BACKWARDS CITY
Update your bookmarks!
Gerry Canavan's blog has moved.

Dear Friends,
Due to unfortunate considerations of time and cost, Backwards City is no longer a print journal. However, we will maintain our presence on the web that, however meager, we hope you might enjoy.

Who We Are
How to Subscribe
Submission Guidelines
Support BCR

RECENT POSTS





Email Us * RSS/XML Feed





LINKS
Lit Blogs [+/-]
Us
Bookslut
Bookninja
Rake's Progress
Tingle Alley
The Elegant Variation
Arts & Letters Daily
MetaxuCafe
McSweeney's
Yankee Pot Roast
Poetry Daily
Verse Daily
Salon
Literary Journals [+/-]
Us
AGNI Magazine
Alaska Quarterly Review
Bat City Review
Ballyhoo Stories
Bellevue Literary Review
Black Mountain Review
Black Warrior Review
Blue Mesa Review
Born Magazine
Brick
Can We Have Our Ball Back?
Carolina Quarterly
Cincinnati Review
Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art
Conduit
Conjunctions
Cranky
Creative Nonfiction
CUE: A Journal of Prose Poetry
CutBank
Denver Quarterly
DIAGRAM
Dispatch
Dos Passos Review
Ekphrasis
EPOCH
Exquisite Corpse
Fence
flashquake
Forklift, Ohio
Fourteen Hills
Fourth Genre
Ghoti Magazine
Glimmer Train
Gulf Coast
Harper's
Harpur Palate
Hayden's Ferry Review
Hunger Mountain
Ink & Ashes
Instant City
Land-Grant College Review
LIT Magazine
Margin
McSweeney's
Mid-American Review
Missouri Review
Narrative
New England Review
New Orleans Review
NOÖ Journal
Octopus Magazine
One Story
Orchid: A Literary Review
Oxford American
Paris Review
Pettycoat Relaxer
Plaztik Press
Ploughshares
Poets & Writers
Post Road
Professor Barnhardt's Journal
RE:AL
Red Mountain Review
River City
River Teeth
Rosebud Magazine
Roux Magazine
Santa Monica Review
Segue
Sewanee Theological Review
SGVPQ
Shampoo
Shenandoah
Sonora Review
South Loop Review
Spire Press
spork
Talking River
The Atlantic Monthly
The Baltimore Review
The Capilano Review
The Chattahoochee Review
The Florida Review
The Formalist
The Georgia Review
The Greensboro Review
The Iowa Review
The Kennesaw Review
The Literary Review
The New Yorker
The South Carolina Review
The Southeast Review
The Sycamore Review
Threepenny Review
Tin House
TriQuarterly
Witness
Zoetrope
zafusy
Comics [+/-]
Dial B for Blog
Drawn!
Rashomon
Monitor Duty
Comic Treadmill
NeilAlien
Absorbascon
Scott McCloud
The Comics Reporter
Paperback Reader
Spoilt!
Exploding Dog
Toothpaste for Dinner
A Lesson Is Learned but the Damage Is Irreversible
Pop Culture [+/-]
Ain't It Cool News
Metaphilm
Television Without Pity
The Dust Congress
Meta [+/-]
Boing Boing
MetaFilter
Gravity Lens
Cynical-C
Linkfilter
GeekPress
Memepool
MonkeyFilter
Wikipedia
Technorati
The Show (with Ze Frank)
Games [+/-]
Jay Is Games
Little Fluffy Industries
Grand Text Auto
Slashdot
Our Writers[+/-]
Issue 6
David Axe & Matt Bors
Eric Greinke
B.J. Hollars
Cynthia Luhrs
T. Motley
xkcd
Lynne Potts
Peter Schwartz
Sarah Solie
Jennie Thompson
Juked
NOÖ Journal"
Reene Wells
Issue 5

http://www.idiotcmics.com/">Idiot Comics

Ira Joel Haber
Jonathan Baylis & David Beyer Jr.
Kathleen Rooney
BookNinja
Issue 4
Kristy Bowen
Abigail Cloud
Will Dinski
Toothpaste for Dinner
The Flowfield Unity
Tom K
Dispatches from Roy Kesey
Austin Kleon
Kristi Maxwell
Marc McKee
Sheryl Monks
Renee Wells
Issue 3
Rafael �vila
Lynda Barry
Melissa Jones Fiori
Eric Joyner
Jonathan Lethem
Brian MacKinnon
Clay Matthews
Jesse Reklaw
Matthew Simmons
Amish Trivedi
Debbie Urbanski
Bart Vallecoccia
Issue 2
Jeremy Broomfield
baseWORDS
Nick Carbo
Adam Clay
Kurtis Davidson
Lisa Jarnot
Patricia Storms
Chris Vitiello
Issue 1
Tom Chalkley
Peter S. Conrad
Cory Doctorow
Arielle Greenberg
Gabriel Gudding
Paul Guest
John Latta
K. Silem Mohammad
Jim Rugg
Marcus Slease
Tony Tost
Kurt Vonnegut
Friends & Associates [+/-]
UNCG Writing Program
Meme Therapy
Candleblog
Desert City Poetry Series
Owlly.com
The Regulator Bookshop
Mac's Backs Paperbacks
Bull's Head Bookstore
Quail's Ridge Books
McIntyre's Fine Books
Chop Suey Books
McNally Robinson Bookstore
Adams Books
The Writer's Center Book Gallery
Project Pulp
Council of Literary Magazines and Presses
Association of Writers and Writing Programs
Small Beer Prees
Ed Cone
The Green Bean
New York Pizza
Triangle Bloggers
Greensboro 101
PClem's Music Blog
Our Frappr Map

ARCHIVES [+/-]
May 2004
June 2004
July 2004
August 2004
September 2004
October 2004
November 2004
December 2004
January 2005
February 2005
March 2005
April 2005
May 2005
June 2005
July 2005
August 2005
September 2005
October 2005
November 2005
December 2005
January 2006
February 2006
March 2006
April 2006
May 2006
June 2006
July 2006
August 2006
September 2006
October 2006
November 2006
December 2006
January 2007
February 2007
March 2007
April 2007
May 2007
June 2007
July 2007
August 2007
September 2007
October 2007
December 2007
March 2008
July 2008
September 2008
October 2008
November 2008
December 2008
October 2009
November 2009



Copyright © 2004-2007 Backwards City Publications of Greensboro.

All rights reserved.
Wednesday, October 13, 2004

Evolution & You: Homosexuality Edition
I have a very vivid memory from my freshmen year of college of arguing with a friend of mine who had recently come out of the closet (to me, anyway) about whether or not it mattered if homosexuality was genetic. I thought it was crucial that we prove that there's a "gay gene"; after all, people can't begrudge someone for being born with a certain gene, now can they?

I thought then, somewhat naïvely, that proof of a gay gene would swing public opinion our way overnight.

She said it didn't matter. She said she was who she was, whether it was genetic or not.

Needless to say, she was right and I was wrong. And not just on the level of "Of course they're still going to begrudge people whether it's genetic or not; it's not about that" -- but also on the level of basic human rights. People don't need to prove that who they are wasn't voluntary before they get rights. They get rights by mere virtue of being a human being.

That's how it's supposed to work in this country. That's what we have to say to people.

Ever since that day, I've looked with a fair amount of disinterest upon the gay gene issue. It really doesn't matter. I don't care one way or the other whether homosexuality is genetic, learned, or a product of radical existential choice -- and neither should anybody else.

But some people do make a distinction between genetics and "choice," and for those people, I have an article from Britain's Independent, which purports to have found an answer to one potentially confusing aspect of the gay gene question, "If homosexuality is genetic, smart guy, and homosexuals can't have kids, why hasn't the homosexuality gene vanished from the gene pool?"

I've always assumed that this was because social pressures -- up to and including fear of violent death -- kept a majority of homosexuals in the closet until very recently, quite literally reproducing against their will.

But a new study suggests that the answer may be far simpler than that:
However, the problem is resolved if the genetic factors that lead to a predisposition to homosexuality and a corresponding lower fecundity in men cause a higher fecundity in the men's female relatives. Such a link means that genetic factors that predispose boys to becoming homosexual will never die out in a population because their sisters, mothers and maternal aunts will continue to spread the genes by having more than the average number of children...

One possible explanation for the finding that gay men have bigger extended families is that the bigger the family size, the more likely it is that some of the male offspring will be gay. However, this did not explain why the study found that the maternal aunts of gay men had significantly larger families than their paternal aunts, Dr Camperio-Ciani said.

Other research has indicated that at least some of the genetic predisposition to being gay was carried on the X chromosome, which men inherit through their mothers, but Dr Camperio-Ciani said that genes on other chromosomes were almost certainly involved in determining sexuality.
But it was this claim I found most noteworthy. I'd never heard this before:
Scientists have also demonstrated repeatedly that the chance of a man being a homosexual rises by about a third for each older brother he has. They found that a man with three older brothers was about twice as likely to be gay as a man with none. This suggests that there may be biological factors operating within the womb of a woman who has already given birth to a number of sons that increase the predisposition towards her next son being gay.
Really interesting stuff. Neither here nor there, as I above, but really interesting all the same.

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?