Posted on 03/13/2006 10:27:46 AM PST by DBeers
(CBS) There are few issues as hotly contested — and as poorly understood — as the question of what makes a person gay or straight. It's not only a political, social, and religious question but also a scientific question, one that might someday have an actual, provable answer.
The handful of scientists who work in this under-funded and politically charged field will tell you: That answer is a long way off. But as Lesley Stahl reports, their efforts are already yielding tantalizing clues. One focus of their research is twins.
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The bedrooms of 9-year-old twins Adam and Jared couldn't be more different. Jared's room is decked out with camouflage, airplanes, and military toys, while Adam's room sports a pastel canopy, stuffed animals, and white horses.
When Stahl came for a visit, Jared was eager to show her his G.I. Joe collection. "I have ones that say like Marine and SWAT. And then that's where I keep all the guns for 'em," he explained.
Adam was also proud to show off his toys. "This is one of my dolls. Bratz baby," he said.
Adam wears pinkish-purple nail polish, adorned with stars and diamonds.
Asked if he went to school like that, Adam says, "Uh-huh. I just showed them my nails, and they were like, 'Why did you do that?'"
Adam's behavior is called childhood gender nonconformity, meaning a child whose interests and behaviors are more typical of the opposite sex. Research shows that kids with extreme gender nonconformity usually grow up to be gay.
Danielle, Adam and Jared's mom, says she began to notice this difference in Adam when he was about 18 months old and began asking for a Barbie doll. Jared, meanwhile, was asking for fire trucks.
Not that much has changed. Jared’s favorite game now is Battlefield 2, Special Forces. As for Adam, he says, "It's called Neopets: The Darkest Faerie."
Asked how he would describe himself to a stranger, Jared says, "I'm a kid who likes G.I. Joes and games and TV."
"I would say like a girl," Adam replied to the same question. When asked why he thinks that is, Adam shrugged.
"To me, cases like that really scream out, 'Hey, it's not out there. It's in here.' There's no indication that this mother is prone to raise very feminine boys because his twin is not that way," says Michael Bailey, a psychology professor at Northwestern University and a leading researcher in the field of sexual orientation.
Bailey says he doesn't think nurture is a plausible explanation.
Psychologists used to believe homosexuality was caused by nurture — namely overbearing mothers and distant fathers — but that theory has been disproved. Today, scientists are looking at genes, environment, brain structure and hormones. There is one area of consensus: that homosexuality involves more than just sexual behavior; it’s physiological.
Bailey and his colleagues set up a series of experiments in his lab at Northwestern University. In one study, researcher Gerulf Rieger videotaped gay and straight people sitting in a chair, talking. He then reduced them visually to silent black and white outlined figures and asked volunteers to see if they could tell gay from straight. The idea was to find out if certain stereotypes were real and observable.
Based on physical movement and gestures of the figures, more often than not, the volunteers in the study could tell a difference.
"So, is the conclusion that gay people do in fact move differently?" Stahl asked Rieger.
"Yeah, absolutely," he replied.
It's not true 100 percent of the time; it is true on average. The researchers also studied the way gay and straight people talk, and they found differences on average there too.
This research is controversial. Some say it is reinforcing stereotypes. But to Bailey, the stereotypes suggest there's a feminizing of the brain in gay men, and masculinizing in lesbians. Ironically though, when it comes to their sex lives, he says gay and straight men actually have a lot in common.
"Straight men tend to be shallow in terms of focusing on looks. Gay men are shallow, too. Straight men are more interested than straight women in having casual, uncommitted sex. Gay men are like that, too," says Bailey.
"One has the impression that gay men are much more inclined toward casual sex than straight men," Stahl said.
"They're just more successful at it, because the people they're trying to have sex with are also interested in it," Bailey explained.
"But don't you find this interesting that the one big area where gay men are more like straight men is in sex? I mean, that is…both amusing and odd," Stahl said.
"It suggests that whatever causes a man to be gay doesn't make him feminine in every respect. There must be different parts of the brain that can be feminized independently from each other," Bailey replied.
But how and when does this feminizing occur? If the differences were already apparent in childhood, that would point to an early, perhaps even genetic origin — and that's what Bailey and Rieger are testing in a new study using childhood home movies.
In the study, volunteers were asked to rate each child's femininity or masculinity. Stahl took the test and rated two girls highly feminine.
When shown video of a toddler girl running a truck off of a table, Stahl observed, "She's really not girly. Isn't that interesting? She’s not girly."
She also observed differences in two boys, one of whom would grow up to be straight, while the other is now gay.
If you can spot a child's future sexual orientation before the child even knows he or she has one, doesn't that prove it's genetic? Studies have shown that homosexuality runs in families. So genes must be the answer. But then the researchers tell you identical twins can have different sexual orientations.
60 Minutes found identical twins Steve and Greg Lofts in New York. They had the same upbringing, have the same DNA — and yet Greg is gay and Steve is straight.
When people meet the twins and find out one of them is gay, Greg says people have asked if he's sure, and how it can be. "Everyone is curious about that," he says.
There were signs, even when they were little kids. Their mother told Stahl that Steve loved sports and the outdoors while Greg liked helping out in the kitchen. But it wasn't until high school that Steve became convinced Greg was gay.
Asked if he said anything to his brother, Steve says, "I did actually. And I think the way I worded it was something like, 'You know, Greg, if you're gay, it's OK with me. And I'll still love you the same.' And he gave a very philosophical answer. He said something like, 'Well, I love the soul of a person and not the physical being.' And in my mind, I was like, 'Yep, he's gay.'"
"I wasn't ready just yet," Greg added.
Does this prove that it's not genetic?
"What it proves is it's not completely genetic. They have the same genes," says Bailey.
Asked if that brings us back to the mother and the father, Bailey says no.
"But that's environment," Stahl said.
"That's environment. But that's not the only environment. There's also the environment that happens to us while we’re in the womb. And scientists are realizing that environment is much more important than we ever thought it was," Bailey explained.
A newborn rat pup in the lab of Dr. Marc Breedlove at Michigan State University, may, oddly enough, hold important clues to what happens in the womb.
Dr. Breedlove says he can take a male rat and make it behave like a female for the rest of its life, and vice versa for a female, just by altering the hormones it's exposed to at birth. Because rats are born underdeveloped, that's roughly the same as altering a third-trimester human fetus in the womb. But first, he said, Stahl would need a crash course in rat sex.
Dr. Breedlove explained that male rats, including one he showed Stahl called "Romeo," will mount any rat that comes their way. In the mating process, the female performs something called lordosis, where she lifts her head and rump.
If Romeo goes after a male, Dr. Breedlove says the male will seem profoundly indifferent.
But Breedlove says he can change all that. He gave a female rat a single shot of the male sex hormone testosterone at birth. Now grown up, she will never perform lordosis.
But a male rat did. He was castrated at birth, depriving him of testosterone.
"So you created a gay rat?" Stahl asked.
"I wouldn't say that these are gay rats. But I will say that these are genetic male rats who are showing much more feminine behavior," he explained.
So the answer may be that it's not genes but hormones.
"That's exactly the question that we're all wondering. This business of testosterone having such a profound influence. Does that have some relevance to humans?" Breedlove said.
While biologists look at hormones for answers about human sexuality, other scientists are looking for patterns in statistics. And hard as this is to believe, they have found something they call "the older brother effect."
"The more older brothers a man has, the greater that man's chance of being gay," says Bailey.
Asked if that's true, Bailey says, "That is absolutely true."
If this comes as a shock to you, you’re not alone. But it turns out, it’s one of the most solid findings in this field, demonstrated in study after study.
And the numbers are significant: for every older brother a man has, his chances of being gay increase by one third. Older sisters make no difference, and there's no corresponding effect for lesbians. A first-born son has about a 2 percent chance of being gay, and the numbers rise from there. The theory is it happens in the womb.
"Somehow, the mother's body is remembering how many boys she's carried before," says Breedlove. "The favorite hypothesis is that the mother may be making antibodies when she sees a boy the first time, and then affect subsequent boys when she carries them in utero."
"You mean, like she's carrying a foreign substance?" Stahl asked.
"And if you think about it, a woman who's carrying a son for the first time, she is carrying a foreign substance," Breedlove replied. "There are some proteins encoded on his Y chromosome that her body has never seen before and that her immune system would be expected to regard as 'invaders,'" he added.
It’s still not a proven theory and it gets even stranger.
"One of the things we've only found out lately is that older brothers affect a boy only if the boy is right-handed," Breedlove said. "If the boy is left-handed, if his brain is organized in a left-handed fashion, it doesn't matter how many older brothers he has, his probability of being gay is just like the rest of the population."
You can give yourself a headache trying to apply all the theories to real people. Greg and Steve Lofts both are right-handed, and they do have an older brother, so maybe that's why Greg is gay. But they also have several gay relatives, which suggests it could be in the genes, except where does that leave Steve?
Adam and Jared, fraternal twins, have older brothers, but they're ambidextrous.
Then there's the question of how something in the womb could affect one twin but not the other. There are many more questions at this point than answers, but the scientists 60 Minutes spoke to are increasingly convinced that genes, hormones, or both — that something is happening to determine sexual orientation before birth. Adam has come up with his own theory.
"I was supposed to be a girl in my mom's stomach. But my mom wished for all boys. So, I turned into a boy," Adam explained.
Asked if he wished he was a girl, Adam nodded.
"Do you think there was anything that you could have done that would have changed Adam?" Stahl asked Adam and Jared's mom Danielle.
"I could have changed Adam on the outside to where he would have showed me the macho boy that I would want as a boy. But that would not change who he is inside. And I think that would have damaged him a lot more," she said.
Stahl asked both boys if they are proud of the way they are, and both boys gave her big nods.
"Yup," Adam replied.
I tried growing my hair out, until Dad said that he'd get me a dress and a pair of earrings to wear with it.
Needless to say, I got a haircut. :-) But, I accomplished what I was trying to do, namely p*ss him off by being a rebellious teenager. LOL!
I have two dogs who are brothers, they've been together since birth. So, they've had the same environment. One is the "alpha" dog, the other not. They're as different as night and day.
That doesn't mean the differences are genetic...we can grow up in the same household but have a totally different experience.
I think that logically, it can't be genetic, and those that promote it as a 'genetic disorder' are seeking an easy excuse for the behavior. The only way I can think of for it to be purely genetic, is if it's an abnormality like 'FragileX syndrome' or something, in which case it would amount to 1 case in thousands, rather than 2-3% (or 10%, as the gay lobby falsely claims.....)
Unfortunately, the entire genetic theory has become so politicized, that the true answer will never come out.
IMHO, I think that it's a combination of learned behavior and a chemical imbalance.
If I recall correctly, this is at least the second time I have read you referencing this study. I did a fairly extensive Google search and found nothing (maybe my keywords or search terms were not good?) Anyway, can you provide something more specific on this study so that I may find and persuse it?
Oh brother. I wasn't a "girly girl" either. I had stick horses, a set of sixgun capguns, a cowboy hat and played commando and climbed trees. I think it had more to do with the cowboy shows and war movies, than "gender displacement".
My preferred mode of dress is still bluejeans and T-shirts. It took my husband 10 years after our wedding to get me back into a dress! I still hate wearing them!
Forgot to add this, it will be interesting to see if this "girly" twin actually grows up to be a gay man. If "mom" is indulging him in his girly stuff then fine but to attach real significance to this at this age, in my opinion, is a real stretch.
Precisely! Any studies that claim objective findings as to causality of a subjective condition are inherently flawed in premise. Especially when the subjective condition is not even realized yet ( e.g. feeling drawn toward or choosing to engage in homosexual activity) and is at best predicted by anectdotal guesswork e.g. in the case of "homosexual" children...
The child plays with dolls -voila, he must be homosexual!
/end sarcasm
It was actually an interesting study--IIRC it sparked a conflict between the author and another scientist which led to them bickering back and forth over several issues of the journal. The study author theorized the trend is due to anti-male antibodies produced by the mother with repetive pregnancies with a boy (the theory mentioned in the article). The other scientist said that it was probably an environmental effect, perhaps due to a higher likelihood of physical or sexual abuse by an older brother as there were more of them.
It couldn't be genetic in this case, of course, since there's no mechanism to transmit certain genes to a son only when one has produced multiple sons already.
I read about this study over 30 years ago - I only remember that it was done in the 60s in Britain. I did find a couple of other studies that make reference to the same conclusions.
Lindy Heinecken Centre for Military Sudies, Military Academy, University of Stellenbosch - Published in African Security Review Vol 8 No 5, 1999: "Other studies have discovered that mothers, who suffered severe stress during pregnancy, had a higher incidence of gay sons. Increased adrenaline levels caused by stress lower the testosterone level in the male foetus. This is believed to influence sexual orientation. Similarly, the use of synthetic oestrogen used to reduce the risk of miscarriage has been associated with an increased incidence of lesbian daughters."
This study of rats was done in 1972:
"Abstract: Male rats were exposed to prenatal (i.e. before they were born) or postnatal (after they were born) stress, or both. The prenatally stressed males showed low levels of male copulatory behavior and high rates of female lordotic responding. Postnatal stress had no effect. The modifications are attributed to stress-mediated alterations in the ratio of adrenal to gonadal androgens during critical stages of sexual differentiation. Specifically, it appears that stress causes an increase in the weak adrenal androgen, androstendione, from the maternal fetal adrenal cortices, or both, and a concurrent decrease in the potent gonadal androgen, testosterone."
Parental Stress Feminizes and Demasculizes the Behavior of Males, Science, January 7, 1972 (83-84).
If I had the time (which I don't) to do the research, I'm sure I could find the study I read about years ago.
"Somehow, the mother's body is remembering how many boys she's carried before," says Breedlove. "The favorite hypothesis is that the mother may be making antibodies when she sees a boy the first time, and then affect subsequent boys when she carries them in utero."
Actually, there are a number of differences in second and third and so forth children. The entire family is different, as is the average age of the family environment, the wealth of the parents, and the age and energy of parents. Smallest children tend to be babied a lot too. All of things appear to create differences between children by birth order - that has nothing to do with being homosexual.
See post below from a google discussion group, 1999 by a shari finkelstein. could this be same author of CBS article?
SUBMISSIONS BEING ACCEPTED FOR NEW ZINE-
'IT'S NOT A PHASE'
You are invited to contribute to the first issue of 'It's Not a Phase'.
Our mission is to combat the authoritarian stereotype that coming out as
anything other than "the norm" - such as gay, lesbian, bisexual,
transgendered, transsexual, pagan and so much more - is simply a phase
or hobby to fill time and destroy parents' and other authority figures'
dreams.
This is about understanding and accepting us as who we are, not who they
wish us to be. This is about the paths we've taken in order to accept
ourselves and how we have attained acceptance, attempted it, or lived
without it.
This is about empowerment. Empowering ourselves through sharing, unity,
and support, not overthrowing the "supposed" societal "norms" as many
wish to believe. We range from pre-adolescent to middle age and include
all races and sexes.
This about seizing who we want to be and who we are, even if we
ourselves are not totally comfortable with whom that is. This is about
controlling permission to change who we are as we see fit, as personal
growth, as an adaptation of ourselves and personality as opposed to
being viewed as "a phase".
'It's Not a Phase' aims to be a forum for all expressions of personal
growth, on all levels, from curiosity to full self-knowledge. We not
only wish to share and learn from each other, but to pass on the
courage, strength and lessons as well as we can to those who are only
beginning the struggle.
All forms of creative expression are accepted, and welcomed. Poetry,
prose, stories from fiction, fact or a mixture, essays, photos
drawings....anything you think expresses your emotions regarding your
personal quest for self and societal acceptance. Submissions can be
published credited or anonymous, whichever you choose, and you can even
contribute anonymously, if you wish.
Send contributions by email to: JewlyaR...@hotmail.com,
sfink...@eden.rutgers.edu or send to: Shari Finkelstein,Rutgers, the
State University, 25776 DPO Way, New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8707. Deadline
for submissions is April 15th.
--
As I wrote in an earlier post, perhaps this poor kid's gender problem is biologically based...so what? That just means something went WRONG. Should an alcoholic whose alcoholism is determined to be genetic be allowed to show up drunk at work?
another article by shari finkelstein on intersexed children:
http://venus-unrelenting.com/other.html
Shari Finkelstein
Response paper #1
988:101:01
The True Other
Although many often describe Women as the lesser regarded and advantageous sex, one only has to believe in Anne Fausto-Sterling's belief in "The Five Sexes: Why Female and Male Are Not Enough", to know the true other is not the second class women, but the largely ignored intersexed.
In "Age, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference", Audre Lorde states, "In a society where the good is defined in terms of profit rather than in terms of human need, there must always be some group of people who, through systematized oppression, can be made to feel surplus, to occupy the place of the dehumanized inferior." She continues on, "Within this society, that group is made up of Black and Third World people, working-class people, older people and women."(WCS, 103)
What Lorde, and so many others, ignore though, is what medical investigators have recognized for quite some time. "For biologically speaking, there are many gradations running from female to male; depending on how one calls the shots, one can argue that along the spectrum lie at least five sexes-and perhaps maybe more."(Fausto-Sterling, 54) On the basis of what is known about them, the author suggests that the three intersexes deserve to be known as additional sexes in their own right. The intersexed human's inner life, complete with their special needs and problems, attractions and repulsions have gone unexplored by science. (54) 013 The intersexed outer life has completely omitted from society, where one has to look no further than any restroom or legal document to see that if you are not strictly male or female, you may as well not exist.
Adrienne Rich in "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence", says "Lesbian existence comprises of both the breaking of taboo, and the rejection of a compulsory way of life."(Reader, 239) There is no denying these facts for lesbians, but it can also be applied to sex. In virtually every society, what is compulsory is fitting into the "natural" classification of male or female. Whereas the "lesbian existence has been lived...without access to any knowledge of a tradition, a continuity, a social underpinning.", and has "historically been deprived of a political existence through "inclusion" as female versions of male sexuality", it has existed with acknowledgment by all, regardless of with support or contempt. In recent decades the homosexual movement has risen, giving themselves character and history with every "outing". The intersexed have a vast lack of public support resources in comparison, and although they are up to 4% births per year, virtually none are publicly accepted.
Simone de Beauroir states in "The Second Sex", "The category of the Other is as primordial as consciousness itself. In most primitive societies... one finds the expression of duality-that of the Self and the Other. This duality was not originally attached to the division of the sexes; it was not dependent on any imperical facts. Otherness is a fundamental category of human thought." "Thus it is that no group ever sets itself up as the One without at once setting up the Other over against itself." (xxiii) Throughout time, the true Other has been so well portrayed that it has been able to become virtually invisible. "Legally...every adult is either man or woman", and although Fausto-Sterling states that the difference is not trivial, it must be, for why else would we be preconditioned to ignore the intersexed?
Society and politics seem to love to control many aspects of our lives, embedding in our impressionable minds that if what they say is what their forefathers said, it must be true, as g-d, if one believes, has meant it to be. The fact remains though that "If the state and the legal system have an interest in maintaining a two-party sex system, they are in defiance of nature."
Although it is clear that in order to correct this, we must act by reversing the ignoring of the intersexed; it would be a long hard struggle. In a world where women are often denied the rights of their male counterparts, and homosexuals are only now gaining exceptance, approval for yet another minority-a minority in the minority-would take much effort.
As Lourde says, "it is the members of oppressed, objectified groups who are expected to stretch out and bridge the gap between the actualities in our lives and the consciousness of our oppressor" "It is the responsibility of the oppressed to teach the oppressors their mistakes."(WCS, 104) Therefore, before a "vision of sexual multiplicity can be realized, the first openly intersexual children and their parents will have to be the brave pioneers who will bear the brunt of society's growing pains."(Fausto-Sterling, 59).
This in my opinion is highly unlikely for the near future. As a young woman who has grown from a highly taunted child, I know the pain childhood can bring. The effort needed simply to educate the nation, much less the world, of the existence of the intersexed would be huge and possibly forever traumatizing on the child. No parent would press that upon his or her child, and¹ even fewer children would choose that route. The fact is, in this day and age, any small home-grown campaign, as well as it means, and as large as it aims, can fail without proper financial and social support, and in this day and age, success for another minority while others are still fighting seems to be a dream for the future. It is a sad reality, yet it is reality. Although many do acknowledge and accept the intersexed as sexual beings in their own right, the majority of existence has and always will considered them the invisible Other.
a shari finkelstein is listed as president of rutgers gay, bisexual, transgender group in college paper:
http://www.dailytargum.com/home/index.cfm?event=displayArticlePrinterFriendly&uStory_id=a21a7a99-6f8c-4d8d-9094-af7702f301bc
So right! I was a tom boy as a kid, enjoyed climbing trees, and hiking with my brothers. I am plenty girlie, thank you very much! LOL
"What kind of folks are mom & dad---if there is a dad. ??????"
The Mom is definately a nut case. Probably wanted a girl, so she treats her son like one.
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