There are also hermaphrodites who are born with genitalia that lie in between male and female. Normally the tissues change from an undifferentiated form into one set of organs or the other during fetal development, but sometimes they develop incompletely, or even change into both male and female (one testicle and one ovary).
Mostly true, sturmhauke. But I don’t know of any reports of a hermaphrodite with both a fertile testicle andovary.
Someone’s gonna make this comment, so why not me:
See Robert Heinlein’s brilliant story “All You Zombies” (found in the collection titled The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag) for an examination of some of the problems a fully fertile hermaphrodite might have with a time machine.
Fenris
Leslie Rogers, professor neuroscience and animal behavior at the U. of New England, Australia, has written a new book, * Sexing the Brain [/] . She states therein that the environment in which we’re raised is at least as important as biology in determining sexual behavior. She also doubts the existence of a “gay gene” or “gay brain,” and claims it’s simplistic to think any behavior pattern is dependent on a single gene or set of genes.
But, if sexual behavior also has to do with environment, how come people raised in a completely homo-phobic environment can be gay, even when it is hammered into their brains that it is a sin that they will go to hell for?
For the same reason that people can be brought up in a fanatically religious environment and be told that not following the religion is a sin they’ll go to hell for. Or would you assert that your religion is determined by your genes?
Anyway, if being gay or straight was purely determined by genetics, wouldn’t it tend to be bred out of the population? Gay people don’t (in general over the course of human history) reproduce. I would think there is a much larger proportion of homosexuality than the few that would be left after thousands/millions of breeding out the ‘gay gene’.
I don’t know about that. It is common knowledge that many married persons, with families, are homosexuals. I wonder what the percentage of gays who marry is? IMHO, it’s better than 40%.
That’s a good point. Many people do reproduce before they find out they are gay. They have sex with a woman because that is what is normally done, but they find out they dont like it, but the child is born and it is too late, but the person is still gay so there.
For example, my uncle had a girlfriend once. She later discovered she was a lesbian. My uncle went to her wedding.
And oh yeah, i would like all of you to cite things for your information. Hehe, j/k, i just hate it when people do that. Like our brains are not enough. Excuse me, though, that is a whole other topic.
That may be true I suppose. Anyone have any info on the proportion of homosexuals that reproduce?
And as for citations, it’s a valid enough demand when people are asserting things as facts that aren’t necessarily true (me stating that gay people don’t generally reproduce as an example). Most arguments only owkr given certain facts, so no, our brains aren’t enough.
Well, unless the child is born with the clinical diagnosis of Ambiguous Genitalia. Then, of course, the difference is ambiguous.
There are also gays who marry knowing they are gay, for appearances sake: they don’t want society to know.