AndyFromMonday said:
OT: Your sexuality is set even before birth. You can't change that and hell, why would you want to? Do whatever makes you happy and fuck everyone else.
AndyFromMonday said:
Your sexuality cannot be changed.
Scipio1770 said:
I think you're putting way too much emphasis on genetics in this, sexual and emotional behaviors are heavily influenced by social environment, education, hormonal balance, etc. the person's gnome is hardly the defining trait in determining sexuality.
StrixMaxima said:
Scipio up there summed up what I'd say quite well. The link between sexuality orientation and genetics/psychology is still full of gray zones, and I think it is a bit foolhardy to put all your chips into one or the other.
I've heard way too many stories to think this is simply a genetic issue. The society we live in interfere profoundly in all our behavioral actions.
And, I would never say that "If you are gay, you are gay" with such confidence, just as I'd never state that heterosexuality is etched in stone.
We need to accept we don't know as much as we think we do, when we are talking about the brain and its processes.
AndyFromMonday said:
If you're born gay, you will always be gay and I cannot stress this enough.
Okay... way too much misunderstanding about genetics' relationship to brain processes... As a psychologist, I will try to explain.
First, if homosexuality was purely genetic, gay people would need a "gay gene" somewhere up their family tree (or an unlikely random mutation), and, as far as anyone can tell, straight people are the ones who keep having children who turn out to be gay.
Secondly, sexual attraction is part of several complex brain processes. When children are very young, they go through cycles of rapid synaptic growth and rapid pruning, essentially completely rewiring their brains twice between 2 and 8. This is why no one can remember anything younger than 2 or 3 (and if they say they can, they either have false memories or they're lying). This synaptic growth and death is largely influenced by: nutrition, society, heavy metals (don't eat lead, kids!), family environment (delayed gratification is largely set by 6), and education. If memories can't survive, why do you think anything as complex as sexuality would? Especially since the synaptic pruning eliminates neural paths that aren't being used (and I don't know any four-year-olds who think about sex).
Thirdly, babies are never homosexual. Nor are they heterosexual. They are asexual. Children "discover" their sexuality during puberty. Anyone who claims sexual memories before puberty is reinterpreting nonsexual memories to have a sexual meaning later, lying, or was horribly abused as a child.
I know there's a lot of pressure to say that homosexuality is purely genetic and can't be changed because then you won't have religious crazies trying to "convert" gays to being straight, but the data doesn't back it up.
Now, I'm going to explain how schizophrenia works and make an analogy between homosexuality and schizophrenia
not because I think homosexuality is some kind of sickness, but because they're both complex brain processes that affect a small proportion of the population and for which no "cure" (either chemical or behavioral) has been developed ("cure" is in quotes because homosexuals shouldn't need to be "cured", I just can't think of a more succinct word).
So:
Schizophrenia has a genetic component (if one identical twin develops schizophrenia, the other is likely to as well), but is not
purely genetic (if one identical twin develops schizophrenia, the other does not
necessarily develop schizophrenia as well).
There also appears to be some effect where if the mother gets the flu when she's pregnant, the child is more likely to develop schizophrenia. No one knows why.
Finally, schizophrenia usually develops at the tail end of/just after puberty, so many have hypothesized that the hormone rush of puberty changes their brain structure, triggering schizophrenia. However, the potential to develop schizophrenia must already be there, and is likely a result of some combination of the following: genetics, heavy metals, nutrition, and culture (more important than you think... catatonic schizophrenia has been very prevalent in some cultures, but is almost unheard of in others).
To compare...
With homosexuality, there is a genetic component, but it's not purely genetic (a homosexual twin does not necessarily have a homosexual sibling, which blows your "purely genetic, born gay" hypotheses out of the water).
I doubt influenza in utero has influence on homosexuality. I mentioned it because
no one knows why it affects a person's likelihood to develop schizophrenia. Homosexuality's in a similar boat in a lot of ways:
no one knows the specific mechanisms that cause it to develop.
Finally, homosexuality (all sexuality, really) tends to develop during puberty, which means it's highly likely to be influenced by raging hormones, which can be influenced by (again): genetics, heavy metals, nutrition, culture, family environment, and their peers.
See, the problem with not understanding the basic mechanisms of how something develops means you can't really rule anything out. You can, however, rule out certain things being
purely the cause. You can also show that certain things do have some effect. For instance, twin studies (for both schizophrenia and homosexuality) have shown that genetics have
some effect, but are not the sole determining factor.
In conclusion: sexuality is not (purely) determined by genes; don't strongly assert ideas you don't fully understand.
