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omarct on 15 July 2018
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Otter said: 

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/

So what you are saying is that you are 100% sure if you had been born in a different environment with different experiences you would still be gay?

Firstly :The mind is incredible and most of what goes through our head is completely subconscious, meaning we have little to no control over it. The point I am getting at is that a small child's brain can be molded very early in his development and be affected for the rest of his life subconsciously without ever knowing why this is the case. I AM NOT saying this is your case, I am just giving a example of the subconscious mind and how easy it is to influence during early development through parents and environment. Environment meaning everything around them, from television, to pornography, to friends and acquaintances, etc....  By molded I am referring to everything from what you like and dislike to what bothers you or angers you, or to what degree, etc.....

Secondly: No I don't think my son is gay nor am I bothered by it, I was making example and exaggerating for arguments sake. Although I will make an effort to toughen him up for his own sake(life's tough).

You make a good point about the black kids although black women have never been well known for their femininity or softness. I believe (personally) that spending time with your father it's not enough, what it's more important is that your dad is around and he gives a strong male presence as well as teaching you discipline.

I think there is nothing wrong with you being gay and I also believe that there is nothing you can do to change it, since like I said before it is all in your subconscious. So there is no need for you to reverse engineer it and should look more towards accepting it. Now in my personal opinion, if I was you, I would make an attempt to become Bisexual as I really want to have kids, but this is just me and we are all different.

I find you last paragraph very intriguing and although it is the first time I have heard of it, it makes a lot of common sense. Yet I still feel that instinct(genetics) alone is not enough. Although you can definitely make the argument that this "fertility gene" pushes some males in that direction.

As for the last point, you are right, this is common knowledge. Yet I was kinda aiming somewhere else with that argument, but perhaps my aim was off. The testes are the ones pushing the sexual drive but in what "direction" has nothing to do with them. My "aim" was that even this guy whose genetics fucked him over and killed off any chance that he had to be a normal male was still trying to make it work and was still interested in females. I was sorta trying to show how powerful the subconscious is, like even if he had been born with a vagina he might have still been interested in females because of his "nurturing". I can see how it was a bit off.

Lastly, I am glad I found someone intelligent who can speak some reason. Excuse me if anything I write/think seems offensive towards you or what you believe.