Genetics and Homosexuality

[Adora]

OKay, so I picked up this book in Borders today called "Adam's Curse" by Bryan Sykes. He's the same dude who did "The Seven Daughters of Eve" and all that stuff, that whilst I find fascinating I don't really understand that well because I haven't read up on it a lot.

But anyway, one chapter caught my eye. In it he discussed the possibility for a genetic disposition to male homosexuality (nevermind female homosexuality, the Great Unspoken Because It Fucks All Our Statistics Up And It Doesn't Threaten The Patriachy). His conclusions basically were that a predisposed female genetic line will have a certain occurance of homosexuality within it due to a "carrier" X-chromosone in the female line (his conclusion, of course, worked on the completely fucking faulty assumption that male homosexuals do not reproduce) to supposedly help the mother raise stronger daughters.

...

You can see why I was going "WTF" during this hideous train wreck. He used 3 main sources for his work. One was Hammer's research into siblings and homosexuality (and I've been told by certain individuals that this kind of research can be troublesome to base conslusions on because of the way siblings- even identical twins - are raised), the other was work by Ray Blanchard and the University of Toronto, and though he didn't mention the name, he briefly touched on Gutner Dorner's work on the sexing of the hypothalamus in the womb (though he didn't mention Dorner's name. No-one ever does because the guy was so misguided in his intentions).

Sykes conclusion (based on no real research whatsoever) had something to do with mitochondrial DNA, the occurance of homosexuality in males with increasing numbers of old brothers and the female body's genetic disposition to view the baby male's mitochondrial DNA as an infection that it slowly builds an immunity to.

I would like to go into the theory deeper and try to explain it, but I am currently too drunk to do it justice. I'll have a crack at it in the morning. But before I do that, I would like to ask; Has anyone else read this book, the other researches he sources or anything related to this, and could possibly provide a more scientific outlook on the topic?

[wildernesse]

But anyway, one chapter caught my eye. In it he discussed the possibility for a genetic disposition to male homosexuality (nevermind female homosexuality, the Great Unspoken Because It Fucks All Our Statistics Up And It Doesn't Threaten The Patriachy). His conclusions basically were that a predisposed female genetic line will have a certain occurance of homosexuality within it due to a "carrier" X-chromosone in the female line (his conclusion, of course, worked on the completely fucking faulty assumption that male homosexuals do not reproduce) to supposedly help the mother raise stronger daughters.

Stronger daughters how? Physically stronger? And stronger daughters are a plus because?


Sykes conclusion (based on no real research whatsoever) had something to do with mitochondrial DNA, the occurance of homosexuality in males with increasing numbers of old brothers and the female body's genetic disposition to view the baby male's mitochondrial DNA as an infection that it slowly builds an immunity to.

I don't understand why the mother would need to see the baby male's mtDNA as an infection when it is the same as her own. Everyone's mtDNA is the same as their mother's (well that's the baseline and if RA were here, he'd probably say that this isn't the case in the very rarest of rare cases, but he's not here so nyyaaahh).

I would like to go into the theory deeper and try to explain it, but I am currently too drunk to do it justice. I'll have a crack at it in the morning. But before I do that, I would like to ask; Has anyone else read this book, the other researches he sources or anything related to this, and could possibly provide a more scientific outlook on the topic?

I haven't read the book, and I'm no geneticist to tell you if it's worth anything. But I do have a handy husband in genetics who I will bug about this topic when I see him. (Although he may not have any patience if I tell him that this is the same guy who wrote something called the seven daughters of Eve--I might have to listen to a day's worth of muttering about coalesence and how mitochondrial Eve gives everyone the wrong idea.)

[Adora]

I don't understand why the mother would need to see the baby male's mtDNA as an infection when it is the same as her own. Everyone's mtDNA is the same as their mother's (well that's the baseline and if RA were here, he'd probably say that this isn't the case in the very rarest of rare cases, but he's not here so nyyaaahh).

Thank you for pointing out one of the problems of posting this kind thread whilst drunk. It actually wasn't mDNA, it was something like proteins or tissue or something from the male child. My bad.

Stronger daughters how? Physically stronger? And stronger daughters are a plus because?

That's what I asked. And how does have a gay male child make stronger daughters? You can see why I was going "WTF" during this whole thing.

[Goliath]

Stronger daughters how? Physically stronger? And stronger daughters are a plus because?


Well, isn't it obvious?! Homosexuals were created in a genetics lab as an obvious part of a worldwide diabolical conspiracy to give females more and more physical strength so that all of them eventually become huge and musclebound and icky looking. The remaining men--the ones who aren't queer, that is--will not only be repulsed by the resulting Ahnold-like women, but will run for their lives from them to die lonely, cold deaths in caves. Thus, with no males to aid in reproduction, the entire human race will become extinct! MUAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! :muahaha:

....or maybe the author in the OP is full of shit. Who knows? :didi:

[Bella]

When I was still Fundie and reading up on "scientific" literature about what causes homosexuality, I came across an article saying that gays and lesbians are in some way incapable of reproducing normally and therefore are attracted to the same sex. Sort of a "get thee out of the gene pool" type thing.

[seebs]

When I was still Fundie and reading up on "scientific" literature about what causes homosexuality, I came across an article saying that gays and lesbians are in some way incapable of reproducing normally and therefore are attracted to the same sex. Sort of a "get thee out of the gene pool" type thing.

Heh. There's a theory known false for close to two millennia.

Trivia point: One of the words in Greek of the time referred to men who lacked interest in women, but were capable of procreation; there were stories of men pretending to be such, to get jobs guarding harems. The word is often translated as "eunuch".

[lpetrich]

Nature vs. nurture is not an either/or thing; heredity and environment can interact in complicated ways that can be difficult to untangle. Consider from Chapter 7 of Gary Cziko's book "The Things We Do":

Some striking examples of the necessary interaction of genetic and environmental factors in determining behavior have been provided by the common laboratory rat. A mother rat will normally build a nest before bearing offspring and then groom her newborn pups. That she performs these behaviors even if she is raised in total isolation from other female rats, and so has never seen other rats engage in such behaviors, is the reason that such activities are referred to as instinctive. Nonetheless, certain experiences are necessary for these behaviors to take place. For example, when provided with appropriate nesting materials a pregnant rat will not build a nest if she had been raised in a bare cage with no materials to carry in her mouth. Also, a mother rat will not groom her young if she had been raised wearing a wide collar that prevented her from licking herself (Beach 1955). And failure to groom her babies can have serious consequences, since a newborn rat cannot urinate until its genital area has been first so stimulated, resulting in burst bladders for the unfortunate unlicked pups (Slater 1985, p. 83).
(online here (http://faculty.ed.uiuc.edu/g-cziko/twd/pdf/twd07.pdf))

Also, learning can be restricted in certain ways. From the same chapter,
Rats also can make certain associations between stimuli and their effects, but not others. If a rat is made sick after consuming a food with a certain taste, it will consequently avoid all foods having the same taste. And if a sound or visual stimulus regularly precedes an electric shock, a rat will associate this as a signal of the impending shock and will learn to make an appropriate avoidance response. But rats cannot learn to associate taste with electric shock or use auditory or visual cues to learn that a food is noxious (Garcia & Koelling 1966; Garcia et al. 1968).

These findings may be puzzling for the psychologist who has no appreciation of the evolutionary past of the rat, but they make quite good sense from an evolutionary perspective. For rats, which often scurry about in dark places and eat an amazing variety of foods, taste is a better indicator of the quality of food than its visual appearance or the sounds they make while eating. In contrast, physical dangers are usually accompanied by visual and auditory signals, not gustatory ones. So it makes sense that evolution would have selected rats that learn what is bad to eat by taste and what is physically dangerous by sight and sound.

And in our own species, spoken natural language is universally present in human societies, except for when it cannot be generated or heard. A counterexample would be very interesting to discover, but none has ever been shown to exist. However, sound-meaning correspondence is nearly always arbitrary, and there are lots of variations in grammatical features. For example, although nounlike and verblike categories seem to be universal, their arrangement is anything but. For example, English has the default sentence order

subject - verb - object

as do many other languages, but a very common alternative is

subject - object - verb

with other arrangements being less common.

There are numerous other such variations, but my patience has run out here.

[viscousmemories]

Trivia point: One of the words in Greek of the time referred to men who lacked interest in women, but were capable of procreation; there were stories of men pretending to be such, to get jobs guarding harems. The word is often translated as "eunuch".
I always thought eunuch was synonymous with castrated.

[seebs]

Trivia point: One of the words in Greek of the time referred to men who lacked interest in women, but were capable of procreation; there were stories of men pretending to be such, to get jobs guarding harems. The word is often translated as "eunuch".
I always thought eunuch was synonymous with castrated.

It is, which makes it a poor translation for a word that was a little broader.