Is sexual orientation genetic?

[Ray H.]

Sort of, but not really, according to this article in Aeon Magazine.

 

 

One of the simplest truisms of biology, taught in its earliest introductory courses, is that genes interact with environmental and social conditions to generate outcomes. Scientists and social scientists alike know this well, and have shown it time and again, even in relationship to sexuality. In 2002, examining the ‘gay gene’ hypothesis, the sociologists Peter Bearman at Columbia University and Hannah Brückner, then at Yale, showed that genetic expression did indeed influence same-sex attraction, but only under certain social conditions.

 

 

 

Those "certain social conditions" involve the often subtle influence of social norms during childhood and adolescence which may either enhance a baseline genetic sexuality or activate genetic expression of sexuality entirely. Parents and peers do the influencing through encouragement or discouragement of types of play, dress, style, etc. 

 

The author briefly sketches out some historic examples that have come and gone, such as pederasty. He condemns that practice as nonconsensual, but concludes that

 

everyone will have to acknowledge that their sexuality is no different than the homosexual’s – driven by desire, and moulded by society.

 

 

Epigenetics strikes again?

[_LiveFree_]

So if a parent encourages homosexuality, then that means homosexuality. If a parent discourages homosexuality, then that means homosexuality. 

 

????????????????

[Ray H.]

Uh, no. Where did you get that from?

 

Edit: I probably wrote that confusingly. "Reinforcing" wasn't entirely accurate. "Influencing" would be better. Whatever an individual's orientation as an adult turns out to be, it is the net result of that individual's experience as a child/adolescent of what is appropriate in fulfilling sexual desire. It's much clearer in the article itself.

 

By the way, what a child understands as being appropriate, may not be what society as a whole accepts as appropriate. There are infinite scenarios that could contribute to a child associating sexual desire with behavior that many would disapprove of. For instance, molestation, or, more innocently, a lax enforcement by parents of traditional gender roles, which one study found to be the case in opposite sex twins, perhaps explaining the increased same-sex attraction rate found in that group.

[fractional slacker]

Sexual orientation does not exist. Sexual behavior does, absolutely.
Good luck pin pointing exactly why someone prefers X rather than Y.

One thought experiment I like to run by folks when discussing the nature of sexuality goes like this. If a man has only dated women, goes on to marry a woman and have kids but always fantasized about being with men, is he a homosexual?
What if he kissed a man once, does that make him homosexual? I think you get the point.
The thought experiment can also be reversed to question if a gay man is heterosexual. So IMHO sexual orientation is not something real.

Furthermore since homosexuality has devolved into a political action mob, there is little chance of having rational debate with interested parties.

[Snafui]

If sexual orientation were absolute and one were heterosexual then why are they not attracted to everyone of the opposite sex? Are homosexuals attracted to all males? No. Because these are labels meant to address a group of people but do not work on the individual level.

 

That is because sex is individual behavior and the factors involved are not so easy to nail down to being genetic.

[Mister Mister]

as I understand there are physical and hormonal differences in homosexuals, and the cause has been pretty substantially tied to the release of certain hormones during a certain stage of the pregnancy, brought on by stress.  still, there may be some leeway and choice involved.  but when you hear stories like the young man who called into the show a few weeks ago, struggling with being attracted to men in a religious family that condemns homosexuality, or millions of Muslims in the world downloading gay porn in countries where they could be executed for having it, it's VERY hard to argue that it is 100% choice.

[Frosty]

There was some discussion of this in the much larger thread on transsexualism, several of the sources of information were interesting, it looks like a lot of the conditions for creating transexual people are similar to creating homosexual people, testosterone exposure at different times during foetal development is responsible for most of this stuff, if sex hormones present spike for whatever reason at specific times then it makes permanent changes to the structure of the brain, the main differences between your sense of gender and your sexuality is the weeks during foetal development the spikes occur, If I remember correctly sense of gender is somewhere around 11 weeks and sense of sexual orientation is later around the 30 week mark.

 

I don't know if genetic traits of mothers can lead to abnormal testosterone production, I suppose that's possible, I think a lot of it is environmental. But I don't think that the genetics of the individual who turns out to be homosexual actually play much of a direct role.

[J. D. Stembal]

Nothing is genetic, as in biologically predetermined. Even your hair color varies with changes in environment. There is no reason to believe that sexuality is any different.

 

My sexuality, and personality, was heavily influenced by having my foreskin severed from my body.

[A4E]

What I have accepted is that homosexual mens brains are not exposed to testosterone in pregnancy, which supposedly would also explain hyper femininity in gay men. I have no idea if its true or not.

 

If it is true, then perhaps lesbian brains were never exposed to estrogen in pregnancy?? If someone is 100% bisexual, maybe the brain was not exposed to estrogen or testosterone, or both too much? I have no idea how it really works, just speculating.

 

Either way, there are theories that this 'random mistake' has survived evolutionary because being gay has some advantages. And is prevalent in animals as well.

 

I thought everyone was aware that its not a matter of choice what orientation a person has. I agree that sexual behavior exists, but so does orientation imo, which is what the brain is programmed to like. If sexual orientation does not exist, then why are most males and females hetero? Shouldn't it be roughly 50/50 if there was only sexual behavior? Is the argument then that hetero people are somehow brainwashed to like the other sex?

[Frosty]

What I have accepted is that homosexual mens brains are not exposed to testosterone in pregnancy, which supposedly would also explain hyper femininity in gay men. I have no idea if its true or not.

 

If it is true, then perhaps lesbian brains were never exposed to estrogen in pregnancy?? If someone is 100% bisexual, maybe the brain was not exposed to estrogen or testosterone, or both too much? I have no idea how it really works, just speculating.

 

Either way, there are theories that this 'random mistake' has survived evolutionary because being gay has some advantages. And is prevalent in animals as well.

 

I thought everyone was aware that its not a matter of choice what orientation a person has. I agree that sexual behavior exists, but so does orientation imo, which is what the brain is programmed to like. If sexual orientation does not exist, then why are most males and females hetero? Shouldn't it be roughly 50/50 if there was only sexual behavior? Is the argument then that hetero people are somehow brainwashed to like the other sex?

 

Remember that it's peaks in testosterone at certain weeks during developments of different parts of the brain that set these traits, femininity is also set but more so at different weeks so you can peak in testosterone or rather lack at different times during the same pregnancy which allows for sexual orientation and masculinity/femininity to be set differently, they're independent scales.

 

Also it seems like lack of eostrogen isn't so much a mirrored cause for lesbianism in women, it's more related to over exposure to testosterone, again during specific weeks of pregnancy, it's also related to several medical conditions that case increased testosterone in women, the rates of gay men and women are different because the actual causes are slightly different in some cases.

 

People absolutely do have a sexual orientation, it's something that's established by testosterone and is permanently set, changes in exposure after brain development has ended after certain weeks has no effect, the parts of the brain responsible respond to this during growth and it cannot be undone. Obvious social pressures can make people behave in different ways, but that doesn't change actual biological processes, if I put a gun to a straight persons head and force them to have homosexual sex they're never going to be gay, they might discover they were always gay or bi-sexual all along but suppressing it for whatever reason, but these are distinctly different things.

[Spaceballs]

Yes, according to Jacques Balthazart.
 

The article is in French, I used google translate so there might be a lot of mistakes.

 

Homosexuality is a biological origin

Jacques Balthazart is a lecturer at the University of Liège. It is part of Giga-neuroscience where he leads a research group in neuro-endrocrinologie behavior.

 

 

Balthazart Jacques is an understatement to say that the last book of Jacques Balthazart published last February to Mardaga editions, biology of homosexuality. We are born homosexual, you do not choose to be, made noise in the gay community ... and elsewhere. And for good reason. While it is commonly accepted that hetero or homosexual orientation of an individual is the result of social interactions that occur in early childhood, while the psychoanalytic Freudian theories analyze homosexuality as the result of a blockage the development of the libido in an immature stage, Jacques Balthazart says that homosexuality depends on prenatal biological determinants.

 

He thus certifies that a large proportion of homosexuals are born with an orientation that is revealed to them gradually during adolescence and is accepted, often at the cost of significant psychological suffering. The understanding of biological mechanisms should lead to wider acceptance of homosexuality in the population and reduce the suffering of those affected.

 

Meeting with a iconoclast who hit the headlines.

 

The 15th day of the month: How did you come about this study?

 

Balthazart Jacques: I have devoted my scientific career to the study of hormones involved in sexual behavior and I'm particularly interested in male subjects in birds, which accounted for my research one of the most interesting model. One of the main topics of research in the laboratory concerns the differentiation of sexual behavior. We analyze how hormones acting during embryonic life determine the type of behavior that will be expressed by the animals when they reach adulthood. In parallel, many studies conducted on rats showed that their sexual behavior in adulthood is defined by early organizers effects that occur during embryonic life. At a moment of brain development - around birth in the case of rat - hormones involved that will define the morphology of the individual, its physiology and sexual behavior. Testosterone clearly organizes the brain and also the orientation of sexual behavior.

 

The 15th day: And humans? Embryonic hormones do they influence the future adult brain?

 

JB: If the sexual behavior of animals is controlled by hormones, why would it not also the case in humans? The scientific literature shows that the gendered nature of an individual depends on a complex process that integrates chromosomes (XX / XY), gonads (ovaries, testes), hormonal sex and finally the phenotypic sex. Usually there are concordance of all but the smallest incident in this chain of events in utero can cause discordance and how, for example, that the genital structure of a child does not match his genetic sex.

 

When designing all embryos are essentially feminine: it is the exposure to hormones testicular which then defines the specialization "male". The sex of the embryo is dependent testosterone. If there is too little, feminine characteristics will persist and potentially explain, in a man's sexual attraction to a male subject.

 

15th day: How to know if the analogy between the animal and human world is relevant?

 

JB: First, I will tell you that the man is a mammal and that several mechanisms that control animal behavior are also observed at home. But other evidence corroborates my point yet. Some women with a disorder of the adrenal glands (hormone-producing) are born with a male genital sex. Operated immediately, they were raised as girls, but there is, in this particular group, a high frequency of sex. Further observations are still illuminating: otoacoustic emissions from ear membranes are significantly more likely in women than in men ... except among homosexual women. But these differences of otoacoustic emissions in animals clearly controlled by the embryonic testosterone ...

 

I am therefore convinced that homosexuality is at least in part, a hormonal but I hasten to add that this phenomenon is not homogeneous. The origin can be genetic, hormonal, or even the result of a personal choice.

 

15th day: What is your goal in publishing this book?

 

JB: First correct errors widespread in our societies and exonerate homosexuals and their parents, too often criminalized. Contrary to what Stéphane Clerget, French child psychiatrist, I am convinced that in most cases there is not homosexual by choice but by nature, that is not the same. Sexual attraction depends on our hypothalamus that we do not control.

 

My second goal is to bring to the attention of French theories that are already well known in the English-speaking world and which are the subject of multiple items. Strangely, these publications are not included in French. Perhaps because Freudian theories are still very much alive in France and certainly also because the French - convinced of the benefits of education - refuse to admit that our behavior could have a biological origin. Marked by extreme left-wing ideologies, the French University is still convinced that society shapes the man. It has almost become a dogma, but this is only partially true.

 

 

 

Original article in french

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

Only the Telemachus Complex Is Natural and Healthy

 

Feminism has caused this Gayist outbreak, aggravated by the fact that both are fads of a tiny but powerful group.  The son sees his father dominated by his mother, so his male drive for power makes him choose to become feminine in that unnatural situation.  However, he is not doomed to that addictive and unfulfillable obsession.  He can either become dominated by women himself or choose role models different from his absurd and destructive situation at home and save himself from either alternative.

[Flying]

Sexual orientation does not exist. Sexual behavior does, absolutely.

Good luck pin pointing exactly why someone prefers X rather than Y.

 

One thought experiment I like to run by folks when discussing the nature of sexuality goes like this. If a man has only dated women, goes on to marry a woman and have kids but always fantasized about being with men, is he a homosexual?

What if he kissed a man once, does that make him homosexual? I think you get the point.

The thought experiment can also be reversed to question if a gay man is heterosexual. So IMHO sexual orientation is not something real.

 

Furthermore since homosexuality has devolved into a political action mob, there is little chance of having rational debate with interested parties.

Anything other then heterosexuality is a disorder. So yeah. Sexual orientation does not exist. The APA only delisted homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1974. And they did it strictly under political pressure.

[fractional slacker]

Anything other then heterosexuality is a disorder. So yeah. Sexual orientation does not exist. The APA only delisted homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1974. And they did it strictly under political pressure.

I have as much use for the APA as I have for the DMV.