and is left as an exercise to the reader. Can you think why this must be so? <\/p>\n<p><i>(<b>Note:<\/b> The standard disclaimers while talking of genetics apply. Saying that you have a &#8220;preference&#8221; for curly hair does not mean that you will be irresistably attracted to every curly haired girl you see. Saying that you have a &#8220;preference&#8221; one way doesn&#8217;t mean that it can&#8217;t be overcome by your more cerebral preferences.  Genes do not determine morality. Saying that you have a genetic preference one way doesn&#8217;t make it right to behave that way. It just means that it takes a little more work than if you didn&#8217;t have that preference. )<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Or, if you are a human female, consider the question amended to &#8220;Would you find a male gorilla attractive?&#8221; (&#8220;Of course! Why else would I get married?&#8221; will not be considered an answer.) Yes, by &#8220;attractive&#8221; I mean attractive in that way. If your answer to this question is a shocked or a somewhat bemused [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}