Oh I know I’m gonna get slammed for this one.
I read in the book “Why men don’t listen and Women Can’t Read Maps” that homosexuals (It seemed to focus on male homosexuality) are, well, ‘created’ when the mother produces insufficient amounts of testosterone during one or more of the 4 different development stages when testosterone is given to the baby. I can’t remember exactly, but according the the book, the testosterone comes in 4 stages, or bursts. One for the reproductive organs, one for the body, and two for the brain. Something like that.
Now, given that this were true, homosexuality could technically be termed a ‘birth defect’ or, to be politically correct, a ?birth anomaly? due to lack of testosterone in male babies, or excess of testosterone in female babies.
Now, if this is actually true, could it not be possible (and I’m not trying to be facist here) to counter this effect by giving testosterone directly to the foetus (if this is at all possible) or to the mother (if this would result in an increased amount for the child). Granted it’s impossible to determine if a child is homosexual wehn its developing, but is it possible to give a developing child more of either hormone to determine a sexuality?
I worked on animal research in rats in graduate school that did exactly what you describe. By manipulating prenatal hormonal bursts prenatally, we were able to make male rats exhibit receptive behavior from other males as adults. This behavior is called lordosis and is a sexual reflex normally seen only in female rats. This is a well established aniaml model for studies in sexual differentiation. We can only speculate how this applies to humans because for obvious ethical reasons, these types of studies have not and will not be done.
Wow, so it’s my mom’s fault that my brother is gay. I’ll be damned, I thought he acquired that from his friends.
lordosis, lor·do·ses (-sz) An abnormal forward curvature of the spine in the lumbar region. Greek lordosis, from lordos, bent backward.
Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language
hibernicus lays the facts on thick doesn’t he? Rock on
Should not be done. Doubtless they will be - and probably have been already - because there will always be some wackos like the Raelians out to break the law.
Also, should they discover a gene which predisposes a woman not to produce the right testosterone for a male foetus, wouldn’t giving her more testosterone be used as a legitimate treatment? Pre-birth surgery is already carried out for other things.
But I know what you mean, the “freakenstein” implications of messing around with these things are horrific.
Why would you want to?
–Cliffy
What was that definition of lordosis supposed to mean Hibernicus? Lordosis has a slightly different meaning when discussing rat sexual behavior. It means a reflexive arching of the back by the female when mounted and stimulated by the male. It enables the male to penetrate the female’s vagina. There is nothing abnormal about it in this context.
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro98/202s98-paper3/deCastro3.html
Characteristics resulting from organizational effects include formation of genitalia and traits such as aggression. Some studies have correlated aggression in preschool boys to organizational effects of androgen. Activational effects are defined as effects which occur in the adult organism, and include reproductive and social behaviors. In the rat, such behaviors include mounting (male) and lordosis (female).
In the rat, it has been held that adult sexual behavior depends solely on organizational effects. A female treated with testosterone shortly after birth or an intact male will exhibit male behaviors no matter what activational effects may be manipulated later in life. An intact female or a neonatally castrated male will exhibit female behaviors.
Before too long we will be “designing” our children to a limited extent as science allows. If the science exists and it is powerful enough and cheap enough and can be ethically tolerated it will be used at some point. Period. End of Statement. While people hold varying views on abortion I doubt many politicans are going to step in front of the freight train of mother’s desire and right to have the most perfect children (in the mother’s eyes) that they desire and science allows.
This hardly means the end of gay people because we cannot know what other surprises the future holds. If parents can control the sexual pre-disposition of their children via science at some point the science will be in place to allow gay couples to clone themselves in some fashion or produce a baby with composite, shared genetic material. As the population increases and population control, to lesser or greater coercive degrees, becomes the norm a gay child might be allowed to be born whereas a heterosexual “breeder” child might not. Gay children might be all the rage.
Who knows.
Warning: Not an expert. Alot of generalizations for the sake of simplicity.
Breed “genetically” would be tougher then “creating” a homosexual since that’s only a half the equation. Actually probably less than half. Im gonna make the case from the male homosexual perspective.
I just saw a great related Nova episode on this question. The lack of testoterone during gestation has much more to do with sexual identity than sexual preference. They are similar but not identical concepts.
The nurture aspect of homosexuality is enormous IMO. There is a family dynamic of a distant father and an overbearing cathecting mother that plays a big role. Now that setup seems to play a big role in alot of psych problems, but each individual reacts differently. Homosexuality by many men is an acting out in an attempt to get love or give love (if they feel they are to blame) from/to the “father” The best preventitive (eek) is lavish love by the father - one who is completely down with the concept of male to male intimacy. That could be one of the reasons why there are so few cases of homosexual boys raised by two men.
The motivation behind someone, and excuse the vernacular, who “pitches” versus “catches” are completely different. The former tends to one who is displaying anger at the father while the latter is one who has identified with the mother due to father absence. Whether or not the child feels he has won or lost(read adapted) to the Oedipal challenge also plays a big role.
I know this is vastly oversimplified and will seem a facile explanation to many if not most. I just wanted to outline some concepts.
Per your OP you may not be an “expert” but you are making a lot of unsupported claims that sound like re-cycled Freudian claptrap. Do you have a cite with evidence supporting any of these statements you are making re nurture issues or is this this really just some kiddin’ around WAG?
Which expains why in roughly half of twins in which one of the pair is homosexual, the other is not. The parents are clearly distinguishing the children and treating them differently, despite them looking alike, occurring at the same place in the birth order and family financial history, etc.
I’m afraid that while I will not rule out a behavioral trigger, the example provided raises far more questions than it answers, and seems to be an area that might justify further inquiry, but currently provides no genuine insight or explanation.
In an ancient joke, the grafitto on a restroom wall said, “My mother made me a homosexual.” Under that was written, “If I give her the yarn, will she make me one, too?”
–Nott, compiler of humorous antiquities
astro-
Virtually all claims in this realm are unsupported. They are almost all speculation and clinical observation. And if I dont footnote its because im not writing a thesis. Im offering ideas that I have heard from decent sources (If you count Nova and the latest psychoanalytic theory texts to be decent sources). The kneejerk reaction against anything remotely psychoanalytic is just as obtuse as throwing it out wholesale.
tomn- As far as the twins: The mind is a chaotic system complete with tremendous sensitivity on initial conditions. Clearly the result isnt genetic, but it could be prenatal. More likely, one had an experience which set off a chain of butterfly effects taking them down a different sexual path. Its also quite possible that there was a dynamic in the family wherein the parents and/or children split into subtle allegiances - it would certainly make sense that identical twins would campaign for the favored postion (like all siblings) and since they were so similar, one got dad, the other got mom. Not that this makes one or the other necessarily gay but it is NOT the same family dynamic.
Lastly, in my first post I stated that these werent the only possibilities, just ones that have been REASONABLY verified to move from hypothesis to theory. There is also a fascinating sociological view on homosexuality but im too tired to keep writing. If someone expresses an interest ill expand.
I’m interested. Please expand.
This might get this tossed in GD but please when you have time expand.
Osip
Well, I’m not sure if you would do so genetically but if put in the right type of society then I’d agree. If you were a White during the slave trade era, you’d probably be brought up to believe Black people as a lesser class, but as we evolve we notice theres no black or white, only grey.
So it would be impossible to create a master race of atomic homosexuals to further my dreams of total domination of planet earth and all women coming to me because I’m the only straight man left?
Excuse me . . . ALL women? 
“Is it possible to breed a homosexual?” Strictly speaking, I believe “breeding” refers to husbandry practices that increase the frequency of the targetted genetic trait(s) in the offspring. There is apparently (don’t have a cite any more) some evidence of a nonzero correlation between male homosexuality and more-than-average prevalence of same in the male relatives of the mother (ie, suggesting something is being passed along to the mother that affects… something… in the offspring). It is NOT passed along by the gay male offspring, even if he fathers a child himself.
So if you wanna make a homosexual–and no jokes, pliz–the best you can do is slightly boost the probabilities by finding a potential mother whose brothers and uncles are gayer than average.
The assumption that hormonal influences that produce opposite-gendered behaviors in certain animals will have a similar affect on humans is unwarranted. The assumption that what our society calls “being a homosexual” equates to such behaviors strikes me as indefensible.
I think this is as far as we can go on GQ.