Gays and Brothers

[axebahia]

Does this study square with your own experience and observation?

 

Friday, March 28, 2003

 

http://www.advocate.com/new_news.asp?ID=8165&sd=03/28/03

 

Study: Boys with several older brothers likelier to be gay

The more older brothers a boy has, the more likely he is to be gay, according to a study published in the weekly New Scientist magazine. The study, conducted by a Canadian researcher, found that boys with a statistical average of 2.5 older brothers are twice as likely to be gay as boys with no older brothers, Agence France-Presse reports. A boy with four older brothers is three times as likely to be gay. One theory behind the study is that a male fetus triggers an immune system response in the mother, which in turn affects the fetus's brain at a critical stage of its development. The more boys a mother carries, the stronger that antibody response. If the Canadian researcher is correct, "then clearly, as average family size decreases, so will the incidence of male homosexuality," the New Scientist article says. "It also follows that, historically, there have been more gay men than there are today."

[Guest Merlin]

On the other hand, the more boys in a family the more chances that one will be gay. On this theory, though, there should not be a greater chance of the youngest being gay than one of the older ones. But there are plenty of gays who are only sons. I feel certain there are more gays who have no brothers than there are gays with several older brothers. If the older brother theory were correct you would think there would be few gays without several older brothers. It is also still possible that environmental factors rather than congenital ones are at work. Perhaps the baby of the family is treated differently etc. I think the study does not mean much.

[Guest Tomcal_]

Interesting article, and what I am going to say is not by any means a scientific study like the one quoted, Of my 7 best friends(gay)only one has a older brother(me and I only have one) Three are the oldest in their families and the other three only have a sister or sisters. So based on this small number, it doesn't appear that we will be going on the Endangered list soon, there is still alot of us being produced in families without older male siblings

[Guest feisty1]

>found that boys with a statistical average of 2.5 older brothers

 

I'm afraid not. I don't know anyone, gay or straight, with an average of 2.5 older brothers.

 

Actually, most of the gay men I know come from smaller families, two siblings at most, and I can't think of any who are the youngest with two older brothers. Those who come from larger families tend to be one of the older siblings.

 

I do have a friend with three brothers and no sisters, three out of the four being gay. (Gotta love those NE US Irish-Italian Catholic families!) But it's the #2 son who's straight. Where or where did they go wrong??

 

As for me, I'm an only child, but I don't know too many other only's either.

 

--Michael

N.P. "Generation Sex" - The Divine Comedy

[Rod Hagen]

Dean Hammer came out with similar results as part of his amazing Gay Gene studies. Before you form any opinion on the heritability of Sexual Orientation, you must read his "The Science Of Desire".

 

 

"Having these balls makes

me feel something close to

joy, I think. I must caress

them." -FRIEZA

-Hagen

[Guest Hijnx]

Hmmm... I have four older brothers, two younger brothers and a gay sister at the very end. Only my sister and I are gay. Wonder what a female/sisters/lesbian study might look like. Then again, I don't really care.

[Guest jeffOH]

I'm the oldest of 5 children (3 boys and 2 girls). Amongst my best gay male friends, 3 are the youngest with 2-3 older sisters, 1 has a younger brother, 1 was adopted, 1 has two older sisters/2 younger brothers and 1 has two older brothers.

 

JEFF [email protected]

[CT Dick]

My closest friend's mother was from a family of four. They all had children and in all four cases, the first born was a gay male.

 

And, I'm the oldest of three sons and eleven grandchildren. I'm the only gay one of the bunch.

 

Dick

[Spida]

Four older sisters! Now there is a study in itself!

[tedbear]

My older brother died in an accident bfore either my sister or I were born. I think my sister might be a big ole closet case, and God knows I'm gay.

 

So does this older brother "count?" I think not, but his presence was known throughout our childhood by the over-proctiveness we were given as a result of his death.

[VaHawk]

Interesting article but I don't know how much scientfic truth I would put into it. I have known friends with just a few siblings and almost all of them were gay both brothers and sisters.

 

I only have one older brother but five older sisters and two younger sisters. I'm the only gay one in the family. Maybe that immune thing was still strong in Mom's system as my brother is only 13 months older. But then again, with seven sisters it seems that someone was always on the "rag" in our household. Maybe that's what drove me to be gay? LOL! it was even worse when it was that time of the month for 2 or 3 at the same time. When that was the case my Dad, brother and I just ran for the hills!

[+ Charlie]

A quick perusal of all my gay friends reveals that all but one of them is either an only child (like me) or the eldest male child in the family. My lover is one of four brothers, and the two older brothers are gay while the two younger are straight, a complete contradiction of the theory.

[+ deej]

I keep doing a double-take when scanning the thread titles. I keep thinking it says "Gays and Brothels" for some reason. :+

[VaHawk]

I LIKE that much better!!! So start a thread on that topic already!

[Guest Love Bubble Butt]

I've read about this or a similar study with the same results quite awhile back. It happens to hold true for me. I'm the youngest son of 6 boys.

 

But another study I read about a couple of years ago (can't find it on the Internet) stated that a gay man or lesbian has a four times greater chance of having a gay sibling than the average straight person. Then when they looked at half-brothers/sisters (same mother/different father, or same father/different mother), the statistic held up with half-siblings from the mother's side ONLY! The researches said the study suggested that not only was homosexuality genetic, but that it appears to pass down from the Mother. I wish I could find this study. It was very interesting.

[Flower]

>said the study suggested that not only was homosexuality

>genetic, but that it appears to pass down from the Mother. I

>wish I could find this study. It was very interesting.

[font color ="green"

] I have read studies similar to that, however a more recent study has found that in IDENTICAL TWINS, where one is gay, the majority of identical twin brothers are not!

 

The geneticists say if it was genetic, then if one identical twin were gay, then the majority of twin brothers would also be gay, and thus have concluded that it is not genetic within the gay man himself, but the factors producing the homosexuality, could very well be genetic--ie., the mother's role.

 

I am the older of 2 brothers, and my brother is 5 years younger--we are both gay.

[Huey]

Interesting topic, though in my case the study doesn't hold true. I'm the oldest and all three of my younger bros are straight. Now I do have a close friend who is the middle brother and he is gay.

 

So what if you happen to be twins or triplets, how does the findings work in that situation .

[Bilbo]

Tedbear - In terms of the study your older brother would count. We have been talking nature versus nurture on this thread, but the study was only talking about what happens in the womb.

[Will]

It's my sense that a great deal of pseudo-science passes without comment under the camouflage of statistics. This is another example. Even if it were true that a majority of gay men have an average of 2.5 older brothers -- and the statistical sample isn't large enough to know that -- it isn't at all the case that birth-order predicts homosexuality. If it did, how does one explain all those other men who are gay, but do not have 2.5 older brothers? This is another search for a "cause" of homosexuality. And that search, I think, is probably what motivated this study in the first place. The endless quest for the "sources" of homosexuality is one of the most elaborate of the many homophobic games. The purpose of the game is eradication: if there is a cause (i.e., birth-order) for a particular effect (homosexuality), all you have to do is find the cause, reverse it (via eugenics and abortion), and -- voila -- you have eliminated the desired effect.

 

That's just for starters. A reliable survey would start with a clear deinition (i.e., scientifically objective) of homosexuality, unless the investigators were willing to base their professional reputations on the possibility of reseults skewed towards a sample population that fully understands the word "homosexuality," or "gay," or whatever other terms they might use. Even so, they would have to limit their population sample to men in societies where such concepts, referring to psychologically fixed erotic orientations, is not only understood but has been internalized as part of the self-descriptive vocabulary of adults in that society. A tall order for any social scientist.

 

I'm the eldest son. Robert Ferro wrote a novel called SECOND SON, which construes the second son's gayness as a response to the first son's over-the-top machismo. And so it goes.

 

I think we'd spend our time to greater profit by trying to figure out what benefits homosexuality contributes to the human community. Unless we're just blips on the evolutionary screen, I have thought for a long time that homosexuality is adaptive, a process of natural selection. If so, it might have very specific functions, just as heterosexuality does.

[Justice]

Interesting topic. I'm the oldest of three, both my younger brother and sister are str8. None of my cousins are gay. A very good friend of my sister, a lesbian, is a fraternal twin. Her twin brother is a very str8, very macho, member of the NYPD. They have a younger brother who is also gay. I have several other gay friends who are all the youngest of two, and who all have str8 older sisters. Go figure.

[Rod Hagen]

> The

>endless quest for the "sources" of homosexuality is one of the

>most elaborate of the many homophobic games. The purpose of

>the game is eradication: if there is a cause (i.e.,

>birth-order) for a particular effect (homosexuality), all you

>have to do is find the cause, reverse it (via eugenics and

>abortion), and -- voila -- you have eliminated the desired

>effect.

 

What paranoid, and forgive me, immature, nonsense. Have you actually taken the time to read "Science of Desire", the memoir of the man who began the search for the "Gay Gene"? How about my neighbor's "Queer Science", or the dense but oh-so-significant "Straight Science" by Jim McNight.

 

I'm tired of the double-talk from people with no knowledge of the research methods, results, and conclusions. Also, I find the double-talk very typical of homosexuals:

1. There's no such thing as a Gay Gene (btw that's mostly correct, but there is PROVEN heritability, anectodal evidence not withstanding (and insignificant in this case))

2. Scientists are tools of the government and will find a way to erradicate "Gay".

 

Which is it? If there is no gay gene, no heritability of sexuality, then you really have nothing to worry about, do you?

[Rod Hagen]

> I have thought for a long time that homosexuality is

>adaptive, a process of natural selection. If so, it might

>have very specific functions, just as heterosexuality does.

 

And have you made any effort to substantiate this reasonable sounding hypothesis by reviewing the "Peer-Reviewed" scientific literature to see if it can be corraberated (spelling)? I could point you to (inconclusive, but compelling) a "real" scientific book on the subject, but I'd want to make sure you'd actually read it first.

 

Don't you hate when you recommend a book to somebody, and the recommendation falls on deaf ears, DEVON! :-)

-Hagen

[Will]

>What paranoid, and forgive me, immature, nonsense. Have you

>actually taken the time to read "Science of Desire", the

>memoir of the man who began the search for the "Gay Gene"?

>How about my neighbor's "Queer Science", or the dense but

>oh-so-significant "Straight Science" by Jim McNight.

 

No, I haven't read it because I'm not much interested in the subject. In any case, I've been laboring under the assumption that there's no Required Reading for this course. Mistakenly, I now discover, I thought that a thread was there for response, not for a book review. There are lots of good books that I haven't read; I have limited time and I read things whose subjects I find compelling. The science of homosexuality is not one of them.

 

>I'm tired of the double-talk from people with no knowledge of

>the research methods, results, and conclusions.

 

As far as my ignorance of the research methods is concerned, I can only say that I recently heard two lectures for a scholarly audience by the man who's generally held responsible for the "gay brain" theory. The first lecture was about his aims and his research methods and their results. In the second lecture he debunked the reductive and sensationalist notion that homosexuality is caused by an aberrant size of a part of the brain.

 

Also, I find

>the double-talk very typical of homosexuals:

>1. There's no such thing as a Gay Gene (btw that's mostly

>correct, but there is PROVEN heritability, anectodal evidence

>not withstanding (and insignificant in this case))

>2. Scientists are tools of the government and will find a way

>to erradicate "Gay".

 

Well, I am a homosexual, and I suppose that I may be accused of being in some ways a "typical" homosexual. And I may even be rightly accused of double-talk. But not in this case. In the first place, I did not say that there is no such thing as a "gay gene" any more than you did; but I did say that it's clear to me that homosexuality has a genetic basis, and I completed my post by wondering what the adaptive advantage of homosexuality might be.

 

In the second place, I did not say that scientists are tools of the government, or of anyone else. (It's true that most high-level scientific research is funded by some institution, which one supposes has its own reasons for funding one research agenda rather than another. But I'll leave it to the real paranoids to play with that one.) I only said that the simplistic theory that there is a unique cause (whether a gene or brain-size or a domineering mother) for a unique effect (in this case, "homosexuality," construed as a single entity) can easily lead to the idea that you can eliminate the effect by altering the cause. Why is that double-talk?

 

>Which is it? If there is no gay gene, no heritability of

>sexuality, then you really have nothing to worry about, do

>you?

 

I don't have anything to worry about for myself anyhow, even though I am quite sure that my homosexuality is the result of heredity and environmental over-determination. It's the tenor of a society that worries me, less for my own sake than for others less able to defend themselves.

 

Finally, I'm taken aback by the vitriol of this post. You're usually more considerate as well as polite, and in this case you might have saved yourself some energy by actually reading, carefully, what I wrote before blasting yourself into outer space. I actually thought I was following on the thrust of your original post, not opposing it.

[Will]

>And have you made any effort to substantiate this reasonable

>sounding hypothesis by reviewing the "Peer-Reviewed"

>scientific literature to see if it can be corraberated

>(spelling)?

 

No. I've made no such effort at all, and at the moment I don't intend to. My hypothesis is an idea. That's it. I have lots of them. Most of them stay at the idea stage. I devote the time, effort and resources necessary for corroborative research only to those ideas that interest me so much that I can't let go of them. At the moment, this one doesn't. I'm interested in what one might call the moral environment of these debates; I leave it to more competent people, like yourself, to do the hard science. Whatever the "facts" turn out to be, there will be ethical and psychological issues that have strong effects on human lives, and that's what interests me.

 

I could point you to (inconclusive, but

>compelling) a "real" scientific book on the subject, but I'd

>want to make sure you'd actually read it first.

 

Thanks for the offer. To save you all the effort of typing out a title, I'll pass for the moment. But if I should want to brush up on this literature, I'll bother a friend of mine who's a research geneticist, or even use the library catalogue and periodical indices.

[bluenix]

>...corraberated(spelling)...

>

>Don't you hate when you recommend a book to somebody, and the

>recommendation falls on deaf ears...

 

You mean like, um, a dictionary?

 

Or, if you prefer: http://www.m-w.com/home.htm