Is it nature or nurture?

[raymar2020 (imported)]

Hi all,

Had a discussion the other night with some friends about sexuality. Are Gays born , that way or nurtured to be gay ?

One friend said that he thought that a domineering Mother could sway a boy to choose to be gay rather than deal with another domineering woman. I totally disagree, since if the idea of male to male sex was repulsive to you, you would NOT follow that path no matter how dominating the women in your life are.

For myself , I KNOW that I was born Gay. I never felt any desire at all to be physical with women, although I did try it a few times just to be sure I was right.

In my own case, my sexuality started to wake up pretty early. I have a really strong memory of our first ever family vacation. My folks raising two boys on a single income,buying a house, and all the other things that go with having a family were not able to save for a vacation til 1965 when I was 7. That Palm sunday we drove to Rehobeth Delaware to look at and reserve a cottage for the summer vacation. I was so excited that we were actually going to be at the beach that summer!!!

My folks chose a place that was maybe a block and a half from the beach, and I started counting the days til vacation. When the day finally came, we arrived and settled in , and changed to go to the beach. On the beach at the end of the street the cottage was on, right in the middle of the beach was the lifeguard stand. They were spaced every 100 yards or so in those days. As we walked past the lifeguard stood up and stretched, and said hello. He was slim, and built and very tanned ( no one used sunscreen in those days) and I was instantly mesmerized. I didn't know why , but I knew I liked what I was seeing.

Keep in mind that in those days, sex was NOT on television, and violence was something that was only in shows that came on after my bedtime. I knew that boys and girls were different, but that was the extent of my sexual knowledge. I had not been exposed to gay/straight, as that was simply NOT discussed by anyone. Hell this is before Stonewall even.

As you can expect , the life guards changed several times a day, and it seemed that each one of them was more fun to look at than the last. I did play with my brother , and swam in the surf, but I spent a vast part of our beach time simply laying on my towel, facing the lifeguard stand and staring. I can't say that I got aroused, but I was drinking in the lovely hunk up there and really enjoying it.

After that vacation, I started to notice handsome guys when we were out shopping, and kind of developed a crush on a young and handsome teacher at my school. There was still no sexual grounds for any of this, I just KNEW that looking at handsome men made me feel good.

Another of my friends said that when he was about 10 , there was a neighbor boy who occasionally babysat when his parents went out. He was about 18 and very handsome, and he said he used to pray that friday night his parents would go out, so he would come over.

Neither my friend or I had any exposure to homosexuality and we were NOT abused. This awakening to our interest in men, was totally natural. I think that is strong support for homosexuality being natural.

Over the coming years when my family went away for those beach vacations, my pattern remained the same. I watched the lifeguards and as my teens came along, I knew enough to have fantasies about them too. I think as a result of the combination of those experiences, and my virtually testicle free life up to age 16, I was comfortable coming out when in high school. The mid 70's was not a time to be "out" but I was, and I have never retreated back into the closet for even a day.

I'd love to hear from others about what your thoughts are. When did you develop an interest in men ? How long was it before you actually acted on those desires?

Raymar

[Jorge2008 (imported)]

Nature, according to contemporary research. The theory ''

that a domineering Mother could sway a boy to choose to be gay

'' is Freudian rubbish.

[Peter47-NL (imported)]

Dr. Dick Swaab, a Dutch scientist who studied almost his whole life the human brain wrote a book, Wij zijn ons brein - van baarmoeder tot alzheimer - We are our brain - from womb to alzheimer that became a bestseller in the Netherlands. In chapter IV Seksuele differentiatie van de hersenen in de baarmoeder - Sexual differentiation of the brain in the womb - he explains that the development of gender identity and the sexual identity of a child depends on the testosterone or the lack of testosterone on certain moments in the womb. Part 4 of this chapter is called Homoseksualiteit: geen keuze - Homosexuality: no choice. I hope this is an answer to Raymar.

[kristoff]

All I can say is I knew when I was five that I was not the same as other boys. Didn't belong there. I fooled around abit when I was 13-14 with Lynn. I didn't know what to do... she was PO'd... said she wasn't a damned teacher. I left.

When I was 18, I had my first "sexual" experience with a woman. Cindy had had her eye on me since about age 13. I had my eye on Dougie since the same time. Dougie was hot for Cindy. Such wonderful dilemma. We were all students at the same university. I was stoned and fairly drunk - I tell folks who know that she raped me, doing all the work. All I knew was that a stiff prick had no guilty conscience. Net result: nine months later, Identical triplet boys. After four months, she kicked me out (in many ways, I am thankful, but missed the opportunity for being a dad, not just a father). She married Dougie; he adopted them, and they did very well. Later, they all attended the college where I was teaching, on a faculty scholarship. They are well and just turned 39. Incidentally, they are all gay, as I am. My maternal birth family and Cindy's have many gay members; hers has many multiple births. I would say that heredity has a massive impact, in many ways.

[Am I you? (imported)]

There is no question about it where I am concerned

As I was growing up I knew that I acted differently than boys my age. I disdained almost all sports, except swimming and water skiing.

While still in grade school, at age 11 or 12 I would go swimming with friends on Saturday at a pool called a Natatorium.

Young boys were required to swim naked, while older guys in their later teens thru their 60's would always be in speedos.

While none of the boys were actually molested, we did interact with the older guys. They taught us to swim different strokes, and

they would frequently support us in the prone position with their hands on our stomachs and our groin. I never thought anything

wrong with this situation.

Years later when in high school I always looked forward to gym time when we got to shower together and play "grab ass"

I joined the swim team in the 12th grade and that was great. The speedos of the time were larger than they are today.

After that I always wore a bikini when swimming or at the beach

My earliest sexual encounter was with a friend of mine who taught me about jacking off. We would do it together, to each other and progress to oral sex.

I got married at age 26 and we had a baby who died shortly after birth. I am still with my wife of 43 years. Yes, she knows I am gay and accepts me

as I am

It seems strange to me to see other men afraid to hug a friend, are overly shy about being naked in front of other guys or

being a loud mouth homophobe

It is NATURE

[cheetaking243 (imported)]

100% nature. Especially because, when I started my hormone trial, I actually felt my sexual orientation shifting a little bit. It has nothing to do with willpower or a personal decision. It is completely guided by your own natural reactions to other people. As a total heterosexual, nothing that other guys did could ever make me feel turned on or attracted. I just found the entire look of them, and smell and the body hair, to all be completely disgusting. (And trust me, I tried. I wondered if maybe I was gay back in high school when I began noticing that I was WAY different from other guys, but no matter how hard I tried to drum up sexual thoughts for the same gender, they just did not come. I found NOTHING attractive about them.) And then, miraculously, my HRT started, and out of the blue suddenly my gut reactions changed, and I felt myself getting more bisexual, less attracted to women and for the first time able to understand what was attractive about men.

Say what you will about why it happens, be it hormones or brain chemistry or genes or whatever, (possibly prenatal stress,) but something is for sure, it is NOT a conscious decision. It's a gut reaction that comes out of nowhere, and cannot be changed by sheer force of will no matter how hard one may try. (Now by sheer force of hormones, on the other hand, that is a different story. That DID have an effect on my sexual orientation, shifting it from completely heterosexual to more bisexual.)

The same can be said with gender identity. For me, transsexualism was NOT a conscious decision. Trust me, I tried the "pray away" route for years, being a religion major and going to a very conservative Christian church. But no matter how many times I tried to "rebuke Satan" from my head, (and I did think that it was working at one time,) my transsexual thoughts never completely went away. I could suppress them, or ignore them, but they were always there. And trust me, there was a time where if I could have been rid of them I would have, but it's not that simple. They always come back. The same can be said with anyone who tries to deny who they are on the inside. No matter of willpower can make those natural feelings stop. You can ignore them, or pretend that they are not there, but they never go away, and never truly change. And no matter how good you are at suppressing them, that feeling that something's wrong, and the frustration from constantly having to fight it, never goes away either.

[_g (imported)]

It's not nurture, it's nature. It's not black and white it's shades of gray with a third factor thrown in sexuality, abstinence to over active. Most are not gay other wise we would not reproduce like we have.

_g

[Milkman (imported)]

There is a large body of research that supports the nature argument. The triggering of gene expression, T levels in the womb and other physiological explanations are supported by current research. Another statistic is that the % of men who are predominately homosexual is relatively constant across cultures at about 7% despite varying levels of tolerance and opprobrium and even if sexual orientation is not allowed to interfere with marriage and child bearing as in our society...

[SplitDik (imported)]

Anyone who thinks it is nurture is bisexual. No amount of horrible mothering would make me interested in any interaction with guys. And every gay person I've known since youth was obviously gay at a young age, and furthermore had normal mothers.

[foxytaur (imported)]

genetic nature, nuture and environmental(internal and external factors such as pre birth hormonal exposure from mothers womb, physical genital trauma before puberty and synthetics and aromatics environmental exposure), with nuture playing a small minor roll.

remember gene allele expressions can change overtime abeit some.

DNA is a very very complex structure to begin with.

The chromatid paks a lot of code ya know that switches on and off!!!

I say nature bc we a born with a great degree of genetic makeup ingrained since our conception however everything else is luck of the draw.

Im happy sexually preffering males, females, trans , androgyne and whatever floats my boat.(call me a nympho I don't care just gimme what i want!)

gender wise again i don't need to stress im this alphabet soup of various letters mixed together.

NB = least we forget dogs we nutured to become domesticated (over a long period of cycles) to be our companions and the results speak for themselves!!!!

With the gentic variation for tameness markers in dna flipping to ON mode.If you don't belive me check out russian tamed silver foxes!!! so cute and the changes are astonishing!!!.

Of course if there were genetic markers for tameness, surely there has to be several genetic markers for homosexuality, bisexuality ,gender variation, whatever

NB = I have a theory that depending on where the adenine, gaunine and thiamine, etc... markers get clipped, added and subtracted it will impact a humans behaviour.

Then theres chromatid crosslinking.

Wow if you think about it theres soo much statistical variability going on its hard to keep up.

Everything including what you eat, stress, smog in the air will change you slowly. You don't notice it because you caan't measure yourself at that instance but ever open a diary, searched through old videos or pictures?

OMG was that me?!!!!