[gringochileno]

I don't have time to respond line-by-line to this right now but I'll try to dig up the study that shows the distribution of sexual orientation in transgender people. It was in one of my lectures last year but they don't provide footnotes for every bullet point. Also, this

Quote:

This little boy in the original article was most likely transformed by his lesbo mom's and there's no easy way to explain this fact away. Not only did I link a book which has received strong reviews from many different sources, but common sense says that having two lesbian moms can turn a boy gay.

is absolutely false. There is no evidence that sexual orientation is determined by anything other than genetics and "nonshared environmental factors" like maternal hormone levels during pregnancy. There is no evidence that you can condition someone to change their sexual orientation or their gender identity. There is no evidence that it is possible to "turn someone gay." If "common sense" tells you otherwise, then your common sense is wrong.

[Samseau]

Quote:

There is no evidence that sexual orientation is determined by anything other than genetics.

Wow dude, did you even read the article you just posted?

Quote:

"Overall, genetics accounted for around 35 per cent of the differences between men in homosexual behaviour and other individual-specific environmental factors (that is, not societal attitudes, family or parenting which are shared by twins) accounted for around 64 per cent. In other words, men become gay or straight because of different developmental pathways, not just one pathway."

First of all, the study only finds 35% of homosexual behavior to be accounted for by genetics. You just refuted yourself.


Second of all, this study fucking sucks. Just look at how ridiculous the claim "other individual-specific environmental factors (that is, not societal attitudes, family or parenting which are shared by twins) accounted for around 64 per cent" sounds. How can they rule out that parenting doesn't affect one twin and not the other? How do they know that the parents gave equal attention and treatment to the twins?

What are these "individual-specific environmental factors"? There's no attempt at intellectual rigor in this study. Rubbish.

Here's another rubbish study I found linked to this one:

Quote:

the team found modest genetic influences on sexual orientation (25 per cent) and childhood gender nonconformity (31 per cent).

What ever the fuck this shit means. Same problem as the last study. There are obvious PC-Feminist biases running through these studies that compromise the validity of their results.

One commenter shreds the study:

Quote:

The title of this article is a little silly. It should say
"Sexual orientation and gender conforming traits in women show slight genetic correlation, but in all honesty nothing conclusive."

There may be genetic influences on gender conformity, but in all honesty there's no such thing as the gay gene. I'm not a fuckin x-man.

As does another:

Quote:

This article is so poorly written that it is not a valid scientific article. The methodology is not explained, but it apparently uses twins for comparison. How do they account for the tendency for twins to have similar environments as well as very similar DNA?
If they have truly found a genetic basis, then DNA testing has reached the stage where researchers increasingly will compare genomes to isolate causal genes -- ie, the Gay Gene. Tell us which one is the gay gene, so that it can be scientifically tested.

[gringochileno]

"Non-shared environment" and "shared environment" actually have precise meanings in this context. They're mathematical parameters that are used in twin studies to tease out how much of the variation in a trait is due to different types of factors. To give an oversimplifying one-sentence summary because I'm about to go to sleep, "individual-specific environmental factors" are environmental influences that the twins don't have in common, like maternal hormone levels (in a multiple pregnancy, the fetuses are exposed to different levels of different hormones during gestation due to having different intrauterine locations). This is actually a pretty uncontroversial study design.

By the way, nice job clipping my quote to make it look like I said something I didn't say, especially since my post is right above yours. Was that unintentional or are you arguing in bad faith?

[ersatz]

(10-03-2011 08:42 AM)Gmac Wrote:  

(10-03-2011 03:12 AM)ersatz Wrote:  

Hetrosexual couples have also done similar things. Kim Petras in Germany is one famous example of this. Many gay couples want life to be as normal as possible for their kids, older gay men have told me if they could not be gay, they would, since life would be much easier. Male hormonal effects are pretty much irreversible and complete, while female hormonal effects are significantly easier to reverse. You'll notice that only the guys trying to become girls stand out looking freakish, you never notice the girls becoming guys. Look at Buck Angel to see how testosterone completely changes a human body to look, smell, sound and think like a guy.

Wow. Well, I think Buck Angel is in the minority... most who go through with the swap don't look quite that authentic -- from what I've seen.

They all do, after a year or two on T and some surgery. Some random youtube searches:

NSFW: Topless men/former women, no tits (that's about it)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3Eiycyhv...re=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiV4f56ckTg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFZ-6cx0s...re=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKPQRigEf...re=related

[Samseau]

Quote:

By the way, nice job clipping my quote to make it look like I said something I didn't say, especially since my post is right above yours. Was that unintentional or are you arguing in bad faith?

My bad, that's what late night posting can do to you.

Quote:

To give an oversimplifying one-sentence summary because I'm about to go to sleep, "individual-specific environmental factors" are environmental influences that the twins don't have in common

Right, and they never mention how they determined these unshared factors. Look at how ambiguous their wording is:

Quote:

The study shows that genetic influences are important but modest, and that non-shared environmental factors, which may include factors operating during foetal development, dominate. Importantly, heredity had roughly the same influence as shared environmental factors in women, whereas the latter had no impact on sexual behaviour in men.

How did they determine this? How did they rule out shared and non-shared? They claim shared matters for women and not men. How can this be? What is their method? How can they rule out that parenting doesn't affect one twin and not the other? How do they know that the parents gave equal attention and treatment to the twins?

Smells like bullshit to me.

I want to read their paper but I can't find it. I'm emailing the authors now.

[Pete]

Why on earth would people allow a 11 year old to take a decision as this? He should wait 'till he's 18 or 21. He'll may even regret it later in life.

[gringochileno]

(10-05-2011 09:23 AM)Samseau Wrote:  

Quote:

By the way, nice job clipping my quote to make it look like I said something I didn't say, especially since my post is right above yours. Was that unintentional or are you arguing in bad faith?

My bad, that's what late night posting can do to you.

No worries. Apparently late-night posting can make you give inadequately brief explanations of how twin studies work too, so allow me to elaborate.

The way you set up a twin study is you look at pairs of monozygotic twins (MZ, or identical twins) and dizygotic twins (DZ, fraternal twins). The MZ twins have all of their genetic material in common and the DZ twins only have half of their genetic material in common since they don't come from the same fertilized egg.

Now define three terms:
A = genetics--the variation attributable to directly inherited traits.
S = shared environment--variation attributable to environmental factors that the twins have in common.
E = non-shared environment--variation attributable to environmental factors that the twins don't have in common.

These three terms account for all of the variation in the trait, i.e. A+S+E = 1.

Now note that monozygotic twins share all of their genetic traits and all of their shared environment (true by definition), so all of the difference between the identical twins is due to E, the non-shared environment. The opposite of the difference between the twins is the correlation coefficient, r. So we get

r(mz) = A + S for MZ twins.

The analysis is the same for DZ (fraternal) twins except that they only share half of their genetic material, so we get

r(dz) = 1/2A + S for DZ twins.

Subtract the second equation from the first and multiply by two:

2*[r(mz)-r(dz)] = A

So the variation in the trait attributable to genetics is twice the difference between the correlation among the identical twins and the correlation among the fraternal twins.

Next, you can get E by going back to the first equation, A+S+E = 1, and substituting r(mz)=A+S. So E=1-r(mz).

Finally, get S using the original equation and substituting with A=2[r(mz)-r(dz)]. It comes out to S=2[r(dz)-r(mz)].
-----------------------------------------------

Alright, that's enough math. So what they did was they measured how well your twin's sexuality predicts your own sexuality when you have an identical twin vs. a fraternal twin, then they used the above derivation to find out how much of the variation is due to genetics, environmental factors the twins have in common, and environmental factors the twins don't have in common. What the results show is that the homosexuality in males is due to about 35% genetics and 64% environmental factors that twins raised in the same household don't have in common. What are the factors that twins raised in the same household have in common?

-Parents and other relatives
-Family structure (age and number of siblings, etc.)
-Surrounding community and implicit values
-Early education
-Exposure to environmental agents, more or less

Now what are factors that they wouldn't have in common?

-Maternal-fetal hormone levels (this is a prime suspect because we have an actual mechanism for how this produces changes in the brain, and when we look at brain scans of the regions affected by these hormones they're different in gay and straight men).
-Epigenetic factors
-Maybe some environmental agents
-A limited number of experiences
-A limited amount of variation in how they're treated
-How they might respond to some environmental stimuli

You're right that it remains possible that there could nonetheless be differences in upbringing that would show up as part of the variation due to nonshared environment, but the idea behind a twin study is that you try to minimize these variations by looking at people who were raised in very similar circumstances. The real gold standard test would be to look at twins who were separated at birth and compare them to twins who were raised in the same household, but unfortunately that's a rare occurrence so we don't have very many opportunities to do studies like that.

The bottom line with this study is that if things like upbringing were really so important in determining someone's sexuality, it surely would have shown a stronger effect from shared environment. The real smoking gun is that the study didn't show any effect due to shared environment even when looking at children whose upbringing was bound to be very similar, even if not identical for the reasons you've stated.

As for why women score higher in shared environment, I think the authors attributed it to measurement errors in assessing women's sexuality. A lot of women who identify as straight will have some degree of attraction to women while it's a lot more cut and dry for men, which makes it more difficult to place them in one category or the other for the purposes of the study.
------------------------------------------------

Also, to go back to our earlier discussion, I looked up the statistics on sexual orientation of transsexuals and it turns out that it matters whether or not the person with GID is an adult or a child. I couldn't find the primary literature source for this but it's actually about 75% of children with GID who go on to become gay if they don't get a sex change. I said the majority turn out to be attracted to women so I was mistaken about that, but my original point was that sexual orientation and gender identity aren't the same thing, which is true--25% of children with GID will be attracted to women.

Here's a paper that looks at sexual orientation in transsexual adults. You might not have access to the full text so I've uploaded it with this post. They're significantly more likely to be attracted to women than children are and it depends on whether or not they fall into the "autogynephilic" category, i.e. they're sexually aroused by the idea of being a woman.

Finally, to get back to the original point of the article, here's some data that the hormone-suppression therapy they're putting the kid on seems to lead to good outcomes. Looks like the doctors are practicing solid, evidence-based treatment.

[Samseau]

No wonder the study makes no sense.

Quote:

Now note that monozygotic twins share all of their genetic traits and all of their shared environment (true by definition),

That's a bad assumption. A shared environment does not mean an identical environment. It's not true by definition, and by my psychological training I already know that each child lives in a different world at home.

Quote:

Now what are factors that they wouldn't have in common?

-Maternal-fetal hormone levels (this is a prime suspect because we have an actual mechanism for how this produces changes in the brain, and when we look at brain scans of the regions affected by these hormones they're different in gay and straight men).
-Epigenetic factors
-Maybe some environmental agents
-A limited number of experiences
-A limited amount of variation in how they're treated
-How they might respond to some environmental stimuli

Let's add to this list.

- Treatment by their parents (this is Huuuuuuuuuuge).
- Treatment by their siblings (this is Huge).

The interplay of amour-propre's (in layman's terms; their "ego's") within a family go unaccounted for because they do not account for variations in upbringing.


Thought experiment:

Suppose a pair of identical male twins live in a house. The father sodomizes one twin but not the other. The one who was sodomized grows up to be gay. But according to the twin studies you've linked, the twin who grew up to be gay cannot be gay on account of his family life, because it was a "shared" environment.

What a flaw.

Quote:

The bottom line with this study is that if things like upbringing were really so important in determining someone's sexuality, it surely would have shown a stronger effect from shared environment.

How would they find out if upbringing was important or not when, according to the definitions you provided me,

{ "monozygotic twins share all of their genetic traits and all of their shared environment (true by definition)" }

it is already assumed that the upbringing is not important?


I think the upbringing of a child can have a tremendous impact on the sexuality/gender-identity of a child, but there are other ways a child's sexuality/gender-identity can be morphed.


------------------------------------------------------------

Quote:

I couldn't find the primary literature source for this but it's actually about 75% of children with GID who go on to become gay if they don't get a sex change.

In other words, these men are attracted to men and so become women to better attract men.

75% is a big number. Looks like my initial "common sense" evaluation was mostly right - people have sex changes so they can better attract the sex they are attracted to. Not all people are like that - but most. It's the logical thing for a young person with mixed up genders to do.

As for men who are attracted to women but want to become women anyways - these men probably had serious damage done to them, both in the womb and early childhood. A rare combo.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Quote:

Finally, to get back to the original point of the article, here's some data that the hormone-suppression therapy they're putting the kid on seems to lead to good outcomes. Looks like the doctors are practicing solid, evidence-based treatment.

It's funny, because I haven't had a position on the article yet. Here's what I think.

The lesbian mothers turned their kid gay, and the kid wants to maximize his chances with men. This comes to him on an instinctual level. Since the kid is broken from his upbringing, hormone suppression and a sex-change makes sense - it will give him the highest chances of happiness in his lifetime.

At this point, science provides damage-control for the lesbian mother upbringing, a questionable enough practice in the first place. I suppose, if I had to choose between a child being stuck in an orphanage or being raised by lesbians, I'd choose him being raised by lesbians (even at the cost of his sexual identity), but the fact that these lesbians aren't adopting but instead using in vitro fertilization is what makes this wrong.

Gays/Lesbians should only be allowed to adopt and not raise newborns.

[gringochileno]

(10-06-2011 01:59 PM)Samseau Wrote:  

No wonder the study makes no sense.

Quote:

Now note that monozygotic twins share all of their genetic traits and all of their shared environment (true by definition),

That's a bad assumption. A shared environment does not mean an identical environment. It's not true by definition, and by my psychological training I already know that each child lives in a different world at home.

Quote:

Now what are factors that they wouldn't have in common?

-Maternal-fetal hormone levels (this is a prime suspect because we have an actual mechanism for how this produces changes in the brain, and when we look at brain scans of the regions affected by these hormones they're different in gay and straight men).
-Epigenetic factors
-Maybe some environmental agents
-A limited number of experiences
-A limited amount of variation in how they're treated
-How they might respond to some environmental stimuli

Let's add to this list.

- Treatment by their parents (this is Huuuuuuuuuuge).
- Treatment by their siblings (this is Huge).

The interplay of amour-propre's (in layman's terms; their "ego's") within a family go unaccounted for because they do not account for variations in upbringing.


Thought experiment:

Suppose a pair of identical male twins live in a house. The father sodomizes one twin but not the other. The one who was sodomized grows up to be gay. But according to the twin studies you've linked, the twin who grew up to be gay cannot be gay on account of his family life, because it was a "shared" environment.

What a flaw.

Quote:

The bottom line with this study is that if things like upbringing were really so important in determining someone's sexuality, it surely would have shown a stronger effect from shared environment.

How would they find out if upbringing was important or not when, according to the definitions you provided me,

{ "monozygotic twins share all of their genetic traits and all of their shared environment (true by definition)" }

it is already assumed that the upbringing is not important?


I think the upbringing of a child can have a tremendous impact on the sexuality/gender-identity of a child, but there are other ways a child's sexuality/gender-identity can be morphed.

No sorry, I still don't think you understand what "shared environment" means. Maybe I'm not explaining it very clearly. By definition the shared environmental factors are any environmental influences that the twins have in common. So the objective result of the study is that genetics account for 35% of the variation in sexuality, and the rest of the variation is accounted for by influences that are not shared by identical twins raised in the same household, whatever those factors are. Conversely, the factors they do share were not demonstrated to have any effect.

What you're saying is that even when dealing with twins from the same family, there may be differences in the home environment that account for some of the variation due to nonshared environment. That's all well and good and I'll admit as much. The more significant result of the study is that it found no effect on sexuality by any shared environmental factors.

Think about that for a second--this was a study with a sample size of thousands. It compared every pair of twins born in the country of Sweden during the study period. Even though it's very possible for pairs of twins to be treated differently by their parents, it's undeniable that there will also be similarities. For what you're saying to be true, the differences in the children's upbringing and interpersonal relationships would have to be so profound that there was literally nothing they had in common that would tend to predispose to homosexuality--even though they are the same age, have near-identical physical features, grew up in the same family, and have the same peer group. And this would have to be the case for every single pair of twins in the study. That seems extremely implausible.

Quote:

Quote:

I couldn't find the primary literature source for this but it's actually about 75% of children with GID who go on to become gay if they don't get a sex change.

In other words, these men are attracted to men and so become women to better attract men.

75% is a big number. Looks like my initial "common sense" evaluation was mostly right - people have sex changes so they can better attract the sex they are attracted to. Not all people are like that - but most. It's the logical thing for a young person with mixed up genders to do.

As for men who are attracted to women but want to become women anyways - these men probably had serious damage done to them, both in the womb and early childhood. A rare combo.

Dude, do you really think getting a sex change is in any sense of the word the "easiest" way for a gay men to attract other men in 2011? Keep in mind also that these are children that we're talking about. I really don't see them coming to decisions like this as a result of a Spock-like rational deliberative process about what will maximize their advantage with the desired sex. Not to mention that that's not at all what they'll tell you if you actually ask them why they wanted to change sexes. They'll tell you that they felt like they were in the wrong body and being female "feels right" to them.

Oh, and there's a big chunk of the transgender population that contradicts your hypothesis just by existing. 25% is not something you can just handwave away.

Quote:

Quote:

Finally, to get back to the original point of the article, here's some data that the hormone-suppression therapy they're putting the kid on seems to lead to good outcomes. Looks like the doctors are practicing solid, evidence-based treatment.

It's funny, because I haven't had a position on the article yet. Here's what I think.

The lesbian mothers turned their kid gay, and the kid wants to maximize his chances with men. This comes to him on an instinctual level. Since the kid is broken from his upbringing, hormone suppression and a sex-change makes sense - it will give him the highest chances of happiness in his lifetime.

At this point, science provides damage-control for the lesbian mother upbringing, a questionable enough practice in the first place. I suppose, if I had to choose between a child being stuck in an orphanage or being raised by lesbians, I'd choose him being raised by lesbians (even at the cost of his sexual identity), but the fact that these lesbians aren't adopting but instead using in vitro fertilization is what makes this wrong.

Gays/Lesbians should only be allowed to adopt and not raise newborns.

See, there's just not any evidence for your premises. And there's a lot of evidence for homosexuality being the result of factors that have nothing to do with the sexual orientation of your parents.

[Samseau]

Quote:

By definition the shared environmental factors are any environmental influences that the twins have in common.

So are parents considered shared environmental factors or not!?

If they are, the study sucks and makes too big an assumption. If not, the study doesn't contradict the claim that parenting has an influence on a childs GID/sexuality!

Quote:

For what you're saying to be true, the differences in the children's upbringing and interpersonal relationships would have to be so profound that there was literally nothing they had in common that would tend to predispose to homosexuality--even though they are the same age, have near-identical physical features, grew up in the same family, and have the same peer group

Yep.

Quote:

And this would have to be the case for every single pair of twins in the study.

Nope. It only needs to be true for some of the twins in the study.


---------------------

Quote:

Dude, do you really think getting a sex change is in any sense of the word the "easiest" way for a gay men to attract other men in 2011?

If they can do it before puberty hits? Absolutely.

There are far more straight men than gay men. (The world hasn't gone insane yet.)

-------------------

Quote:

See, there's just not any evidence for your premises.

Evidence is just a matter of conducting the right experiments.

Quote:

And there's a lot of evidence for homosexuality being the result of factors that have nothing to do with the sexual orientation of your parents.

Of course there is, I never denied it.

[gringochileno]

(10-06-2011 03:14 PM)Samseau Wrote:  

Quote:

By definition the shared environmental factors are any environmental influences that the twins have in common.

So are parents considered shared environmental factors or not!?

If they are, the study sucks and makes too big an assumption. If not, the study doesn't contradict the claim that parenting has an influence on a childs GID/sexuality!

Whatever aspects of the parenting are shared by the children, go under shared environment. Whatever aspects of the parenting are not shared by the children, go under non-shared environment. A lot of the parenting is bound to be similar but as you've pointed out there could be differences. The remarkable thing is that they didn't find any effect at all due to environmental similarities. What this says is that there's nothing the children have in common, aside from their genes, that makes a difference for sexual orientation.

Quote:

Quote:

For what you're saying to be true, the differences in the children's upbringing and interpersonal relationships would have to be so profound that there was literally nothing they had in common that would tend to predispose to homosexuality--even though they are the same age, have near-identical physical features, grew up in the same family, and have the same peer group

Yep.

Quote:

And this would have to be the case for every single pair of twins in the study.

Nope. It only needs to be true for some of the twins in the study.

No, it would have to be the case for all of them because the study result is a statistical analysis of all of the pairs of twins. If there are environmental factors that predispose to homosexuality, and if even a small percentage of the twins had these in common, then it would show up as a "shared environment" influence in the results. Let's try an example.

Suppose for the sake of argument that being sodomized as a child turns you gay 100% of the time. Now suppose that we have 10 pairs of twins from 10 different families. In 9 of the families, the father sodomized one of the twins, but in the other family, the father sodomized both of them. The way this will show up in the study result is a 90% contribution from non-shared environment and a 10% contribution from shared environment. So even if some of the twins are having different experiences in the home, if those experiences are shared by even a small number of the twins we would see an effect from shared environment. But we don't, which indicates that parental upbringing has a negligible to non-existent influence.

Quote:

Quote:

Dude, do you really think getting a sex change is in any sense of the word the "easiest" way for a gay men to attract other men in 2011?

If they can do it before puberty hits? Absolutely.

There are far more straight men than gay men. (The world hasn't gone insane yet.)

Gender transitions take years, are extremely expensive, have risks and side effects from the treatments, result in massive social humiliation and ostracism, and you basically have to redefine your entire personal identity, peer group, and social network. You'd have to be crazy or stupid to think that's easier than simply trying to find another gay man.

Quote:

Evidence is just a matter of conducting the right experiments.

You sound like a creationist.

[Samseau]

Quote:

Whatever aspects of the parenting are shared by the children, go under shared environment. Whatever aspects of the parenting are not shared by the children, go under non-shared environment.

Ridiculous. What meaningless terms. The word "shared" in this context is almost worthless. No two children are treated the same by their parents.

Quote:

A lot of the parenting is bound to be similar but as you've pointed out there could be differences. The remarkable thing is that they didn't find any effect at all due to environmental similarities. What this says is that there's nothing the children have in common, aside from their genes, that makes a difference for sexual orientation.

Considering neither you nor I can figure out how these studies precisely determine what "shared" means, we shouldn't be too surprised by any of their results. They just move goalposts to fit whatever conclusions they want to make.

Quote:

No, it would have to be the case for all of them because the study result is a statistical analysis of all of the pairs of twins. If there are environmental factors that predispose to homosexuality, and if even a small percentage of the twins had these in common, then it would show up as a "shared environment" influence in the results.

Not true either, because environmental factors can be specific to only one child.

And it wouldn't show up as a "shared environment" influence, because the researches will just redefine the term "shared" until parental influences are no longer considered part of the "shared" category.

Quote:

So even if some of the twins are having different experiences in the home, if those experiences are shared by even a small number of the twins we would see an effect from shared environment. But we don't, which indicates that parental upbringing has a negligible to non-existent influence.

All your example shows is that parental influence is never uniform, not that parental influence is negligible.

Likewise, for all we know, the study you linked me shows that parental influence is never uniform in shaping which child becomes gay, not that parenting is negligible.

The study doesn't disprove anything.

--------------------

Quote:

Gender transitions take years, are extremely expensive, have risks and side effects from the treatments, result in massive social humiliation and ostracism, and you basically have to redefine your entire personal identity, peer group, and social network. You'd have to be crazy or stupid to think that's easier than simply trying to find another gay man.

It's more work, but in the long term it has more rewards. For a young boy who hasn't entered puberty, the downsides are outweighed by the benefits.

I also suspect that, since it is a boy transformed into a woman, the newly transformed boy-woman will be able to enjoy the fruits of his(her?) efforts for much longer as he(she?) should age much more slowly than a regular woman does.

Quote:

You sound like a creationist.

No, I am being the critical thinker here. You being the one blindly accepting dogmas and believing in the lie of "evidence".


Evidence is trash. What is important is counter-factual evidence. It's possible to find evidence to prove any number of theories, so it's much more valuable to disprove theories instead of confirming them.

If you are interested in how to be more scientific...

See: David Hume and the Problem of Induction
See: Immanuel Kant and the Third Analogy of experience (Critique of Reason, Book II, Chapter II, Section III, Part 3, Letter C.)
Read: The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Karl Popper

[gringochileno]

(10-06-2011 05:43 PM)Samseau Wrote:  

Quote:

Whatever aspects of the parenting are shared by the children, go under shared environment. Whatever aspects of the parenting are not shared by the children, go under non-shared environment.

Ridiculous. What meaningless terms. The word "shared" in this context is almost worthless. No two children are treated the same by their parents.

Quote:

A lot of the parenting is bound to be similar but as you've pointed out there could be differences. The remarkable thing is that they didn't find any effect at all due to environmental similarities. What this says is that there's nothing the children have in common, aside from their genes, that makes a difference for sexual orientation.

Considering neither you nor I can figure out how these studies precisely determine what "shared" means, we shouldn't be too surprised by any of their results. They just move goalposts to fit whatever conclusions they want to make.

OK look, take off your adversarial-debater "everything my opponent says must be wrong" hat for a minute because you are fundamentally misunderstanding how the experiment works. The researchers do not get to define what shared and unshared environment mean. They're numbers that get spit out of equations after they plug in the results of their study. This is why I posted the mathematical derivation--it's actually important to understand what's being measured here. Once again:

For each pair of twins, you get three data points: Are they identical or fraternal, is twin 1 gay or straight, and is twin 2 gay or straight. Repeat for every pair of twins in your sample. Now separate out the identical and fraternal twins and for each group, see how well twin 1's sexual orientation correlates to twin 2's sexual orientation. This gives you two numbers, r(mz) and r(dz), that you plug into the equations to get A (variation due to genetics), S (variation due to shared environment), and E (variation due to unshared environment). There is no way to shift the goalposts or do any other fudging to make the numbers come out differently. They shouldn't be in dispute.

Now, what you have to do next is interpret what the results mean. The argument you've been making is that even identical twins from the same family will have different experiences growing up and can be impacted differently from one another. Fair enough. Translated into the language of the study, to the extent that any upbringing-related factors that the twins do not have in common have an effect on sexual orientation, it will tend to increase E, the variation due to unshared environment.

Conversely, there are surely also environmental influences that at least some of the twins will have in common. Do you dispute that? If not, then you agree that there are environmental influences that, if they impacted sexuality, would tend to increase S. Again, this is independent of the researchers' opinion of what constitutes shared and unshared environment. It comes straight out of the math.

Quote:

Quote:

No, it would have to be the case for all of them because the study result is a statistical analysis of all of the pairs of twins. If there are environmental factors that predispose to homosexuality, and if even a small percentage of the twins had these in common, then it would show up as a "shared environment" influence in the results.

Not true either, because environmental factors can be specific to only one child.

And it wouldn't show up as a "shared environment" influence, because the researches will just redefine the term "shared" until parental influences are no longer considered part of the "shared" category.

Quote:

So even if some of the twins are having different experiences in the home, if those experiences are shared by even a small number of the twins we would see an effect from shared environment. But we don't, which indicates that parental upbringing has a negligible to non-existent influence.

All your example shows is that parental influence is never uniform, not that parental influence is negligible.

Likewise, for all we know, the study you linked me shows that parental influence is never uniform in shaping which child becomes gay, not that parenting is negligible.

The study doesn't disprove anything.

Hopefully you read the first part of my response and you already understand why this doesn't make sense. The researchers do not have the ability to change the numerical value of the term E, which determines the variation due to shared environmental factors. In my example, if being sodomized always caused a child to become gay, then 1 out of 10 families where both twins were sodomized would cause a 10% increase in the value of S when the results were calculated. If there were anything that can predispose to homosexuality that even a small number of twins could have in common, we would see a contribution from shared environment in the results. But we don't, leaving two possibilities:

1) Upbringing influences sexuality, but those aspects of upbringing that influence sexuality are NEVER held in common by identical twins raised in the same household, or
2) Upbringing does not significantly influence sexuality

The study doesn't say which one of these is the case but I know which one I find more plausible.

--------------------

Quote:

Quote:

Gender transitions take years, are extremely expensive, have risks and side effects from the treatments, result in massive social humiliation and ostracism, and you basically have to redefine your entire personal identity, peer group, and social network. You'd have to be crazy or stupid to think that's easier than simply trying to find another gay man.

It's more work, but in the long term it has more rewards. For a young boy who hasn't entered puberty, the downsides are outweighed by the benefits.

I also suspect that, since it is a boy transformed into a woman, the newly transformed boy-woman will be able to enjoy the fruits of his(her?) efforts for much longer as he(she?) should age much more slowly than a regular woman does.

I really doubt that. All things considered, transsexuals aren't going to have a physical advantage over their biological female counterparts. Even if you get to them before puberty the transition process still isn't perfect. They won't be able to bear children and will have to be on hormone therapy for the rest of their lives, which have nasty side effects. Any long-term partner is going to find out that they used to be male too, which will dramatically decrease the pool of men that are willing to date them.

It's not like it's hard for gay men to find partners either. There are fewer gay men than straight men but there are also more straight women, so competition-wise it's about equal. I can get on the El and in 15 minutes be in a place where a gay man would have no trouble meeting a romantic partner.

I don't even know why I'm having this argument, by the way. All you need to do is ask people who have gone through gender transitions and they'll tell you that their decisions had nothing to do with a calculated attempt to attract their desired sex.

You also just did exactly what I said you couldn't do--ignore the 25% of transsexual children who contradict your hypothesis.

Quote:

Quote:

You sound like a creationist.

No, I am being the critical thinker here. You being the one blindly accepting dogmas and believing in the lie of "evidence".


Evidence is trash. What is important is counter-factual evidence. It's possible to find evidence to prove any number of theories, so it's much more valuable to disprove theories instead of confirming them.

If you are interested in how to be more scientific...

See: David Hume and the Problem of Induction
See: Immanuel Kant and the Third Analogy of experience (Critique of Reason, Book II, Chapter II, Section III, Part 3, Letter C.)
Read: The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Karl Popper

What are you saying, this experiment couldn't falsify a hypothesis? Sure it could.

Hypothesis: homosexuality is caused only by genetics and maternal-fetal hormone levels

That would be falsified if we found a significant effect due to shared environment, which genetics and maternal-fetal hormone levels wouldn't be able to explain. This study had the potential to find very strong support for the claim that upbringing is important for sexuality, but it found the opposite.

And are you really using the problem of induction to try to attack my position? All right, if you don't believe in induction then I'll make you a 50/50 bet that the sun will rise tomorrow. Sound good?