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Is Male Homosexuality Nature or Culture?

Mar 03,2022 | Alphus Underwear

We have some question about homosexuality.

Is homosexuality innate or acquired? If homosexuality is genetically related, how is it that the gay gene, which cannot reproduce offspring, can escape evolution for and survive? 

Can a naturally straight man really be altered in his sexual orientation? 

Why do homosexuals seem to have a better aesthetic than the average person? 

In this blog, we will get preliminary answers to all of the above questions. Before we begin, we also need to emphasize that the real world has a thousand faces, but love is love.

First, if we think that homosexuality is innate, then the number one suspect must be genes. In 1991, this paper (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1845227/) about twin brother kicked off a wave of research on sexual orientation and genetic relatedness. Briefly, this experiment investigated families with identical twin brothers versus families without blood brothers, such as one of the boys who was adopted. They found that the probability of those identical twin brothers having the same sexual orientation was just greater than the probability of unrelated brothers having the same sexual orientation. The crude explanation is that twin brothers are either both heterosexual or both homosexual. This probability is greater than the probability that two brothers who just grow up under the same roof. So, look at it this way, sexual orientation has something to do with genetics, and maybe could be inherited. 



In 2000, a large study (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11058483/) of the sexual orientation of American twins concluded that the heritability of a male liking the same sex was estimated to be between 0.28 and 0.65. With the limited level of research back in 20 years ago, the number is high. So, when people say that homosexuality is born, it is completely understandable.

 

But the times are progressing, in 2019, a large-scale study (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7082777/) came.

 

 

Researchers divided the genetic sequences of nearly half a million people into two groups; One group of people accounted for 5.6 percent who declare they had sex with the same sex, while the rest of the group said they had not done it. The researchers then combined the two groups of genes and did genome-wide association analysis to see what was different. In the end, five significantly different locus were identified, and what was the effect of these five? The effect was small, and together they were found to explain less than one percent of the variation in sexual behavior.

The lead author of this massive study, MIT geneticist Andrea, said outright that there is no gay gene. Not that homosexuality has nothing to do with genes, but that there is no gene that directly controls homosexuality. Not to mentioned if looking at each gene individually, it doesn’t play any role. This also shows one thing, if we now presume to intervene in homosexuality from genes modification, the task is impossible.

Homosexuality is related to genes, but there is no homosexual gene, so it is a bit of a confused for people without a basic understanding of biology. As another example, epigenetic inheritance and many human traits are not directly controlled by genes, but also involve protein synthesis. This is very similar to the inheritance of homosexual behavior. Virtually all human behaviors are regulated by a complex network of genes, and no single gene can control a behavior alone, including sexual behavior. After all, humans are not fruit flies, and fruit flies have a mutated gene FRU that regulates sexual behavior to a large extent. When this gene is knocked into, fruit flies and the related protein is expressed in female fruit flies, female fruit flies that are not courting will begin to do so; and when this gene is inactivated in male fruit flies, male fruit flies will not have courtship behavior. Even male Drosophila will mate with each other in the absence of female Drosophila, which is called chain courtship behavior. Gene like FRU that is extremely powerful, we call it the switch gene. Now we only know about the existence of such things, but we don’t know yet if it exists on human.

In January 2022, a study (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41421-021-00341-7) by the University of Zhejiang and Peking University, which said that two new loci had been found that might be related to Han Chinese gay men. And no progress for further information, the progress is very slow. 

So, the conclusion is out, can we say that homosexuality is innately determined, no, we can only say that it is genetically related, but not completely related. After talking about genes, you may wonder if the matter of homosexuality genetics is related to epigenetic inheritance, as well as proteins and other things? Well, it does. For example, a magical 'elder brother' phenomenon was discovered early on, where, on average, gay men have more brothers than heterosexual men. For this phenomenon, there is an immunological explanation that the mother's body will produce a certain protein antibody during pregnancy, this antibody has an impact on the development of the male fetus brain. And with each pregnancy of the mother, the male baby this effect will become more and more likely to occur, and eventually change the male baby's brain structure ah, so that the male baby into gay love.

 

So, for this explanation, in 2017 a team in Canada to find a lot of mothers (https://www.pnas.org/content/115/2/302), specifically to do tests to verify. 

 

This is a histogram of the concentration of antibodies to a certain protein in the experiment. The highest bar, they had a boy and a second boy, but the second boy was gay, and for the second highest bar, mother only had a son, who was gay. This third highest strain gave birth to a son, who was heterosexual. The lowest concentration. This strain of mothers did not give birth to a son. 

Anyway, the result is that women has significantly higher protein antibody levels than men. Also, those mothers of gay men, especially those who had multiple boys, had significantly higher protein antibodies than others. The conclusion is that there is a relationship between a woman's immunological response to this protein and the sexual orientation of her male offspring. I know at this point someone will surely remember to ask where this protein antibody comes from, is there something wrong with the mother's body? The answer is that men do it themselves. The male fetus summons this protein during its development, so this protein stimulates the mother to produce antibodies to protect the male fetus.

The mother will produce this antibody the first time she is pregnant with a boy, and it will be activated again when she is pregnant with the next boy. The more male babies there are, the more antibodies the immune response, and this is the brother effect. Men with older brothers are more likely to become gay. And this theory is also the more widely circulated in the academic world of brother birth order theory. I heard that it is currently one of the most plausible theories to explain male homosexuality.

Next, we answer that question at the beginning; If a gene, or a series of genes, which would serve to keep animals from reproducing, how did they continue to this day? Why is homosexuality found in all the more than 1,500 species of animals? Why is it widespread? If you think about it from the perspective of superiority, in the end it seems that the only explanation can only be that they are useful. I saw a keyword offsetting power in an Australian study (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01168-8) two months ago. The authors used the principles of buff and debuff to explain the problem of genetic perpetuation, specifically, two hypotheses were given. 



The first, you are a straight man, but you may also have gay-related genes in you. These genes will bring you some unexpected benefits, may be to make you more handsome, more robust, or more empathetic, and so on, to help you find more heterosexuality, the opportunity to have more children to offset those who do not have children gay, and finally achieve the purpose of passing the gay gene. The authors analyzed the heterosexual and homosexual genomes and found that the heterosexual side carrying some of the homosexual genes may indeed have a mating advantage, which supports this hypothesis, but how the specific genes allow you to find more girlfriends is not yet answered. The second hypothesis is that the homosexuality-related genes carried by women will allow women to enhance their fertility and pass themselves on by allowing them to have more children. That is, you are a boy carrying gay genes, you cannot have children, you have a biological sister, she is heterosexual, but she also has the relevant genes, these genes will enhance her fertility, so that she has more children. Then it doesn't matter to the genes whether you have children or not.



There is also a theory of kin selection, from which a gay uncle hypothesis is derived to explain homosexuality, saying that gay men are willing to spend money and energy on their nephews and nieces to help them grow, so that although they cannot have children, but the genes can still continue in the race.

 

Finally, I will discuss with you a phenomenon, why gay boys are so aesthetically pleasing, dressing with class and body shape, far above the male average. I was also curious, so I looked up the information and found that this phenomenon has attracted the attention of many scholars, and there are quite a few relevant studies. In 2002, this American study (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11920991/) on the gay diet said that gay men, prefer young boys with muscularity and low body fat percentage. 

So why would that lead to this preference? I searched for a paper (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15538605.2012.725648) where he used the minority stress model to explain this, saying that the gay community would be subject to greater social pressure like other minority groups.



For example, there is a common perception that gay men should be white, thin, and feminine. These social perceptions can put unresolved pressure on gay men when growing up. Under this pressure, they will try to build up a fit body and create a tall and sunny external image to resist social prejudice. On top of that, gay men are more critical of their outward appearance than the average person. They also pay more attention to what people like about men in online media to compare with themselves. Of course, I know many people will think that this is not just anxiety about looks, who does not have it. The point is that several studies have shown that gay men are significantly more dissatisfied with their body image than heterosexuals. This dissatisfaction is not driven by one's own personality, but by social pressure to coerce.

Biologically speaking, heterosexuality and homosexuality are two sides of the same coin and are not understood independently of each other. Homosexuality is necessary to understand heterosexuality, and the principle of homosexuality is also the principle of heterosexuality. They are but two statements of the same principle, such as the observation that the lack of a certain molecule causes homosexuality, and you find that the work of this molecule involved in the phenomenon of heterosexuality or sexual preference is not a medical problem, but a natural phenomenon. The purpose of studying them is not to change, much less to cure, but to explore the scientific mysteries involved. If I were to conclude with a sentence of my own, I would say that it seems that the biological differences between people of different sexual orientations and preferences are not that great. Sometimes acquired social factors can instead magnify these differences and influence our judgment. And we as ordinary people have to be clear that there are some contradictions that are neither primary nor important enough for you to fight for.

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