Multiple factors involved in sexual orientation, part 2
I posted 2 weeks ago about this twin study but it is now making the media.
Here is the abstract of the article from Archives of Sexual Behavior:
There is still uncertainty about the relative importance of genes and environments on human sexual orientation. One reason is that previous studies employed selfselected, opportunistic, or small population-based samples. We used data from a truly population-based 2005–2006 survey of all adult twins (20–47 years) in Sweden to conduct the largest twin study of same-sex sexual behavior attempted so far. We performed biometric modeling with data on any and total number of lifetime same-sex sexual partners, respectively. The analyses were conducted separately by sex. Twin resemblance was moderate for the 3,826 studied monozygotic and dizygotic same-sex twin pairs. Biometric modeling revealed that, in men, genetic effects explained .34–.39 of the variance, the shared environment .00, and the individual specific environment .61–.66 of the variance. Corresponding estimates among women were .18–.19 for genetic factors, .16–.17 for shared environmental, and 64–.66 for unique environmental factors. Although wide confidence intervals suggest cautious interpretation, the results are consistent with moderate, primarily genetic, familial effects, and moderate to large effects of the nonshared environment (social and biological)
on same-sex sexual behavior.
Reactions are mixed but not really along any ideological grounds that I can see. For instance, from ScienceNOW:
J. Michael Bailey, a psychologist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, who led earlier twin studies of sexual orientation, calls the new study “good, important, and one unlikely to be bettered in the near future.” But Jonathan Beckwith, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, says that the new work fails to overcome a number of problems faced by previous twin studies. He notes that the final sample included only 12% of the males in the Swedish registry, leaving open the possibility of recruitment bias. And Beckwith says that the failure to control for family environment could inflate estimates of genetic influence.
Co-author Qazi Rahman, was quoted by the Washington Post:
“This study puts cold water on any concerns that we are looking for a single ‘gay gene’ or a single environmental variable which could be used to ’select out’ homosexuality — the factors which influence sexual orientation are complex. And we are not simply talking about homosexuality here — heterosexual behavior is also influenced by a mixture of genetic and environmental factors,” study co-author Dr. Qazi Rahman, a leading scientist on human sexual orientation, said in a prepared statement.
I intend to devote at least one more post to this study as I agree with Michael Bailey that it is an important study. I think along with the other 2 population based studies (Bailey’s in 2000 and Kendler’s also in 2000), it provides a picture of modest genetic effects along with a major role for non-shared enviromental factors. Many roads lead to a similar result. Nothing in this study provides a clear picture of what those environmental factors are but a simple environmental explanation (e.g., poor parenting) or genetic source (single gene, or uniform action of several genes) is not supported here.
Rahman added in the Post article:
“Overall, genetics accounted for around 35 percent of the differences between men in homosexual behavior and other individual-specific environmental factors (that is, not societal attitudes, family or parenting which are shared be twins) accounted for around 64 percent. In other words, men become gay or straight because of different developmental pathways, not just one pathway,” Rahman said.
Warren
First of all, RIGHT ON! about this study.
But second off I don’t understand one thing. Why does this study suggest multiple, environmental triggers? I’m not saying I don’t believe that to be the case because most things have a few, main triggers. I’m just asking what in this study excludes a “magic bullet”?
Example:
Pretend for a second that male SSA is triggered by prenatal exposure to something lame like a common, cold virus. Don’t sizable portions of the population run into this microbe, every generation? Aren’t there a lot of things like that? For most of human history measles was ubiquitous in human populations. Maybe certain strains still are.
I LOVE that quote. More good stuff comin’ our way!
An indication of low genetic influence possibly headed even lower?
It looks like the genetic factors are going to be clarified first in the next period. But just when they are about to be clarified, their influence loses some weight in the balance of factors. Interesting turn of events. Scientists are probably going to work on the correlations between genes and other brain correlates until the other environmental factors, especially prenatal factors, are liable to be studied in detail.
The 12% response rate is very small indeed. It’s likely that the most motivated participants were also the ones who were most open about their sexuality. That could be linked with a particular trait that could have a contribution to the concordance rate. Also, if the trait is polygenic, environment is likely to play a big role. Actually, at low penetrance rates, environmental factors can be decisive.
One thing I forgot to mention.
So, if I get this right, this study shows what is the genetic contribution in individuals where the trait is most strongly expressed.
That’s an act of God.
There are probably many genes that correlate with SSA. Imagine if one of these was accidentally discovered 10 or 20 years ago. We would have never heard the end of it. Even a 1% correlation would have been spun and blasted through loudspeakers as absolute proof that SSA was 100% genetic. Just thinking about that alternate universe makes me cringe.
Given the free will of each individual, where are the social interactive factors such as expectations of significant adults (or peers), experimental options opened to curious youth, pop cultural influences, etc. Do these get lost among the “environmental”
factors?
Is Dave G. suggesting that impressionable kids are somehow pressured into being gay by adults/peers, society pushing experimental options, etc.? What is he suggesting? That kids wouldn’t turn out gay if someone wasn’t pushing them? Is peer, adult and social pressure what makes people straight? Or is that just gayness?
Does this go along with his idea that we are “all gay if we want to be” and practice it enough? Couldn’t it be that some folks are just gay and some are not? That it is a temperamental and normal variation in human personality?
I sure wasn’t pressured into it. I wanted it. It was built in. Intrinsic. Instinctive. Just like heterosexuality. This obsession with what “causes” it irks the daylights out of me! It’s so icky, odd and vilethat something must have “caused” it, right?
It’s not a sickness. Not a disorder. Not a sin. Not broken. Not abnormal. Not wrong. It’s like heterosexuality — and that ain’t nothing wrong with being straight.
@Michael Bussee: This study relates to the direction of sexual orientation whether same-sex or opposite sex behavior.
1. I haven’t seen the study yet so I don’t know what their methodology was, but I noticed from the abstract that they included both identical and fraternal twins in the final estimate. Identical twins have a greater degree of concordance for a trait and they also share the same placenta. I wonder how significant are the differences between identicals and fraternals in this study.
That could throw some light on the probable magnitude of nonshared environmental effects, especially prenatal ones.
2. This study points to weak genetic influences and equal shared environmental effects on the female homosexual orientation. But the numbers for nonshared environmental effects are largely the same as for male homosexuality. Keeping in mind the brain similarities from the Savic study, it seems they cannot be accounted for by a different degree of genetic factors operating on male and female homosexuals. Apparently, the same magnitude of nonshared environmental factors and the similar brain patterns point to hormonal effects.
Also, the greater genetic pull for men seems to point to a gender-specific genetic mechanism. Possibly something on the chromosome X.
3. To my knowledge, twins undergo epigenetic modifications across a lifetime. The greater the age, the greater the differences, as genes can be turned on or off. 20-year old monozygotic twins are more likely to have a greater phenotypic similarity for a given trait than 47-year old twins. Exposure to different environmental factors can do that in the post-natal period and beyond.
Evan
Absolutely correct, genes express according to how useful they are in a given environment.
Environmental factors weigh heavily in modulating gene expression in humans
The thing about DaveG’s assertion is - there really wasn’t any peer pressure to be gay when I grew up (I am 38). There were no gay characters on TV shows, gays and lesbians where rarely if ever talked about in any media outlet, I wasn’t exposed to any homoerotic literature - in short there was nothing like what DaveG asserts as an environmental factor.
Even today I don’t think there is that much exposure to gay and lesbian life. Yes there are a few shows that have gay things and it is talked about more - but in comparison to hetrosexuality - well there there is no comparison - that is the vastly more dominant societal push.
As an aside to Drowssap here - why would it irk you so much if many people did think that being gay was primarily genetic - it seems so odd for someone who doesn’t have an emotional attachment to this issue (either gay themselves or anti-gay) to react like that. I just cannot imagine myself - If I were straight - really caring that much about this issue. Even now, I don’t keep up to date on the latest literature about this. I have to say this - but you have a strange hobby Drowssap.
Patrick
Well… to be honest you got me, it is a weird hobby for a straight guy. I could write a lengthy story to explain how this got started but I’ll try to do a Readers Digest condensed version.
In a nutshell, somebody in my extended family is gay. When this fact came out did it change our relationship? Nope. I have nothing but love for this person. But for some reason this sent me on a 24/7 mission to understand why. I suppose that’s just my personality. Anyway, this was about 5 or 6 years ago. Initially I believed Narth and philosophies based around their ideas. What they said already fit in with my worldview that somehow gay men were molested or perhaps they missed some sort of critical imprint period. For years (ok I’m nuts) I googled every story on SSA that I could find. The more I learned, the more I realized that SSA was biological. But at the same time the more I learned about biology the more I realized that the gay gene theory was an impossibility. Nothing in all of human biology works anything like it. Well, that’s pretty much my story.
Patrick
Imagine if you were born in 1900. How much gay media was around back then? And yet you can bet there were small, but significant populations of gay men everywhere.
Patrick,
TBH, the issue of what causes homosexuality has become a bit boring. But what causes gender differences inside a gender group, that’s another story. Since the lady from Harvard managed to flip gender by a simple gene in mice this subject is really hot stuff. No one could have ever imagined that would be possible. Many scientific minds are probably working around the clock right now thinking about a potential commercial success of a brain viagra, that would boost typical gender feelings and desire either in heterosexual or homosexual people. How many sexual dysfunctions are caused by weak attractions? I bet there are plenty, especially in aging people. Great scientific discoveries sometimes come where you don’t expect to see them.
Drowssap: Did the discovery that one of your family members was gay just ignite a dedazzled sense of wonderment and curiousity, like one might feel on seeing a rare color of tiger or unusually beautiful bird? Or did you start with the conviction that something must have gone awry?
It sounds like the latter because you say “for some reason this sent me on a 24/7 mission to understand why.” Try to t hink. What could that reason be? Was it pure intelletual curiousity (like trying to understand the life cycle of stars) or was it a determined hunt for cause and cure?
Is sounds like the latter. Because you also say that intially you “believed Narth and philosophies based around their ideas. What they said already fit in with my worldview that somehow gay men were molested or perhaps they missed some sort of critical imprint period.” They “already fit”…. Hmm….
Why, of all things, NARTH? NARTH’s elaborate psychodynamic theories are not facts. They are stories. Guesses — but, hey, they “fit your world view”. In science, we normally don’t look for theories to fit our worldviews. Instead, we formulate theories to try to explain and predict. We don’t start with a conclusion.
In other words, it seems to me that you were obsessed because you already believed that something must be damaged — that there was something wrong with being gay, that something was busted, disordered, unhealthy or wrong. It’s just my opinion, but that’s the way it seems.
Patrick’s initial statement did more than just suggest that gays are coached or role-modeled into being gay. There may have been a lack of gay role models in real life and on TV but that does not mean that very serious messages weren’t being passed on by the ’straight’ role models .
If TV suggested that all straight men ogle women, that ‘real men’ respond first with lust and then, maybe, find basic personal attraction… that real men are drawn to busty women,…that real men always want to be the leader, to be in charge…..then a kid who doesn’t think or respond this way gets a message. It doesn’t say ‘you’re gay’ but it shouts ‘you’re different’. It’s often at the time of puberty or later that the kid equates ‘being different’ with ‘being gay’. This, to me, is why so many deeply believe that they were born gay; they feel they were ‘different’ from day one and decide later that the explanation for that sense of difference is their homosexuality. It’s plausible–but it’s just as plausible that they were simply different and that the negative messages they got about being different led them to conclude they were gay.
(By way of illustration, David Hasselhoff is back again as a judge for America’s Got Talent. I hope and pray that most people can see beyond his fame and star status and see that he’s not a proper model of either maleness or straightness. He’s much too condoning of lascivious looking after women and his reaction to the sight of any male flesh (even the chest) is overblown homophobic response.
Now, let’s take a kid who doesn’t know better…who thinks ‘the Hoff’ is the norm. He’ll begin to wonder why his eyes don’t get as big as saucers when a scantily clad woman takes the stage and why he doesn’t react with horror at the sight of a well-built male. Could be he respects women or isn’t as sexually charged as ‘the Hoff’…its not necessarily a gay message. And it could be that he simply has no homophobia, so a male chest is a male chest, a well-defined male chest is a well-defined male chest…to notice that is not necessarily a gay response. But how many kids are taking these unspoken messages and getting them scrambled? We don’t really know because we haven’t fully examined the impact of peer pressure and the media.)
Eddy,
Great intuition. I never thought that actually dichotomising sexual messages like that in the media could also force feelings of being different in someone. I think you’re right.
Something similar crossed my mind after hearing a psychologist from the US saying that American kids are raised in a more aggressive manner than kids from other parts of the developed world. I thought that this kind of rearing might also divide children into separate categories: children who are able to play rough and those who prefer more tranquil games. If this is true, then maybe finding ways to reduce rejection and make more children feel integrated with the other gender peers will give them a different perspective when they reach adolescence.
(Note: I wrote a message on a topic here pointing to this possible flaw in Daryl Bem’s EBE theory: the exclusive rough-and-tumble play for typical boys might be also typical for a certain cultural environment. In other parts of the world, play activities can be more inclusive, which is also reflected in social outcomes. Environment can force outcomes sometimes, both in early age socialisation and later identification. I don’t remember any rejected kids from my childhood, nor any of them identifying as gay today. But it may be a coincidence.)
Michael Bussee
Well, back in the 80s when I grew up gay people weren’t viewed as bad people any more. SSA was viewed as some sort of emotional or psychological disorder that wasn’t biologically based and could be overcome. I believed that hook, line and sinker and if you look back in your own history so did you in the 1980s. But I have an excuse, I was young. You actually worked to promote the idea and probably had at least a small impact on my belief system.
So when I went looking for answers I ran across Narth and related groups. What they said made sense because they fed me what I had heard all my life. But something about their concepts didn’t add up, and science was finding more and more biological corelations to homosexuality. So ultimately I began to disagree with them and that’s where I am today.
Gene, germ or whatever I don’t care. I’ll follow the science. Right now environment appears to be in a strong lead and I don’t expect that to change.
/sorry, back on topic
Evan
Eddy
If I remember correctly Timoth Kincaid was one of the “cool” kids growing up and he is gay. I found out about a year ago that one of the semi-cool kids in my highschool recently came out. So I dunno if feeling like an outsider is necessarily responsible.
Drowssap,
Different factors work differently in different people. GID kids were happy mostly in opposite-sex roles, but lack of rejection would have probably played no role in their sexual identity development. Where the biological factors are strongest, probably environment doesn’t have much to say in the later outcome.
Eddy,
You have definitely touched on something very important in the development of a gay identity. If you do not fit the model that the media portrays as a real man you may feel different. Over the past few years I have come to see that real men look nothing like the image that Hollywood has portrayed to us for the past 10-20 years, in fact this image of men is now being shown to be a pretty poor example of what a man should be and yet I think these models have had a major impact on many of us and on our perceptions of ourselves.
Eddy commented that “it’s just as plausible that they were simply different and that the negative messages they got about being different led them to conclude they were gay”
So they were just confused? Mistaken? They were really straight? Maybe for some — I would call them “pseudohomosexual”. But, for me, it wasn’t being “simply different” or “negative messages” that convinced me.
What was “different” was that I was homosexual and they were not. What was different about me is that I had crushes on boys and was attracted to them sexually — not girls.
That basic, undeniable fact led me to conclude I was homosexual. In other words, if you don’t get crushes on girls and only want to see other boys naked, you just might be gay.
Michael,
You keep mentioning that you were interested in the anatomy of other boys early on in your life. If you are willing to say a few things about that without being too personal or explicit, do you remember what was your age when you first felt drawn to other boys? And what was your age when you clearly associated sexual feelings with same-sex interest? Did you at any point in your life have similar feelings for a particular opposite-sex person? How strong would you say was your early interest in boys? Were you a boy very curious about sex in general?
Do you find that any of the known theories or explanations (like Daryl Bem’s ‘Exotic Becomes Erotic’ or some correlations, like the fraternal birth order effect) can account for your personal story?
Feel free to reply to any of these questions.
Thanks.
(1) Do you remember what was your age when you first felt drawn to other boys? About age 5 or six. Definitely during first grade. It was emotional and sexual — a definite first crush like a teenaged boy would feel towards his first female crush.
(2) And what was your age when you clearly associated sexual feelings with same-sex interest? I don’t quite understand this queation. Same thing. First grade. I knew the words “homo” and “queer” by about third grade and understood that this must be something very bad — why else would people mistreat you for being different?
(3) Did you at any point in your life have similar feelings for a particular opposite-sex person? Nope. Never. Liking a girl as a person was about it.
(4) How strong would you say was your early interest in boys? Very strong.
(5) Were you a boy very curious about sex in general? I guess so. I guess I always have been, but females just didn’t (and still don’t) evoke the same feelings as males.
And for the record, I didn’t “choose” it or “want” it. I was never molested. My parents did a fine job of loving and providing for us. My Dad was not abusive or passive. My Mom was not an emasculating witch. I wasn’t “pressured” into by anyone.
I didn’t eat too much soy. I was not possessed by demons. Whatever “caused” it, It happened early for me — but I have talked to quite a few straight men who were also aware of their orientation early on.
It is curious to me that people imagine that the emergence of sexual/romantic attractions for gays must somehow be different than it is for straights. As far as I can tell it feels about the same. Think back on your own sexual development and awareness. it doesn’t happen to you — you just become aware of it..
Michael Bussee
You mention having strong SSA and no OSA from a very early age. Yet surprisingly you became one of the founders and leaders of Exodus. What made you think that homosexuality was a mental disorder when it came so naturally to you early in life?
Drowssap, you asked: “You mention having strong SSA and no OSA from a very early age. Yet surprisingly you became one of the founders and leaders of Exodus. What made you think that homosexuality was a mental disorder when it came so naturally to you early in life?”
I knew i had only homosexual attractions and no heterosexual ones, but I believed that God could and would change me. That’s what the church I was attending told me.
They said that the Bible promised it — if only I tried hard enough, read the Bible enough, fellowshipped enough, prayed enough, etc. They said He created me heterosexual.
About age 12, I read a lot of books that all agreed it was a mental disorder. Who was I to question that? I was just a kid. That’s what the APA called it until 1974. Then, I started to meet gay guys who were not psychiatrically disordered. They were just gay.
The APA dropped it from the DSM IV. I sttarted to question what I had come to believe. My Christian faith deepened, but my beliefs about homosexuality took a 180.
Even though it “came naturally” for me at an early age, this does not mean that I was unaware of the strong anti-gay religious and cultural attitudes about it. I wanted to be “normal” and accepted — doesn’t everyone?
Michael:
First, let’s make the kid who’s getting the messages from TV an 8 or 9 year old boy. In most cases he doesn’t yet really understand what sex is. The only message he gets is “That’s a man…that’s a popular man but I’m nothing like that.” So, the child doesn’t make a conclusion such as “I’m straight” or “I’m gay” but rather “I’m different”. That feeling of being different begins to set up a ‘deficit’…the assumption is that ‘being different’ is also somehow wrong. So, the kid begins to ask “what’s wrong with me?” and doesn’t realize that the answer might be “nothing at all”. He may ask “why am I different”…and–the question itself infers that ‘being different’ is some type of problem. As a result, the individual has a heaping dose of self-doubt and identity conflict.
Now, logically, how would one attempt to resolve feelings of self-doubt and identity conflicts? The resolving process is focussed on their own gender…their perceived differences with others of their gender is at the heart of their conflict so naturally they will focus on their own gender for the resolution. Some of these conflicts work out quite normally; the child eventually develops some peer relationships that address their self-doubts and conflicts or perhaps they learn on their own that they bought into a truckload of negative messages that weren’t true.
But, if the conflicts aren’t resolved by the time the youth reaches adolescence, it would be easy for the youth to misinterpret their preoccupation with their own gender. “I’m always looking at other guys; I must be gay”…or perhaps they’re trying to still resolve those doubts and conflicts by constant comparison. “I’ve had an intense curiosity about the nakedness of other men so I must be gay”…or, could it be that since they didn’t measure up to the TV/media images, they’re now wondering how their developing body measures up. “Yeah, but the male nakedness excites me”…well, forgive me, but I remember getting turned on by the simple word ‘naked’ even if it was just a ‘naked light bulb’ being discussed.
“Well, why then didn’t naked women turn me on”. I’d be willing to bet that most of us were exposed to nudity of our own gender before that of the opposite sex…by the time the opposite sex exposure hit, we were a bit older and knew lots more about sex than we did at the onset of puberty. Our titillation by our own gender may have been a combination of self-doubt, envy and admiration; our ‘yukk’ feelings towards the opposite sex…because now we realize that sex means sharing body parts, germs, performance expectations, the risk of pregnancy. A whole lot of baggage…and an especially heavy load if you’re filled with self-doubt and feelings of inadequacy.
One of the ironies is that a good kid: one with a strong sense of morals, with true respect for others, who desires good and peace for all….well, this kid is branded as ‘different’ and often as ‘gay’…not because anyone caught them fixating on their own gender but simply because they are different. If someone doesn’t step in to reassure them that it’s okay to be different…and that ‘being different’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘being gay’, they are likely to conclude that they are gay. Once they come to that conclusion, the drive for intimacy will keep them stumbling on–even through unpleasant sexual experiences–as they struggle to find out who they are.
Well, there goes my library time for today…still shopping for that new home computer.
Eddy: “That’s a man…that’s a popular man but I’m nothing like that.” So, the child doesn’t make a conclusion such as “I’m straight” or “I’m gay” but rather “I’m different”. That feeling of being different begins to set up a ‘deficit’”.
So in your world view, homosexuality is really a misguided inferiority complex? I have heard this “masculinity-deficit-compensated-for-by-sexualizing-unmet- emotional-needs” theory many, many times before — and I still think it’s a load of horse manure. It’s not a deficit or an attempt to fill a deficit any more than straightness is.
Here’s the problem with the “masculinity deficit” theory: once you start with the assumption that a person must be gay because they are attempting to fill in “deficits” in their sense of masculinity, then all you have to do is ask a gay man if he has ever felt such inferiority — and he will say “yes”!
Then, you feel gratified because you have proved your assumption! Aha! There it is! He felt inferior to other boys or men! But, come on, ho hasn’t? Begin with a prejudice and you will find your proof every single time.. It’s “post hoc, ergo propter hoc” — one of the most common errors of logic. The fact that something occurs before something else or in conjunction with something else does not prove causality.
.
Michael Bussee
Let me just agree with Michael on this one.
A) I’m only 5′8″
B) I’m nerdy
C) In highschool I had bad skin
D) Girls wouldn’t even TALK to me in highschool, let alone date me
At that age I was definitely an outsider. My friends were also outsiders. In all the conversations we had as highschoolers nobody ever said, “Girls hate us, jocks hate us, the cool kids won’t talk to us, let’s go gay!” Our brains couldn’t comprehend something like that. There were five of us and during our highschool careers only 2 of us ever had a girlfriend. I only went on one date during all 4 years! Anyway, we kept oggling girls and when we hit about college age the girls began to like us in return. For some reason, after that it was a flood the other direction. 4 of us are happily married, I don’t know what happened to #5, we lost touch. The last I heard years ago was that he was in a longterm relationship with a girl.
I think Eddy concluded he was was inferior because he was gay — and not the other way around. Gay kids are made to feel less valuable, that there is something wrong with being gay, that it is an illness, a deficit, a sin, a disorder, etc. — they feel less valuable because they are gay. They don’t incorrectly “conclude” they must be gay because they feel inferior. Eddy has it backwards.
Michael,
Not to mention that there are many gay men who haven’t had a problem with their masculinity.
I would also add that even today’s culture is one that incessantly perpetuates the non-masculine gay stereotype, it is no wonder then that some gay men, even the truly masculine ones - whatever that word means - might be made to feel as if there is a problem with their masculinity.
Michael Bussee
Well… I don’t want to totally discount that SSA could develop differently in different people. But in my opinion just about every secondary trait that is commonly associated with SSA is a side effect and not a cause.
I know it makes you and probably other people irritated when I suggest that SSA might in some crazy way be the result of a common, early life infection. When I write that I don’t mean that gay people are inferior to straight people. Pretend blindness could be the result of an infection, actually it is. A suggestion that a germ might be responsible is in no way a condemnation of blind people. I might actually love a blind person. It’s just a way to scientifically understand whats going on.
Drowssap -
Let’s not forget the problems associated with your infection theory either
Happy Fourth, btw
Agreed.
Happy Fourth to you too!
Jayhuck, you observed that “some gay men might be made to feel as if there is a problem with their masculinity.” Might? But that’s precisely it. It’s what EXODUS and NARTH actually teach — that there is something very wrong with your masculinity. They believe that, they tell you that and then they look for that.
And, lo and behold, they find it. Nicolosi even goes so far as to say that if you did have a good relationship with Dad (and a solid sense of your own maleness) that you could not turn out gay. If you are gay, you must have missed out on this. If you say you didn’t, you must be in denial. Perfect catch 22.
You didn’t bond with your Dad. He was critical of you. Your mother emasculated you. You didn’t fit it with other boys. You never really felt like a legitimate male so you turned that into a psycho-sexual desire for one.
You felt inferior to other boys and so you turned this sense of “deficit” into a sort of masculine idol worship — wanting to possess that which you felt you lacked. It’s really just a tired re-working of old psychoanalytic concepts — gayness as a case of mistaken identity. You’re not really gay — you just think you are.
Drowssap: Problem is, blindness is a disability. Homosexuality is not. I would only buy into your idea if you suggested that the wonderful variations in the color of butterflies might be the result of an infection. Or that heterosexuality was also caused by an infection. Why would you assume that only homosexuality is?
Also, there are many causes of blindness. To assert that it is also the result of an infection is overstating the case. How about injury to the eye? Retinal detachment, etc.?
Jayhuck,
The facts coming from research point to something feminine in the brains of gay men. Childhood gender non-conformism is the greatest predictor of future homosexual orientation. On average and in most cases, of course, because not all people might become gay for the same reasons, and the presumed genetic or biological factors are probably not equally distributed among gays. In some cases personal experiences might have played a sizeable role, while in others a lot less so.
Evidence is growing that male homosexuality is correlated with a number of female-like brain patterns (amygdala connectivity, brain symmetry, maybe INAH3 size). It is logical that what creates attraction to men brainwise must be the same in both sexes, male and female. Which is not to say that gay men have female brains, but the regions that create attractions in the gay male brains will probably be female-like.
If the neurohormonal hypothesis is eventually proven in humans too, then prenatal hormonal hardwiring might actually mean that many (future) gay men had biological reasons to feel different from the majority of men. Someone could be male from a genetic and gonadal point of view, but he might have female-typical feelings towards the physically same-sex peers.
Michael Bussee
You are exactly on the right track. Somewhere in the world there are almost certainly genes or gene combinations that can result in blindness. BUT… because of natural selection those genes are super rare, probably less than 1 in 10,000 people and possibly as infrequent as 1 out of millions. Every common cause of blindness comes back to environment. Infections, wear and tear, pollution, etc. Specific genes create susceptability to all of these things which is why genes seem to corelate with everything. The next time you see a young, blind person you can safely bet that something happened to him. If you bet your chips on that hand you’ll win almost every time.
It isn’t that blind people are bad, immoral or inferior to you and me. It’s that blindness results in fewer offspring in all human environments. Babies are the currency of life, nothing else matters to Mother Nature. If there was an environment where blindess worked, we’d find it there. Certain breeds of cave fish are naturally blind and they have plenty of offspring. So in certain environments blindess is the result of natural genetics. In humans no such environment exists and so blindness is rarely part of the original blueprint.
Ok, so how does this apply to SSA?
If there was an environment on earth where male SSA stomped OSA for making and/or raising children you can bet it would thrive in that spot. Outside of that area it would taper off until eventually you wouldn’t find it at all. First of all I don’t know of any environment where male SSA whips OSA, second we don’t see any geographic pattern for homosexuality. Ok, so what about the “gay gene makes women extra fertile” hypothesis. Well, so far it’s just an algebra equation. Unfortunately that theory has a much bigger problem. No common gene in all of human biology is that common and that antagonistic between men and women. And if it really was that antagonistic why is it even expressed in men? Finally, all of the hard evidence points towards environment.
Ok, so if SSA is environment it doesn’t automatically mean damage but it does suggest the possibility. If it ultimately turns out that homosexuality is the result of early life damage it doesn’t mean gay people are bad, immoral or inferior to straights. Anybody who would talk down to a deaf person or blind person or tease a kid with acne is a jerk not to mention short sighted. Every person on Earth suffers from large amounts of environmental damage, both mental and physical. The reason we survive and thrive is because humans are tough. Sometimes I also get the feeling that somebody is looking out for us.
Michael Bussee
I should have added one more small point. Even if male SSA ultimately turns out to be the result of biological damage it’s not a mental disorder.
Why?
For arguments sake let’s pretend that SSA works like Narcolepsy.
A virus sneaks into your brain during infancy and chews up a few thousand neurons. Those cells were responsble for producing a chemical that makes you straight. Anyone missing those cells would be gay. If we took those cells out of the NARTH Board Of Directors they’d be gay too. The point being that you SHOULD be gay and you don’t have a choice.
The disorder in this scenario isn’t homosexuality. The disorder is that you might lack a few thousand specialized cells. Homosexuality would merely be the symptom that these cells weren’t there. Everything in the brain depends on everything else and we probably need them for more than just “straightness.” So yeah, in this case scientists should find a way to replace those cells if they could.
I would think the risk of replacing some cells in the brain would be such a risk prone procedure that there would have to be some very good reason for it other than ‘well maybe these cells are needed for something besides straightness’.
Now if someone suffered a debilitating stroke - and there was a way to repair the damage - then the risk here might be worth it (I say might because frankly none of us really have any idea what dangers would be involved in such a procedure).
Drowssap,
The picture that comes to light doesn’t seem to be either one thing or another, ie either disorder or not, it looks more gradient-like. The amygdala patterns common to straight women and gay men do point to vulnerability to mood disorders and anxious type of personality. But we don’t know yet whether they are associated with same-gender attractions or participate in causing them.
If there is any respect in which homosexuality might be considered to produce an impairment, then it must be reproduction. The same thing may not be a disorder from one point of view, like psychiatry or psychology, but it may produce a form of disability from another point of view: lack of attractions that can lead to reproductive behaviour. It’s the lack of evolutionary fitness argument. The greater maternal fertility effect hypothesis is the kind of explanation that creates false negatives, because we cannot know whether gay men did not reproduce more in the past. Present cultural conditions prevent us from making that assumption. Gay men today might be biased to form new kinds of bonds based on a newly accepted type of sexuality, which was not the case in the past when social conditions might have pressured them to focus less on sexuality. This is the weak spot of evolutionary explanations applied to humans: they fail to take into account cultural factors that may not follow a pattern liable to be studied by natural science. Culture can work in anti-naturalistic ways.
Once again, Drowssap, whether “mental illness or not, you are still conceptualizing homosexuality in negative terms of deficit or damage: “Even if male SSA ultimately turns out to be the result of biological damage…
Why would you assume — and that is the correct word — why would you begin with assumption that something is “damaged” in the brains of gay men and not that something is simply different in the brains of gay men?
Not every human difference is damaged. All of out fingerprints and eyes are different from individual to individual. Homosexuality is just one of those natural differences. Nothing got “chewed up”.
Michael:
Re your post 11084. LOL. On the way to the library today (before reading your post) I thought about pointing out the big distinction between us…and your post makes it clear that you see the same distinction…we just disagree about the order of things. You think I have it backwards and I think you do.
Eddy: It’s a question of which came first — (A) the feeling of being different/inferior or (B) the awareness of same sex attraction. For me, the awareness came first.
You experienced it differently. Sounds like you (1) compared yourself to other males, (2) found yourself lacking and (3) then began a quest to find what you didn’t think you had — real maleness.
What made me feel “different” was that I was a gay boy and they were not. For me, the “gayness” itself made me realize I was “different”. For you, the “difference” made you feel (and incorrectly conclude) that you must be “gay”
Some people used to call this “pseudohomosexuality” — people who feel and act “gay” but really aren’t. Like you, they are acting out some other unmet need or inner conflict.. You then seem to argue that all gays became gay through the same process you experienced — as a reaction to feeling “less than”. You really shouldn’t generalize your experience in this way. You present it as though it were established fact — and not just another unprovable theory.
For you, it was a damaged sense of maleness that became a case of “mistaken identity’. Gay wasn’t truly who who were. It’s who you assumed you must be because of feeling inferior. For me, it was (and is) my true identity -=- and trying to change it or deny it caused much misery both for me and those I loved…
Michael:
I still disagree. In looking back you feel that you had sexual attractions akin to crushes on men at the age of 5 or 6. I maintain that a 5 or 6 year old’s attractions are not sexual. There are strong desires going on but they are not sexual.
The desire to be noticed, accepted, loved. To be appreciated as special and unique. The desire for human touch, for male affirmation. I believe that’s what’s likely going on for a 5 or 6 year old. Pretty strong feelings of desire directed towards one’s own gender…but not sexual desire.
Your response came in while I was still at the library. I may not get a chance to check in again until Tuesday.
Eddy – “I maintain that a 5 or 6 year old’s attractions are not sexual. There are strong desires going on but they are not sexual.”
You can “maintain” it all you want, but it doesn’t change the facts. Your beliefs, preconceptions and favorite theories don’t make something true or not true. Furthermore, you really shouldn’t generalize your own experience as t hough it held true for the rest of us. That’s kinda arrogant, dontcha think?
My interests were definitely sexual — along with affection, touch, admiration, etc. — just like a boy might feel about his first “girlfriend”. Just because you experienced it differently doesn’t mean it’s gospel.
Michael Bussee
You are absolutely correct. Homosexuality appears to be largely the result of “environment” but that doesn’t automatically mean damage. Maybe it’s due to a common, healthy combination of genes and hormones or something related.
But maybe it’s not.
And that’s the thing. Everybody needs an open mind.
When you were young you said “homosexuality is bad!”
Now your older and you say “homosexuality is good!”
Maybe you just happen to be blessed with a personality that doesn’t automatically look for the middle ground.
Infection. Germ. Deficit. Damage. Busted. Disordered. Mistaken. Sinful. Chewed up. Not in God’s will.
Awareness. Different. Orientation. Variation. Instinct. Intrinsic. Part of the normal specturm of human sexual attraction.
Review the posts. The answers you come up with depend entirely on which vocabulary you select. When you have already made up your mind, you tend to find what you are looking for.
Drowssap commented: “When you were young you said “homosexuality is bad!” Now you’re older and you say “homosexuality is good!”
No. Not exactly. Now I say that homosexuality is neutral — just like heterosexuality. What makes anything “bad” or “good” is the intent — how it is used and why. It’s like fire — neither good nor bad in and of itself. It can warm and give light or it can injure and destroy. It all depends on how you use it
Question: On what basis do you assume that homosexuality must be damaged or chewed up — brain damage as the result of an “infection” — as opposed to being just another human trait — like eye color or fingeprints? Why assume that something went wrong? How can you keep an open mind if you start with a conclusion?.
Patrick
You’re right, that’s not possible today.
You have approximately 30,000 Neurons in your brain that produce Orexin. If those get chomped your sleep patterns go haywire and you get Narcolepsy. Scientists are working on a way to give Narcoleptics an Orexin like medicine to make up for the fact that it’s not being produced in the brain. That’s the sort of thing they can attempt today.
However there is plenty of AMAZING stuff on the horizon. Researchers are working on ways to get the brain to regrow damaged areas on it’s own. If the brain built these cells in the first place, why not get it to build them again? But that’s a couple of decades away. Then again, the rate of scientific advancement keeps accelerating so who knows.
Michael Bussee
There is only one main reason that my brain guesses that something out of the ordinary must have happened. Gay men have fewer babies. Good evidence is starting to crop up that SSA is indeed set in motion by something in the environment but forget all that. Even if I lived 100 years ago and had no scientific evidence the fewer babies thing is what stands out. If gay men produce 99 offspring for every 100 that straight men produce the genes and natural processes involved are ultimately doomed to extinction.
Evan
I was thinking while I worked today and it’s even worse than that. Not only can we not guess how many kids gay men had in primitive cultures we also don’t know why “super attracted to men” women would be at any advantage.
A) Being super attracted to men would make women less picky, that’s BAD not good.
B) Being super attracted to men increases the odds of catching an STD, that’s UBER-BAD for fertility not good.
C) Healthy women in primitive cultures are going to have a baby every year or two anyway. What’s the difference?
But it gets worse from there. Look at the extra fertility theory from the reverse.
A) Preferentially gay men live in every environment
B) They exist because women with the “super attraction to men” gene have more kids than regular women in every environment
So the ONLY counterforce slowing down the spread of this gene in women are gay men. Without gay men there is no antagonism and the trait becomes fixed in females in every environment.
So if the trait is that awesome, why aren’t there 40 other genes that do the same thing? Mutation never stops and if something works that well EVERYTIME, EVERYWHERE you can bet there wouldn’t be just 1 gene that coded for that trait. Of course if there were 40 genes many of these would have different side effects besides male homosexuality. A few wouldn’t have any side effects at all and these would spread world wide.
The extra fertility concept is ridiculous. I’m not saying there couldn’t be a corelation between extra female fertility and male homosexuality but to say they cause each other is silly. It’s something else.
Readers Digest Version:
Camperio Ciani is claiming that if gay men didn’t slow down the spread of the “super hot for men” gene every women on earth would have it and they’d be fawning over men like crazy.
Once again it’s the gay man’s fault.
Dean Hamer quote on the subject:
The fact that Hamer is so smart makes that quote really sad.
Drowssap,
That article looks like a conversation between a gay anthropologist (Camperio Ciano) who knows no gay gene(s) but advances a mathematic formula to prove a genetic trade-off that would solve the Darwinian paradox of homosexuality, a gay geneticist (Dean Hamer) whose contribution in the field has not been replicated and a gay journalist (Michael Balter) who has been writing this kind of scientific news for some years.
He argues that two genes would make both men and women more attracted to men, so as to create a greater possibility for women to have more children. But women cannot have children by themselves; he assumes that if a woman is more attracted to men than other women are, she will actually have more children. What about the families where children of both sexes are gay? How did he assess the degree of ‘gayness’ in each participant to the first study? Did he use Kinsey scores, plethysmographic measures, brainscans?
Some might identify as gay because they prefer having sex with men over having sex with women. It’s not scientific to assume that all studied families that included gays had similar genetic contribution to that trait or the trait was expressed equally strong. Some might have had greater environmental contribution and less genetic load. How can he project this theory on an evolutionary scale, if his fertility rates are calculated based on present-day rates, which may be influenced by the fact that gays can now identify as such and have no societal pressure to marry women and have kids? Cultural pressure in the past must have forced many of them to start traditional families. This means that not only their female siblings spread the ‘gay genes’, but they did it too to some extent. Camperio Ciano’s model does not take into account any past cultural pressures that bypassed ‘natural’ evolutionary trends. Any such scenario would have spread the ‘gay genes’ too much, which would have made homosexuality prevalent in the gene pool, a possibility he mentions in the study that he excluded from the start.
This is a theoretical construct, a hypothesis, that is being injected in the media to draw attention and keep the theme going. There are hundreds of studies published everyday a lot more exciting than a mathematic hypothesis based on 0 genes, but they do not make the news even if they are based on facts.
Here is another hypothesis I can think of, which is more plausible, I think, than that of CC. How about a familial genetic mechanism that predisposes siblings to a certain type of mating strategies: females who are attracted to less typical males and males who find an easier match with the type of women their siblings are? That would be a clean-cut mechanism that would produce less typical males (modern-day ‘gays’) who would have an easier task in finding a female coming from a similar background, due to a genetic effect on their compatibility which makes the carriers target each other. This can also explain how the trait was maintained during historical periods when homosexual behaviour was punished. Otherwise, how could two genes make some women more attracted to men in biopsychological terms? How could two proteins in the brain make some women more attracted to men?
The shared amygdala patterns are a lot more plausible than that, but they would be common to all heterosexual women and homosexual men if the Savic and Lindstrom study is duplicated. So not only the heterosexual female sibs of homosexual men would have those patterns, but all of them in each category. If those patterns are confirmed, they are correlated with attractions to men, irrespective of gender. In order for Camperio Ciani to have his hypothesis seriously considered he needs two genes expressed in the brains of homosexual men and their heterosexual female siblings which would cause greater attraction to men and would not be common to all heterosexual women, but only to the forementioned siblings. How probable is that? Present brain studies show no such exclusive evidence. On the contrary, they show some brain similarities between all straight women and gay men. There is no particular female category, in these brain studies, that has the trait (?) “attraction to men” more strongly expressed than the rest of females and which is comprised of females with gay male relatives. This is the kind of evidence needed to support such mathematic speculations.
Drowssap,
This debate is imbued with contemporary trends and mentalities. If I remember well, the blue eyes genetic trait is the accidental result of a mutation, there was no special evolutionary selection that brought this trait into the gene pool. We, modern people, have this ‘disease’ of ascribing meaningful causes to any particular occurence we find in nature or society. But the truth is many times things come by accident. Is having blue eyes part of human nature? It is now, but it was not 15.000 years ago. Some geneticists projected that some thousands of years in the future all humans will be mulatto. I don’t know how probable this is, but it is possible. Caucasians have declining demographic rates projections for the next 50 years. In 500 years they could become less widespread and more sough-after for a particular phenotype.
BTW, here’s a piece of news on what environmental factors could mess with a species’ gender make-up. The same thing could apply to humans in some ways, bearing in mind that humans have been using pesticides since history began to be recorded in Sumer. They have been a mainstay of agricultural civilisations ever since. That’s an environmental candidate factor for a number of changes that humans might have gone through.
I also read about a certain village in the Dominican Republic where many boys looked like girls in terms of primary sexual characteristics until they reached puberty (it was due to a deficit in a particular enzyme). Just look for the story of guevedoces or machihembras. It could be similar to what caused the frog sexual abnormalities. This goes into the possible environmental hazards category.
Evan
I don’t have time to respond right now but this link is somewhat related to your point that perhaps sexual orientation is related to some part of the brain that codes human agressiveness.
GNXP: Intercourse and Intelligence
Cliff Notes:
Masculinity and Intelligence are antagonistic traits. Smart guys have less masculine bodies. Smart guys also have fewer sex partners and less early life sex.
This one is a gold mine filled with research study links and interesting points.
Drowssap,
Thanks for the link. I remember reading something similar on sexual maturation and preference for extreme sexually dimorphic traits, like women who got sexually mature early on preferring very masculine types of men and vice versa for men.
I’m not sure if aggressiveness per se can directly cause differences in sexual orientation. Let me give you an example:
If you ride a bike you can pick up some speed, but if you get muscular fever you might have to stop. You can still get the bike to go forward by holding it by the handlebars and pushing it in the direction you want it to go, but it’s not the same if you could ride it.
Similarly, aggressiveness, by the way brain networks are interconnected, can probably provide some traction to one’s sexual orientation, but before that happens there has to be other factors that work with perception. When a person sees another person, all the visual stimuli are processed in a certain way and they signal the gender status of that person. I think that attraction is decided in this area, between the gender status of the person who perceives and the type of person and gender status perceived. So it must be dependent on one’s internal gender state, which must also depend to some degree on levels of aggressiveness, but also on how visual stimuli are emotionally processed. I bet, as I said before, that different levels of aggressiveness have a bearing on how “open” the gates of perception are and also they must be related to one’s gender status, but there are other factors that work in perception to produce a particular recognition of genders.
There could be something like proprioception, the internal sense of body parts position which works with the visual system when you see an object/person and how you may interact with that object/person. If you have an impaired proprioceptive sense, when you see a ball coming at you, you may look at it and get hit, because you cannot realise that it’s directed at you and can affect you physically. On the other hand, if this sense is over-reactive, you might exaggerate the presence and directedness of many objects or people. I think autistic people have this kind of problems, of sensory integration: some of their senses are dysfunctional, either underreactive or overreactive. So there could be many things working in the brain to influence perception before it gets emotionally interpreted. I’m sure aggression has a big say, but it’s not all of it.
I mentioned before, on another topic, that we probably have some brain maps of gender, which we use to quickly classify the people we see and prepare emotional reactions or ignore their presence. I’m sure these brain maps have some interesting ways of working together to create all sorts of expectations in human brains, like reward, fear or maternal behaviour. Someone watching a movie might get drawn in the action and forget a bit about the surroundings, they might even get excited by action scenes even if they still are aware that it’s just a movie. They use brain maps to predict possible physical consequences. Similarly, people participating in a scientific study in Bailey’s lab could be watching videos of people having sex, and their brains or sex organs could react to what they see according to how brain maps of genders work in the brain with associated expectations of reward or lack of it. But it’s still not as reliable as real life experience, which can be either stronger or weaker, because real sensations can be a lot fuller than videos, but videos can also work more with fantasies. This kind of differences between experiences and environments could work with the factors I mentioned before in slightly different ways.
These mechanics are really interesting, but we better leave researchers do their job. -_-
Drowssap: Gay men have fewer babies.
That’s it? That’s what proves to you that gay men’s brains are busted? Come on. Even if it’s true that their lower birth rate will eventually cause the gays to become extinct, it’s going to take a long, long time. And if it does happen, there will be a lot of conservative Christians dancing in the streets.
We’ve known about homosexuality for thousands of years. None of us will be around to to see it. Neither will my grandson, his granson, his grandson, etc…
And if it’s going to die out anyway, why be so concerned about it? I understand that the gene for red hair may also die out due to intermarriage. Why aren’t you worried about that? Maybe red hair is caused by a virus, too?
Michael Bussee
If male homosexuality was caused by genes and it resulted on average in 50% fewer offspring we would see noticably fewer gay people every generation. In just a couple of hundred years it would be gone. If the “increased female fertility” hypothesis were true we’d see the same pattern due to the increasingly small family sizes found in the modern world. SSA probably wouldn’t last more than a couple of hundred years. But since it’s not a genetically based trait this is all academic.
Red hair shows a pattern of inheritance, SSA does not. More importantly red hair might offer survival advantages in certain environments and this equals more babies. At worst it was a neutral trait spread by a process called “genetic drift”.
OK you convinced me. My brain is chewed up by a virus. No wait, I am sexualizing unment emotional needs. No wait, I had a bad relationship with my Dad. No wait. I just thought I was gay when what I really was was inferior. No wait. I am just rebelling against God. No wait. I am possessed by demons. No wait. I ate too much soy. No wait.
How would you feel if folks endlessly opined about what was wrong with you?
Oh, I almost forgot! I was molested as a kid. No wait. My mother coddled and emasculated me. No wait. An older man “recruited me”. No wait. My Mom was stressed during preganancy and this resulted in abnormal homone levels. No wait. I was pressured into it by the liberal media. No wait. We are all gay, but I “wanted” it and “practiced” it. No wait. Maybe I was abducted by aliens and they probed me or something and I liked it and…, There must be SOMETHING wrong with me, right?
Michael Bussee
Well, if people were talking about me I’d be COMPLETELY, 100% IN FAVOR OF IT!
Maybe I’ve got low self esteem but I don’t think I’m perfect. I look in the mirror and I know I’m not. If a scientist figured out that I’m only 5′8″ because I ran into a virus early in life and he knows how to flip on a gene and make me 6′ I’d say GO FOR IT! Maybe it’s too late for me and they can only prevent the spread of the “short” virus in future generations. I don’t care, I’d send these guys money. If society started to look at shortness as a disorder I’d be in complete agreement because being short sucks. If a short person’s advocacy organization tried to stop this research because they found it offensive 25% of America would want to burn down their office. I’d probably help!
In the meantime I’m happy with what I’ve got, which in most ways is bountiful. You oughta be happy with what you’ve got too. What is anyone supposed to do until they have a choice?
Unless of course the parents with the genes are having a lot more babies.
Your argument also assumes it is 100% genetic, which I don’t think anyone is claiming. If it’s partly genetic and partly prenatal environment, then this statement completely falls apart. And, it seems to me, most of the recent articles are claiming it is partly genetic and partly environmental. As such, using arguments based on 100% genetics is a red herring. Please, stop with the all or nothing scenario and stick to reality.
Nick R
I was speaking hypthothetically. I believe the concept of a gay gene is ridiculous.
Evan
Bingo. The model is built in unbelievably simplistic terms and it’s completely designed from a male perspective. Who says a higher than average female sex drive is better in all environments? If a higher than average sex drive was a better reproductive strategy for women that WOULD be the average. Their theory could be called the “Lusty Female” gene theory as easy as the “Gay Male” gene theory because it applies to both groups equally.
In their model:
Without the lusty women having loads of babies gay men go extinct. Without gay men having fewer children the lusty women completely replace existing women who then go extinct.
I can’t believe it took me this long to figure out how silly this whole concept is. Shame on me.
Michael,
You wrote:
You answered your own question. This is one possible application of any result coming from future research. But there are many others. A great deal of psychological disorders and physical illnesses originate from problems inside the emotional brain. Understanding how strong emotions, including attractions, work in the emotional brain can help understanding more about how any disregulation in that area can produce disorders and illnesses downstream. It doesn’t mean that homosexuality is a disorder. No one knows right now how it is caused, therefore no one knows what the nature of homosexuality is. The professional bodies you mentioned, like the APAs, have decided that from psychological and psychiatric points of view there are no reasons to classify homosexuality as a disorder.
What irks you about this humble corner of the internet?
Evan
Your frog link is excellent. I heard about that like a year ago and guess what scientists believes fuels the deformities? Our old pal, germs.
Nutrient Pollution Drives Frog Deformities by Ramping Up Infections
Drowssap,
Would you see Ciano, who is gay, studying lesbianism or female heterosexuality? Maybe he can explain how could female homosexuality genes still be in the pool, even if their effect might be smaller (did he include the female homosexuality effect in his calculations?). They must have served some evolutionary purpose or else nature would have eliminated them. No one seems interested in coming up with a mathematic formula to explain whatever incidence they have. What is Dean Hamer waiting for? He should do a genetic linkage study for lesbian genes.
Drowssap said in post 111420 :
If male homosexuality was caused by genes and it resulted on average in 50% fewer offspring we would see noticably fewer gay people every generation. In just a couple of hundred years it would be gone.
You claim is wrong. And it has been pointed out to you more than once why it is wrong and yet you keep repeating the same false claim. You keep incorrectly repeating the same freshmen level biology concepts to rationalize your own anti-gay bias.
Ken - Perhaps you could explain why Drowssaps claim is wrong or provide a reference; ditto, Drowssap.
I have explained what is wrong with Drowssap’s comments previously, unfortunately, the search engine isn’t finding them (or they have been purged). However, as a brief recap:
Drowssap has once again ignored the concept of recessive genes. Additionally, even if gays had a lower percentage of offspring, those offspring could have a higher survival rate. Evolutionary theory deals with more than birth rate or genetics. Traits (genetic or otherwise) that can contribute to the overall survival of the family or tribal group (regardless of whether the individuals with those traits produce children) will continue to exist.
ken
You are making two logical mistakes.
First you assume there is evidence that SSA is genetic in the first place. Everything points towards environment with some sort of week genetic susceptability. According to Dean Hamer there is no pattern of inheritance for SSA and no gay gene.
The second mistake is simple math.
Pretend that scientists did take the concept of a gay gene seriously. You are correct that a “kinship” effect could spread this gene. But have you ever run the math on that?
When you have a child, approximately 50% of your genes get passed on.
When your brother or sister have a child approximately 25% of your genes get passed on.
Put simply for every child a straight man raises safely to adulthood, a gay man needs to ensure the survival of two neices or nephews to adulthood. And that’s to keep it even. It takes even more for the gene to spread. Put simply, this flat out isn’t going to happen. Does SSA have anything to do with an intense desire to raise other people’s children? The two are completely unrelated traits.
But more important than that, back to your initial error. There is no evidence that genes play a substantial role in SSA. It appears to be an environmentally caused trait.
Drowssap said in post 111555 :
First you assume there is evidence that SSA is genetic in the first place.
No, I didn’t make that assumption, YOU made that assumption in post 111420, then you proceeded to repeat incorrect claims about evolutionary theory based on that assumption.
Put simply for every child a straight man raises safely to adulthood, a gay man needs to ensure the survival of two neices or nephews to adulthood.
Or has a child himself and that child survives to reproduce. Or if women who carry the recessive gene have a higher fertility rate than women who don’t carry the gene, then only a single niece would need to survive.
But more important than that, back to your initial error. There is no evidence that genes play a substantial role in SSA. It appears to be an environmentally caused trait.
Again, not my error YOUR assumption. As for the rest I suggest you re-read the title of this topic. And if you are so sure it is an environmentally caused trait, why did you use a genetic justification in answering Michael’s question about why you believe something is wrong with gays (post 111082)?
To Drowssap who said: “In the meantime I’m happy with what I’ve got, which in most ways is bountiful. You oughta be happy with what you’ve got too.”
But, I am happy with what I’ve got. I just don’t appreciate other people insisting that what I’ve got is an illness, defect, deficit, sin, disorder, etc. It’s insulting. I don’t call what “you’ve got” demeaning names.
To answer Evan’s question, that’s what “irks me about this humble corner of the internet.” You all seem to start with a conclusion that something is wrong, (chewed up, broken, inferior) with being gay. You might get a little irked, too, if the tables were turned. Why don’t you guys get that?
Michael Bussee
I guess we come at things differently. I would not be irked if somebody called my 5″8″ shortness a disordered trait. I know that generally speaking increased height is a sign of good health and nutrition. The fact that I’m the shortest person in my family other than my mother suggests that something probably did happen to me in the womb or during my childhood. If some reasonable person pointed that out to me I would agree with them because they’re right.
ken
Ken, I’m sorry if you misunderstood me. I am already aware that all of the strong, scientific evidence (both theoretical and collected data) points directly away from any sort of gay gene theory. I agree, clearly there is no common “gay” gene. When I write about the gay gene theory I’m doing so hypothetically.
Drowssap: ” I would not be irked if somebody called my 5?8? shortness a disordered trait.”
Really? You might if they fired you for being short — or threw you out of your church — or if your family rejected you — or if a gang of “shortophobes” murdered your friend and tried to kill you because you were short.
You might be irked if an “expert” with the North American Asscociation for the Reparative Therapy of Shortness advised parents and teachers to not stop the bullying and teasing of short kids.
You might if you were told you could and should be “ex-short” if you were a real Christian. Of if you were told you “wanted” to be short because you “practiced” shortness and could become tall if you really wanted to.
You might get irritated and offended if a legislator claimed that short guys were a bigger threat than terrorism. Or that being short was “vile and disgusting” and that you deserved an illness like AIDS because you were small.
You might be irked if you were told that you were immoral for being short,, that shortness wa “evil” and that you would burn for all eternity if you didn’t try to be taller.
Michael,
I see what you mean. But, let me make my point clearer. I do not consider homosexuality, as a type of attractions, fantasies etc, to be a disorder. However, some of the findings coming from scientific studies point to atypical characteristics in both male and female homosexuals. One such characteristic is the atypical connectivity and function of a brain area that is responsible with fear and anxiety. Based on this fact, apparently gay men have a female-typical sensitivity to stress, which indicates a greater vulnerability including to female-specific stress-related problems. Having a vulnerability is not a disorder, of course. But still, we need to see more studies to get the bigger picture of possible implications arising from that. Usually men and women differ in how they deal with stress brainwise, so we have to see whether female-typical brain patterns in males are not detrimental to their health.
The other reason why some of our messages start from assuming that ’something may have gone wrong’ is the fact that in evolutionary terms, it is a bit odd that some men and women do not have the capacity to be attracted to the opposite sex too. We have been taught that evolution hardwired men’s brains to like a certain kind of women (young and beautiful) and women’s brains to be attracted to a certain type of men (older and having secured resources). This is part of the controversy around homosexuality. But it’s not just that, otherwise it would be boring to study a category of 5-7% of population. It’s the gender component that is the most interesting here and that is a human dimension that needs serious scientific investigation. We don’t know what having more or less typical gender traits can mean to one’s health or fitness. That’s why we need more research on that. And more debate, like we do here.
“We don’t know what having more or less typical gender traits can mean to one’s health or fitness. That’s why we need more research on that. And more debate, like we do here.”\
Evan, that may be why you do it — a concern about the possible health implications of gay men being wired more like women — but that would be a simple scientific inquiry — no pre-supposed value judgement — just the question: “Does this difference result in any health problems for gay men?” How benevolent to be concerned for my health!
But what about the “sin”, “against God’s will and design”, “busted”, “broken”, “chewed up”, “immoral”, “inferior”, “evil”, “sinful”, “sick” — etc? That’s what I strongly object to — concluding that something is bad, starting with that prejudice and then pretending to be “scientific”..