Honest question: what is being gay? Is it physical attraction? Emotional attraction? Both? Is it dislike, fear(?) of opposite sex?
I would suggest asking yourself "what is being straight?", assuming that you identify as such.
The largest study to date on the genetic basis of sexuality (2019)
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Re: The largest study to date on the genetic basis of sexuality (2019)
#52Not an expert here but, IF a gay gene existed, wouldn't have it been evolved into extinction?
What if the "gay gene" is tied to the "sexually attracted to our parents gene" ?
And evolving out the former would cause the later to go which is detrimental to the overall health of the species.
Re: The largest study to date on the genetic basis of sexuality (2019)
#53It's unlikely there's a gene that codes for being gay. Homosexuality instead is better thought of as more like why men have nipples. Obviously the nipples are not useful to the reproductive success of men, but genetics and natural selection are messy and there's likely no easy path to not having them in men while maintaining their function in women.
For homosexuality, the systems of sexual attraction in the brain need to tune to the gender somehow, and this is a system which, apparently, isn't 100% successful at aligning gender and sexual attraction. So the answer to "why are some men attracted to men" is the same as "why do men have nipples:" it's because women need to be attracted to men and because women need nipples.
And of course it needs to be said that just because someone's sexual attraction isn't aligned to their gender it doesn't mean that they're inferior. We don't measure the worth of a person by their reproductive success.
Re: The largest study to date on the genetic basis of sexuality (2019)
#54Honest question: what is being gay? Is it physical attraction? Emotional attraction? Both? Is it dislike, fear(?) of opposite sex?
I assume it’s a physical attraction to members of the same sex, with the emotional dimension developing in the same way as it does between any two individuals in a mated pair.
Re: The largest study to date on the genetic basis of sexuality (2019)
#55Honest question: what is being gay? Is it physical attraction? Emotional attraction? Both? Is it dislike, fear(?) of opposite sex?
An innate desire to form an atypical pairing in a non-reproductive fashion. Honestly i have no idea but this might be one of the last places left on the internet you can ask a question like this without getting dogpiled. I've batted for both teams in my life and i still can't tell you.
Indeed, sexual attraction is a lot more complicated than "I am attracted to this bimodal extreme of gender."
Re: The largest study to date on the genetic basis of sexuality (2019)
#56"Ganna and his colleagues also used the analysis to estimate that up to 25% of sexual behaviour can be explained by genetics, with the rest influenced by environmental and cultural factors — a figure similar to the findings of smaller studies." An argument for gay rights has been that people are "born that way". That appears to be false. Does this suggest that it may be possible to shape the environment to reduce the…
> An argument for gay rights has been that people are "born that way". That appears to be false
Only if you take the strict literal definition of the phrase "born that way" to mean your genetic make-up.
A person has little to no control over their environmental factors during their upbringing. Everything from average air temperature, food nutrient makeup, airborne particles, etc are environmental factors that we know influence other aspects of human development.
Your comment is making the assumption that the environmental factor that causes homosexuality is witnessing other members of the species be homosexual, which is a large leap of logic to make. Especially knowing that homosexuality is quite common in the animal kingdom despite penguins not participating in Pride Months.
Re: The largest study to date on the genetic basis of sexuality (2019)
#57Kind of hopeful we can stop using genetics as a way of justifying queer peoples' existence. Whether it's conditioning, a choice, or genetics, shouldn't really be a factor in how you treat queer people.
That would be ideal, but some people need to be convinced that it is not a choice before they will consider treating gay people with respect. So long as they think it's just a behavioral decision, they can rationalize their bigotry.
Re: The largest study to date on the genetic basis of sexuality (2019)
#58I'd definitely be surprised if a significant portion of homosexuality wasn't environmental, but to my knowledge there is a degree of heritability shown in twin studies. Actually reading the article shows that they found several genes that each contribute, but no single gene. That shouldn't be surprising to anyone, considering that almost every complex trait is somewhat affected by a huge number of genes each tweaking the result by a small amount. Remember that DNA controls the development of the body through an insanely complicated Rube Goldberg machine, no one should expect a 1:1 correspondence between any complicated trait and a gene.
Re: The largest study to date on the genetic basis of sexuality (2019)
#59Not an expert here but, IF a gay gene existed, wouldn't have it been evolved into extinction?
I would think that being "gay" doesn't 100% prevent someone from fathering / mothering children.
This. In the past, there was a lot of prominent personalities who were suspected of being gay, but left progeny.
Social pressure to have children, especially if there is a title / wealth / prestige to inherit, would certainly play a role.
Re: The largest study to date on the genetic basis of sexuality (2019)
#60> The study authors also point out that they followed convention for genetic analyses by dropping from their study people whose biological sex and self-identified gender did not match. As a result, the work doesn’t include sexual and gender minorities (the LGBTQ community) such as transgender people and intersex people.
I don't get it, isn't this the whole point of the study? The G in LGBTQ stands for "gay", did they exclude people who self-identify as gay from a study meant to find the genetic basis of being gay?