What do you do with "resilience" ? I don't know if the word exists in english. Search Boris Cyrulnik if it doesn't.

Yes sorry I read too fast.

Yes just read the study. It said. "Normally, X chromosome inactivation occurs at random: half of the cells in a woman's body will have one X chromosome inactivated, while the other half inactivates the other chromosome. However, when the researchers in the current study examined cells from those women who had at least two gay sons, they found that 42 of them—or 23 percent—showed something different."

It is just a choice to decide the norm is "X chromosome inactivation occurs at random: half of the cells in a woman's body will have one X chromosome inactivated".

We can also read the percentage : 23% . With 23% do they really think their "discovery" is interesting ?

It has been changed since 20 years. and some studies about porn and women just shows the opposite. and as I told before, you only interest to occidental societies, it is quite differet in other societies. You can read Laan, Sonderman and Janssen about porn and women. Catherine Vidal bout brain and gender.

wrong. Just read about ethnology.

Just about male, harem and so on.
There is a chinese tribe called Na. Woemn choose men who visite them during night. The woman decides which man to have sex with. The man has nothing to say and women must have many and many partners. It is a social obligation. So no man dies if his ex gri l friend has other partners. So you can see in this tribe how you assertion about men and harem is false.

[Edited on Mar 01, 2006 by mathilde74]

We don't speaking of individual choices. First it means we believe in individuality does exist wich is wrong.
I can take some examples. Some studies shows how boys and girls are treated differently when they are 1 or 2 years old. It grows up all the life. So there is a social influence. and there is a personal life too wich make you choose your sexuality, your love and so on.
a boy who is 3 years old, has already a mental and psychic construction which puts him into homosexuality or heterosexuality.

I suggest everbody tries to read some ethnology. In many tribes all men are homosexual during a long and long time. Do we really think their women all have this genetic thing ?
In other tribes heterosexuality exists just for reproduction. Male partners are just men ; is this really something to do with genetic ?

Sounds a little conspiratorial for my taste, but, that aside, wouldn't the people who would be trying to "fix" the "genetic problem" likely be the same ones who are already trying to "cure" what they see now as a behavioral problem, through therapy, conditioning, etc.? And wouldn't it be more difficult for them to justify eugenics than therapy?

Interesting question, since the answer is actually...wait for it...possibly, yes.

In the US, race and sex discrimination by the government are constitutionally suspect under the Equal Protection Clause. The courts determine which groups receive heightened constitutional protection in part based on whether members of the class possess "an immutable characteristic determined solely by the accident of birth." So you can see how this issue could have actual, real life, legal implications, and quite important ones.

More generally, I have to say I'm astounded by how resistant so many people in this thread are to the notion of improving our understanding of the science involved here.

Okay, so i think that everyone has thier own preferences. I was in a conversation recently where a question was introduced: "So you think that being gay is not right, but you have gay friends and are cool with them. Although you dissagree with gay 'men' you highly encourage and are stimulated by lesbians and/bisexuals." Now my friend went on to try and explain his postion. He failed miserably, but asked, and i ask you now, is he being unfair or sexist?

Actually, resilience is a great example. Trauma induces a brain center related series of biochemical changes in the brain, which remain permanent...unless the memories can be brought out of the trauma center of the brain and into the “regular” memory center of the brain.

When an individual suffers a trauma, the memory gets stored in a “trauma” center of the brain, which causes the individual to continually re-live the event very vividly as if it was happening all over again (night terrors, panic disorder, ETC.) If the memory can be coaxed OUT of the trauma center, and into the regular memory centers, the trauma is recalled as a normal memory and not as a “re-living” of the trauma..

Do a search for “EMDR” as a therapeutic technique. It is fascinating. It is a technique that deals with trauma as a biochemical memory issue. They have found trauma victims (war veterans, rape, fire, assault, ETC.) that have failed to find relief after decades of talk therapy are finding relief after a few months of EMDR.

It does not involve drugs, but instead uses a method of memory manipulation, in conjunction of the stimulation of the optical and aural brain centers, to draw the memories across the hippocampus and into the standard memory retention centers.

No worries :-)

I don’t know if the study is interesting or not...but random compression of the X-Chromosome into heterochromatin IS the norm. Which x-chromosome gets compacted in each cell is random in all forms of life which have sexual x-chromosome reproduction and is a very well studied phenomenon.

Even in this study...43 women out of 200 had non-random x-chromosomal compaction which is less than 25% which would, by definition, make random compaction “normal” response.

Hmmm...I’ll have to look into them :-)

I don’t know. It’s a pretty well documented anthropological state. You would have to quote some examples.

Good point...however, as I remember, this tribe initially began this practice due to a severe under population of women. That would make this a unique situation, where a tradition is formed out of desperation. There would need to be significantly more examples, from unrelated circumstances, for this to be considered viable to contest the statement.

One tribe, against the rest of the world, is an even smaller study group than the one used in this experiment :-)

I love to reboot when I'm answering. I don't quote some of your comments because I d'ont think we can become agree.

You ask me some examples about social interaction. You told women are more mental and men more visually oriented. With what you said ("women ornamenting themselves in an attempt to demonstrate a physical suitability for mating (creating visual cues for the men), whereas the men perform acts of performance ", I can first say viewing a man who is performing is an act of viewing

I don't have some examples in ethnology but in ethology. There are birds in Amazonia. With his beek (beack ?? the mouth of a bird ) paints the nest. He uses many colors. The nest must be as parents 'nest of the female bird. She will have intercourse with the male who did the nest who is similar to her parent's nest. You see her approach is totally visual. You can see pinguins too ; the male gives the most round stone to the female. She takes the male who brings her the most round. Isn't it the visual ?

We have no idea about it. A better choose would be exogamy (they are endogame) ; they did not choose it.

no you're kidding . They are maybe 1000 ou 2000.

I give you a website in english. It is about hormones and agression (not chromosomes) but it can make you understand what I believe.


Hormones in Context:

Maybe for you, but you can't possibly make that assumption about anyone else. I have been bisexual since I knew the difference between male and female and remember wondering what the hell that made me, when my Mum explained that boys only want to kiss girls and girls only want to kiss boys. I could have only been three at the time. it was an innocent attraction at that age, but an attraction none the less.

I made no choice, I just felt how I felt and as I grew older and became aware of actual sexuality, my homosexual feelings developed in exactly the same way as my heterosexual feelings. Again, I made no choice about this, it just was.

The only choice a gay or bisexual person, such as me would have is whether we act on our feelings or not, not on whether we harbour the feelings themselves. Growing up in a Catholic family, I did not act on mine for a long time and tried to conceal every aspect of that part of me. Upon finally admitting my true orientation to my friends a few years ago, none were shocked; in fact a couple matter-of-factly stated that they already knew, although I had done my best not to even acknowledge that side of me. This confirmed to me that my bisexuality is innate, whether I accepted it or not.

Not at all true. A sample that large is actually, quite respectable. If we assume the sample was chosen randomly, then any number greater than 30 is a respectable sample size, and statistically speaking, will reflect the population in terms of it's makeup.

If you want to criticize how they took this 200 mother sample, that is another issue. And one where there may very well be an issue.

23% percent instance of chromosome inactivation in women with two homosexual sons, compared with a 4% instance of chromosome inactivation in women with no homosexual sons. So, chromosome inactivation was six times more likely in women who had two homosexual sons compared with women who had none. There is diffidently something there. An interesting correlation, which will no doubt shed some light on the issue. This does not imply cause, of course, but it is still damn interesting.

This is logical fallacy.

The cultural prevalence of either homosexuality or heterosexuality cannot be used as a direct indicator of underlying genetics. If we were to look at Victorian England, based on the partners people chose, we would conclude that there was little or no homosexuality. The same, if we look at a culture in witch the norm is bias is STRONGLY towards homosexually, we will conclude that the gene for homosexuality is at or near 100% prevalence. No one (I think) is arguing that homosexuality is some binary trait; that it is either on or off, and that you are slave to this gene. Simply that genetics is going to influence the choices we make in regards to sexuality. And who knows? Perhaps the homosexual gene is in more prevalent in this culture. We see genetic microcosms quite frequently.

Now, i am going to have to ask you to be more specific about this culture. Vague assertions about undefined cultures aren’t really useful (plus, I would like to learn more about them).

OK I will be more precise (I'm quite lazy to write in english today ).

The tribe is called Azande (South Sudan). We can say there is three sorts of gender. "Male warriors", "male wifes "and women. The "male warriors" can take"male wifes" as wifes. In this marriage there is a traditional repartition of tasks. For example warrior men can beat their "wife".
We have an example in Tahiti too. There is a third gender ; mahus. They are male borns (if we believe male does exist) and just acts as women (dress housekeeping and so on).

Ethnology is very useful to understand our social viewings (here in Occident). There is some universal behaviours we can see in all cultures. As society are more simple in some tribes, we can study them and after report them in our societies (for example Levis Strauss and exchane of women, interdiction for women to hunt with wepaons which make bleed ....).

Not so sure.

I made this other choice. Culture just "erases" nature (genetics, hormones).

I wonder how 30 can reflect the population. We used to work with 1000 or 200 persons isn't it ?

30, give or take, is the magical number where we can start to talk about "statistical significance". For a simple binary question (tossing heads versus tails for example), we'd want at least 30 observations before we could start inferring whether the coin was "fair" or not (equally likely to toss a head as a tail).

Larger numbers (samples) are typically better, but there are "diminishing returns" to collecting ever-increasing sample data. There were large debates about this on this board during the last US election when discussing national/internaitonal polls, with people arguing that a poll of a few thousand people could not possibly represent a national mood. The answer is, if they are truly randomly selected, then yes, a few thousand people is enough.

The sample in this study is on the smallish side, but the point is, it's not so small as to be meaningless, and the difference in results would indicate a statistically significant difference, which suggests this is a promising avenue for further and more extensive work.

I would suggest this too. Many studies on Indigenous Australian groups have been heavily criticised by Indigenous people because anthropologists examined their behaviour through their own cultural perspective; only focussing on male power within these groups (which is completely at odds with the principles of reciprocity that underpin the Indigenous values system). Basically they saw what they wanted to see.
I don't think you can satisfactorily explain the sexual norms of a culture simply by examining the behaviours that are condoned or out in the open...clandestine sexual activity is far more revealing of real human sexuality (I think anyway).

[Edited on Mar 03, 2006 by CoralSea]

I love focusing on male power

Honestly, and I am not syaing this to be difficult, but I am still not sure which stance you are taking.

This example...the example that homosexual behavior exists in all cultures regardless of whether those cultures have ever interacted with another culture...indicates homosexuality has a genetic component. If it were strictly cultural, there would be at least one culture with no evidence of it.

No. Genetics are not simply “on” or “off.” That has been demonstrated inarguably. All genetic traits are activated through a complex series of methods which allow for mild, moderate, or extreme expression...not to mention the constant conflict between dominant and recessive genes.

Culture does not modify our biological tendencies...however our intellect gives us the capability to overpower them. Culture cannot make you attracted to a member of the same, or opposite, sex...however culture can pressure us to act, or not act, based on our existing attractions.

The issue has less to do with the size of the sampling...and more to do with how the sampling was determined. 200 women is more than adequate to make a reasonable determination, assuming the sample was randomly generated.

However, if all the women were taken from the same geographical area, or same population base, or of the same genetic background...all of these would weaken the conclusions drawn from the results.

The results would not change...a 28% to 6% ratio is of tremendous statistical importance...that cannot be argued. However, if all the women shared too many common factors...the conclusion drawn from the statistical evidence would be in question.

Which, just as an aside, I doubt the scientists made any conclusions other than there was a statistical correllation between the x-chromosome compaction and gay sons. Any conclusions beyond that were probably drawn by the journalists...not the scientists.

[Edited on Mar 02, 2006 by BurningKrome]

[Edited on Mar 02, 2006 by BurningKrome]