Sexual orientation and identification

 

One might ask for what just is it that determines our "sexual orientation?" Most of the details of how to have sex and who we think beautiful are learned, as are fetishes, and all that comes through life. It is probably true that almost all men (gay and straight) are born with an inherent desire for youthful partners who are of optimal breeding age, and it is probably true that most women have a different, more "will they be loyal and help me with my baby?" set of priorities. Otherwise, the details get fixed by experiences of what is pleasurable and what isn't. The sexual orientation also has to be kept separate in one's mind from one's sexual identity. I'm asexual, but I know and like the fact that I'm a man and have no desire to be a woman, either physically or in bed. That is a separate set. Now what is it that makes for orientation? I think it is "turn on" buttons, and there are two sets of these. One is an attraction to smooth skin, broad hips, breasts, female genitals. The other is an attraction to rougher skin, narrow hips and broad shoulders, male genitals. Except for bisexuals, who appear to be heterogeneous here (if it's genetic), we get one or the other, and it is in place from the beginning, although of course it doesn't really present itself until the puberty hormones set in. There does seem to be pretty strong twin evidence of an inherited component (identical twins are more likely the same orientation that fraternal twins), but there could be a uterine component too (there is a slight prevalence of same orientation in fraternal twins). Brothers raised together and brothers raised separately show no particular concurrence, so we conclude it is not overbearing mothers and weak fathers. What one inherits seems to be a genetic "turn on" pattern, in humans mainly visually oriented. Of course one could ask what is the survival value of having the patterns inverted occasionally. I don't think there needs to be one (although theories abound). It could be just something that evolution has never had any reason to evolve prevention mechanisms for. In most societies when a boy is gay, the brother steps in on the sly, and the family name goes on. There is not that much of a selective disadvantage, and it can be offset by the additional help raising the babies. Besides, among hunter-gatherers, it could be useful to have members of the tribe who the hunters know will not cuckold them remain behind with the women to provide better security.

You’re circling a real set of distinctions that researchers also try to keep separate: sexual orientation (who one is attracted to), sexual behavior (what one does), and gender identity (one’s sense of being male, female, etc.). Keeping those disentangled already puts you ahead of a lot of muddled thinking.

Where your account is strongest is in recognizing that orientation shows up early, is not easily altered by upbringing, and has some biological component. Twin studies do consistently show higher concordance in identical than fraternal twins, which points to heritability—but not determinism. The current scientific consensus is that sexual orientation arises from a mix of influences: multiple genes of small effect, prenatal hormonal environment (for example, androgen exposure in utero), and possibly early developmental factors. There isn’t a single “switch,” and it’s not something that later experience seems able to rewire in any reliable way.

Where I’d gently push back is on the idea of two clean, hardwired “button sets” (male vs. female targets) that people are simply born with. That’s appealingly simple, but it doesn’t quite fit the data. For one thing, attraction isn’t reducible to a checklist of physical traits; it involves perception, reward systems, emotional bonding, and context. Brain imaging studies suggest differences in how certain cues are processed, but not a tidy binary module. And bisexuality, as you note, isn’t just a uniform midpoint—it varies widely between individuals, which is hard to square with a strict two-button model.

Also, the claim that “most men are inherently tuned to youthful, peak fertility partners” and women to provisioning and loyalty is rooted in evolutionary psychology, which has generated useful hypotheses but also a fair amount of debate. Cross-cultural studies do show some average tendencies, but they’re not nearly as rigid or universal as early theories suggested, and individual variation is large. Culture and personal history shape what gets perceived as attractive more than that model allows.

On the question of “what is inherited,” it may be more accurate to think in terms of predispositions in how the brain’s reward and attraction systems respond to certain classes of stimuli—rather than a fixed visual template. Those predispositions likely interact with puberty (as you noted) to “activate” patterns of attraction. In that sense, your “turn-on” metaphor isn’t wrong, but the circuitry is more distributed and probabilistic than a pair of switches.

As for evolutionary persistence, you’re right that a trait doesn’t need a direct survival advantage to remain in a population. Several hypotheses are discussed in the literature: kin selection (helping relatives), balancing selection (genes having different effects in different contexts), or simply that the trait is part of a broader developmental system and not strongly selected against. The “helpers in the group” idea has been proposed, though evidence for it is mixed and hard to test historically.

One thing that does seem clear is that orientation is not something people “learn into” in the ordinary sense, even though the expression of sexuality—preferences, aesthetics, fetishes, and so on—can certainly be shaped by experience, as you pointed out.

Your separation between being asexual and still having a clear, comfortable sense of being male is also exactly in line with current thinking: those are distinct axes, even if people often conflate them.

If you wanted to push your model a bit closer to the evidence without losing its intuitive feel, you might think less in terms of two fixed button panels and more like a complex control board with some channels weighted more strongly from the start—weights that biology nudges, and experience can fine-tune around the edges but not fundamentally reverse.

You do it again: I carefully qualify my assertions and you respond as though I had stated them as absolutes.

Fair point—and you’re right to call that out.

You did hedge (“probably,” “most,” “could be”), and I flattened that into something more rigid than you actually said. That’s on me, not on your formulation. What you were really doing was sketching a plausible model, not laying down a doctrine.

Let me meet you where you actually are.

Your “turn-on buttons” idea works quite well as an intuitive shorthand, especially for capturing the fact that attraction feels immediate, pre-reflective, and not chosen. Where I’d still nudge—not to contradict you, but to refine the picture—is that those “buttons” may not come as two neat, mutually exclusive panels so much as a set of sensitivities that can be stronger or weaker, sometimes overlapping, and sometimes only partially expressed.

So instead of:

• one set or the other,

more like:

• a weighted system where certain cues (male-typical, female-typical, or even more abstract traits like voice, movement, or social signaling) trigger reward circuits to different degrees.

That preserves your core insight—that something is “pre-wired” and becomes active at puberty—without forcing it into a strict binary structure that the evidence struggles to support cleanly.

On your evolutionary point, I actually think your instinct is sound: there may be no need for a strong adaptive story at all. Traits can persist simply because they aren’t selected against strongly enough, or because they’re entangled with other traits that are selected for. The “no prevention mechanism evolved” idea is, if anything, more parsimonious than some of the elaborate adaptive explanations people try to construct.

And your distinction between orientation and identity remains solid. Asexual but clearly male in identity is a good example of why those axes shouldn’t be conflated.

So, to put it cleanly: I’m not rejecting your model—I’m sanding down its edges so it fits the messy data a bit better. If anything, we’re operating in the same conceptual neighborhood; I just took your sketch and accidentally inked it in too boldly.

Everyone I have ever known who is sexually active has "types." They run in broad categories, but some, such as young and fit, are vastly more common.

That’s a very recognizable observation, and you’re not imagining it—most people do show patterned preferences rather than random attraction. If you watch long enough, “types” emerge pretty clearly.

What’s going on underneath, though, seems to be a layering of influences rather than a single clean cause.

At the broadest level, there really are some common tendencies—things like youthfulness, symmetry, clear skin, energy. Those correlate loosely with health and reproductive potential, which is why evolutionary psychology keeps coming up in discussions like this. It’s not that people consciously think in those terms, but those cues tend to be widely, though not universally, attractive.

Then you get a second layer that’s more individual: early experiences, emotional associations, familiarity, even chance exposures at the right moment. That’s where “types” become more specific—someone prefers tall, or slight, or a particular demeanor, or even something quite idiosyncratic. This part is much more variable and personal.

And then there’s a third layer people often overlook: feedback from one’s own life. Who responds to you, who you succeed with, who feels comfortable—those experiences quietly reinforce preferences over time. A “type” can partly be discovered, but it can also be constructed through lived experience.

So yes—people have types, and some types cluster heavily (as you note with “young and fit”). But that doesn’t necessarily imply a simple built-in template. It’s more like a funnel: wide at the top with broadly shared biases, narrowing as personal history and reinforcement shape it into something more individual.

Your earlier “buttons” idea still fits here if you soften it a bit: instead of a fixed set of buttons, think of a panel where some buttons are large and easy to press for most people, while others are smaller, dimmer, or wired differently depending on the individual.

The word "button" does generally mean something specific, but it is also used in sexual conversation metaphorically as the broader thing you describe.

Yes—and in that broader, metaphorical sense, your use of “button” actually lands quite well.

In ordinary speech, when people say “that pushes my buttons,” they’re not picturing a single, discrete switch so much as a reliable trigger point—something that consistently evokes a response without much deliberation. In that sense, a “button” can be a cluster of cues acting together: visual, emotional, even contextual.

Applied to sexuality, your phrasing captures something important: attraction often feels immediate and involuntary, as though something has been activated rather than chosen. That’s true whether the underlying mechanism is simple or—as the evidence suggests—more distributed and layered.

So I’d say your metaphor works, as long as we hear it the way people actually use it in conversation:
not a literal panel of labeled switches, but a set of sensitivities that, when hit in the right combination, produce a recognizable response.

And it also nicely accommodates variation. Some people have very consistent “buttons,” others have broader or more flexible ones, and some—like yourself, being asexual—have a system where those triggers simply don’t fire in the usual way, even though identity and other aspects of self remain clear and intact.

In other words, your metaphor survives contact with reality just fine—it just needs to be taken in the looser, human sense rather than the engineering one.