omarct said:
Prove what? This is so basic I feel stupid even having to explain it. Do you think people are born deeply religious or are they made so through childhood "conditioning"? Let me give an example from my personal life. I work night shifts so I rarely see my son and wife. My son(3) spends most of his time with his mom. When his mom is cleaning he wants to join in and clean. When she is putting on lipstick/makeup, he wants to play with her cosmetics. He is also scaredy-cat just like his mom and will cry easily. Am I suppose to suspect that my son was somehow born gay or feminine? Or that the fact that he spends so much time with his mom is influencing him? It doesn't take a science article to let me figure out which is the correct answer. If you can't see it then there is no more point to this conversation. Edit: One last thing. No matter what your genetics are, sexual orientation for humans is more mental than physical. I personally know a guy who was born without a penis. He didnt even have a hole to piss from. He had to tube linked straight to his bladder so he could pee. Long story short, the guy is straight, even without a penis he is still attracted to women. Maybe this isn't the best example but my point is that any girl no matter what her genetics can be attracted to the same sex and the same applies to guys. Humans have mostly overcome things like instinct through intelligence and the ability to release sexual tension by masturbation etc.... |
As I gay man, I read your post and I feel its just coming from a place mostly of assumptions which although are logical at a glance, fail under closer inspection and are second place to the actual experience gay people.
Firstly being born with a belief and having an inherent sexual attraction when hitting puberty are completely different things, so your "religious" analogy doesn't make sense. Pre-puberty I really thought I fancied girls, but that was nothing more than shallow ideas of beauty etc. Suddenly puberty hit and my body and brain were responding to male physiques in a way that was completely different to what I understood as attraction when I was younger.
Secondly, if you son is 3, then you can't already determine he's gay which is what it sounds like you're doing. Feminine =/= gay and how he is an adult is yet to be determined. I'm not one to outrule nurture as a influence and nurture/nature always influence each but we also have to take account of the fact that nature influences how we respond to nurture. There are many scenarios similar to the one you're describing but that have various branching paths. Some kids will respond favouring their dads over their mums due to the scarcity of their time with their dad... Either way we would backwards engineer it with a limited knowledge and say that made them gay. I spent a lot of time with my dad and was very much a daddies boy until I hit my angsty teens yeaes, didn't stop me from being gay. Single Parent house holds are far more common in poor black communities in America, yet you'll never catch this being used as a narrative for being gay, instead its used to explain poor performances in school, crime and reckless teen behaviour.
I spent much time trying to backwards engineer why I was gay, first it was I had too many brothers, then it was I preferred may dad over my mum, then it was I used to watch wrestling which is mostly guys in spandex, then its because I saw the spice girls movie when I was like 6 and loved it... Eventually I realised all of my other brothers had these same experiences yet are straight. I think biology is a strong bluepint which naurture can influence, but I think for most people being gay is a biology thing, with nurture mostly determining physical expression. Almost everyone assumes I'm straight until I tell them and Im not especially masculine, trust me there are a lot of non-femimine gay guys but you won't know unless you literally ask everyone what their sexuality is and many people still remain in the closest, especially of older generations 35+
Orientation itself (straight/gay/bi) doesn't explain all of people nuance of people sexual, romantic attraction and sexual habits and cognitive thoughts on what kind of partner they want, those things change over time and by experience, we shouldn't conflate these 2 discussions. I'm very attracted to guys who remind me of my most recent best friend, thats nurture. That shouldn't be confused with me being attracted to guys full stop.
Do straight people think their sexuality is mostly by nurture? I mean finding the appropriate partner is essential for our species existence and so I think its likely sewn into our biology after millenia to at least get the gender right, so I think gender orientation is very genetic and has shown to be in many animals (example below). Any and all aspects of nature find weird and unique expressions (mutations/side effects) and right now one of the more prevailing theories is that homosexuality is males is a side of affect of high fertility in certain females. Overall beneficial to the species and being carried from mother to child, which is why it hasn't died out but it doesn't need the gay sons to pass the genes. Since we're all female at gestations, its not hard to conceive that the biological blueprint for male/female orientated attraction can me messed up early in conception based on hormone balance of the mother which can be disrupted by many things.
For your last point, its your testes which create your sexual drive. Not having a dick shouldn't determine your orientation. And science so far correlates orientation with the hypothalumus in the brain
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3085551/
Last edited by Otter - on 14 July 2018