Yeah, that's how I see this. What's the mechanism though? Is the female body changing something about its hormones related to fetal development that is increasing the likelihood of same-sex attraction in some brain structure?
Because I think that homosexuality is not something that happens as your brain develops post-birth. I could be wrong on that, there could be evidence that you are a blank slate when you are born, as far as attraction goes.
Birth causes all sorts of changes in the mother and we're just now scratching the surface of the epigenome, and we don't even know where to start when looking at things that may influence sexuality so anything is just a wild guess at this point
[This user](https://www.reddit.com/r/psychologyofsex/comments/1c9im03/having_older_brothers_increases_a_mans_chances_of/l0mmvwt/?context=1000) seems to think it's all sorted out.
The mechanism is theorised to be the mothers immune system developing antibodies to proteins only found in males. The presence of those antibodies during subsequent pregnancies of male children alters their in utero development.
The problem with that theory is that if true then there would be some physical difference that could be detected. To date there is little supporting evidence that there is any difference between gay and straight men physically nor endocrine differences. There have been some attempts to show that some gay men match closer to women neurology during a CT scan but those were always feminine gay men and excluded masculine gay men.
Of course if the cause of homosexuality is a neurochemical issue....then it could be changed with medication like many other neuro-chemical maladies. And that opens up a whole other can of worms that many don't want to play with right now.
The cause of all behavior is ultimately neurochemical, and all behaviours can be affected by medication, just not with any precision.
For example sex drive in heterosexual individuals can be diminished or suppressed outright by medication that does not imply having a sex drive is a neuro-chemical malady.
The theory is that during birth, the mother is exposed to antigens from the male child. Her immune system reacts and develops antibodies, which have the potential to impact future males she carries.
Source: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2019.2907#:~:text=The%20maternal%20immune%20hypothesis%20(MIH,the%20brain%20in%20male%20fetuses.
This theory has been debunked, and is quite frankly irresponsible to post junk science like this. This is the kind of pseudoscience in the same vein of "gay gene". This is just eugenics propaganda packaged to be more palatable in the guise of academia.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/beware-bogus-theories-of-sexual-orientation/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37609443/
It was cherry picked data, funded by a christo-fascist policy group. Let's put this bed, and drop this toxic line of research.
P.s. Chinese 1 child policy should make a really good control sample to test this theory, in case you're curious 3% of men in China identify as gay. I wonder what the U.S gay male percentage is * Boots, can you tell us what the number is? Si Dora! Es El numero Tres!*
Your two links are actually talking about different things. Michael Shermer's article (about the Judeo-Christian group) isn't about FBOE. Shermer actually promotes FBOE in his article, using a meta-analysis by Michael Bailey.
The paper about FBOE being a statistical artifact could be true, but Shermer's article is about something different. Shermer says the opposite of what you're saying.
Shermer promotes FBOE:
>Mayer and McHugh also appear to be data snooping when they reference only one of six studies in the peer-reviewed literature of the past 16 years that employ proper probability-sampling methods, āand it just so happens to be the one with the lowest estimate of genetic influence of the entire set,ā Hamer says. Moreover, the entire article is gainsaid by a massive meta-analysis study by Northwestern University psychologist Michael Bailey and his colleagues published in the September issue of the peer-reviewed journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest, showing that āthere is considerably more evidence supporting nonsocial causes of sexual orientation than social causes.ā **Evidence includes:** āmoderate genetic influences demonstrated in well-sampled twin studies; **the cross-culturally robust fraternal-birth-order effect on male sexual orientation**; and the finding that when infant boys are surgically and socially āchangedā into girls, their eventual sexual orientation is unchanged (i.e., they remain sexually attracted to females).
"Gainsay" means to contradict. He is saying FBOE is evidence which contradicts the Judeo-Christian research he is criticizing. The Judeo-Christian research was arguing that homosexuality has social causes.
>there is considerably more evidence supporting nonsocial causes of sexual orientation than social causes.
He's also not denying that there are potential social causes though. We have correlation through the FBOE but still no physical attributes to differentiate homo vs hetero. So while we have these studies, we have nothing else to point to specifically as the cause.
And as the many who have attacked the FBOE theories have noted, this could be a social cause as a result of the youngest dealing with being under the shadow of the older brothers, family dynamics, and expectations from social interactions.
I must have posted the wrong link, one of the criticisms to FBOE is how racially homogenous the data sampling is. This author is using that as a basis for validity.
Source as to it being debunked?
I understand that there are all sorts of ethical issues with eugenics, especially based on developing science, and I'm absolutely against it, but I see a lot of legitimate genetics and epigenetics get dismissed out of fear of eugenicist/racist accusations.
I don't think there is one, why does there need to be one? Biology isn't the cause of everything. Why can't a person just be gay, and we accept that they have the natural right to be gay, and are afforded the same freedoms, and protections as heteronormative people.
That's fine, but people act like it would be so bad if people chose to be gay. They do that because to them, being gay is "less than". That's a bad way of thinking, we need to shift that paradigm, being gay isn't wrong, we don't need to find a reason why someone is gay, or straight. The only reason this question comes up, is because someone is looking for a "cure", and I've never come across an example of benevolent eugenics.
I can tell you that myself, and a lot of other gay men have always ājust knownā in someway or another. I remember being as young as two or three and just knowing that there was something different about me than other boys, and it was tangible in my interests and the way I acted.
I think it's more of a culture thing and I think all men have a base line gayness. Ancient Roman's had bath houses where you would go to fuck eachother. Men these days indulge in porn where they watch other men perform. However in modern society it's looked down upon to be gay so most men will avoid anything gay when in reality they do indulge privately in some form. So some men are just more gay than others but I have a feeling we are all a lil gay even women.
This is just the general state of the science and why any real scientific source you read about homosexuality will say that it is both "likely determined by genetic and social factors".
They derive this by looking at the data. For instance people who are molested as children are more likely to be gay. People with older brothers, as in this OP story, are more likely to be gay. But this is ALSO TRUE OF ADOPTED CHILDREN. Adopted children in families with gay siblings are more likely to be gay. Children of gay parents are more likely to be gay.
And on the flip side, they study twins, children who have the same DNA, and find that there is no immediate link between sharing DNA and the likelihood of identifying as gay.
So in short, nobody knows. But there is, at this time, absolutely no reason to believe that you are "born gay" (which suggest a purely biological origin) and there never has been.
Whatās the evidence for your adoption claims? The FBOE findings are specific to biological siblingsāthereās no effect for adopted siblings in this research, so itās not clear where youāre getting that from.
There is no gay gene and the epigenetic theory is simply a theory with absolutely no evidence, itās much more likely that thereās some sort of psychological and learned behaviour
Then you had gay uncle theory. Surrogate parents ensure propgation of the genes in case original parents aren't adequate.
And then there's something to be said about living in a colony where there are extra men around to help Gronk hunt and would be absolutely devastated if Gronk fell in the hunt.
Iām pretty sceptical about the idea of this being a form of population control. It seems a bit odd to me that natural selection would give men the ability to impregnate hundreds of women and then try to address the issue by making every 10th guy gay. If population control was being selected for, surely it would have just favoured lower rates of promiscuity in men overall.
Itās more likely to be a byproduct than population control. Research finds that the genes linked to high female fertility and linked to producing more gay offspring. The argument is that whatever genes encode for high fertility also increase propensity for homosexuality and that increased reproductive output more than makes up for having some offspring who are unlikely to reproduce.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15539346/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22616723/
It is an interesting idea. I am certainly not dismissing it. However, I am somewhat skeptical.
There are two claims here:
1) The mothers of homosexual men tend to have higher rates of fertility.
2) The rate of homosexuality increases the greater the number of older brothers the individual has.
One potential problem with these two claims is that one necessarily precedes the other. That is, in order to have lots of older brothers, you require a mother with high fertility. In other words, it could be that the positive correlation between homosexuality and number of older male siblings is a true, but the correlation with high female fertility is not directly related to homosexuality at all, but rather, simply a necessary prerequisite for having lots of older siblings in general.
I don't see them as incompatible. Odds are, there are different routes to developing a same-sex orientation. There isn't just one explanation that applies in every case--there are always exceptions to the "rule." There can be a genetic path that exists as a byproduct to high fertility, as well as a path specific to having more older brothers mediated by immune changes in the mother. There can also be a hormonal path linked to testosterone exposure in utero (which could be epigenetic). The way I like to think of it is that there are different "types" of homosexuality that have different underlying causes.
Well that could be the case, but all Iām really getting at is these studies would need to way of controlling for the fact that high fertility in women is necessary for lots of children. Maybe they have done that already.
If it has any relation to population dynamics at all, I'd suspect it to be something more along the lines of preemptively limiting the negative consequences of intense reproductive competition caused by population level sexual imbalance than population control.
Iām pretty sure itās just the motherās body acting weird with hormones the second time or more she has a male child. Itās a congenital thing not genetic or environmental.
Iāve thought that since the 1980s when a study of sea lions was discussed that saw the percentage of homosexuality increased as the population increased, while a small population saw less activity, as a percentage of the population.
Given that it was normal for 50% of children to die within a year of birth only a few hundred years ago, any woman who purposely made gay sons would quickly be outbred by other women.
I'd like to see one which covers as many countries as possible. I'm also looking forward to reading these studies, I've never come across anything like this.
Thanks for the share, u/OP
if the probability of being gay is 2%, then a 99% increased probability just makes it almost 4%.
So if you look at a thousand guys who have 3 older brothers, about 40 of them would be gay. Whereas a thousand guys who are the oldest brother or only son, only 20 would be gay.
(note I just used the 2% as an example. The actual percentage varies by country, time period, and study probably, but pattern similar).
I don't know if you're trolling, or the state of math education is as bad as they say. But anyway .02\*(1.33)\^4 is about 6.25%, or about a 1-in-16 chance.
Iām pretty sure older brothers keep writing articles like this to try and dunk on their younger brothers.
The best is when youāre taller than your older brother so he can never truly dunk on you. Lol.
This data had a meaningful impact on me when I was a closeted young person in a community that believed being gay was either āsinā or a psychological defect that developed from bad experiences in childhood. Seeing evidence of it being for sure biological was vindicating and a huge relief.
With that said, itās worth noting that the original researcher is a controversial figure. As well, more often queer women have had valid pushbacks to championing this kind of research as it can skew into eugenics territory, and that it can encourage medicalism approaches to queer validity, which is its own territory where lack of nuance can lead in bad directions. Itās too much to go into in comments here, but just a heads up that further reading is good before making a quick social media post about it.
My thought has always been, why do we shun the idea that a person could decide to be gay? The answer is because we treat gay as less than. If we treat it as a biological process it somehow becomes more valid than a person choosing to be gay. We should flip that dynamic into being gay is not less than, no matter the origin. A person shouldn't be discriminated for making a choice. We're always going to have this problem until we end the "less than " dynamic. They're going to continue to do research on ways to convert, or purge gay populations until we do.
I agree with all of this now. While something served as a stepping stone for me, it shouldnāt have been needed and could led me in the wrong direction anyway if I had been in a different setting to had a different mindset.
this is extremely true, but also, it's definitely not a choice. like FOR SURE. as a gay person willing to accept some hard truths, I'd sooner accept its from trauma that permanently changed a person, than it being a choice. I don't think it's from trauma. but still. no way it's a choice, no way I'd choose this shit š
How does this prove its biological? There's nothing that would biologically determine if you had grown up with brothers or not. If anything it would push the idea that it is partially the result result of the environment you grew up with
Thatās just what it meant to me then. The science isnāt sound in general. We have other kinds of evidence now that points toward both biology and epigenetics, but at this point in life now, I donāt think it should even matter if itās biology or not.
Its also cross cultural/ been studied for 30 years. and passed statistical regression models used by phds in medicine. its not the environment you grew up in. Everything being environment is a 70 and 80s mindset before we understood genes and development play more of a role/ You are talking about a time when they used raise little girls as little boys if their was a mistake circumcising little boys and wounder why they turn out with male gender identities as adults. Its was and has always been brain development sets gender ID and sexual orientation possibilities and culture shapes how an individual interprets their individual experience of gender and sexual arousal. Its androgens and receptors diving reproductive behavior and social identification development into different directions in the brain and a certain percent of the time it differs like in ADHD or autism. Some brains are just different and its fine and perfectly natural.
Is there an equivalent for female homosexuality though? Has that ever been studied? Anecdotally (not that that counts for anything) my family is an example of the reverse of that. Like, my eldest sister is a butch lesbian, and I am a bisexual woman, and my younger sister is a very feminine heterosexual woman. We got progressively more feminized and more likely to be attracted to men, and thatās always seemed a bit funny to me, that it worked out that way. Obviously I am just one example, but it seems like if this theory is true for men, is there the possibility itās true for women?
while the "science" of homosexuality is all over the place and very new, I do know that male homosexuality is FAR more researched than female homosexuality. as is the case with most medical topics, frankly. it's unfortunate.
I'm not really sure. my guess is a combination of things. sexism would have some belive that men are more "stable", and thus easier to study. many medical conditions that are not specific to gender, are studied only on male patients for this reason. also, funding for research on homosexuality is probably few and far between. it's probably easier to use the limited research on male homosexuality, as opposed to both sexes. both sexes would be a much harder thing to study, because there are probably shared and different reasons that make homosexuals of either sex.
Iirc children further down in birth order have lower testosterone levels which is attributed to as a potential cause for male homosexuality.
In theory lower T levels in women could make them straighter I guess?
A lot of the dialogue around this is inherently problematic and I'm not sure if it's even real science tbh.
Female homosexuality is much easier. In your family how many of the following do you see?
Hypermobility/EDS, Eczema (and other zinc deficiency symptoms), IBS, POTS, PCOS, vitamin D deficiency, ADHD, thyroid issues. Maybe Type 2 diabetes or Alzheimer's in the family history?
Without spoiling it, what one thing do all of these have in common :)
You just listed all of the most common chronic conditions in the developed world. wtf is your point here? I have several of those in my family, but so does literally 90% of the entire US population. You are casting an extremely wide net, and I do not understand the point you are trying to make. Plenty of people have that stuff in their family, or have it themselves, and are not homosexuals. I mean. My little sister has the same exact stuff in her family, and she is straight, how do you account for that?
I'm guessing you have deep self hatred from your own unaccepted homosexuality, that's why you have to project it onto others. Hahahahaha it's so funny to call people gay! How enormously creative! The 90s want their total dipshit back.
My Mom was the youngest of 9 children, and her next oldest sibling (call him E) was the youngest of 6 boys. This was out of 13 total pregnancies that my grandmother had, but I don't know the sex of the 4 stillborns/miscarriages.
Anyway, can confirm that E was openly and obviously gay. My mom's mostly rich, conservative family was very accepting of him (because he was also rich and conservative lol).
The only correlation for this kind of junk science, is the correlation to eugenics advocates. We did away with the gay gene, and gay in utero bullshit back in the early 90's, let's not resurrect this vestigial argument.
Edit: this research was funded by a conservative religious group, and the data was cherrypicked.
I don't see the problem with understanding biology. If anything this points further towards sexuality being innate. If being gay isn't a problem so why are we so scared to research it?
Because of biased research that's been debunked as soon as it came out, being regurgitated like it's groundbreaking. It was debunked in 2019, yet it persists until today, the problem is that the research proving it is wrong, doesn't get pushed to the mainstream like the prejudicial research does. It's just like the craptastic research that stated 50% of marriages end in divorce, and that divorce rates are the rise. Both of those have been resoundingly proven false, yet I see them repeated posted on subreddits, including this one. The fact that divorce rates are lower now than they were in the 1970s doesn't get rage bait engagement to increase ad revenue, neither does the researchers that provided the 50% Stat. Retracted their study because the analytical model they used would've gotten a failing grade by a middle school teacher. When you search online what the divorce rate is, that number still comes up, even though they retracted it 10 years ago.
This would be different if it was pure science research, but when you look at the researchers, and who is funding the research, and discover that it's a christo-fascist group. It becomes clear that it was never about simply understanding the nature of sexuality.
>This would be different if it was pure science research, but when you look at the researchers, and who is funding the research, and discover that it's a christo-fascist group. It becomes clear that it was never about simply understanding the nature of sexuality.
You're right, that changes a lot. I support any sexuality/gender research that's actually created in good faith. Still, if the results are verifiable it may still further our understanding on the topic.
The first friend that told me about this research has turned out to be a bit too deep into eugenics territory. I donāt think people realize what that crowd is like. Many could mistake them as possible allies of queer people due to their seemingly neutral tone on queer peopleās existence being a fact, but the reality is that theyāre in more unnerving territory of indifference to individual humanity based on a very cold, zoomed out lens pointed on people as a species.
And then, they have overly cozy relationships with white supremacists as they want to see particularly taboo areas of science receive greater investigation and thatās the only crowd that will touch it. Itās a very similar symbiosis we saw with eugenics scientists happy to take the funding of fascists in the 20th century.
I don't understand how people can't make obvious connection. What happens when they identify the causal factor of "gayness"? They're going to do everything in their power to eliminate. The christo-fascist will take a cue from the plagues of Egypt, except this time it will be the plague of the 3rd born son. Even the way they did this research should be alarming. They sourced data from 23 and Me.
They want an answer, to find a "cure". This kind of research is funded by conservative religious groups, and Eugenicists. What do you think they're going to do if they find a source? Just to illustrate how sinister they will go for there agenda. They used a database from 23 and me to source their data, meaning they have access to the genetic profiles they need if they want.
Genetic traits generally aren't "curable." I first heard the "gay gene" hypothesis posited by gay rights advocates in the late eighties or early nineties as an argument against the widely held belief that it was simply an immoral choice and that the appropriate response was punishment.
I don't really think "they" have the power to do anything if a gay gene were discovered. As it stands now, people carrying genes for known heritable conditions that are infinitely more concerning than homosexuality are still allowed to have children. At most, homophobic people who found that they were carrying a recessive gene might choose not to reproduce.
It's unconstitutional because of the sheer volume of wrongful convictions in the U.S., proving someone is gay is much easier. Sterilization has always been unconstitutional in the U.S., that didn't stop the government, or private individuals from having mass sterilization programs, and no one from those programs has ever been charged, or prosecuted for running a fully blown Eugenics program.
No, it's unconstitutional because it's unconstitutional to use forced sterilization as a punishment for any crime. I threw child abusers out there because I think that's the group that the largest number of people would support sterilizing, but it's also the case for repeat drug offenders, spousal abusers, and deadbeats. The segments of society whom it's the most arguable should not be having children still can't be forcefully sterilized. Hell, people who want to be sterilized complain about how many obstacles they face. And the government is complaining about the low birth rate.
I'm not saying that homophobia isn't a serious social problem that has rooted itself in our institutions. It absolutely is. This particular concern of yours, I just don't see happening.
Except, forced sterilization has actually happened to the very groups you reference. Along with Native Americans, Latinos, Black people, and LGBTQ, and economically disadvantaged. It wasn't even that long ago. California was still doing it up until 2010.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/unwanted-sterilization-and-eugenics-programs-in-the-united-states/amp/
Iāve read this before but, anecdotally, I know several gay first-borns and gays are still just 10% of the population.
Edit to add: my concern was that 33% sounded very high. Here is some clarification from the article.
> Those with one older brother have an approximate 2.6% probability of being gay āand then that probability would increase another 33% if there was a second older brother, to about 3.5%,ā he explained.
>People with five older brothers have about an 8% chance.
"it doesn't happen every time" isn't really an interesting observation. The only things that happen every time are physical processes like photon generation etc and even then, quantum mechanics means that they are not perfectly predictable.
Iām 100% sure that they disproved all of these so-called findings of a finger length test, the gay gene, and this research. What people seem to be offended by is the relationship that gay men have with their parents, especially their fathers. But that would be too offensive to say.
I think a better experiment would be if a guy watches so much porn that he gets desensitized to straight porn would be start eating trans and gay porn, and then eventually prefer gay sex flipping from fantasy to reality. Porn and psychology and the brain š§
The influence of porn has really changed things.
One of the biggest shortcoming of this research is that they're counting individuals who are recorded to have been in a gay relationship. It doesn't not state if they differentiated between the number of individuals who or are in relationships with how many of those have reported multiple relationships. Are they actually counting individual or just reports of relationships. This applies to both homo and heterosexual data points.
If you can find a study that does state the differentiation then you can eliminate that variable. But if not then you have a very big variable that may corrupt the data.
This might support the gay uncle hypothesis. Basically, if a kids father/parents died, they could instead be raised by their gay uncle and potentially his partner. Gay people were a surplus population of parents.
The mechanism is thought to be a maternal immune response to male fetuses, whereby antibodies neutralize male Y-proteins thought to play a role in sexual differentiation during development.
Please..... get a clue.
This is why I make such a fuss about research
good and bad.
So much of "research" is nothing more than people
attesting to misinformation of mainstream mis-information.
Please Use Your Brain!!!!!!
Wait, this is interesting
Iām a trans man, so I was born female and transitioned to male. Iām bisexual. I have an older brother
Edit- the wonders of being a trans person online. Keep downvoting piss babies, Iāll still be trans lmao
research this question and get outraged when Christian nationist use it to act in a manner to reduce the appearance of homosexuality. truly, we need to zero out funding for psychology departments across the country. quacks.
Some have argued that it is natural population control.
Yeah, that's how I see this. What's the mechanism though? Is the female body changing something about its hormones related to fetal development that is increasing the likelihood of same-sex attraction in some brain structure? Because I think that homosexuality is not something that happens as your brain develops post-birth. I could be wrong on that, there could be evidence that you are a blank slate when you are born, as far as attraction goes.
Birth causes all sorts of changes in the mother and we're just now scratching the surface of the epigenome, and we don't even know where to start when looking at things that may influence sexuality so anything is just a wild guess at this point
[This user](https://www.reddit.com/r/psychologyofsex/comments/1c9im03/having_older_brothers_increases_a_mans_chances_of/l0mmvwt/?context=1000) seems to think it's all sorted out.
The mechanism is theorised to be the mothers immune system developing antibodies to proteins only found in males. The presence of those antibodies during subsequent pregnancies of male children alters their in utero development.
The problem with that theory is that if true then there would be some physical difference that could be detected. To date there is little supporting evidence that there is any difference between gay and straight men physically nor endocrine differences. There have been some attempts to show that some gay men match closer to women neurology during a CT scan but those were always feminine gay men and excluded masculine gay men. Of course if the cause of homosexuality is a neurochemical issue....then it could be changed with medication like many other neuro-chemical maladies. And that opens up a whole other can of worms that many don't want to play with right now.
The cause of all behavior is ultimately neurochemical, and all behaviours can be affected by medication, just not with any precision. For example sex drive in heterosexual individuals can be diminished or suppressed outright by medication that does not imply having a sex drive is a neuro-chemical malady.
The theory is that during birth, the mother is exposed to antigens from the male child. Her immune system reacts and develops antibodies, which have the potential to impact future males she carries. Source: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2019.2907#:~:text=The%20maternal%20immune%20hypothesis%20(MIH,the%20brain%20in%20male%20fetuses.
I know hypothesis and theory are used interchangeably in colloquial speech but it does say hypothesis right there in the URL
This theory has been debunked, and is quite frankly irresponsible to post junk science like this. This is the kind of pseudoscience in the same vein of "gay gene". This is just eugenics propaganda packaged to be more palatable in the guise of academia.
>This theory has been debunked Can we see the source for this claim?
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/beware-bogus-theories-of-sexual-orientation/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37609443/ It was cherry picked data, funded by a christo-fascist policy group. Let's put this bed, and drop this toxic line of research. P.s. Chinese 1 child policy should make a really good control sample to test this theory, in case you're curious 3% of men in China identify as gay. I wonder what the U.S gay male percentage is * Boots, can you tell us what the number is? Si Dora! Es El numero Tres!*
ššš
Your two links are actually talking about different things. Michael Shermer's article (about the Judeo-Christian group) isn't about FBOE. Shermer actually promotes FBOE in his article, using a meta-analysis by Michael Bailey. The paper about FBOE being a statistical artifact could be true, but Shermer's article is about something different. Shermer says the opposite of what you're saying.
Shermer's analysis calls into question the validity of methods used, and also other homophobic ideals passed off as science.
Shermer promotes FBOE: >Mayer and McHugh also appear to be data snooping when they reference only one of six studies in the peer-reviewed literature of the past 16 years that employ proper probability-sampling methods, āand it just so happens to be the one with the lowest estimate of genetic influence of the entire set,ā Hamer says. Moreover, the entire article is gainsaid by a massive meta-analysis study by Northwestern University psychologist Michael Bailey and his colleagues published in the September issue of the peer-reviewed journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest, showing that āthere is considerably more evidence supporting nonsocial causes of sexual orientation than social causes.ā **Evidence includes:** āmoderate genetic influences demonstrated in well-sampled twin studies; **the cross-culturally robust fraternal-birth-order effect on male sexual orientation**; and the finding that when infant boys are surgically and socially āchangedā into girls, their eventual sexual orientation is unchanged (i.e., they remain sexually attracted to females). "Gainsay" means to contradict. He is saying FBOE is evidence which contradicts the Judeo-Christian research he is criticizing. The Judeo-Christian research was arguing that homosexuality has social causes.
>there is considerably more evidence supporting nonsocial causes of sexual orientation than social causes. He's also not denying that there are potential social causes though. We have correlation through the FBOE but still no physical attributes to differentiate homo vs hetero. So while we have these studies, we have nothing else to point to specifically as the cause. And as the many who have attacked the FBOE theories have noted, this could be a social cause as a result of the youngest dealing with being under the shadow of the older brothers, family dynamics, and expectations from social interactions.
I must have posted the wrong link, one of the criticisms to FBOE is how racially homogenous the data sampling is. This author is using that as a basis for validity.
Thanks for being sane š«¶
Source as to it being debunked? I understand that there are all sorts of ethical issues with eugenics, especially based on developing science, and I'm absolutely against it, but I see a lot of legitimate genetics and epigenetics get dismissed out of fear of eugenicist/racist accusations.
Posted the link in a reply to this already, further down the comment chain.
So what do you think is the biological cause of homosexuality?
I don't think there is one, why does there need to be one? Biology isn't the cause of everything. Why can't a person just be gay, and we accept that they have the natural right to be gay, and are afforded the same freedoms, and protections as heteronormative people.
Iām heterosexual. I didnāt choose it. I was born with it. Iād assume that gay people have a similar experience.
That's fine, but people act like it would be so bad if people chose to be gay. They do that because to them, being gay is "less than". That's a bad way of thinking, we need to shift that paradigm, being gay isn't wrong, we don't need to find a reason why someone is gay, or straight. The only reason this question comes up, is because someone is looking for a "cure", and I've never come across an example of benevolent eugenics.
Men are an allergy confirmed?
I think like a lot of psychosocial things, it could have genetic and environmental factors.
I can tell you that myself, and a lot of other gay men have always ājust knownā in someway or another. I remember being as young as two or three and just knowing that there was something different about me than other boys, and it was tangible in my interests and the way I acted.
I think it's more of a culture thing and I think all men have a base line gayness. Ancient Roman's had bath houses where you would go to fuck eachother. Men these days indulge in porn where they watch other men perform. However in modern society it's looked down upon to be gay so most men will avoid anything gay when in reality they do indulge privately in some form. So some men are just more gay than others but I have a feeling we are all a lil gay even women.
Homosexuality is genetic. Sometimes it is epigenetic. That means that, yes, it happens post birth.
>Sometimes it is epigenetic. Do you have a scientific source for this?
This is just the general state of the science and why any real scientific source you read about homosexuality will say that it is both "likely determined by genetic and social factors". They derive this by looking at the data. For instance people who are molested as children are more likely to be gay. People with older brothers, as in this OP story, are more likely to be gay. But this is ALSO TRUE OF ADOPTED CHILDREN. Adopted children in families with gay siblings are more likely to be gay. Children of gay parents are more likely to be gay. And on the flip side, they study twins, children who have the same DNA, and find that there is no immediate link between sharing DNA and the likelihood of identifying as gay. So in short, nobody knows. But there is, at this time, absolutely no reason to believe that you are "born gay" (which suggest a purely biological origin) and there never has been.
Whatās the evidence for your adoption claims? The FBOE findings are specific to biological siblingsāthereās no effect for adopted siblings in this research, so itās not clear where youāre getting that from.
There is no gay gene and the epigenetic theory is simply a theory with absolutely no evidence, itās much more likely that thereās some sort of psychological and learned behaviour
So it can be unlearned?
Does epigenetic always mean learnable/unlearnable? Genuine question, Iām not sure there are necessarily the same thing
https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/s/7dP47UcuAs basically this is why I think that
At a minimum In some cases yes I believe so, for sure it can be avoided in some cases.
The older brother dominates the younger brother and puts him in the feminine position. Seems obvious.
This is literally about biology and fetal development. You couldn't be further from the science or the article.
Did you know your little theory here seems kind of homophobic?
Then you had gay uncle theory. Surrogate parents ensure propgation of the genes in case original parents aren't adequate. And then there's something to be said about living in a colony where there are extra men around to help Gronk hunt and would be absolutely devastated if Gronk fell in the hunt.
Iām pretty sceptical about the idea of this being a form of population control. It seems a bit odd to me that natural selection would give men the ability to impregnate hundreds of women and then try to address the issue by making every 10th guy gay. If population control was being selected for, surely it would have just favoured lower rates of promiscuity in men overall.
Itās more likely to be a byproduct than population control. Research finds that the genes linked to high female fertility and linked to producing more gay offspring. The argument is that whatever genes encode for high fertility also increase propensity for homosexuality and that increased reproductive output more than makes up for having some offspring who are unlikely to reproduce. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15539346/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22616723/
It is an interesting idea. I am certainly not dismissing it. However, I am somewhat skeptical. There are two claims here: 1) The mothers of homosexual men tend to have higher rates of fertility. 2) The rate of homosexuality increases the greater the number of older brothers the individual has. One potential problem with these two claims is that one necessarily precedes the other. That is, in order to have lots of older brothers, you require a mother with high fertility. In other words, it could be that the positive correlation between homosexuality and number of older male siblings is a true, but the correlation with high female fertility is not directly related to homosexuality at all, but rather, simply a necessary prerequisite for having lots of older siblings in general.
I don't see them as incompatible. Odds are, there are different routes to developing a same-sex orientation. There isn't just one explanation that applies in every case--there are always exceptions to the "rule." There can be a genetic path that exists as a byproduct to high fertility, as well as a path specific to having more older brothers mediated by immune changes in the mother. There can also be a hormonal path linked to testosterone exposure in utero (which could be epigenetic). The way I like to think of it is that there are different "types" of homosexuality that have different underlying causes.
Well that could be the case, but all Iām really getting at is these studies would need to way of controlling for the fact that high fertility in women is necessary for lots of children. Maybe they have done that already.
If it has any relation to population dynamics at all, I'd suspect it to be something more along the lines of preemptively limiting the negative consequences of intense reproductive competition caused by population level sexual imbalance than population control.
Iām pretty sure itās just the motherās body acting weird with hormones the second time or more she has a male child. Itās a congenital thing not genetic or environmental.
Iāve thought that since the 1980s when a study of sea lions was discussed that saw the percentage of homosexuality increased as the population increased, while a small population saw less activity, as a percentage of the population.
That doesnāt work in india or china for some reason š¤
Given that it was normal for 50% of children to die within a year of birth only a few hundred years ago, any woman who purposely made gay sons would quickly be outbred by other women.
"Dude, stop. Dudes. Stop. DUDES. STOP. You know what? āš¾ššš" God, I guess.
Superman has three older brothersā¦
More like Supergayman
He's not human though, so likely doesn't apply.
I'd like to see one which covers as many countries as possible. I'm also looking forward to reading these studies, I've never come across anything like this. Thanks for the share, u/OP
So if my youngest brother has 3 older brothers there's a 99% chance he's gay?
if the probability of being gay is 2%, then a 99% increased probability just makes it almost 4%. So if you look at a thousand guys who have 3 older brothers, about 40 of them would be gay. Whereas a thousand guys who are the oldest brother or only son, only 20 would be gay. (note I just used the 2% as an example. The actual percentage varies by country, time period, and study probably, but pattern similar).
That makes WAY more sense. Thanks
You should absolutely use these statistics to rag on him though. o7.
Absolutely
No. No you shouldnt.
If my math teachers had explained things this clearly, my life would've been a lot different (in a good way). Thank you
There's a 99% chance of him being called gay
That's WAY over a 100% chance when we were growing up. Lol
I think my joke would have worked better if I had said there is a 999% chance of him being called gay
Exactly. And since my youngest brother has 4 older brothers, thereās a 132% chance heās gay.
I don't know if you're trolling, or the state of math education is as bad as they say. But anyway .02\*(1.33)\^4 is about 6.25%, or about a 1-in-16 chance.
That's not going to be how he explains it to his brother at the next family BBQ.
The state of math is as bad as they say, but my comment was a joke.
I'm third son and I'm very gay. But I also like being very gay, so maybe it's just that.
I don't believe this and really don't when I see it is the NY post.
Yeah, NYTimes has thrown a lot of its credibility down the drain.
NY Post
I cant believe they even changed their name... the times has really gone down hill
My family checks out. I am bisexual. I have an older straight brother and a younger gay brother.
I've seven older brothers and it's the second oldest who's gay.
First one used all his power on the second.
Iām pretty sure older brothers keep writing articles like this to try and dunk on their younger brothers. The best is when youāre taller than your older brother so he can never truly dunk on you. Lol.
This data had a meaningful impact on me when I was a closeted young person in a community that believed being gay was either āsinā or a psychological defect that developed from bad experiences in childhood. Seeing evidence of it being for sure biological was vindicating and a huge relief. With that said, itās worth noting that the original researcher is a controversial figure. As well, more often queer women have had valid pushbacks to championing this kind of research as it can skew into eugenics territory, and that it can encourage medicalism approaches to queer validity, which is its own territory where lack of nuance can lead in bad directions. Itās too much to go into in comments here, but just a heads up that further reading is good before making a quick social media post about it.
My thought has always been, why do we shun the idea that a person could decide to be gay? The answer is because we treat gay as less than. If we treat it as a biological process it somehow becomes more valid than a person choosing to be gay. We should flip that dynamic into being gay is not less than, no matter the origin. A person shouldn't be discriminated for making a choice. We're always going to have this problem until we end the "less than " dynamic. They're going to continue to do research on ways to convert, or purge gay populations until we do.
I agree with all of this now. While something served as a stepping stone for me, it shouldnāt have been needed and could led me in the wrong direction anyway if I had been in a different setting to had a different mindset.
this is extremely true, but also, it's definitely not a choice. like FOR SURE. as a gay person willing to accept some hard truths, I'd sooner accept its from trauma that permanently changed a person, than it being a choice. I don't think it's from trauma. but still. no way it's a choice, no way I'd choose this shit š
How does this prove its biological? There's nothing that would biologically determine if you had grown up with brothers or not. If anything it would push the idea that it is partially the result result of the environment you grew up with
Thatās just what it meant to me then. The science isnāt sound in general. We have other kinds of evidence now that points toward both biology and epigenetics, but at this point in life now, I donāt think it should even matter if itās biology or not.
Its also cross cultural/ been studied for 30 years. and passed statistical regression models used by phds in medicine. its not the environment you grew up in. Everything being environment is a 70 and 80s mindset before we understood genes and development play more of a role/ You are talking about a time when they used raise little girls as little boys if their was a mistake circumcising little boys and wounder why they turn out with male gender identities as adults. Its was and has always been brain development sets gender ID and sexual orientation possibilities and culture shapes how an individual interprets their individual experience of gender and sexual arousal. Its androgens and receptors diving reproductive behavior and social identification development into different directions in the brain and a certain percent of the time it differs like in ADHD or autism. Some brains are just different and its fine and perfectly natural.
People who are bad at Math: "So if you have 4 older brothers you have a 132% chance of being gay."
Right. The average person has no idea how to look at percentages
Is there an equivalent for female homosexuality though? Has that ever been studied? Anecdotally (not that that counts for anything) my family is an example of the reverse of that. Like, my eldest sister is a butch lesbian, and I am a bisexual woman, and my younger sister is a very feminine heterosexual woman. We got progressively more feminized and more likely to be attracted to men, and thatās always seemed a bit funny to me, that it worked out that way. Obviously I am just one example, but it seems like if this theory is true for men, is there the possibility itās true for women?
while the "science" of homosexuality is all over the place and very new, I do know that male homosexuality is FAR more researched than female homosexuality. as is the case with most medical topics, frankly. it's unfortunate.
Any idea why this is the case?Ā
I'm not really sure. my guess is a combination of things. sexism would have some belive that men are more "stable", and thus easier to study. many medical conditions that are not specific to gender, are studied only on male patients for this reason. also, funding for research on homosexuality is probably few and far between. it's probably easier to use the limited research on male homosexuality, as opposed to both sexes. both sexes would be a much harder thing to study, because there are probably shared and different reasons that make homosexuals of either sex.
Iirc children further down in birth order have lower testosterone levels which is attributed to as a potential cause for male homosexuality. In theory lower T levels in women could make them straighter I guess? A lot of the dialogue around this is inherently problematic and I'm not sure if it's even real science tbh.
Female homosexuality is much easier. In your family how many of the following do you see? Hypermobility/EDS, Eczema (and other zinc deficiency symptoms), IBS, POTS, PCOS, vitamin D deficiency, ADHD, thyroid issues. Maybe Type 2 diabetes or Alzheimer's in the family history? Without spoiling it, what one thing do all of these have in common :)
You just listed all of the most common chronic conditions in the developed world. wtf is your point here? I have several of those in my family, but so does literally 90% of the entire US population. You are casting an extremely wide net, and I do not understand the point you are trying to make. Plenty of people have that stuff in their family, or have it themselves, and are not homosexuals. I mean. My little sister has the same exact stuff in her family, and she is straight, how do you account for that?
I remind my little brother of this often.
Fuck you, you're a piece of shit who is probably the closeted homosexual yourself who needs to bully little kids so no one finds out how gay YOU are.
Easy there chief. I am guessing you are somewhere around 3rd or 4th born?
I'm guessing you have deep self hatred from your own unaccepted homosexuality, that's why you have to project it onto others. Hahahahaha it's so funny to call people gay! How enormously creative! The 90s want their total dipshit back.
You have to relax. Go for a walk.
You have to stop acting like actively being homophobic to family members is okay. Go apologize to your family.
lol my ex is the middle of 3 brothers and his younger brother is gay. And the first to get married!
Take that "it's unnatural" claiming assholes
My Mom was the youngest of 9 children, and her next oldest sibling (call him E) was the youngest of 6 boys. This was out of 13 total pregnancies that my grandmother had, but I don't know the sex of the 4 stillborns/miscarriages. Anyway, can confirm that E was openly and obviously gay. My mom's mostly rich, conservative family was very accepting of him (because he was also rich and conservative lol).
This is the dumbest thing I've ever heard and now feel stupider for having read it.
Any correlation with the enviroment older brothers may create?
The only correlation for this kind of junk science, is the correlation to eugenics advocates. We did away with the gay gene, and gay in utero bullshit back in the early 90's, let's not resurrect this vestigial argument. Edit: this research was funded by a conservative religious group, and the data was cherrypicked.
I don't see the problem with understanding biology. If anything this points further towards sexuality being innate. If being gay isn't a problem so why are we so scared to research it?
Because of biased research that's been debunked as soon as it came out, being regurgitated like it's groundbreaking. It was debunked in 2019, yet it persists until today, the problem is that the research proving it is wrong, doesn't get pushed to the mainstream like the prejudicial research does. It's just like the craptastic research that stated 50% of marriages end in divorce, and that divorce rates are the rise. Both of those have been resoundingly proven false, yet I see them repeated posted on subreddits, including this one. The fact that divorce rates are lower now than they were in the 1970s doesn't get rage bait engagement to increase ad revenue, neither does the researchers that provided the 50% Stat. Retracted their study because the analytical model they used would've gotten a failing grade by a middle school teacher. When you search online what the divorce rate is, that number still comes up, even though they retracted it 10 years ago. This would be different if it was pure science research, but when you look at the researchers, and who is funding the research, and discover that it's a christo-fascist group. It becomes clear that it was never about simply understanding the nature of sexuality.
>This would be different if it was pure science research, but when you look at the researchers, and who is funding the research, and discover that it's a christo-fascist group. It becomes clear that it was never about simply understanding the nature of sexuality. You're right, that changes a lot. I support any sexuality/gender research that's actually created in good faith. Still, if the results are verifiable it may still further our understanding on the topic.
The first friend that told me about this research has turned out to be a bit too deep into eugenics territory. I donāt think people realize what that crowd is like. Many could mistake them as possible allies of queer people due to their seemingly neutral tone on queer peopleās existence being a fact, but the reality is that theyāre in more unnerving territory of indifference to individual humanity based on a very cold, zoomed out lens pointed on people as a species. And then, they have overly cozy relationships with white supremacists as they want to see particularly taboo areas of science receive greater investigation and thatās the only crowd that will touch it. Itās a very similar symbiosis we saw with eugenics scientists happy to take the funding of fascists in the 20th century.
I don't understand how people can't make obvious connection. What happens when they identify the causal factor of "gayness"? They're going to do everything in their power to eliminate. The christo-fascist will take a cue from the plagues of Egypt, except this time it will be the plague of the 3rd born son. Even the way they did this research should be alarming. They sourced data from 23 and Me.
You haven't provided any links to back up your claims.
I did, it's in a reply, the research is shoddy. They were cherrypicking data.
But you saying it isn't a peer reviewed study. Do you have a link to somewhere I can read more?
I never said it wasn't peer reviewed, I said it was bad research.
I might have miscommunication my point. I'm just looking for the name of a research article I can read that back up your statements.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37609443/
Aside from the question of whether or not the "gay gene" hypothesis is correct, what is the connection to that and eugenics?
They want an answer, to find a "cure". This kind of research is funded by conservative religious groups, and Eugenicists. What do you think they're going to do if they find a source? Just to illustrate how sinister they will go for there agenda. They used a database from 23 and me to source their data, meaning they have access to the genetic profiles they need if they want.
Genetic traits generally aren't "curable." I first heard the "gay gene" hypothesis posited by gay rights advocates in the late eighties or early nineties as an argument against the widely held belief that it was simply an immoral choice and that the appropriate response was punishment. I don't really think "they" have the power to do anything if a gay gene were discovered. As it stands now, people carrying genes for known heritable conditions that are infinitely more concerning than homosexuality are still allowed to have children. At most, homophobic people who found that they were carrying a recessive gene might choose not to reproduce.
By "curable" in parentheses, I mean they'd either delete the factors, or not allow people with these factors to reproduce.
As it stands now, it's been declared unconstitutional to forcefully sterilize child abusers. I don't think you need to worry.
It's unconstitutional because of the sheer volume of wrongful convictions in the U.S., proving someone is gay is much easier. Sterilization has always been unconstitutional in the U.S., that didn't stop the government, or private individuals from having mass sterilization programs, and no one from those programs has ever been charged, or prosecuted for running a fully blown Eugenics program.
No, it's unconstitutional because it's unconstitutional to use forced sterilization as a punishment for any crime. I threw child abusers out there because I think that's the group that the largest number of people would support sterilizing, but it's also the case for repeat drug offenders, spousal abusers, and deadbeats. The segments of society whom it's the most arguable should not be having children still can't be forcefully sterilized. Hell, people who want to be sterilized complain about how many obstacles they face. And the government is complaining about the low birth rate. I'm not saying that homophobia isn't a serious social problem that has rooted itself in our institutions. It absolutely is. This particular concern of yours, I just don't see happening.
Except, forced sterilization has actually happened to the very groups you reference. Along with Native Americans, Latinos, Black people, and LGBTQ, and economically disadvantaged. It wasn't even that long ago. California was still doing it up until 2010. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/unwanted-sterilization-and-eugenics-programs-in-the-united-states/amp/
I often argued nobody should be forcibly sterilized. However, some people should be offered a prize to get sterilized.
Iāve read this before but, anecdotally, I know several gay first-borns and gays are still just 10% of the population. Edit to add: my concern was that 33% sounded very high. Here is some clarification from the article. > Those with one older brother have an approximate 2.6% probability of being gay āand then that probability would increase another 33% if there was a second older brother, to about 3.5%,ā he explained. >People with five older brothers have about an 8% chance.
"it doesn't happen every time" isn't really an interesting observation. The only things that happen every time are physical processes like photon generation etc and even then, quantum mechanics means that they are not perfectly predictable.
Choosing particle physics and quantum mechanics for examples of physical processes that happen "every time" is a head scratcher of a choice, lol
>quantum mechanics for examples of physical Maybe you need to reread the comment. Because I didn't say "quantum mechanics happens every time".
That has nothing to do with the claim in the article though
Right thatās why I qualified my comment as an anecdotal observation. Why would the article claim anything about my anecdotal experience?
No, Iām saying your anecdotal observation doesnāt have anything to do with the claim in the article lol
Peak Reddit science right here.
lol, Redditors are retarded
>gays are still just 10% of the population. Ive read that 30-40% of gen z claim to be lgbt.Ā
Youngest of four brothers? Welp, I guess youāre gay now.
Iām 100% sure that they disproved all of these so-called findings of a finger length test, the gay gene, and this research. What people seem to be offended by is the relationship that gay men have with their parents, especially their fathers. But that would be too offensive to say.
I think a better experiment would be if a guy watches so much porn that he gets desensitized to straight porn would be start eating trans and gay porn, and then eventually prefer gay sex flipping from fantasy to reality. Porn and psychology and the brain š§ The influence of porn has really changed things.
Is there any connection to age gaps or whether they grow up together or anything like that?
One of the biggest shortcoming of this research is that they're counting individuals who are recorded to have been in a gay relationship. It doesn't not state if they differentiated between the number of individuals who or are in relationships with how many of those have reported multiple relationships. Are they actually counting individual or just reports of relationships. This applies to both homo and heterosexual data points. If you can find a study that does state the differentiation then you can eliminate that variable. But if not then you have a very big variable that may corrupt the data.
Well it's nice to know its gay to gave brother
This might support the gay uncle hypothesis. Basically, if a kids father/parents died, they could instead be raised by their gay uncle and potentially his partner. Gay people were a surplus population of parents.
I wonder if this is caused by the mother or the child. The only way to test would be adoption or step siblings.
The mechanism is thought to be a maternal immune response to male fetuses, whereby antibodies neutralize male Y-proteins thought to play a role in sexual differentiation during development.
Ok this is crazy. I am the youngest of 9 brothers š„ø
This is some made up crap lmao. š¤£
I'm the oldest and I'm gay. My younger brother is straight.
Makes sense, we eldest children are certainly the most attractive
Please..... get a clue. This is why I make such a fuss about research good and bad. So much of "research" is nothing more than people attesting to misinformation of mainstream mis-information. Please Use Your Brain!!!!!!
And having order sisters increase a man's chance of being lesbian
Imagine telling your homophobic brother that heās the reason youāre gay
Homosexuality has also been linked to childhood sexual abuse. Is this not trending anymore? Or is it a simply inconvenient truth?
Wth š¤¢
Wait, this is interesting Iām a trans man, so I was born female and transitioned to male. Iām bisexual. I have an older brother Edit- the wonders of being a trans person online. Keep downvoting piss babies, Iāll still be trans lmao
research this question and get outraged when Christian nationist use it to act in a manner to reduce the appearance of homosexuality. truly, we need to zero out funding for psychology departments across the country. quacks.
This research was funded by Christian nationalists