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...
The largest study to date on the genetic basis of sexuality (2019)
321–330 of 495 posts
Re: The largest study to date on the genetic basis of sexuality (2019)
#322Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do feel rather strongly that we should not persecute people suffering from pedophilia, especially as a lot of it seems to come from suffering from abuse as a kid. That doesn't make you an active child rapist. You may hate that about yourself. Well, at least I assume that to be the case. I can't say I'm familiar with it. The predictability of something isn't the issue though. It's whether or not something is actuall…
Many things that we’re not tolerant of (like rape or murder) may also be an inherent natural part of human nature.
Re: The largest study to date on the genetic basis of sexuality (2019)
#323Fascinating! 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.
Given the number of comfortably-masculine gay men I've known, I have a feeling the womb isn't necessarily trying to ensure it eventually creates a Disney Princess. It feels a bit far-fetched, to be honest.
Re: The largest study to date on the genetic basis of sexuality (2019)
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you want people to be treated equally, wouldn't you want their existence to be justified? It's difficult to think of a PC analogy here, so maybe... super villain mind control device strapped to someone's head. Provably unjustified behaviors due to the mind control device implies the ethical thing to do is try to remove the device. Treating someone normally implies an implicit belief that they're normal. Sound biol…
Do you need a justification for the existence of people? Who shouldn’t be treated equally?
I'm also ok with furries, but I don't think they're so intrinsic that we need to protect fursuits and light animal roleplaying in the workplace.
apologies if something I said there was off color in terminolgoy
Re: The largest study to date on the genetic basis of sexuality (2019)
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
And yet, it's the other commenters who seem backwards to you?
Re: The largest study to date on the genetic basis of sexuality (2019)
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
What they're describing is a very broad range of variations across multiple genetic loci with subtle effects that do not predict, only relatively vaguely correlate with, sexual behavior. They say as much, too, although at much greater length and complexity. I get the concern for potential risk around selective abortion, IVF, etc; I was around for the "gay gene" debate in the 90s. This isn't that. This disproves that.…
That's interesting, thanks - will read up on that. I'm gay but I sadly wasn't existing enough in the early 90s to have caught it live :)
On that note, if you haven't read Randy Shilts' And the Band Played On, I strongly recommend it. The events it describes are, I think, the single strongest influence on everything about US (at least) gay culture that's thus far followed.
Re: The largest study to date on the genetic basis of sexuality (2019)
#327I'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…
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.
21% of Monozygotic twins are left-handed when the other is right-handed. This is higher than the general population.
Aren't there plenty of genes that just lead to higher causes of something? There are identical albino and non-albino twins.
I'm really skeptical that albinism is environmental. But stranger things have happened, I suppose.
Re: The largest study to date on the genetic basis of sexuality (2019)
#328Earlier quoted context omitted.
> given that mainstream society is predominantly heterosexual, that would inevitably morph into whether homosexuality is an intrinsically valuable thing Society presently allows extreme leeway on providing value in every other way imaginable. We allow people to work in ad-tech for crying out loud. Ok, that was a bit of a joke, but the point is that society not only allows people to not contribute to the social good,…
> Singling out sexuality on this particular front is patently perfidious. Perfidious it may be, but the question of innateness has very real policy effects. The best comparison is probably religion. Parents are allowed to send their children to religion camps. Should they be allowed to send their children to conversion therapy camps? Perhaps therapy is too coercive, but what about something less coercive, but more ef…
Society's desire to bend itself backward to accommodate religious sectarian meme indoctrination is a huge moral blind spot. I don't think many communities are able to honestly discuss consent as applied to religious obedience and obeisance. That doesn't mean we should consider it a moral standard.
> Indeed I think even the very act of calling "singling out sexuality to be perfidious" demonstrates just how much value it holds for people.
It's not the sexuality that has value. The value is in not being the subject of a lie constructed to mask arbitrary oppression because of a religious meme.
> If it were as simple as whether one liked broccoli or not, why would anyone ever care?
I think we can turn this on its head to make it more apt to demonstrate why this reasoning doesn't work for me. Heterosexual people don't form communities for themselves on the basis of heteroidentification (I mean, some definitely do, but it's also definitely an extreme minority). There are communities and there are LGBTQ-oriented communities and there are even (we should acknowledge) straight-exclusionary communities, but we might rightly look askance at anyone who desires LGBTQ-exclusionary communities. So then we have to ask ourselves why, and we can look to your broccoli example...
Maybe you enjoy eating broccoli. Let's say you do. For the sake of argument, let's also say that while you like broccoli you don't identify yourself as "a broccoli person". Like...when you're at parties and people ask you what things you enjoy, you don't even mention broccoli. Then someone comes along and says "everyone who enjoys broccoli has to die". That's you. You're the person who they want to die. Now you care about the broccoli situation, but you care about not being oppressed and you care about solidarity and support, not about broccoli. In that environment you will form bonds with other broccoli eaters, not because of the broccoli, but because oppression forges bonds among the oppressed.
Now non-broccoli-eaters, on the other hand, don't have to spend their lives in fear that someone will beat them up or kill them for enjoying broccoli (because they don't), which means that broccoli isn't on their minds. Like basically ever. At best you could say that once in a while a non-broccoli-eater might be relieved that they aren't in the difficult position of someone wanting them dead because of what they like eating.
The bonds of identification are a consequence of the oppression, not of the broccoli. Broccoli is just the point of intersection.
Re: The largest study to date on the genetic basis of sexuality (2019)
#329People 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…
Re: The largest study to date on the genetic basis of sexuality (2019)
#330It'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…
She expands on it and I think her writing breaks it down well (just make sure to check out the appendix correction too!)