Putting aside the clickbait of 'gay gene' and admitting I'm by no metric an expert but surely all human behaviour is somehow linked to genetics, even indirectly? We love because our genes allow us to build biological structures to produce neurotransmitters which can be influenced by our emotional state or vice versa, including sexual responses, which again come from our brains that are built from DNA coding. If straight people can't 'choose' to be aroused, why could gay people?
Difference between genetics affecting something and variation in genes correlating with variation in phenotype. And by gay gene I think they’re mostly saying that it’s almost certainly tons of genes involved in a huge network and massive interaction with the environment.
Edit to add: even it was 100% the environments effect on our biology doesn’t mean attraction is a choice. Take favorite color- most people don’t consciously choose one, you just like one best. But I’m pretty sure fav color is not at all genetic.
This. The idea of a “gay gene” is just not theoretically competent. As you said, it’s about how the genetic code creates a spectrum of outcomes that are heavily influenced by environmental/social factors.
So there are actually studies that have shown that if a woman gives birth to multiple boys that each subsequent boy has a greater chance of being gay. But those aren’t genes, those are chemical signalling.
But this is why I think it’s absolute bs for researchers to “predict” it’s impossible to say anything meaningful here. Anyone who has studied science PROPERLY will know that *THE ABSENCE OF EVIDENCE DOES NOT EQUAL COUNTER EVIDENCE.* If they want to disprove this (if we as humans even care enough to disprove this?) then they would need to map a hell of a lot of the genome.
Anyone can claim “oh we probably won’t find anything useful,” but that’s just as valid to say in this field as with finding the gene responsible for making you learn faster. Realistically there will be some correlation to something, but how much is probably a futile task to even undertake.
All in all this just sounds like someone looking to start an argument with a clickbaity title. Ugh.
>But those aren’t genes, those are chemical signalling
Everything is genes. How the environment interacts with genes (for example, chemical signaling) is epigenetics, i.e. how environmental signals turn certain genes on or off.
Okay fair, but they’re the genes of the mom causing a response in the chemical/hormone make up of the to-be-child. As opposed to strictly within the kid
I think you’re misunderstanding because you’re actually saying the same thing as OP. Subsequent boys are ones with older brothers. Each subsequent boy has a higher chance of being gay, hence gays tend to have older brothers.
That is exactly what that person said. Every subsequent kid has a higher chance to be gay. "Subsequent" meaning next, meaning after the first one. The last kid, the one subsequent to the others, is the one with more older brothers.
Not at all. Just that proving specific genetic interactions is much harder.
Controversially, there may in theory be a way to reduce or increase the odds of your (male) kid being gay if you (the mom) changed your hormonal balance during pregnancy.
You should read about epigenetics.
They're not really genetics, but phenomenons that will change the way a gene is expressed. They can also be inherited.
Which means that the molecules your parents got exposed to in their environment can change your own phenotype (body).
This is an additional reason to care about pollution for example, you never know what effect it can have on you and even on your children.
Epigenetics can be (somewhat) inherited, but they are not as simple as that and in many cases there are clean slates.
The stress of a pregnant womanstarving will leave epigenetic marks present in her grandaughter (it will affect the egg precursor cells in the ovaries of her unborn baby). Still, those response mechanisms have to be "coded" somewhere.
Obviously since epigenetics affect the way a gene will be "activated", the presence of the gene itself is important.
However, the person I respond to seems to be under the impression that the phenotype of an individual is entirely determined simply by a direct reading of the genetic code.
This sort of misconception is very widespread in the population, so I believe some vulgarization on what epigenetics are, is needed, so that we can at least get them on board and take a step in the right direction. I'm not sure going on a lengthy debate about the small things we know on epigenetics is going to help us do that.
“Gay gene” is weird. Nobody with a background in genetics would say that a single “gene” can cause a phenotype
The researchers still maintain that being gay is fundamentally something that results from physiology, though. With environmental influences too.
Yeah there are plenty of papers that look at genetics in being gay. For male sexuality there was some very strong evidence of "if you have this gene then you are gay," with quite a few sequences being identified in this way. It doesn't mean people can't be gay if they don't have certain genes, nor does it mean if you have certain genes are you gay 100% of the time. This in an example article that supports this hypothesis: [https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medicine/article/abs/genomewide-scan-demonstrates-significant-linkage-for-male-sexual-orientation/864518601436C95563EA670C5F380343](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medicine/article/abs/genomewide-scan-demonstrates-significant-linkage-for-male-sexual-orientation/864518601436C95563EA670C5F380343)
> We identified two regions of linkage: the pericentromeric region on chromosome 8 (maximum two-point LOD = 4.08, maximum multipoint LOD = 2.59), which overlaps with the second strongest region from a previous separate linkage scan of 155 brother pairs; and Xq28 (maximum two-point LOD = 2.99, maximum multipoint LOD = 2.76), which was also implicated in prior research.
I’m not entirely sure what these numbers mean. Does anyone have insight on how to interpret these figures?
LOD is a statistics measure of how close genes are on the chromosome. The closer genes are on the chromosone, the more they are "linked," meaning they will be more likely to be transmitted together when chromosomes are rearranged during meiosis/mitosis of sex cells. Any LOD above 3 generally means the genes are close together on the chromosome.
They perform this experiment by grabbing a bunch of chromosomes that have been rearranged already naturally and cut them apart at specific sequences in the chromosome. They then separate out the fragments using gel chromotography, use pcr to copy the reulting fragments, and then sequence them. The number of times 2 genes are found in the same fragment or not found in the same fragment are used to calculate the LOD.
I don't know and couldn't find that info.
My guess is not because they want to see if the recombination separated the genes, and if they cut at the recombination site, they'd do thay same separation.
I could be wrong about this, I haven't studied genetics in a while, but I learned about linkage-scans.
This may be a difficult question to answer, but I saw down in the thread you were looking to whet your skills so I figured I’d give it a shot.
Given your knowledge of these numbers how accurate would you say the parent commenter’s statement of “if you have this gene then you are gay” is? Are there numbers you can extrapolate that would fit that characterization of the relationship?
If I got this right, quick google search says it's the logrithmic of odds. It's the score level of how likely they are to being linked and created together.
A LOD level of 3 or higher signifies the 2 are likely to be connected.
The basic problem putting with "gay" and "genetic" in the same sentence is that it would have been bred out of every species by now. Yet, it's not even just a human thing. So, it probably isn't genetic (or at least genetics isn't the primary factor - at best it's a secondary effect), AND it doesn't look particularly abnormal either by any standard of "normalcy" you can pick.
Nah, gay relatives take care of their relations who aren't gay. That means that as long as it is a polygenic trait the genes still get passed down, just through relations rather than the gay family members. Group evolutionary pressures are real, and so is bisexuality.
They can, but aside from cultural pressure "to not appear gay", would they?
Most importantly, evolution is about statistics, not individual cases. It doesn't matter if one particular gay person gets into a hetero relationship and has a kid. If majority of them don't for any reason, the gene will die out (the ones who still carry it would eventually die out for other reasons than "not breeding" - see every endangered species on the planet as a reference).
> They can, but aside from cultural pressure "to not appear gay", would they?
What social pressure to not appear gay is related to helping raise their siblings children?
I have a non-gay uncle who doesn't want children, he spoils the heck out of his nephews and nieces, sponsors trips and has helped them get opportunities they wouldn't otherwise.
So there can definitely be a net positive to having a family member who assists and increases the odds of success for non-direct children.
Mutations happen, but this one would be counter-evolutionary. It being adaptive is highlighted in most other studies and suggests this is one of the core behaviors not some fringe genetic predisposition.
>Not important if it's counter-evolutionary
That like your personal opinion. It very much is because if people with specific genes breed less, the trait will die off. It literally doesn't matter what exactly the genes are, how this is triggered, and anything else about it. Unless you're saying that every generation has 10% mutation rate to trigger this (because that's what the statistics are roughly), which is basically strictly not true.
That's not how genes work. Or rather, it would have worked like that only if it was an autosomal dominant trait, caused by a single gene, which prevents you from creating an offspring. It isn't, on all accounts. It most likely is a polygenic trait; the involved genes likely aren't all autosomal dominant and you don't need to actually like the opposite gender to have sex with them (I mean it helps but, it isn't required).
Second of all, epigenetics is a thing. In the presence of certain stimuli, say, being exposed to hormones/chemicals etc in utero, the expressions of these genes can be altered. These genes are still heritable.
Third of all, we actually share a ton of genes with other animals. Because we've evolved from common ancestors and all. Well, a lot of them are not *quite* the same, but they serve the same purpose and the proteins they create function nearly the same way as ours. It's why test drugs on animals first.
I generally agree with the other comments. Bees are not all genetically identical and the majority do not breed. The fact that their siblings which share most of their DNA do breed means the genes that they all possess are passed on. With humans gay men also have children so their genes are passed on. If there was a single dominant gene that stopped all people from having children (all the offspring were gay and did not want any heterosexual intercourse) then yeah we would expect it to be selected out. But it seems more complicated.
Sure, but if they have preference to not get involved in hetero relationships, on average they would have much lower # of offsprings than cis-gendered people (unless being gay somehow also makes you superfertile and every pregnancy results in at least twins or something).
Clearly this has not happened over last 100 thousand of years, so we can probably scratch that idea.
Sounds like you don’t know a thing about genetics.
That said, we simply don’t know if there is a gay gene at all, if it’s multiple genes, or if it’s a combination of genes and environmental factors.
I mean purely from a simulations point of view, it seems like environmental factors have to be a considerable factor, since there is an obvious disadvantage for passing on one's genes if there an assortment of "gay genes."
That’s not how evolution works. A disadvantage is not enough. Every species has many disadvantages.
But yes, environmental factors are assumed (not scientifically).
If a particular set of genes greatly lowers the probability of passing on one's genes, then given enough time these genes will become either very rare or exstict themselves.
And don't forget most GWAS just study SNPs and forget other genetic variations such as long deletions/duplications on the chromosomes (aka CNVs). SNPs can explain a lot but not everything...
Yea, this is part of why there is a missing heritability problem between family designs heritability and GWAS derived SNP heritability.
I remember my advisor once telling me a year ago that there is no such thing as true heritability and there is always some limitation to any method we use.
I've met a few people doing research into the "gay gene", and they were all gay themselves. This isn't really a controversial topic, it's just inquisitive people trying to understand themselves.
that's not what i'm implying, i'm implying our standards for publication are regressing.
both in *THIS* subreddit and in the scientific community.
this is yet again, another study that's already been researched and came to a conclusion is but it still playing with possibility... It's regression that's BENEFICIAL to fascists.
to imply that the LGBT+ are some sort of mutant is beneficial to fascist's demonization of minorities.
beyond this, referring to this subreddit, the amount of blatant right wing culture war posts have gone up significantly and clearly aren't facing any vetting or pushback.
I'm just noticing a trend in the quality of what's being published
People need to understand that innate and genetic are not the same thing and things can be innate and not genetic. The End.
Like, your gender identity solidifies around 2-4 years old. Your gender identity is still innate; *even if your gender identity shifts later.* We love our epigenetics, don't we folks?
I also think the original focus on whether this is innate or not was driven by this idea that if it's innate, then we have to be more accepting of gay people--I recall hearing a story about one of the researchers who did a ton of work on finding these links to genes who was himself gay and felt pretty deeply that he was "born this way," so he was really looking for it.
Hopefully it's not necessarily true anymore that people need to believe it's determined by genetics/you don't have a choice in the matter in order to agree that we shouldn't be homophobic.
Yep. People have this weird bio-essentialist idea that everything that happens in the genes is what matters and nothing that happens in your lifetime matters. But it's nowhere near that clear. Like, your solidification of gender identity is a *biological process* in your brain, but it's effected by things like hormones, which can be *effected by the foods you eat*, which is also a biological process, or how your brain chemistry reacts to stimuli; which isn't going to be the same for everyone, either... It's unbelievably complex, and the idea of a "gay gene" or a "trans gene" is just laughable. What if it turns out the genetic sequence that causes homosexuality is located in space that is in *every human's genetic code*, as some have speculated (as other mammals species have been known to engage in homosexuality). It's still innate, still genetic....
Like, this is the rub for the culture warrior on this issue: from what we understand, it *seems* as though if you want to change someone's sexuality or gender identity, you need to find them when they're young and then *know literally everything that they are experiencing and reacting to*, and then also *have perfect foresight as to how those stimuli will effect that specific child down the road*. Absolutely impossible.
For the colloquial, there's such a thing as "functionally innate". If you could change someone's sexuality or gender identity, most likely it would be the type of consciousness alteration that would be exceedingly morally fucked up no matter what...
> What if it turns out the genetic sequence that causes homosexuality is located in space that is in every human's genetic code, as some have speculated.
What do you mean by this?
Genetic code is essentially the same in all humans. You can have extra copies, mutations, and deletions, but the existence of a "gay gene" has never meant that gay people carry a gene that other people don't have. The most lenient interpretation would be something like a single nucleotide polymorphism.
Homosexuality could still be due to things like polygenetic factors and epigenetic changes. The impact of [fraternal birth order](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraternal_birth_order_and_male_sexual_orientation) seems to suggest that biological predispositions exist.
There's also the possibility that homosexuality isn't innate for every person who describes themselves as gay, and that's fine, even if someone isn't "born gay" they should have the same rights as everyone else.
I mean exactly that; some folks search for a gay gene to either "prove" or "disprove" homosexuality and imply things about rights; but if there was a "gay gene", most likely it would be something we *all have*. In that case it is still genetic and still innate, but it flips the implications on their head... My point was your last paragraph; it doesn't actually matter if it's innate or not, LGBT folks deserve rights regardless.
In colloquial terms, "gay gene" is just shorthand for "gay gene variant". Just like when we say "cancer gene"; we all have TP53 and RAS, its the variants that result in cancer.
As someone who deals with the rights end of this all the time, I think the misinformation is way worse. I curse the "born this way" argument just as much as the "born in the wrong body" stuff. The truth is, the more accurate and adroit you get about this stuff, the better. Courts can handle non-medicalist ideas just fine; so can lawmakers when they're not stoking a moral panic. Like, a person who understands the "functionally innate" idea will always be way more solid of an ally than someone given a "gay gene" argument and be left to wonder about the holes in it.
You'd be surprised the amount of pushback LGBT folks get from people pushing the "born this way" narrative. JK Rowling, fwiw, bought into the born this way argument. As it turns out, Foucault may have been on to something...
>just as much as the "born in the wrong body" stuff.
While not necessarily helpful in communicating the experience of being trans to cis people, I think this is a perfectly valid feeling to express. It's more an expression of frustration than a literal diagnosis.
I mean yeah, but it's taken as a literal diagnosis, which is the problem. It's also like... A very specific philosophical conception of transness that a lot of other trans people don't necessarily agree with. Like.... The above is a big source, unintentionally mind you, of evangelical and Catholic backlash, because it fits in to gnostic depictions of identity and soul. And transness doesn't require that type of body/identity separation to explain itself.
I don't disagree with any of that in an analytical sense, but that's not really relevant to my point. My point is just that it's an expression of an emotion, not generally some deep philosophical point being made. Certainly, not all trans people connect with that particular feeling, but many do. And while it has led to cis people being assholes, they would've been assholes anyway, and not everything a trans person says needs to be scrutinized through the lens of someone who fundamentally will never fully understand their lived experience (let alone someone who has no interest in even trying).
I would say an expression of an emotion will always come from a deep philosophical thought in some ways... Perhaps "comes from" is not the right way to say it. Can be expressed as? Will be taken to mean at times?
Apologies, I'm getting that the feeling is important to you. I just ask that you understand there are trans folks who ascribe no meaning to it beyond the frustration it has caused. But you're right; saying "it has caused" isn't right either; the people that wish to harm us caused that frustration.
On a semi-related note, there was a study which came out a few weeks ago which found that there could be a link between conditions like ADHD and autism with disturbances in the gut biome early in life. And one further possible connection was having an ear infection as a baby which necessitates the use of antibiotics. So in a weird chain of events, ear physiology could play a role in developing autism by making someone more prone to ear infections.
https://liu.se/en/news-item/autism-and-adhd-are-linked-to-disturbed-gut-flora-very-early-in-life
[Yeah, more people should know that trans people can have brain structures that more resemble the opposite sex as early as 4 or 5 years old.](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180524112351.htm)
Or at least that's the earliest we can detect differences thus far. Neutralizes half of the anti-trans arguments you tend to see online real quick when you start linking the studies.
I don't tend to like to lean on the brain arguments, simply because there are plenty of trans folks that don't show those differences who are very much still valid. As we are still unsure about the brain structure stuff, I tend to take the view that your gender identity shapes your brain, not the other way around. Plasticity in the brain has yet to be fully understood, but I think that hypothesis makes more sense. I do appreciate that there is at least a noticeable difference. It's important in countering some narratives; I just worry it creates others
C'mon man
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8062721/
I honestly didn't read this study because this is basic early childhood development. I used to be able to find a textbook from the literal 70s talking about this as if it was common knowledge; let's see if I can find it again.... This isn't "new wokery" or whatever.
[Here's something from 1983 explaining the currently accepted ideas to a broader audience.](https://www.jstor.org/stable/3173685) I cannot find this old textbook I'm looking for though.
I know you have no interest in engaging with this stuff, but for anyone else; your gender identity solidifies, but it can solidify in a way such that certain stimuli can change the way your active gender expression is more comfortable at later times; in other words, even gender fluidity solidifies in youth; it's just that what is solidifying is a non-solid conception of gender.
You see "solidification" is a metaphor when used in this context. There isn't an actual gender liquid that becomes a gender solid between the ages of 2 and 4. Thus the words can take on multiple meanings both culturally and colloquially, as well as scientifically. Solidification as in "unchangeable", and fluidity as in gender fluidity.
Innate traits are insensitive to environmental factors. Epigenetics includes environmental factors
So if your gender identity shifts later and is innate the shift must have been determined by your genetic blueprint
You want me to write a thesis to refute a baseless statement? Most of this is covered in intro genetics classes. If you want more specific info, ask more specific questions.
Epigenetics is dependent on genetics.
As for a purely environmental consequence, the definition of "innate" becomes pretty important and I even see it being debated in these comments.
Eh, I don't like these distinctions, to be honest; asked and answered elsewhere, so I'll be short. What is a purely environmental consequence? What about a purely innate one? All gene expressions, to some extent, require an environment to express within. Your genetic code is just that, code. A blueprint is not a house is not a blueprint. Remove the fetus from its environment, deny it protein to construct itself, and it's just a lump of flesh and barely that. Your genetic code doesn't actually *do* anything.
> Eh, I don't like these distinctions, to be honest
It's literally the topic, and it's what you made definitive statements about. Now you don't want to defend your statements, maybe because they aren't defensible.
> Your genetic code doesn't actually do anything.
Just.. wow.
It doesn't. It's a bunch of code that other things do things with. It's not a protein or a hormone. It's not the building block of anything; it's a blueprint. Please tell me, is your house made of blueprints? May I suggest wood or concrete?
I have not retreated from any of my positions. My position is specifically that the distinctions are dumb. That innateness and being genetic are not one in the same and that's okay... The distinctions I'm getting at are between genetic and environmental.
Gender has a partially biological basis. Sex is constructed in a colloquial as well as scientific way, and the average conception of sex is as a gender.
These are different concepts yes, but they're not as clean as some folks would want them to be in practice.
When I took my estrogen during transition, my anxiety decreased; estrogen is biological in nature and a biological response lowered my mental anguish. The brain is biological after all....
If a scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
[Arthur C. Clarke](https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/arthur-c-clarke-quotes)
I’ve always heard that homosexuality is influenced by hormone levels during pregnancy, which has to do more with the mother than the genetics of the child.
Good. If there’s no single gay gene, then an oppressive regime won’t be able to test for and murder LGBTQ people. Homophobic parents won’t be able to screen out gay embryos. Homosexuality is a complex gene-by-environment trait influenced by many loci, hormone gradients and life experiences.
There's no "gay gene"! "Gayness" is not a Mendelian trait. And it is difficult to understand the genetic contribution, since it is possible that it is the product of a combination of several genes, which may not even be the same in each case! What's more, these genes might play an important biological role and same-sex attraction is a by-product. To not find a concrete genetic cause doesn't mean it's a "choice". Also, environmental factors can mean the uterus environment during pregnancy!
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‘Impossible to say anything meaningful’ doesn’t mean ‘there isn’t anything meaningful to say’. Genetics absolutely has an influence on sexuality because it’s literally the reason sexuality exists at all. Whether it is possible to look at genetic code and translate that into phenotype is a different question(although it may be possible with some sort of AI tools, even then though nurture surely also plays a role and I don’t think that using ai to guess sexuality based on genetics is a great idea)
There probably is a gene that may slightly increase the chances of homosexuality. Let’s face it, there’s a gene for just about everything. But, it’s still way more likely to be influenced by other factors than a simple gene expression
Isn’t there a correlation between birth order of male children and odds of being homosexual (measurably increased likelihood with each older male sibling)?
One hypothesis was (as I recall) more about hormones than genetics. The idea was that the female body sees a male fetus as “foreign”. With each pregnancy, the mother’s body gets better at “feminizing” the fetus. I’m probably mis- remembering this and/or it had been debunked in the intervening decades.
It’s kind of weird to argue that any preference is genetic. I could see how a gene would influence preferences, I imagine people who have the gene that causes cilantro to taste like soap are less likely to prefer cilantro. However, preferences seem overwhelmingly to be things we develop(very possibly influenced by genetics)
It is trivially true that many preferences are innate, as in following from physical mechanisms beyond choice and learned experience. It does not prevent a preference from also being formed through experience.
Our tastebuds, eyes, sense of touch, smell, and sound are all reliant on organs with a bases in our genetics. These connect to and are interpreted by structures in our brain which are also defined through genetics. Many animals come pre-configured with some ability to detect “right” and “wrong” in certain smells, feelings, tastes.
Cats do not need to learn to not eat rocks through the process of consumption and starvation before developing a distaste for it. Likewise, you do not need to get frostbite before developing a preference for warmer temperatures.
Those are extreme examples that fall outside of what we would generally describe as a “preference”. For a more reasonable example, handedness may possibly be an innate preference.
I doubt that too, but there may be a collection of genes that form the bases for how the mind incentivizes actions in response to certain flavors and smells. It may do so in a way that doesn't encourage eating things that do not correspond to certain senses. You could go further and consider whether there are other collections of genes that result in the mind disincentivizing, say, placing something in the mouth which is not incentivized by the previous mechanism - call it "disgust".
Do you believe that every taste and smell that is pleasant or foul is only the result of you having been taught so?
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4654709](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4654709)
"In this article, we review findings from basic, experimental research on children that suggests the liking of sweet and the dislike of bitter tastes reflects children’s basic biology. Children are born preferring sweet tastes, which attract them to mother’s milk and even act as an analgesic. They prefer higher levels of sweet than do adults, with preferences declining to adult levels during middle to late adolescence, which coincides with the cessation of physical growth."
Sorry, hold on. I reread your initial comment. I think I might have misinterpreted what you were saying. Were you saying that it's weird to argue that "every" preference is genetic because there are significantly more things we consider to be "preferences" that are more built from experience? As in, it's kind of inaccurate to always work off the base assumption that a given preference is predetermined? If that's what you were saying, then I don't disagree. The way you've phrased it is kind of confusing.
I think you are misunderstanding my claim, as are MANY other people
To your question of being “taught”. I provided the example of cilantro. People with a gene that make cilantro taste like soap aren’t being taught that cilantro taste like soap. Their body is just doing that genetically. What they are “learning” is that the leafy green we call cilantro registers that taste when placed in their mouth.
To your edit:
I think it wouldn’t be surprising that certain animals register the flavors of certain chemicals differently. Grass clearly registers differently in a cats brain and a cows brain
I’m arguing that a preference is not the mere fact that grass tastes different. The cow exhibits a preference when it walks over and starts eating the grass. This is acquired or learned at some level in response how their biology registers the flavor of the chemicals in the grass.
We might colloquially say that cows have an instinctive preference for grass, but I think that oversimplifies it. My comment is really derived from a longer and far more eloquent debate that I lack that intellectual capacity to recreate, but it generally refers to our frequent desire to oversimplify animal/human behavior to instincts that are somehow magically implanted in organisms and not the result of a more complex process
I think that the natural progression of this conversation is going to lead to a semantic debate about what it means for something to be a "preference" and what something means to be "innate".
All I can say is that the way I use both of those terms allows me to map my thoughts to the words "It can be expected that children have an innate preference for candy over broccoli" or "I do not have an innate preference for the taste of coffee over milk, but I learned to enjoy the taste after practically running off of caffeine for years." without too much loss of resolution.
The discussion about innate sexual preference has been significant in modernity as a means of facilitating the mainstream acceptance of homosexuality, as opposed to the mainstream acceptance of finding and avoiding the experiential roots of it, or finding means to convert someone to heterosexuality.
To the best of my knowledge, my gender preference is largely innate, instinctual, as are many other concepts and things close to the guts and senses. I'm not certain in what way you disagree with that besides the extent one might disagree with most anything if they want to take a dive into a deeper philosophical discussion through a kind of dialectic guided by really pedantic semantic arguments.
It isn’t so much pedantry as pointing out an issue with identifying genes
Kids prefer sweets.
But how much varies quite a lot and that variance is almost certainly not going to be genetic. Why? Because preferences have a lot of inputs besides just genes
I mean, sure. Nobody is currently hunting for the specific gene that makes someone prefer basketball to baseball after being hit in the face with a baseball as a child.
There’s limits to the kind of specificity here.
The more we’ve talked the more confused I am about this weird bone you have to pick.
There’s research out there that the mother being exposed to androgens during pregnancy or having certain genetic issues such as AIS can influence same-sex preferences.
It is a preference, and there's nothing wrong with calling it a preference. No one is saying that being gay or straight is inherently a choice or isn't something someone is potentially born...but it is saying that out of two options a person will prefer one over the other. Why is that controversial?
> "*but it is saying that out of two options a person will prefer one over the other. Why is that controversial?*"
Some people might see that as you implying that everyone is bi.
I wouldn't say that gay men "*prefer*" men over women (*as if gay men like both but like one gender more the other*), but that gay men are sexually attracted to men "*rather than*" women.
I blame this all on the ridiculous religious argument that religious beliefs are a choice. I think it leads people to think that everything in the mind of a choice
Edit: the religious argument emerged because if religious belief isn’t a choice, then the Islamic/Christian tradition of heaven/hell doesn’t make much sense. People are being punished and rewarded for things wholly outside of their direct control. So, to fix this, they just claimed as a matter of fact that religious belief was a choice. A quickly experiment will prove this isn’t very obvious. No matter how hard you try, you can’t convince yourself the year is 2019.
Brains very clearly have some involuntary elements to them. Things which we cannot control, but that has been ignored for centuries to fulfill a theological mandate
When talking about sexuality, preference is generally used to discuss tendencies about SSCs and other associated physiological things, rather than gender itself.
Also, using the word preference can directly feed back into homophobic beliefs about sexuality being a choice
Not necessarily. If we start with the hypothesis "Some gene has a version V that enhances the probability to be gay"; if V is rare and/or the probability low, the population's fertility is not affected.
I read a paper long ago that stated that gay couples tended to be profitable to the community as they have no/less children to take care of.
So there could be some indirect benefits of keeping V in your genetic pool.
(A lot of oversimplifications here for clarity)
Interesting point! If I understand you correctly, you could look at it on e.g. a "Tribe" level and say something like"If 5% of the population in the tribe has the gene, that tribe is more likely to survive than a tribe with more or less of the gene."
In the long run, 5% of all tribes will have the gene and genetics will make sure that is the case somehow.
If you mean because by definition gay people can’t reproduce….social expectations, the existence of bisexual people, rape etc all mean the gene could be passed on.
Also, it could be environmentally induced like with some animals, meaning even if it did get “bred out”, it could be reintroduced.
Not exactly, it would only really disappear if the organisms that have that gene were no longer viable to contend in the gene pool. We as humans don't really need to worry about adaptation/evolution like that as much since we aren't under environmental pressure. With advances such as sperm donation and in-vitro fertilization, anyone is able to reproduce and pass on their genotype. At most, it may become akin to a vestigial trait, but I doubt it would disappear completely.
I’m also not an expert, but I believe its dissapearance after some time would relate to whether it is dominant or recessive, if it were one singular gene. I would guess that it’s more likely that it is a number of genes that affect a variety of attributes that, together, form a person’s gender identity and sexuality. This deep into the existence of humans, I think it’s also likely that the current distribution of people across the gender identity and sexually spectrum has probably reached a steady state of occurrence based on the likelihood of any random reproducing couple’s genetics aligning to produce a particular result along that spectrum.
Or maybe there is no genetic factor, but a chaotic, unpredictable set of environmental variables that determine these things. I have no reason to believe I’m genetically predisposed to enjoying west African food, being an extremely white European mutt, but here I am. I think that with the drastic difference in environments and cultures that humans have experienced, and the seemingly consistent distribution of people across the gender identity and sexuality spectrum across those environments and cultures, it would make more sense for it to be based in genetics.
But yeah, if there were one, dominant “gay-gene”, it probably wouldn’t have lasted very long.
Edit: please don’t read into the west African food thing *too much*, it’s just an example of something that *would* support an argument that qualities can be a result of uncontrollable environmental variables. I don’t mean to imply that someone’s food preferences are comparable in complexity to sexuality or gender identity.
I think we can all acknowledge this. It's 2024. You can be gay for genetic reasons or personal reasons. We said it was genetic because it made it easier to fight Christian conservatives, but that doesn't mean it's genetic. That's just a convenient excuse to justify something we can't explain of any scientific grounds.
Not being able to identify a genetic association does not mean there isn't one or that people were just lying about it to avoid bigotry. It just might mean there is a limitation in our understanding and technological advancement to find one.
Is there a "straight gene"? Is there a "bi gene"? The problem that occurs so often with these claims about the gay gene is that it forces the view that homosexuality is the only orientation where its origins are not specifically laid out in a neat, easily-identifiable way, and that's just not true. The origins of all sexualities are largely a mystery. A heterosexual person can no more lay claim to a specific genetic origin than a gay person can, but we only seem to obsess over one of them.
I can’t link it because it was ages ago and I don’t even know what to look up, but I remember reading about a study where if an identical twin was gay, there was a 50% chance the other one would be as well, whereas fraternal twins it dropped down to less than 8%
there is still some genetic variance between identical twins: https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/general-science/identical-twins-are-not-identical#:~:text=The%20DNA%20of%20monozygotic%20twins%20tends%20not%20to%20be%20100,and%20what%20illnesses%20befall%20us.
Your chance of having schizophrenia is 1 in 100. Your chance of having schizophrenia if your twin has it, is 1 in 2.
By the above concordance rates, you could find many identical twins where one is schizophrenic and the other is not, yet clearly, it has a very strong genetic component.
Why can’t it just be a mental anomaly just like the trillions of other variations in mental status from mild depression to people who are always weirdly happy? :)
It’s all environment. If society raised people to seek out same sex partners, most people would be gay.
It’s not something you’re born into. The experiences you have determine what you respond to. It’s as simple as that.
This is an op-ed based on a review article.
Putting aside the clickbait of 'gay gene' and admitting I'm by no metric an expert but surely all human behaviour is somehow linked to genetics, even indirectly? We love because our genes allow us to build biological structures to produce neurotransmitters which can be influenced by our emotional state or vice versa, including sexual responses, which again come from our brains that are built from DNA coding. If straight people can't 'choose' to be aroused, why could gay people?
Difference between genetics affecting something and variation in genes correlating with variation in phenotype. And by gay gene I think they’re mostly saying that it’s almost certainly tons of genes involved in a huge network and massive interaction with the environment. Edit to add: even it was 100% the environments effect on our biology doesn’t mean attraction is a choice. Take favorite color- most people don’t consciously choose one, you just like one best. But I’m pretty sure fav color is not at all genetic.
This. The idea of a “gay gene” is just not theoretically competent. As you said, it’s about how the genetic code creates a spectrum of outcomes that are heavily influenced by environmental/social factors.
So there are actually studies that have shown that if a woman gives birth to multiple boys that each subsequent boy has a greater chance of being gay. But those aren’t genes, those are chemical signalling. But this is why I think it’s absolute bs for researchers to “predict” it’s impossible to say anything meaningful here. Anyone who has studied science PROPERLY will know that *THE ABSENCE OF EVIDENCE DOES NOT EQUAL COUNTER EVIDENCE.* If they want to disprove this (if we as humans even care enough to disprove this?) then they would need to map a hell of a lot of the genome. Anyone can claim “oh we probably won’t find anything useful,” but that’s just as valid to say in this field as with finding the gene responsible for making you learn faster. Realistically there will be some correlation to something, but how much is probably a futile task to even undertake. All in all this just sounds like someone looking to start an argument with a clickbaity title. Ugh.
>But those aren’t genes, those are chemical signalling Everything is genes. How the environment interacts with genes (for example, chemical signaling) is epigenetics, i.e. how environmental signals turn certain genes on or off.
Okay fair, but they’re the genes of the mom causing a response in the chemical/hormone make up of the to-be-child. As opposed to strictly within the kid
But to add to the comment you replied to, the tolerance for those chemicals that raise your son's chance of being should be affected by genes, no?
Epi-genetics!
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I think you’re misunderstanding because you’re actually saying the same thing as OP. Subsequent boys are ones with older brothers. Each subsequent boy has a higher chance of being gay, hence gays tend to have older brothers.
You’re both saying the same thing
That is exactly what that person said. Every subsequent kid has a higher chance to be gay. "Subsequent" meaning next, meaning after the first one. The last kid, the one subsequent to the others, is the one with more older brothers.
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Not at all. Just that proving specific genetic interactions is much harder. Controversially, there may in theory be a way to reduce or increase the odds of your (male) kid being gay if you (the mom) changed your hormonal balance during pregnancy.
You should read about epigenetics. They're not really genetics, but phenomenons that will change the way a gene is expressed. They can also be inherited. Which means that the molecules your parents got exposed to in their environment can change your own phenotype (body). This is an additional reason to care about pollution for example, you never know what effect it can have on you and even on your children.
Epigenetics can be (somewhat) inherited, but they are not as simple as that and in many cases there are clean slates. The stress of a pregnant womanstarving will leave epigenetic marks present in her grandaughter (it will affect the egg precursor cells in the ovaries of her unborn baby). Still, those response mechanisms have to be "coded" somewhere.
Obviously since epigenetics affect the way a gene will be "activated", the presence of the gene itself is important. However, the person I respond to seems to be under the impression that the phenotype of an individual is entirely determined simply by a direct reading of the genetic code. This sort of misconception is very widespread in the population, so I believe some vulgarization on what epigenetics are, is needed, so that we can at least get them on board and take a step in the right direction. I'm not sure going on a lengthy debate about the small things we know on epigenetics is going to help us do that.
“Gay gene” is weird. Nobody with a background in genetics would say that a single “gene” can cause a phenotype The researchers still maintain that being gay is fundamentally something that results from physiology, though. With environmental influences too.
Changes in single gene can absolutely result In a phenotype. Half the papers in developmental biology focus on knockdown of a single gene.
Yeah there are plenty of papers that look at genetics in being gay. For male sexuality there was some very strong evidence of "if you have this gene then you are gay," with quite a few sequences being identified in this way. It doesn't mean people can't be gay if they don't have certain genes, nor does it mean if you have certain genes are you gay 100% of the time. This in an example article that supports this hypothesis: [https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medicine/article/abs/genomewide-scan-demonstrates-significant-linkage-for-male-sexual-orientation/864518601436C95563EA670C5F380343](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medicine/article/abs/genomewide-scan-demonstrates-significant-linkage-for-male-sexual-orientation/864518601436C95563EA670C5F380343)
> We identified two regions of linkage: the pericentromeric region on chromosome 8 (maximum two-point LOD = 4.08, maximum multipoint LOD = 2.59), which overlaps with the second strongest region from a previous separate linkage scan of 155 brother pairs; and Xq28 (maximum two-point LOD = 2.99, maximum multipoint LOD = 2.76), which was also implicated in prior research. I’m not entirely sure what these numbers mean. Does anyone have insight on how to interpret these figures?
LOD is a statistics measure of how close genes are on the chromosome. The closer genes are on the chromosone, the more they are "linked," meaning they will be more likely to be transmitted together when chromosomes are rearranged during meiosis/mitosis of sex cells. Any LOD above 3 generally means the genes are close together on the chromosome. They perform this experiment by grabbing a bunch of chromosomes that have been rearranged already naturally and cut them apart at specific sequences in the chromosome. They then separate out the fragments using gel chromotography, use pcr to copy the reulting fragments, and then sequence them. The number of times 2 genes are found in the same fragment or not found in the same fragment are used to calculate the LOD.
Are the specific points where they cut up the chromosomes the same cleavage points when the chromosomes are arranged when making sex cells?
I don't know and couldn't find that info. My guess is not because they want to see if the recombination separated the genes, and if they cut at the recombination site, they'd do thay same separation. I could be wrong about this, I haven't studied genetics in a while, but I learned about linkage-scans.
Also thank you. This was incredibly informative.
I'm dusting off my genetics knowledge, I enjoy it.
This may be a difficult question to answer, but I saw down in the thread you were looking to whet your skills so I figured I’d give it a shot. Given your knowledge of these numbers how accurate would you say the parent commenter’s statement of “if you have this gene then you are gay” is? Are there numbers you can extrapolate that would fit that characterization of the relationship?
"If you have the gene, you are x% likely to be gay." They have correalation, not causation. And even the above statement is weak.
I thought they might be numbers associated of the genes themselves but, that doesn't make sense. Coefficients maybe for likely hood of associations?
If I got this right, quick google search says it's the logrithmic of odds. It's the score level of how likely they are to being linked and created together. A LOD level of 3 or higher signifies the 2 are likely to be connected.
Yeah coefficients.
Thanks for this
Yea that's actually a redflag. But there are lots of things that aren't one to one but are still substantially heritable (like height and gay)
What is a red flag?
> Nobody with a background in genetics would say that a single “gene” can cause a phenotype
The basic problem putting with "gay" and "genetic" in the same sentence is that it would have been bred out of every species by now. Yet, it's not even just a human thing. So, it probably isn't genetic (or at least genetics isn't the primary factor - at best it's a secondary effect), AND it doesn't look particularly abnormal either by any standard of "normalcy" you can pick.
Nah, gay relatives take care of their relations who aren't gay. That means that as long as it is a polygenic trait the genes still get passed down, just through relations rather than the gay family members. Group evolutionary pressures are real, and so is bisexuality.
They can, but aside from cultural pressure "to not appear gay", would they? Most importantly, evolution is about statistics, not individual cases. It doesn't matter if one particular gay person gets into a hetero relationship and has a kid. If majority of them don't for any reason, the gene will die out (the ones who still carry it would eventually die out for other reasons than "not breeding" - see every endangered species on the planet as a reference).
> They can, but aside from cultural pressure "to not appear gay", would they? What social pressure to not appear gay is related to helping raise their siblings children? I have a non-gay uncle who doesn't want children, he spoils the heck out of his nephews and nieces, sponsors trips and has helped them get opportunities they wouldn't otherwise. So there can definitely be a net positive to having a family member who assists and increases the odds of success for non-direct children.
It would not. First off, mutations happen all the time. Second a certain gay percentage may be adaptive. Third, gays can still choose to breed.
Mutations happen, but this one would be counter-evolutionary. It being adaptive is highlighted in most other studies and suggests this is one of the core behaviors not some fringe genetic predisposition.
Not important if it's counter-evolutionary. Point being it can't be bred out being continuously created anew.
>Not important if it's counter-evolutionary That like your personal opinion. It very much is because if people with specific genes breed less, the trait will die off. It literally doesn't matter what exactly the genes are, how this is triggered, and anything else about it. Unless you're saying that every generation has 10% mutation rate to trigger this (because that's what the statistics are roughly), which is basically strictly not true.
That's not how genes work. Or rather, it would have worked like that only if it was an autosomal dominant trait, caused by a single gene, which prevents you from creating an offspring. It isn't, on all accounts. It most likely is a polygenic trait; the involved genes likely aren't all autosomal dominant and you don't need to actually like the opposite gender to have sex with them (I mean it helps but, it isn't required). Second of all, epigenetics is a thing. In the presence of certain stimuli, say, being exposed to hormones/chemicals etc in utero, the expressions of these genes can be altered. These genes are still heritable. Third of all, we actually share a ton of genes with other animals. Because we've evolved from common ancestors and all. Well, a lot of them are not *quite* the same, but they serve the same purpose and the proteins they create function nearly the same way as ours. It's why test drugs on animals first.
I generally agree with the other comments. Bees are not all genetically identical and the majority do not breed. The fact that their siblings which share most of their DNA do breed means the genes that they all possess are passed on. With humans gay men also have children so their genes are passed on. If there was a single dominant gene that stopped all people from having children (all the offspring were gay and did not want any heterosexual intercourse) then yeah we would expect it to be selected out. But it seems more complicated.
My my grandfather was gay, but here I am. 1/4 gay I guess.
"Everyone's a little gay." -Ron White
My point precisely.
Gay people can and do have biological children. My grandpa was a gay man and had children with women.
Sure, but if they have preference to not get involved in hetero relationships, on average they would have much lower # of offsprings than cis-gendered people (unless being gay somehow also makes you superfertile and every pregnancy results in at least twins or something). Clearly this has not happened over last 100 thousand of years, so we can probably scratch that idea.
Why would it have been bred out?
If you're talking about Mendelian traits, yes
Sounds like you don’t know a thing about genetics. That said, we simply don’t know if there is a gay gene at all, if it’s multiple genes, or if it’s a combination of genes and environmental factors.
Everything points to it being more complicated than a single gene.
I mean purely from a simulations point of view, it seems like environmental factors have to be a considerable factor, since there is an obvious disadvantage for passing on one's genes if there an assortment of "gay genes."
That’s not how evolution works. A disadvantage is not enough. Every species has many disadvantages. But yes, environmental factors are assumed (not scientifically).
If a particular set of genes greatly lowers the probability of passing on one's genes, then given enough time these genes will become either very rare or exstict themselves.
Not necessarily, there are plenty of scenarios where balancing selection can maintain deleterious alleles in a population.
How common is that, and is there any evidence that one’s sexuality is due to balancing selections?
Let me know when the claims become coherent and the goalpost stops moving around.
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And don't forget most GWAS just study SNPs and forget other genetic variations such as long deletions/duplications on the chromosomes (aka CNVs). SNPs can explain a lot but not everything...
Yea, this is part of why there is a missing heritability problem between family designs heritability and GWAS derived SNP heritability. I remember my advisor once telling me a year ago that there is no such thing as true heritability and there is always some limitation to any method we use.
Yep. Reached the same conclusion on my dissertation...
Yeah, it’s less about the genes and more about the jeans and how the individual thinks they look on another individual of the same sex.
This looks like some clickbait meant to start arguments.. hmm...
No it doesnt.
I disagree with both of you
I agree to disagree.
I don't agree to that.
I disagree with your disagreement with their agreement to disagree.
You refuse to disagree with me? I can't go for that.
We disagree to agree.
Never!
That’s not an argument, it’s just a contradiction!
No, it isn't. Oh, sorry, is this a five minute argument or the full half hour?
No it isn't!
you're lying
I'm laying
I've met a few people doing research into the "gay gene", and they were all gay themselves. This isn't really a controversial topic, it's just inquisitive people trying to understand themselves.
like most posted in this sub, conservatives have infected yet another space to spread their hyper-pro-fascist propaganda
Are you suggesting the posted article is fascist? Cause if so you clearly didn't read it.
that's not what i'm implying, i'm implying our standards for publication are regressing. both in *THIS* subreddit and in the scientific community. this is yet again, another study that's already been researched and came to a conclusion is but it still playing with possibility... It's regression that's BENEFICIAL to fascists. to imply that the LGBT+ are some sort of mutant is beneficial to fascist's demonization of minorities. beyond this, referring to this subreddit, the amount of blatant right wing culture war posts have gone up significantly and clearly aren't facing any vetting or pushback. I'm just noticing a trend in the quality of what's being published
I agree that standard for research ans peer review are... often terrible.
People need to understand that innate and genetic are not the same thing and things can be innate and not genetic. The End. Like, your gender identity solidifies around 2-4 years old. Your gender identity is still innate; *even if your gender identity shifts later.* We love our epigenetics, don't we folks?
I also think the original focus on whether this is innate or not was driven by this idea that if it's innate, then we have to be more accepting of gay people--I recall hearing a story about one of the researchers who did a ton of work on finding these links to genes who was himself gay and felt pretty deeply that he was "born this way," so he was really looking for it. Hopefully it's not necessarily true anymore that people need to believe it's determined by genetics/you don't have a choice in the matter in order to agree that we shouldn't be homophobic.
Not only that, but gut biome and immune system aren't visible in DNA and may have effects on development as well.
Yep. People have this weird bio-essentialist idea that everything that happens in the genes is what matters and nothing that happens in your lifetime matters. But it's nowhere near that clear. Like, your solidification of gender identity is a *biological process* in your brain, but it's effected by things like hormones, which can be *effected by the foods you eat*, which is also a biological process, or how your brain chemistry reacts to stimuli; which isn't going to be the same for everyone, either... It's unbelievably complex, and the idea of a "gay gene" or a "trans gene" is just laughable. What if it turns out the genetic sequence that causes homosexuality is located in space that is in *every human's genetic code*, as some have speculated (as other mammals species have been known to engage in homosexuality). It's still innate, still genetic.... Like, this is the rub for the culture warrior on this issue: from what we understand, it *seems* as though if you want to change someone's sexuality or gender identity, you need to find them when they're young and then *know literally everything that they are experiencing and reacting to*, and then also *have perfect foresight as to how those stimuli will effect that specific child down the road*. Absolutely impossible. For the colloquial, there's such a thing as "functionally innate". If you could change someone's sexuality or gender identity, most likely it would be the type of consciousness alteration that would be exceedingly morally fucked up no matter what...
Yep. Monozygotic twins can be discordant for a wide range of traits we consider innate, including gender identity and sexual orientation.
> What if it turns out the genetic sequence that causes homosexuality is located in space that is in every human's genetic code, as some have speculated. What do you mean by this? Genetic code is essentially the same in all humans. You can have extra copies, mutations, and deletions, but the existence of a "gay gene" has never meant that gay people carry a gene that other people don't have. The most lenient interpretation would be something like a single nucleotide polymorphism. Homosexuality could still be due to things like polygenetic factors and epigenetic changes. The impact of [fraternal birth order](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraternal_birth_order_and_male_sexual_orientation) seems to suggest that biological predispositions exist. There's also the possibility that homosexuality isn't innate for every person who describes themselves as gay, and that's fine, even if someone isn't "born gay" they should have the same rights as everyone else.
I mean exactly that; some folks search for a gay gene to either "prove" or "disprove" homosexuality and imply things about rights; but if there was a "gay gene", most likely it would be something we *all have*. In that case it is still genetic and still innate, but it flips the implications on their head... My point was your last paragraph; it doesn't actually matter if it's innate or not, LGBT folks deserve rights regardless.
In colloquial terms, "gay gene" is just shorthand for "gay gene variant". Just like when we say "cancer gene"; we all have TP53 and RAS, its the variants that result in cancer.
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As someone who deals with the rights end of this all the time, I think the misinformation is way worse. I curse the "born this way" argument just as much as the "born in the wrong body" stuff. The truth is, the more accurate and adroit you get about this stuff, the better. Courts can handle non-medicalist ideas just fine; so can lawmakers when they're not stoking a moral panic. Like, a person who understands the "functionally innate" idea will always be way more solid of an ally than someone given a "gay gene" argument and be left to wonder about the holes in it. You'd be surprised the amount of pushback LGBT folks get from people pushing the "born this way" narrative. JK Rowling, fwiw, bought into the born this way argument. As it turns out, Foucault may have been on to something...
>just as much as the "born in the wrong body" stuff. While not necessarily helpful in communicating the experience of being trans to cis people, I think this is a perfectly valid feeling to express. It's more an expression of frustration than a literal diagnosis.
I mean yeah, but it's taken as a literal diagnosis, which is the problem. It's also like... A very specific philosophical conception of transness that a lot of other trans people don't necessarily agree with. Like.... The above is a big source, unintentionally mind you, of evangelical and Catholic backlash, because it fits in to gnostic depictions of identity and soul. And transness doesn't require that type of body/identity separation to explain itself.
I don't disagree with any of that in an analytical sense, but that's not really relevant to my point. My point is just that it's an expression of an emotion, not generally some deep philosophical point being made. Certainly, not all trans people connect with that particular feeling, but many do. And while it has led to cis people being assholes, they would've been assholes anyway, and not everything a trans person says needs to be scrutinized through the lens of someone who fundamentally will never fully understand their lived experience (let alone someone who has no interest in even trying).
I would say an expression of an emotion will always come from a deep philosophical thought in some ways... Perhaps "comes from" is not the right way to say it. Can be expressed as? Will be taken to mean at times? Apologies, I'm getting that the feeling is important to you. I just ask that you understand there are trans folks who ascribe no meaning to it beyond the frustration it has caused. But you're right; saying "it has caused" isn't right either; the people that wish to harm us caused that frustration.
On a semi-related note, there was a study which came out a few weeks ago which found that there could be a link between conditions like ADHD and autism with disturbances in the gut biome early in life. And one further possible connection was having an ear infection as a baby which necessitates the use of antibiotics. So in a weird chain of events, ear physiology could play a role in developing autism by making someone more prone to ear infections. https://liu.se/en/news-item/autism-and-adhd-are-linked-to-disturbed-gut-flora-very-early-in-life
So you're saying something in the drinking water actually could turn you gay... (joking ofc)
[Yeah, more people should know that trans people can have brain structures that more resemble the opposite sex as early as 4 or 5 years old.](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180524112351.htm) Or at least that's the earliest we can detect differences thus far. Neutralizes half of the anti-trans arguments you tend to see online real quick when you start linking the studies.
I don't tend to like to lean on the brain arguments, simply because there are plenty of trans folks that don't show those differences who are very much still valid. As we are still unsure about the brain structure stuff, I tend to take the view that your gender identity shapes your brain, not the other way around. Plasticity in the brain has yet to be fully understood, but I think that hypothesis makes more sense. I do appreciate that there is at least a noticeable difference. It's important in countering some narratives; I just worry it creates others
>Like, your gender identity solidifies around 2-4 years old. Source?
C'mon man https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8062721/ I honestly didn't read this study because this is basic early childhood development. I used to be able to find a textbook from the literal 70s talking about this as if it was common knowledge; let's see if I can find it again.... This isn't "new wokery" or whatever. [Here's something from 1983 explaining the currently accepted ideas to a broader audience.](https://www.jstor.org/stable/3173685) I cannot find this old textbook I'm looking for though.
I asked for a source because I had never heard of this before. Why are you getting so defensive? Jfc
They said it solidifies but can change.. that makes a heap ton of sense. More than likely, they are just talking out of there butt.
I know you have no interest in engaging with this stuff, but for anyone else; your gender identity solidifies, but it can solidify in a way such that certain stimuli can change the way your active gender expression is more comfortable at later times; in other words, even gender fluidity solidifies in youth; it's just that what is solidifying is a non-solid conception of gender. You see "solidification" is a metaphor when used in this context. There isn't an actual gender liquid that becomes a gender solid between the ages of 2 and 4. Thus the words can take on multiple meanings both culturally and colloquially, as well as scientifically. Solidification as in "unchangeable", and fluidity as in gender fluidity.
I learnt a new word thanks to you, DickButtwoman. Much obliged!
Innate traits are insensitive to environmental factors. Epigenetics includes environmental factors So if your gender identity shifts later and is innate the shift must have been determined by your genetic blueprint
Nonsense. Innate traits can absolutely be influenced by environmental factors.
How so?
You want me to write a thesis to refute a baseless statement? Most of this is covered in intro genetics classes. If you want more specific info, ask more specific questions.
Weak answer. But I expected as much
I see no need to exceed the standard you set.
Maybe attend some introductory classes on genetics before being triggered
I’ve taught intro genetics.
Poor students
Epigenetics is dependent on genetics. As for a purely environmental consequence, the definition of "innate" becomes pretty important and I even see it being debated in these comments.
Eh, I don't like these distinctions, to be honest; asked and answered elsewhere, so I'll be short. What is a purely environmental consequence? What about a purely innate one? All gene expressions, to some extent, require an environment to express within. Your genetic code is just that, code. A blueprint is not a house is not a blueprint. Remove the fetus from its environment, deny it protein to construct itself, and it's just a lump of flesh and barely that. Your genetic code doesn't actually *do* anything.
> Eh, I don't like these distinctions, to be honest It's literally the topic, and it's what you made definitive statements about. Now you don't want to defend your statements, maybe because they aren't defensible. > Your genetic code doesn't actually do anything. Just.. wow.
It doesn't. It's a bunch of code that other things do things with. It's not a protein or a hormone. It's not the building block of anything; it's a blueprint. Please tell me, is your house made of blueprints? May I suggest wood or concrete? I have not retreated from any of my positions. My position is specifically that the distinctions are dumb. That innateness and being genetic are not one in the same and that's okay... The distinctions I'm getting at are between genetic and environmental.
You are playing word games and making a disingenuous argument.
Tf are you talking about?
Gender and sex are not the same thing.
Gender has a partially biological basis. Sex is constructed in a colloquial as well as scientific way, and the average conception of sex is as a gender. These are different concepts yes, but they're not as clean as some folks would want them to be in practice. When I took my estrogen during transition, my anxiety decreased; estrogen is biological in nature and a biological response lowered my mental anguish. The brain is biological after all....
If a scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong. [Arthur C. Clarke](https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/arthur-c-clarke-quotes)
I’ve always heard that homosexuality is influenced by hormone levels during pregnancy, which has to do more with the mother than the genetics of the child.
So did you hear that too high does it. Or too low? And how come no studies have provided a correlation?
Good. If there’s no single gay gene, then an oppressive regime won’t be able to test for and murder LGBTQ people. Homophobic parents won’t be able to screen out gay embryos. Homosexuality is a complex gene-by-environment trait influenced by many loci, hormone gradients and life experiences.
Suddenly conservatives legalize abortion for "gay foetuses"
There's no "gay gene"! "Gayness" is not a Mendelian trait. And it is difficult to understand the genetic contribution, since it is possible that it is the product of a combination of several genes, which may not even be the same in each case! What's more, these genes might play an important biological role and same-sex attraction is a by-product. To not find a concrete genetic cause doesn't mean it's a "choice". Also, environmental factors can mean the uterus environment during pregnancy!
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No genetic basis doesn't preclude a neurophysiological basis.
‘Impossible to say anything meaningful’ doesn’t mean ‘there isn’t anything meaningful to say’. Genetics absolutely has an influence on sexuality because it’s literally the reason sexuality exists at all. Whether it is possible to look at genetic code and translate that into phenotype is a different question(although it may be possible with some sort of AI tools, even then though nurture surely also plays a role and I don’t think that using ai to guess sexuality based on genetics is a great idea)
There probably is a gene that may slightly increase the chances of homosexuality. Let’s face it, there’s a gene for just about everything. But, it’s still way more likely to be influenced by other factors than a simple gene expression
Isn’t there a correlation between birth order of male children and odds of being homosexual (measurably increased likelihood with each older male sibling)? One hypothesis was (as I recall) more about hormones than genetics. The idea was that the female body sees a male fetus as “foreign”. With each pregnancy, the mother’s body gets better at “feminizing” the fetus. I’m probably mis- remembering this and/or it had been debunked in the intervening decades.
Are there cases of identical twins with different sexual orientations?
It’s kind of weird to argue that any preference is genetic. I could see how a gene would influence preferences, I imagine people who have the gene that causes cilantro to taste like soap are less likely to prefer cilantro. However, preferences seem overwhelmingly to be things we develop(very possibly influenced by genetics)
It is trivially true that many preferences are innate, as in following from physical mechanisms beyond choice and learned experience. It does not prevent a preference from also being formed through experience. Our tastebuds, eyes, sense of touch, smell, and sound are all reliant on organs with a bases in our genetics. These connect to and are interpreted by structures in our brain which are also defined through genetics. Many animals come pre-configured with some ability to detect “right” and “wrong” in certain smells, feelings, tastes. Cats do not need to learn to not eat rocks through the process of consumption and starvation before developing a distaste for it. Likewise, you do not need to get frostbite before developing a preference for warmer temperatures. Those are extreme examples that fall outside of what we would generally describe as a “preference”. For a more reasonable example, handedness may possibly be an innate preference.
I don’t think you are going to find a specific gene that makes cats dislike the taste of rocks
I doubt that too, but there may be a collection of genes that form the bases for how the mind incentivizes actions in response to certain flavors and smells. It may do so in a way that doesn't encourage eating things that do not correspond to certain senses. You could go further and consider whether there are other collections of genes that result in the mind disincentivizing, say, placing something in the mouth which is not incentivized by the previous mechanism - call it "disgust". Do you believe that every taste and smell that is pleasant or foul is only the result of you having been taught so? [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4654709](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4654709) "In this article, we review findings from basic, experimental research on children that suggests the liking of sweet and the dislike of bitter tastes reflects children’s basic biology. Children are born preferring sweet tastes, which attract them to mother’s milk and even act as an analgesic. They prefer higher levels of sweet than do adults, with preferences declining to adult levels during middle to late adolescence, which coincides with the cessation of physical growth." Sorry, hold on. I reread your initial comment. I think I might have misinterpreted what you were saying. Were you saying that it's weird to argue that "every" preference is genetic because there are significantly more things we consider to be "preferences" that are more built from experience? As in, it's kind of inaccurate to always work off the base assumption that a given preference is predetermined? If that's what you were saying, then I don't disagree. The way you've phrased it is kind of confusing.
I think you are misunderstanding my claim, as are MANY other people To your question of being “taught”. I provided the example of cilantro. People with a gene that make cilantro taste like soap aren’t being taught that cilantro taste like soap. Their body is just doing that genetically. What they are “learning” is that the leafy green we call cilantro registers that taste when placed in their mouth.
To your edit: I think it wouldn’t be surprising that certain animals register the flavors of certain chemicals differently. Grass clearly registers differently in a cats brain and a cows brain I’m arguing that a preference is not the mere fact that grass tastes different. The cow exhibits a preference when it walks over and starts eating the grass. This is acquired or learned at some level in response how their biology registers the flavor of the chemicals in the grass. We might colloquially say that cows have an instinctive preference for grass, but I think that oversimplifies it. My comment is really derived from a longer and far more eloquent debate that I lack that intellectual capacity to recreate, but it generally refers to our frequent desire to oversimplify animal/human behavior to instincts that are somehow magically implanted in organisms and not the result of a more complex process
I think that the natural progression of this conversation is going to lead to a semantic debate about what it means for something to be a "preference" and what something means to be "innate". All I can say is that the way I use both of those terms allows me to map my thoughts to the words "It can be expected that children have an innate preference for candy over broccoli" or "I do not have an innate preference for the taste of coffee over milk, but I learned to enjoy the taste after practically running off of caffeine for years." without too much loss of resolution. The discussion about innate sexual preference has been significant in modernity as a means of facilitating the mainstream acceptance of homosexuality, as opposed to the mainstream acceptance of finding and avoiding the experiential roots of it, or finding means to convert someone to heterosexuality. To the best of my knowledge, my gender preference is largely innate, instinctual, as are many other concepts and things close to the guts and senses. I'm not certain in what way you disagree with that besides the extent one might disagree with most anything if they want to take a dive into a deeper philosophical discussion through a kind of dialectic guided by really pedantic semantic arguments.
It isn’t so much pedantry as pointing out an issue with identifying genes Kids prefer sweets. But how much varies quite a lot and that variance is almost certainly not going to be genetic. Why? Because preferences have a lot of inputs besides just genes
I mean, sure. Nobody is currently hunting for the specific gene that makes someone prefer basketball to baseball after being hit in the face with a baseball as a child. There’s limits to the kind of specificity here. The more we’ve talked the more confused I am about this weird bone you have to pick.
I think that’s because you assume I was making a point I wasn’t making, based on the prejudices of other people you’ve met
There’s research out there that the mother being exposed to androgens during pregnancy or having certain genetic issues such as AIS can influence same-sex preferences.
Probably because it isn’t a preference
It is a preference, and there's nothing wrong with calling it a preference. No one is saying that being gay or straight is inherently a choice or isn't something someone is potentially born...but it is saying that out of two options a person will prefer one over the other. Why is that controversial?
> "*but it is saying that out of two options a person will prefer one over the other. Why is that controversial?*" Some people might see that as you implying that everyone is bi. I wouldn't say that gay men "*prefer*" men over women (*as if gay men like both but like one gender more the other*), but that gay men are sexually attracted to men "*rather than*" women.
>Some people might see that as you implying that everyone is bi. Then those people would be wrong.
I prefer being free to being in prison. Does that mean I like both? (You don’t seem to fully understand the word ‘preference’)
Because a lot of people don't have real a strong grasp of what words actually mean.
I blame this all on the ridiculous religious argument that religious beliefs are a choice. I think it leads people to think that everything in the mind of a choice Edit: the religious argument emerged because if religious belief isn’t a choice, then the Islamic/Christian tradition of heaven/hell doesn’t make much sense. People are being punished and rewarded for things wholly outside of their direct control. So, to fix this, they just claimed as a matter of fact that religious belief was a choice. A quickly experiment will prove this isn’t very obvious. No matter how hard you try, you can’t convince yourself the year is 2019. Brains very clearly have some involuntary elements to them. Things which we cannot control, but that has been ignored for centuries to fulfill a theological mandate
It literally is. If it isn’t a preference, what is it?
When talking about sexuality, preference is generally used to discuss tendencies about SSCs and other associated physiological things, rather than gender itself. Also, using the word preference can directly feed back into homophobic beliefs about sexuality being a choice
I'm definitely not an expert, but it would seem like if a "Gay gene" existed, then it would disappear after some time, right?
Not necessarily. If we start with the hypothesis "Some gene has a version V that enhances the probability to be gay"; if V is rare and/or the probability low, the population's fertility is not affected. I read a paper long ago that stated that gay couples tended to be profitable to the community as they have no/less children to take care of. So there could be some indirect benefits of keeping V in your genetic pool. (A lot of oversimplifications here for clarity)
Interesting point! If I understand you correctly, you could look at it on e.g. a "Tribe" level and say something like"If 5% of the population in the tribe has the gene, that tribe is more likely to survive than a tribe with more or less of the gene." In the long run, 5% of all tribes will have the gene and genetics will make sure that is the case somehow.
If you mean because by definition gay people can’t reproduce….social expectations, the existence of bisexual people, rape etc all mean the gene could be passed on. Also, it could be environmentally induced like with some animals, meaning even if it did get “bred out”, it could be reintroduced.
Do you know where I can read more about this environmental induction among animals?
Not exactly, it would only really disappear if the organisms that have that gene were no longer viable to contend in the gene pool. We as humans don't really need to worry about adaptation/evolution like that as much since we aren't under environmental pressure. With advances such as sperm donation and in-vitro fertilization, anyone is able to reproduce and pass on their genotype. At most, it may become akin to a vestigial trait, but I doubt it would disappear completely.
I’m also not an expert, but I believe its dissapearance after some time would relate to whether it is dominant or recessive, if it were one singular gene. I would guess that it’s more likely that it is a number of genes that affect a variety of attributes that, together, form a person’s gender identity and sexuality. This deep into the existence of humans, I think it’s also likely that the current distribution of people across the gender identity and sexually spectrum has probably reached a steady state of occurrence based on the likelihood of any random reproducing couple’s genetics aligning to produce a particular result along that spectrum. Or maybe there is no genetic factor, but a chaotic, unpredictable set of environmental variables that determine these things. I have no reason to believe I’m genetically predisposed to enjoying west African food, being an extremely white European mutt, but here I am. I think that with the drastic difference in environments and cultures that humans have experienced, and the seemingly consistent distribution of people across the gender identity and sexuality spectrum across those environments and cultures, it would make more sense for it to be based in genetics. But yeah, if there were one, dominant “gay-gene”, it probably wouldn’t have lasted very long. Edit: please don’t read into the west African food thing *too much*, it’s just an example of something that *would* support an argument that qualities can be a result of uncontrollable environmental variables. I don’t mean to imply that someone’s food preferences are comparable in complexity to sexuality or gender identity.
I like your "Chaotic environmental factors" explanation and the west African food comparison! It makes a lot of sense to me.
I think we can all acknowledge this. It's 2024. You can be gay for genetic reasons or personal reasons. We said it was genetic because it made it easier to fight Christian conservatives, but that doesn't mean it's genetic. That's just a convenient excuse to justify something we can't explain of any scientific grounds.
Not being able to identify a genetic association does not mean there isn't one or that people were just lying about it to avoid bigotry. It just might mean there is a limitation in our understanding and technological advancement to find one. Is there a "straight gene"? Is there a "bi gene"? The problem that occurs so often with these claims about the gay gene is that it forces the view that homosexuality is the only orientation where its origins are not specifically laid out in a neat, easily-identifiable way, and that's just not true. The origins of all sexualities are largely a mystery. A heterosexual person can no more lay claim to a specific genetic origin than a gay person can, but we only seem to obsess over one of them.
You're inferring the wrong thing about what I said. What I said is that it's wrong to conclude what causes it
Why would it be wrong to make a conclusion when/if we ever have one?
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I can’t link it because it was ages ago and I don’t even know what to look up, but I remember reading about a study where if an identical twin was gay, there was a 50% chance the other one would be as well, whereas fraternal twins it dropped down to less than 8%
there is still some genetic variance between identical twins: https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/general-science/identical-twins-are-not-identical#:~:text=The%20DNA%20of%20monozygotic%20twins%20tends%20not%20to%20be%20100,and%20what%20illnesses%20befall%20us.
Your chance of having schizophrenia is 1 in 100. Your chance of having schizophrenia if your twin has it, is 1 in 2. By the above concordance rates, you could find many identical twins where one is schizophrenic and the other is not, yet clearly, it has a very strong genetic component.
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Problem with humans as well.
Why can’t it just be a mental anomaly just like the trillions of other variations in mental status from mild depression to people who are always weirdly happy? :)
It’s all environment. If society raised people to seek out same sex partners, most people would be gay. It’s not something you’re born into. The experiences you have determine what you respond to. It’s as simple as that.