Can there ever be an environmental reason for homosexuality?

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I hope it's not insensitive to ask, but is there? Or is it all biological?

― mantilla, Tuesday, 24 January 2006 02:46 (twenty years ago)

http://www.brokebackmountain.com

― cancer prone fat guy (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 02:57 (twenty years ago)

Is that supposed to mean something?

― mantilla, Tuesday, 24 January 2006 03:02 (twenty years ago)

is this question?

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 03:21 (twenty years ago)

Did father walk around with erection in front of you? How did this make you feel?

― Cunga (Cunga), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 03:23 (twenty years ago)

do you really think it's possible that the decisions people make about who they want to fuck have nothing to do with what they experience?

xpost cunga you lost me dude

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 03:24 (twenty years ago)

Just an ambiguous, snarky and ironically detached comment. :)

― Cunga (Cunga), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 03:35 (twenty years ago)

it's a politically very sensitive question

― Thomas Tallis (Tommy), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 03:36 (twenty years ago)

cunga you lost me dude

― phantasy bear (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 03:38 (twenty years ago)

"do you really think it's possible that the decisions people make about who they want to fuck have nothing to do with what they experience?"

I'm pretty certain that the answer to that would be yes if "who" is a sex and not a type of person.

I'm a girl, and I like guys. How could my own personal experiences have influenced me to like guys? I was assuming it's all biological.

― mantilla, Tuesday, 24 January 2006 03:39 (twenty years ago)

I'm going to break with my personal tradition of just posting silly answers just for a second to state that I have absolutely no idea what this thread is about.

― phantasy bear (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 03:41 (twenty years ago)

what's the difference between asking "can there ever be" and "is there"?

― geoff (gcannon), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 03:43 (twenty years ago)

Is the question about, like, homosexuality as a way of cutting down breeding in overpopulated species? As opposed to homosexuality as a damn good time.

― edward o (edwardo), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 03:45 (twenty years ago)

edward if that were even close to being true, all the goddamn starlings in tennessee would be at least bi-curious

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 03:48 (twenty years ago)

mantilla sorry for being rude at the beginning

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 03:49 (twenty years ago)

Oops, look like someone forgot to use the search function.

― Dom iNut (donut), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 03:49 (twenty years ago)

ALL THE GODDAMN STARLINGS IN TENNESSEE

― geoff (gcannon), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 03:50 (twenty years ago)

Homosexuality does sometimes run in families which could suggest that environment plays a role. Studies of twins reared apart however also show higher than usual correlations, which suggests that biology is important. The nature vs. nurture debate will probably never be satisfactorily resolved one way or the other, and it's most likely a combination of factors. Personally though, I lean towards biology as being the primary determinant with regards to sexual orientation if only because I can remember being aroused while watching Wonder Woman on TV before I even started kindergarten. While I had no clue about girls, sex or any of the rest of it at the time, I knew that I liked what I was seeing.

― J-rock (Julien Sandiford), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 03:54 (twenty years ago)

"These highly social birds do not defend a territory beyond their cavity nest site, but males are very protective of their mates."

that's from the first page google pulls up and that is just bullshit - they terrorize everybody, even the blue jays

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 03:57 (twenty years ago)

Prison inmates to thread!

― Aimless (Aimless), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 04:24 (twenty years ago)

If my environment were all male, I think that might affect my sexual choices.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 13:27 (twenty years ago)

My WORK environment is all male and traditionally has been.

― Sororah T Massacre (blueski), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 13:39 (twenty years ago)

We fixed the company website. And then we all gayed up.

― Sororah T Massacre (blueski), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 13:40 (twenty years ago)

I was hoping this had something to do with greenhouse gas emmisions

― Vicious Cop Kills Gentle Fool (Dada), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 13:45 (twenty years ago)

Oh no, greenhouse gays!

― NickB (NickB), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 13:51 (twenty years ago)

Homosexuality does sometimes run in families which could suggest that environment plays a role

Wouldn't this point to a hereditary factor instead?

― NickB (NickB), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 13:51 (twenty years ago)

Yeah I'm really kind of horribly depressed by the fact that it took until Aimless's post for anybody to bring that up. I mean I have to kind of wonder about anybody who asks this question and doesn't IMMEDIATELY think about the rich and storied history of sailor/prisoner homosexual activity.

I remember when they had to put NETS around the trees near the dorms at UTK because the starling shit was going to start giving us kids all blood diseases and such.

― TOMBOT, Tuesday, 24 January 2006 13:54 (twenty years ago)

I think there can be variety of different combinations of explaining factors that lead to homosexuality, which also means there are various homosexualities. They only have same-gender desire in common. A biological explaining factor may exist, but it's yet to be found by scientists, which would imply environment that even if a biological factor exists, environment is more important. I doubt the explanation is purely biological though, because a) surely researchers would've found it already, and b) it's hereditability would be a lot clearer then. I think homosexuality can be purely environmental though, the most obvious example is it's occurence in communities with members of only one gender, such as boy and girl schools or monasteries.

However, I think there's no reason to search for the origins of homosexuality, because the results could easily fall into the hands of those who want to "cure" it. Homosexuality is a harmless form of human behaviour, it doesn't need any more explanations than, say, the fact that we like and dislike different sorts of foods.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 14:05 (twenty years ago)

Scratch the word "environment" from the third row there, that was a typo.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 14:07 (twenty years ago)

tuoumas, but how would for example someone who lives in some small remote town be gay due to environmental reasons?

and I thought scientists *had* found evidence of a "gay gene" or something of that sort. there was alot of talk about a swedish study last year.

― alma, Tuesday, 24 January 2006 14:12 (twenty years ago)

Human behaviour is rather complex, the environmental reasons don't follow a clear pattern, like: you know/know of gay folks -> you become gay yourself. In most cases I'd say it's almost impossible to find the explanation for homosexuality, because, like many other forms of behaviour, it results from the interplay of numerous different factors, be they environmental or (possibly) biological.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 14:19 (twenty years ago)

Sailor/prison sodomy would (often/theoretically) be about incidentally filling a hole, not intrinsic homosexuality. Of course Gore Vidal wd say there's no such diff, etc.

One little-commented element of BBM is both the Ledger and Gyllenhaal characters describe distant/cruel fathers, playing into a stereotype of homo child environments.

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 14:34 (twenty years ago)

Saying there even is an intrinsic homosexuality implies it's purely biological. People change throughout their lives, and if someone "turns" gay in a later age, I wouldn't say it's less "real" than other forms of same-gender desire, unless the person in question feels like that himself.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 14:38 (twenty years ago)

maybe if the environment is when you're stranded in an island with no animals and is full of just humans with the same sex and they're the sole providers of warm, moist orifices.

see also prison

― ken c (ken c), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 14:43 (twenty years ago)

and sailors

― ken c (ken c), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 14:43 (twenty years ago)

lol xp[ost

― ken c (ken c), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 14:44 (twenty years ago)

OK rather than intrinsic let's say 'established.' As opposed to ordering it bcuz it's the only thing on the menu.

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 14:48 (twenty years ago)

I remember when they had to put NETS around the trees near the dorms at UTK because the starling shit was going to start giving us kids all blood diseases and such.

this is the most mysterious sentence I have ever read

― kyle (akmonday), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 14:51 (twenty years ago)

Yeah, I was a bit scared to ask...

― Trying To Resonate Concrete (kate), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 14:51 (twenty years ago)

I wonder how big a percentage of those who find homosexuality in a same-gender environment, such a ship or a boy school, denounce it altogether once they get back to a mixed environment? I think the percentage could be smaller than one'd initially assume.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 14:53 (twenty years ago)

xpost
In an environment that is single sex (convents, prisons, ship etc.), some of the homosexual behaviour may simply be due to lack of opportunity to engage in sexual activities with members of the opposite sex. So in that respect there can be environmental reasons for homosexuality.

It does depend what you mean by environment. One of the theories for causative factors of homosexuality is the hormone levels within that person's mother's womb. There's believed to be some evidence for a high testosterone womb environment for some lesbian foetuses [finger lengths resembling those of males] and high oestrogen and progesterone levels [and hence feminisation] in the womb environment for some gay male foetuses [caused by a mother building resistance to a succession of male children - there's, apparently, a statistically significant preponderance of gay men who have more than two older brothers]

― Stone Monkey (Stone Monkey), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 14:54 (twenty years ago)

Could you provide some references for these studies? Anyway, surely the hormones would stop having any effect on the baby once it's out of the womb. So unless you believe one's personality is already shaped in the foetus stage I find that theory not so convincing.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 14:59 (twenty years ago)

Personality isn't necessarily shaped in the womb, but I'd suspect that brain organisation is. And given that sex differences in brain organisation are quite important to the way we think, I would say that formative experiences in the womb might have significant effect on potential personality.

This is the lesbian finger length thing. This is a CNN.com abstract, the actual paper is in Nature, but I don't have a licence for that.
http://archives.cnn.com/2000/HEALTH/03/29/gay.fingers/

And, as you would expect Wikipedia has something to say on the subject:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digit_ratio

Here's a psychiatry thing on the older brother thing which does confirm some stats but doesn't form any conclusions that I can see.
http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/153/1/27

A here's Wiki in the older brothers thing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraternal_birth_order

― Stone Monkey (Stone Monkey), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 16:07 (twenty years ago)

Exposure to lots of hot guys in college turned me gay.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn (Alfred Soto), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 16:09 (twenty years ago)

You know, even apart from everything being discussed here: homosexuality does not consist solely of "biological" same-sex lust. In fact, what we think of as homosexuality -- something different from, say, sailors or prisoners getting off with one another -- consists mostly of social arrangements. Love, romance, romantic relationships, the erotic, aesthetics of beauty, etc.: these are all incredibly social notions.

― nabisco (nabisco), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 16:22 (twenty years ago)

although i guess to come out (lol) of prison as a proper homosexual you would have to suddenly don't wnat to bone ladies too. otherwise you'd just have turned bisexual or BI-DESPERATE yay!

― ken c (ken c), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 16:48 (twenty years ago)

thread connections argaaruga
Bi-Desperation

― ken c (ken c), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 16:49 (twenty years ago)

And given that sex differences in brain organisation are quite important to the way we think,

Is that really so? I don't think there is any consensus on the subject.

This is what I was aiming when I said that there are many different homosexualities, with same-gender desire being the sole unifying factor. "Homosexuality" itself is a term only invented in the 19th century, and a stereotypical homosexual identity as we know it was mostly formed in the 20th century. How same-gender lust is interpreted and what sort of behavioural patterns form around it varies enormously between historical periods and between cultures. So even if the lust itself may have some biological basis, homosexuality as an identity is definitely a cultural phenomenon.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 17:15 (twenty years ago)

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