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The largest study to date on the genetic basis of sexuality (2019)

nature.com

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Re: The largest study to date on the genetic basis of sexuality (2019)

#301

Post by da_big_ghey »

meibo wrote: post #177

Makes me wonder if there was a lot of thought given to ethics when planning this study. If we've learned anything, we should know that people will be terrible enough to want to "cure" homosexuality or detect it before birth, like trisomy 21, if it ever will become possible - and research like this will lead to that.

Tangentially related; question to those who are pro-choice: why is regular abortion okay but sex-selective abortion, aborting downsies, etc. not? My understanding of the pro-choice argument is that if a fetus is not yet a person, it's not wrong to kill it. Why is it more wrong to abort a fetus because it is a boy/girl? I am pro-life and so view this differently, hence not understanding the reasoning here.

Re: The largest study to date on the genetic basis of sexuality (2019)

#302

Post by [deleted] »

robin21 wrote: post #296
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #94

People latched onto the idea that sexuality is genetically determined because it seemed like the only viable way to defend themselves against rampant religious bigotry and oppression. It was a rope dangling into the well you were trapped in, and the well was filling with acid, but if you could just manage to climb that rope then you'd make it out. The reasoning went something like "if I can prove that sexuality is ge…

It’s very common for people to make decisions that they regret for the rest of their lives. If someone is straight and they have a gay experience that is something that could haunt them for the rest of their life. This seems to be less of a thing in the other direction. Maybe this is societies fault though. The lack of acceptance causes the inner shame. But the notion of letting people be free to choose is pretending…

[deleted]

Re: The largest study to date on the genetic basis of sexuality (2019)

#304

Post by robin21 »

I wonder if anyway has attempted a more qualitative study on this. Asking exactly what attributes attract and what the person is thinking when they look at images of men and women.

Do gay men think the same as women? Is it a spectrum?

For straight men it seems mostly tied to women’s ability to carry children, coupled with a genderless beauty evaluation (e.g. symmetry) and then some measure of femininity (which is kind of like anti-masculine maybe). Femininity is really hard to quantify but it’s definitely a “know it when you see it” kind of thing.

Re: The largest study to date on the genetic basis of sexuality (2019)

#305

Post by mc32 »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #94

People latched onto the idea that sexuality is genetically determined because it seemed like the only viable way to defend themselves against rampant religious bigotry and oppression. It was a rope dangling into the well you were trapped in, and the well was filling with acid, but if you could just manage to climb that rope then you'd make it out. The reasoning went something like "if I can prove that sexuality is ge…

The biggest danger of using genetics as a reason is that at some point someone is going to say, "we have unequivocally ID'd the genes involved and we can ensure your offspring are of the orientation of _your_ choice". Or in more authoritarian regimes, the state's choice.

Re: The largest study to date on the genetic basis of sexuality (2019)

#306

Post by peteretep »

robin21 wrote: post #304

I wonder if anyway has attempted a more qualitative study on this. Asking exactly what attributes attract and what the person is thinking when they look at images of men and women. Do gay men think the same as women? Is it a spectrum? For straight men it seems mostly tied to women’s ability to carry children, coupled with a genderless beauty evaluation (e.g. symmetry) and then some measure of femininity (which is kin…

> For straight men it seems mostly tied to women’s ability to carry children

I think this is far from clear

Re: The largest study to date on the genetic basis of sexuality (2019)

#307

Post by [deleted] »

tomp wrote: post #223
suizi wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it is possible to turn someone who is straight gay, anymore than it is possible to turn someone who is gay straight. The exception would be where they're bi, but they would already have had some interest in the same sex, and it wouldn't have come from social conditioning.

Why do you think that? I’d say it’s very much cultural... these days, bisexuality is much more acceptable for women than for men, and more women identify as bisexual... in Ancient Greece, men having sex with men were much more common than these days (AFAIK).

[deleted]

Re: The largest study to date on the genetic basis of sexuality (2019)

#308

Post by mc32 »

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #272

Fascinating! To me this sounds like the mother's body is trying to "nudge" the odds towards a daughter after several sons, but sometimes the process "fails" and produces an effeminate male instead - a gay son. Alternatively, some kind of meta-level mechanism to reduce competition over women in the community, ultimately improving its collective health and well-being.

That... seems unlikely. That implies a woman's reproductive system knows and remembers or at least keeps a tallies of the sex of the offspring it has produced...

Re: The largest study to date on the genetic basis of sexuality (2019)

#309

Post by jdgoesmarching »

drocer88 wrote: post #165
hajile wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Identical twin studies point away from genetics very hard. Pretty much all genetic anomalies will affect both identical twins 100% of the time. The fact that it's less than 40% points much more to environmental effects rather than genes.

From the link: "Research from the 1990s2 showed that identical twins are more likely to share a sexual orientation than are fraternal twins or adopted siblings." Study here : https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9549243/ "We present an overview of behavioral genetics research on homosexual and heterosexual orientation. Family, twin, and adoptee studies indicate that homosexuality and thus heterosexuality run in families.…

This thread seems very insistent on pushing the environmental case when presented with evidence to the contrary. It’s like I stumbled into a Republican convention in the 90s.

Baseless theories: people do this to feel better about LGBT discrimination or the idea of sexuality being out of our control is too scary for dudes who haven’t come to terms with their own masculinity. The latter isn’t necessarily shade, I’m not sure I figured it out until my mid-20s.

Re: The largest study to date on the genetic basis of sexuality (2019)

#310

Post by wyldfire »

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #272

Fascinating! To me this sounds like the mother's body is trying to "nudge" the odds towards a daughter after several sons, but sometimes the process "fails" and produces an effeminate male instead - a gay son. Alternatively, some kind of meta-level mechanism to reduce competition over women in the community, ultimately improving its collective health and well-being.

It seems more likely for it to be an emergent property of children serving as hunter/gatherer resources but not competing for procreation. It is either a novel mutation or something that is selected for.
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