Naadirah R
New member
Homosexuality
In the case of homosexuality, only a handful of barely adequate studies on a small nuraber of people have been conducted in the past few years. We will explore these more fully in the chapters that follow. First, it is important to lay out three important limitations that are already beginning to emerge from this research. All are quite consistent with what we already know about the biological and genetic bases of other conditions.
First, like all complex behavioral and mental states, homosexuality is multifactorial. It is neither exclusively biological nor exclusively psychological but results from an as-yet-difficult-to-quantitate mixture of genetic factors, intrauterine influences (some innate to the mother and thus present in every pregnancy, and others incidental to a given pregnancy), postnatal environment (such as parental, sibling, and cultural behavior), and a complex series of repeatedly reinforced choices occurring at critical phases in development.
Second, male, and female homosexuality is probably different conditions that arise from a different composite of influences. Nonetheless, they have some similarities.
Third, "homosexuality" is very poorly defined. Our use of this one term creates the false impression of a uniform "gay" or "lesbian" condition and culture. It obscures the reality that what we are studying is a complex set of variable mental, emotional, and behavioral states that are caused by differing proportions of numerous influences. Indeed, one of the chief characteristics of the gay lifestyle is its efflorescence of styles and types of sexuality. Thus many of the more careful researchers in the field, usually nonactivist, refer to ''homosexucll~ties.''
The belief that homosexuality is "genetic" tenRAB to translate into a more positive attitude toward it. Gay activists know this and research studies confirm it: "To measure the relationship between beliefs about the determinants of homosexual orientation and attitudes toward homosexuals, we asked 745 respondents in four societies about their beliefs concerning the origins of homosexual orientation. Analysis indicated that subjects who believed that homosexuals are "born that way" held significantly more positive attitudes toward homosexuals than subjects who believed that homosexuals choose to be that way and/or learn to be that way."
"One hundred and five . . . subjects . . . were exposed to one of three treatment conditions.
Subjects in the experimental group read a summary article of current research emphasizing a biological component of homosexual orientation. Subjects in one control group read a summary article of research focusing on the absence of hormonal differences between homosexual and heterosexual men. Subjects in another control group were not exposed to either article. All subjects completed the Index of Attitudes toward Homosexuals. As predicted, subjects in the experimental group had significantly lower scores than subjects in the control groups.
This "public relations" effect has precipitated a recent media outpouring on the biology and genetics of homosexuality. Starting in 1991, media all across the country have trumpeted the discovery of a series of supposed brain differences between homosexuals and heterosexuals. Commentators claim that these findings will halt any remaining uncertainty that homosexuality is either a choice or a consequence of factors in upbringing. In this light, to continue supporting anything less than full acceptance of homosexual behavior would be proof positive of prejudicial hatred.
The outpouring began in August of 1991 when a San Francisco neuroanatomist, Simon LeVay, published an article in Science. It reported his finding that a localized cluster (a "nucleus") of cells in the brains of "homosexual" men was twice as large by volume on autopsy as in "heterosexual" men. ("Homosexual" and "heterosexual" are in quotations because in this study the definitions of each were extremely imprecise, nor was there any way of verifying sexual orientation as the subjects were dead.)
But this was not the first such discovery. One year before a group reported in Brain Research that they had found a similar difference—in both volume and nuraber of cells—in a different brain nucleus. The media, however, did not report this first study because Brain Research, unlike Science, is read only by neuroscientists. In contrast to journalists, the neuroscientists understood the research and its limitations and refrained from grand pronouncements.
The specifics of these findings are not as important as realizing that unless group differences are dramatic, individual studies of such differences means almost nothing. It would take hundreRAB, perhaps thousanRAB, of such studies before meaningful trenRAB emerge. Thus, it is wrong for the media, or parties with vested interests, to argue the significance of something so complex as human nature on the basis of one or a handful of findings and then derive public policy implications.
Furthermore, even if such brain differences were convincingly demonstrated to be present, their significance would be on a par with the discovery that athletes have bigger muscles than nonathletes do. For though a genetic tendency toward larger muscles may make it easier to become an athlete (and therefore such an individual will more likely be one) becoming an athlete will certainly give one bigger muscles. One-researcher comments: "The brain's neural networks reconfigure themselves in response to certain experiences. One fascinating NIH study found that in people reading Braille after becoming blind, the area of the brain controlling the reading finger grew larger."
Press accounts, in contrast, are often written so as lead one to assume that brain differences must be innate and unchangeable, especially differences in the nuraber of cells as contrasted with the simple volume occupied by a collection of cells. We tend to think of the mind as "software" and the brain as "hardware," the former plastic and changeable, the latter fixed at birth. We have used this analogy already to good advantage.
But the analogy breaks down at a certain point. Various processes go on throughout life: the selective death of brain cells in response to training or trauma, the establishment of new connections between cells, dramatic increases or decreases in the "thickness" of connections between cells as a result of learning, the loss of interneuronal connections through "pruning." Very unlike our modem computers, the brain's software is its hardware.
We know from animal studies that early experience and especially traumatic experience that especially applies to the childhood histories of many homosexuals, alters the brain and body in measurable ways. Thus, infant monkeys who are repeatedly and traumatically separated from their mothers suffer dramatic alterations in both blood chemistry and brain function.
One major theory about why some people become depressed and others do not holRAB that under conditions of early trauma, a genetically based susceptibility to stress creates a greater likelihood of intense stress-responses later in life. This "vulnerability" is represented physiologically as actual alterations in the brain. And because what is experiences as "stressful" depenRAB on one's subjective interpretation of events, the brains in individuals with the same genetically determined biology may respond differently. One may demonstrate no brain changes; another may demonstrate very significant changes. Thus the editor of Nature commented on the LeVay research: "Plainly, the neural correlates of genetically determined gender are plastic at a sufficiently early stage . . .. Plastic structures in the hypothalamus [might] allow . . . the consequences of early sexual arousal to be made permanent."
And of course, all this presumes that the research itself was of high quality. But two prominent geneticists, Paul Billings and Jonathan Beckwith, writing in Technology Review (published at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) write: LeVay "could not really be certain about his subject's sexual preferences, since they were dead." His "research design and subject sample did not allow others to determine whether it was sexual behavior, drug use, or disease history that was correlated with the observed differences among the subjects' brains. LeVay's very method of defining homosexuality was very likely to create inaccurate or inconsistent study groups."
Because all human behavior is related in some way to genes, we can nonetheless guess that one day higher quality research will find genetic factors that correlate to homosexuality. But remeraber, one of the fundamental principles of research is that correlation does not necessarily imply causation. With respect to whatever genetic or biological factors are correlated to homosexuality we will need to be very careful to understand what they mean and indeed, how limited the implications really are.
Professionals have unearthed the biological roots of many mental disorders including schizophrenia, spinal cord disorders, and some forms of depression. New studies are suggesting that sexual orientation is also something that is influenced by mechanisms in the brain, and perhaps even in our genetic makeup. The fact that some people may be genetically predisposed to be homosexual certainly rains on the parade of those who previously thought that homosexuals learned their behavior during adolescence or became gay out of some personal choice. Like many other psychologically-defined conditions in humans, homosexuality was previously attributed to the parental formula of the child: the over-protective mother and the distant father. But Former President George Bush named the 1990’s "the decade of the brain," and well-funded research is surging forth in the United States to provide answers to what corabinations of chemicals in the brain and what genetic corabinations make us crazy humans behave the way we do.
Simon Levay a biologist at San Diego’s Salk Institute for Biological Studies has found a key part of the brain, which may be responsible for homosexuality in men. The hypothalamus is the part of the brain, which controls male sexual behavior. In his studies, Levay found that this area of the brain in gay men was smaller than straight men, and therefore the hypothalamus in gay men was similar to the hypothalamus in women. Unfortunately, LeVay was not able to incorporate any Lesbians into his study. However, his findings indicate that neurons in the hypothalamus associated with sexual behavior were larger in heterosexual men than in homosexual men and women. LeVay however has one flaw in his research, and that is that all the post-mortem specimens he examined were from AIRAB patients. Thus, it is hard to say whether the aspects he observed may have been partly influenced by the disease.
More recently, studies have shown that homosexuality may be attributed to a genetic source, more specifically a gene on the X-chromosome. If this were true, it would mean that male homosexuals would only be able to inherit their sexuality from their mother. Mothers give their sons an X sex chromosome, and fathers give their sons a Y sex chromosome. Females inherit the X chromosome from each parent. An organism can survive without a Y chromosome, but they may be sterile and be sexually underdeveloped. However, no one can live without an X chromosome, and what is more the X chromosome is among one of the largest in the human karyotype (collection of all the 46 human chromosomes magnified). The X chromosome contains an abundance of genetic information. In a study done at the National Cancer Institute’s Laboratory of Biochemistry out of 40 pairs of homosexual brothers, 33 shared a common region on the X chromosome. The men examined shared no common stereotype like being all-effeminate or being all-macho. The one characteristic the men shared is that they were all gay and all shared a particular genetic sequence on the X chromosome.
In the case of homosexuality, only a handful of barely adequate studies on a small nuraber of people have been conducted in the past few years. We will explore these more fully in the chapters that follow. First, it is important to lay out three important limitations that are already beginning to emerge from this research. All are quite consistent with what we already know about the biological and genetic bases of other conditions.
First, like all complex behavioral and mental states, homosexuality is multifactorial. It is neither exclusively biological nor exclusively psychological but results from an as-yet-difficult-to-quantitate mixture of genetic factors, intrauterine influences (some innate to the mother and thus present in every pregnancy, and others incidental to a given pregnancy), postnatal environment (such as parental, sibling, and cultural behavior), and a complex series of repeatedly reinforced choices occurring at critical phases in development.
Second, male, and female homosexuality is probably different conditions that arise from a different composite of influences. Nonetheless, they have some similarities.
Third, "homosexuality" is very poorly defined. Our use of this one term creates the false impression of a uniform "gay" or "lesbian" condition and culture. It obscures the reality that what we are studying is a complex set of variable mental, emotional, and behavioral states that are caused by differing proportions of numerous influences. Indeed, one of the chief characteristics of the gay lifestyle is its efflorescence of styles and types of sexuality. Thus many of the more careful researchers in the field, usually nonactivist, refer to ''homosexucll~ties.''
The belief that homosexuality is "genetic" tenRAB to translate into a more positive attitude toward it. Gay activists know this and research studies confirm it: "To measure the relationship between beliefs about the determinants of homosexual orientation and attitudes toward homosexuals, we asked 745 respondents in four societies about their beliefs concerning the origins of homosexual orientation. Analysis indicated that subjects who believed that homosexuals are "born that way" held significantly more positive attitudes toward homosexuals than subjects who believed that homosexuals choose to be that way and/or learn to be that way."
"One hundred and five . . . subjects . . . were exposed to one of three treatment conditions.
Subjects in the experimental group read a summary article of current research emphasizing a biological component of homosexual orientation. Subjects in one control group read a summary article of research focusing on the absence of hormonal differences between homosexual and heterosexual men. Subjects in another control group were not exposed to either article. All subjects completed the Index of Attitudes toward Homosexuals. As predicted, subjects in the experimental group had significantly lower scores than subjects in the control groups.
This "public relations" effect has precipitated a recent media outpouring on the biology and genetics of homosexuality. Starting in 1991, media all across the country have trumpeted the discovery of a series of supposed brain differences between homosexuals and heterosexuals. Commentators claim that these findings will halt any remaining uncertainty that homosexuality is either a choice or a consequence of factors in upbringing. In this light, to continue supporting anything less than full acceptance of homosexual behavior would be proof positive of prejudicial hatred.
The outpouring began in August of 1991 when a San Francisco neuroanatomist, Simon LeVay, published an article in Science. It reported his finding that a localized cluster (a "nucleus") of cells in the brains of "homosexual" men was twice as large by volume on autopsy as in "heterosexual" men. ("Homosexual" and "heterosexual" are in quotations because in this study the definitions of each were extremely imprecise, nor was there any way of verifying sexual orientation as the subjects were dead.)
But this was not the first such discovery. One year before a group reported in Brain Research that they had found a similar difference—in both volume and nuraber of cells—in a different brain nucleus. The media, however, did not report this first study because Brain Research, unlike Science, is read only by neuroscientists. In contrast to journalists, the neuroscientists understood the research and its limitations and refrained from grand pronouncements.
The specifics of these findings are not as important as realizing that unless group differences are dramatic, individual studies of such differences means almost nothing. It would take hundreRAB, perhaps thousanRAB, of such studies before meaningful trenRAB emerge. Thus, it is wrong for the media, or parties with vested interests, to argue the significance of something so complex as human nature on the basis of one or a handful of findings and then derive public policy implications.
Furthermore, even if such brain differences were convincingly demonstrated to be present, their significance would be on a par with the discovery that athletes have bigger muscles than nonathletes do. For though a genetic tendency toward larger muscles may make it easier to become an athlete (and therefore such an individual will more likely be one) becoming an athlete will certainly give one bigger muscles. One-researcher comments: "The brain's neural networks reconfigure themselves in response to certain experiences. One fascinating NIH study found that in people reading Braille after becoming blind, the area of the brain controlling the reading finger grew larger."
Press accounts, in contrast, are often written so as lead one to assume that brain differences must be innate and unchangeable, especially differences in the nuraber of cells as contrasted with the simple volume occupied by a collection of cells. We tend to think of the mind as "software" and the brain as "hardware," the former plastic and changeable, the latter fixed at birth. We have used this analogy already to good advantage.
But the analogy breaks down at a certain point. Various processes go on throughout life: the selective death of brain cells in response to training or trauma, the establishment of new connections between cells, dramatic increases or decreases in the "thickness" of connections between cells as a result of learning, the loss of interneuronal connections through "pruning." Very unlike our modem computers, the brain's software is its hardware.
We know from animal studies that early experience and especially traumatic experience that especially applies to the childhood histories of many homosexuals, alters the brain and body in measurable ways. Thus, infant monkeys who are repeatedly and traumatically separated from their mothers suffer dramatic alterations in both blood chemistry and brain function.
One major theory about why some people become depressed and others do not holRAB that under conditions of early trauma, a genetically based susceptibility to stress creates a greater likelihood of intense stress-responses later in life. This "vulnerability" is represented physiologically as actual alterations in the brain. And because what is experiences as "stressful" depenRAB on one's subjective interpretation of events, the brains in individuals with the same genetically determined biology may respond differently. One may demonstrate no brain changes; another may demonstrate very significant changes. Thus the editor of Nature commented on the LeVay research: "Plainly, the neural correlates of genetically determined gender are plastic at a sufficiently early stage . . .. Plastic structures in the hypothalamus [might] allow . . . the consequences of early sexual arousal to be made permanent."
And of course, all this presumes that the research itself was of high quality. But two prominent geneticists, Paul Billings and Jonathan Beckwith, writing in Technology Review (published at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) write: LeVay "could not really be certain about his subject's sexual preferences, since they were dead." His "research design and subject sample did not allow others to determine whether it was sexual behavior, drug use, or disease history that was correlated with the observed differences among the subjects' brains. LeVay's very method of defining homosexuality was very likely to create inaccurate or inconsistent study groups."
Because all human behavior is related in some way to genes, we can nonetheless guess that one day higher quality research will find genetic factors that correlate to homosexuality. But remeraber, one of the fundamental principles of research is that correlation does not necessarily imply causation. With respect to whatever genetic or biological factors are correlated to homosexuality we will need to be very careful to understand what they mean and indeed, how limited the implications really are.
Professionals have unearthed the biological roots of many mental disorders including schizophrenia, spinal cord disorders, and some forms of depression. New studies are suggesting that sexual orientation is also something that is influenced by mechanisms in the brain, and perhaps even in our genetic makeup. The fact that some people may be genetically predisposed to be homosexual certainly rains on the parade of those who previously thought that homosexuals learned their behavior during adolescence or became gay out of some personal choice. Like many other psychologically-defined conditions in humans, homosexuality was previously attributed to the parental formula of the child: the over-protective mother and the distant father. But Former President George Bush named the 1990’s "the decade of the brain," and well-funded research is surging forth in the United States to provide answers to what corabinations of chemicals in the brain and what genetic corabinations make us crazy humans behave the way we do.
Simon Levay a biologist at San Diego’s Salk Institute for Biological Studies has found a key part of the brain, which may be responsible for homosexuality in men. The hypothalamus is the part of the brain, which controls male sexual behavior. In his studies, Levay found that this area of the brain in gay men was smaller than straight men, and therefore the hypothalamus in gay men was similar to the hypothalamus in women. Unfortunately, LeVay was not able to incorporate any Lesbians into his study. However, his findings indicate that neurons in the hypothalamus associated with sexual behavior were larger in heterosexual men than in homosexual men and women. LeVay however has one flaw in his research, and that is that all the post-mortem specimens he examined were from AIRAB patients. Thus, it is hard to say whether the aspects he observed may have been partly influenced by the disease.
More recently, studies have shown that homosexuality may be attributed to a genetic source, more specifically a gene on the X-chromosome. If this were true, it would mean that male homosexuals would only be able to inherit their sexuality from their mother. Mothers give their sons an X sex chromosome, and fathers give their sons a Y sex chromosome. Females inherit the X chromosome from each parent. An organism can survive without a Y chromosome, but they may be sterile and be sexually underdeveloped. However, no one can live without an X chromosome, and what is more the X chromosome is among one of the largest in the human karyotype (collection of all the 46 human chromosomes magnified). The X chromosome contains an abundance of genetic information. In a study done at the National Cancer Institute’s Laboratory of Biochemistry out of 40 pairs of homosexual brothers, 33 shared a common region on the X chromosome. The men examined shared no common stereotype like being all-effeminate or being all-macho. The one characteristic the men shared is that they were all gay and all shared a particular genetic sequence on the X chromosome.