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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)

#421

Post by dang »

Bostonian wrote: post #22

"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…

Would you please stop posting generic ideological flamewar comments to HN? You've gone to this, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26056636, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26055100, and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26054989 just in the last 24 hours. That's way over the top. We ban accounts that use HN primarily for ideological battle, so please don't.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#422

Post by supercheetah »

Neeek wrote: post #404
arp242 wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can believe that homosexuality is at least partly environmental while also believing that people should have the freedom to be as gay as they want to be. I don't really like these appeals to motive; this is quite an interesting empirical question that's disconnected from discrimination. Even if it would turn out that homosexuality is a choice (I don't think it is, but let's assume it would be) then this wouldn't…

I'm a little confused, you seem to be using choice and environment like they are synonymous here. It's a small nitpick but, even if this is environmental or epigenetic it doesn't necessarily mean that people get to choose the environment they exist in, at least in their formative years.

That's not at all what was being said. The question of what causes homosexuality or heterosexuality is an interesting scientific question. Even if it were purely by choice, that doesn't reflect on any other characteristic of a person, and any fear that homophobes might try to use some hypothesis or another for their propaganda doesn't matter because they don't care about science anyway.

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

#423

Post by circlefavshape »

irrational wrote: post #385
tomc1985 wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious as to whether we'd see a lot of effeminate straight men if social norms permitted it. My guess is yes

Definitely. I'm straight and I love watching Jane Austen, Anne of Green Gables, Musicals, Hallmark, Downton Abbey, Romcom, etc. movies with my wife. But I'd never let any of my male friends know.

/me blinks

Liking Jane Austen is effeminate?

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

#424

Post by drdeca »

rcoveson wrote: post #420
jabberwcky wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> effeminate male > gay son This is a dangerous stereotype that is equally harmful to people of any sexuality, I'd encourage you to correct it. Most of the gay folk I know personally tend towards the athletic end of the spectrum

Isn’t “being attracted to males” a predominantly female characteristic in animals that reproduce sexually? On the “sexuality” dimension, do not gay men fall closer to the female cluster than the male cluster?

I assume you mean more in that direction than a typical male?

Because I’m pretty sure that homosexual men aren’t overall more like heterosexual women than they are like heterosexual men, at least in terms of appearance.

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

#425

Post by cornel_io »

dragonwriter wrote: post #374
rootusrootus wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are enough twin studies out there to rule out environmental factors as the sole cause.

Twin studies where the twins don't share gestational environment are...rare, to say the least.

You could of course argue that environment in the womb is largely genetic (and has a 50% correlation with the kid's genes, which is damn influential).

But once we open that door we're going down an extended phenotype rabbithole where you can start to talk about social interactions amongst non-immigrants being partially genetic because of correlations within regions, etc, and hilarity (with a healthy dash of idiocy) ensues.

The greater point being that saying something is either genetic or due to environment is always a pointless exercise because there is no separation, there are merely genes that spread without ever deciding how to allocate blame or credit for their successes and failures.

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

#426

Post by LatteLazy »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #388
LatteLazy wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is good evidence that gay males are much more involved with their neices and nephews [0] and that their sisters are more fertile[1]. [0] https://www.advocate.com/news/daily-news/2010/02/05/study-su... [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15539346/

I've seen this hypothesized and studied before as how homosexuality exists in the face of evolution. That is, some combination of (a) without children of their own homosexuals are better able to help raise their other family members, (b) homosexuality is strongly correlated to higher fecundity of female family members, and (c) homosexuality is just a fluke in sexuality in general, similar to how other complex biologi…

Yeah, evolution is a bitch. Never ascribe moral worth based on what evolution favours.

I think the theory makes more sense in communities in conflict. Missing fathers make the presence of an uncle much more important and high mortality rates make fertility rates more important.

Interestingly that somewhat overlaps (to my untrained eye) with cultures more accepting of homosexuality: early Japan, ancient Greece, modern tribal societies.

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

#427

Post by jmpman »

Animats wrote: post #167

It's known that birth order matters. "The more older brothers a male has from the same mother, the greater the probability he will have a homosexual orientation."[1] Interestingly, this occurs only in right-handed males. See [2]: "Mothers of gay sons, particularly those with older brothers, had significantly higher anti-NLGN4Y levels than did the control samples of women, including mothers of heterosexual sons." Ther…

Are there any studies looking for genetic differences in mothers of gay men? Is it possible for the mothers to have a genetic trait that increases the chance of a gay son, but doesn’t get passed down to that gay son?

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

#428

Post by estaseuropano »

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 doesn't seem to make any sense as gender is determined by the sperm cell reaching the egg. Unless gay-dna sperm are somehow faster...

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

#429

Post by hypertele-Xii »

billyruffian wrote: post #419
wutbrodo wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure the parent comment meant effeminate in demeanor. There is some indication that the brains of homosexual men have some similarities to female brains[1]. The GP's speculation doesn't need to rely on "stereotypes" to describe the homosexual male brain as closer to (heterosexual) female than the heterosexual male brain. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/study-says-brains...

'Effeminate' is an adjective of demeanor.

lol @ all these comments immediately jumping to stereotypes. My English is great but it's not my first language. What's the right word here? Feminine? "More female in brain structure"?

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

#430

Post by rayiner »

damnyou wrote: post #405
rayiner wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody here is saying that discrimination isn't wrong. But why that discrimination is wrong matters. In the west, you can appeal to notions of individual self-determination: "We shouldn't care about peoples' consenting sexual conduct." Those rationales have little meaning in Asian or African societies. That's why the fact that sexual orientation is not a choice people make one day, but is instead something they are b…

Liberal gender and sexual norms are very clearly better for humanity and it is a moral imperative that the rest of the world adopt them. Social conservatism of the sort practiced in most of the world, including but not remotely limited to the Muslim world, is incompatible with basic human rights and freedoms. To be very clear: social conservatism is bad and social liberalism is good . As someone not from the west, I…

There is no reason to treat "social liberalism" as practiced in western countries in 2020 as some inextricable bundle, where each change must be considered "progress" independently. For example, while the sexual revolution tries to ride the coat tails of equal legal rights for women, there is no reason a society can't have equal rights for women without embracing the premises of the sexual revolution. (Don’t forget that the sexual revolution has freed men to do a lot of socially harmful things that burden and hurt women.) Even in the west, it is far from the consensus view that the sexual revolution was a good thing: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/07/sex-re.... Can a society have equal rights without, for example, the epidemic of fatherlessness that plagues the United States?

It’s impossible to deny that socially liberal societies today aren’t doing a great job at one of the fundamental functions of a society: raising children. North America and Western Europe suffer from birth rates so low they’d soon cease to exist if it wasn’t for immigrants from socially conservative countries (Latinos in America, Muslims in Europe).

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