We don't really know. There's evidence to support both sides of the debate and the truth, like most things in human behavior is probably some of both.
Poll: Is Sexual Orientation Nurture or Nature?
- Thread starter Ramthundar
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It's tricky to say both, because nurture can make someone try to be straight even though they are not, but I don't think it actually changes your sexual preference.
Marv21 said:
The thing with "nurture" is that it seldom goes exactly like the parents expect.SimuLord said:
Sure, ultra-conservative subcultures in America consider homosexuality highly undesirable. But they're also obsessed with it. That's very different from an environment where homosexual desires are just treated as irrelevant and uninteresting. Being straight or gay is a big fucking deal to these people, and they only really give you two choices: you can be straight-as-an-arrow/righteous/conventionally-masculine or you can be a pervert/sinner/queer.
Bad metaphor time! It's like growing up in a house where there's this one locked door at the end of the hall that your parents keep yelling at you to ignore. Maybe you'll become obsessed with keeping the locked door shut, too, or maybe you'll really want to open it, but it's unlikely you'll grow up and actually ignore locked doors at the end of the hall.
-- Alex
The soy thing is completely false. Total fabrication. Ever encountered the gay clusters in places with high soy diets? China, Kansas, Indiana, Mexico?Sewblon said:
Unresolved oedipal issues might correlate with homosexuality to some degree (how can you want to sexually posess a person of a gender you're not attracted to?) but given that genetic components have already been identified the psychoanalytical explanation doesn't seem to bear up to the facts.
But it's more nuanced than an on/off switch for who you want to mate with. The very cues that determine whether you find a particular body type sexually attractive are both biological and culture-bound, for example. I think there's a strong biological component to how we recognize secondary sexual characteristics, but it gets filtered through learned behaviors before getting fully realized as aggression or fear or revulsion or friendly interest or sexual desire.Ramthundar said:
-- Alex
"I mean if a homosexuality gene exists, how did it survive and get passed on through all of human history?"
Uh, there are recessive genes. The same way that two brown-haired people can have a blond-haired child if they're both carrying (but not expressing) the 'blonde gene'; if there is a 'gay gene' it's conceivable that it wouldn't be expressed unless one got two copies, one from each parent. There's also the fact that throughout history, countless homo people have felt social pressures to conform to a hetero lifestyle and have lived a lie by coupling with someone they weren't actually attracted to. Gay people are still as physiologically capable of having straight sex and making kids, it's just that doing so feels as 'unnatural' as if two straight people of the same sex were socially pressured into a sexual relationship. Either way, we've always been around. It's just been a question of whether at any given time in history it was safe to let it be known. If it'll get you stoned to death then of course it'll seem like there are few or no gay people-- most will likely be keeping a low profile. This idea that there's been some gay population explosion because society's increasingly allowed it to "spread" is nonsense; society's increasingly allowed people who were always there to finally disclose and be counted.
Uh, there are recessive genes. The same way that two brown-haired people can have a blond-haired child if they're both carrying (but not expressing) the 'blonde gene'; if there is a 'gay gene' it's conceivable that it wouldn't be expressed unless one got two copies, one from each parent. There's also the fact that throughout history, countless homo people have felt social pressures to conform to a hetero lifestyle and have lived a lie by coupling with someone they weren't actually attracted to. Gay people are still as physiologically capable of having straight sex and making kids, it's just that doing so feels as 'unnatural' as if two straight people of the same sex were socially pressured into a sexual relationship. Either way, we've always been around. It's just been a question of whether at any given time in history it was safe to let it be known. If it'll get you stoned to death then of course it'll seem like there are few or no gay people-- most will likely be keeping a low profile. This idea that there's been some gay population explosion because society's increasingly allowed it to "spread" is nonsense; society's increasingly allowed people who were always there to finally disclose and be counted.
Then why weren't there any gay people 20 hunderd years ago, when being with the same sex was unthinkable?
EDIT:Well, Ironicly, since my opinion was DIFERENT, I am flamed by the iteir forum like I'm the most stupied and evil person avlive, stop queting this post and stop raping my inbox.
Also, I mean 2 hunder years ago, it was a fucking typo.
EDIT:Well, Ironicly, since my opinion was DIFERENT, I am flamed by the iteir forum like I'm the most stupied and evil person avlive, stop queting this post and stop raping my inbox.
Also, I mean 2 hunder years ago, it was a fucking typo.
I'm just spitballing here, but do you mean the 1800's? Because the obvious answer would be the amount of sexual repression that occurred in that era.SnowCold said:
If you mean 2000 years ago, the Romans were bisexual and before that the Athenians were.
Edit:meant Athenians, 11:30 is late for me.
I think its mainly nature and a bit of nuture. A good indicator of the nature side is that sometimes animals are gay. Its been known to happen with rams so why not humans?
Behaviorism is a part of your sexual preference, but so is biology. Let me say this right up front to avoid the one statement that pisses me off more than anything -
Homosexuality is not a "disease" or a "mental disorder." After nearly thirty years of researching the homosexual phenomenon - as some people call it - the APA, with a majority of worldly psychological research associations, has declared that homosexuality is neither caused by a foreign element, or a particular deviant behavior. It is not typically considered deviant behavior in the scientific community (although the religious community thinks otherwise), because in many cases, most gay people are not harming themselves or others physically or mentally. There is no solid proof that gay behavior is directly attributed to being exposed to gay behavior.
Now, having gotten that out of the way, we can confidently say that it's a case-by-case basis of how each individual copes with the biological and social urges present. It's a combination of those two factors, as well as personal preference, that drive homosexual tendencies in various persons, and the culture that they grow up in can either lead to unlocking or suppressing these tendencies. In the end, it is the level of acceptance that a person has with the truth about their emotions and physical desires that decides whether they choose to engage in the act of homosexuality with other people.
How's that? Did that put you to sleep?
Homosexuality is not a "disease" or a "mental disorder." After nearly thirty years of researching the homosexual phenomenon - as some people call it - the APA, with a majority of worldly psychological research associations, has declared that homosexuality is neither caused by a foreign element, or a particular deviant behavior. It is not typically considered deviant behavior in the scientific community (although the religious community thinks otherwise), because in many cases, most gay people are not harming themselves or others physically or mentally. There is no solid proof that gay behavior is directly attributed to being exposed to gay behavior.
Now, having gotten that out of the way, we can confidently say that it's a case-by-case basis of how each individual copes with the biological and social urges present. It's a combination of those two factors, as well as personal preference, that drive homosexual tendencies in various persons, and the culture that they grow up in can either lead to unlocking or suppressing these tendencies. In the end, it is the level of acceptance that a person has with the truth about their emotions and physical desires that decides whether they choose to engage in the act of homosexuality with other people.
How's that? Did that put you to sleep?
Wow, I missed that one.Caliostro said:
There have been recorded incidents of gay people reaching as far back as the Egyptians. The mindset doesn't change the fact that people were essentially having the urges or developing homosexual behavior. It may have been that in cultures where it was more repressed and frowned upon that it was hidden from prying eyes better. But in fairly open societies - like someone mentioned the Romans and the Greeks - there were many cases of accepted homosexual behavior.
Note that it wasn't homosexual behavior that was the downfall of either of these civilizations, either. There were several economic, political, religious and militaristic issues that destroyed both ancient Greece and Rome. Homosexuality, if anything, was so insignificant an issue with these people and the people around them at times.
"Then why weren't there any gay people 20 hunderd years ago, when being with the same sex was unthinkable?"
I'm going to trust previous respondents' translation of "20 hunderd [sic] years ago" to mean 2000 years. Then I'm going to wonder WTF? Are you arguing that there's no record of gay people existing 2000 years ago? Because there's a ton of evidence that says there was all kinds of man-on-man action going on back then, and even earlier. Though I will concede you the *technical* point that back then a man having sex with a man wasn't considered as making them a different 'kind' of person; they saw is as a behaviour, not an identity. People who were predominantly or exclusively attracted to their own sex wouldn't have called themselves anything or thought of themselves in terms of "I'm 'gay' and other people are 'straight.'" In some times and places, man-on-man wasn't considered bad in and of itself-- it was all about the roles assumed. The guy 'giving' was fine, but if you were a guy who was 'taking' all the time then that was embarrassing because it was like you were trading your manhood to assume a 'womanly' role. Really, modern "homophobia" is about hang-ups over gender; people whose sense of self is heavily invested in rigid ideas about what a 'man' must be and what a 'woman' is are threatened by transgressions against those ideas. Their whole world goes upside-down and askew, full of nasty uncertainty and confusion (read: 'scary freedom') if other people "aren't following the rules" and showing just how mind-bogglingly diverse nature and humanity can be.
The idea of sexual orientation as an identity, setting 'types' of people apart, is a fairly recent invention to come out of an era where in Humanity's cloying efforts to quantify and 'know' everything we started imposing dichotomous labels on everything. So where once there was just people getting it on and "people getting it on" was considered normal because most-everyone was doing it in one way or another, that gave way to measurements and statistics and "ninety percents" being labeled 'normal' and "one out of tens" being branded deviant. It's a myopic 'small picture and details' obsession that misses the 'big picture' holistic reality that diversity is natural and doesn't require explaining or justification.
I'm going to trust previous respondents' translation of "20 hunderd [sic] years ago" to mean 2000 years. Then I'm going to wonder WTF? Are you arguing that there's no record of gay people existing 2000 years ago? Because there's a ton of evidence that says there was all kinds of man-on-man action going on back then, and even earlier. Though I will concede you the *technical* point that back then a man having sex with a man wasn't considered as making them a different 'kind' of person; they saw is as a behaviour, not an identity. People who were predominantly or exclusively attracted to their own sex wouldn't have called themselves anything or thought of themselves in terms of "I'm 'gay' and other people are 'straight.'" In some times and places, man-on-man wasn't considered bad in and of itself-- it was all about the roles assumed. The guy 'giving' was fine, but if you were a guy who was 'taking' all the time then that was embarrassing because it was like you were trading your manhood to assume a 'womanly' role. Really, modern "homophobia" is about hang-ups over gender; people whose sense of self is heavily invested in rigid ideas about what a 'man' must be and what a 'woman' is are threatened by transgressions against those ideas. Their whole world goes upside-down and askew, full of nasty uncertainty and confusion (read: 'scary freedom') if other people "aren't following the rules" and showing just how mind-bogglingly diverse nature and humanity can be.The idea of sexual orientation as an identity, setting 'types' of people apart, is a fairly recent invention to come out of an era where in Humanity's cloying efforts to quantify and 'know' everything we started imposing dichotomous labels on everything. So where once there was just people getting it on and "people getting it on" was considered normal because most-everyone was doing it in one way or another, that gave way to measurements and statistics and "ninety percents" being labeled 'normal' and "one out of tens" being branded deviant. It's a myopic 'small picture and details' obsession that misses the 'big picture' holistic reality that diversity is natural and doesn't require explaining or justification.
They've actually done loads of brain scans on homosexuals and found that they are a lot more similar to the opposite sex than the same sex (i.e. gay men's brains look more like a heterosexual woman's brain than a heterosexual man's brain).
Also, the chances of a baby growing up to be homosexual increases the more older same-sex siblings you have, so if a male baby's born with like 4 or 5 older brothers, the baby is very likely to turn out homosexual.
Also, the chances of a baby growing up to be homosexual increases the more older same-sex siblings you have, so if a male baby's born with like 4 or 5 older brothers, the baby is very likely to turn out homosexual.
facts that have been overlooked perhaps:
Homosexual behavior has been around for THOUSANDS of years at least, it's likely that records of it prior to the Romans simply don't exist, however there are gay non-sentient animals, so an element of homosexuality is certainly natural.
BUT and that's a big but, your environment, your upbringing etc definitely have an influence, you see many people fighting for the "it's natural" argument speak about chemical balance etc, thing is your hormones, your testosterone etc are effected by external systems, your diet, your exercise levels etc all effect testosterone production, it's likely your parents diet effects your "natural" state at birth too.
George Carlin put it best:
Of course it's not natural, it's human beings jumping past nature again, but is it normal? Sure why not?
Homosexual behavior has been around for THOUSANDS of years at least, it's likely that records of it prior to the Romans simply don't exist, however there are gay non-sentient animals, so an element of homosexuality is certainly natural.
BUT and that's a big but, your environment, your upbringing etc definitely have an influence, you see many people fighting for the "it's natural" argument speak about chemical balance etc, thing is your hormones, your testosterone etc are effected by external systems, your diet, your exercise levels etc all effect testosterone production, it's likely your parents diet effects your "natural" state at birth too.
George Carlin put it best:
Of course it's not natural, it's human beings jumping past nature again, but is it normal? Sure why not?