Maybe that girl Rita beating you at a game left a mark on your emotional memory.

I don’t remember playing anything with a girl when I was a boy, I don’t know what games they were playing. I remember most of us boys were hanging out in a bunch and had little to do with girls unless a teacher paired us with them for some purpose. This is the fascinating part – finding out what made us see girls as completely strange and attractive. It must be sexual difference and some typical brain development stuff.

I don’t think there are so many as there used to be who think attractions to one’s gender are diseased. I think what makes someone attracted to the other gender is also involved in what makes someone else attracted to their own gender. Maybe that’s why some talk about choice, because they assume based on their own experience that others are choosing their sexual identity. It’s important to see why some people feel no degree of choice and learn something about sexual development while at it. It will help people on all sides learn and will force society to deal with its own prejudice and harmful lies. It will be like society going through therapy.

This whole discussion of what causes gayness is offensive, because unlike heterosexuality, gayness is presented as some sort of brokeness or disease. It is assumed to be the result of trauma, developmental deficits, bad parenting, abuse, etc. It’s a illness model — and that reveals the underlying, unscientific (usually religious) prejudice.

These words suggest to me either a weak understanding of or a disinterest in the hard sciences regarding certain topics, which is perfectly fine, but which is not fine for others; or a disinterest in human behavior, which again is fine, but not fine for others.

In addition, it appears you have positioned yourself atop a moral high horse so tall you may not have a clear view of what’s beneath and so you read an evil intent into what you think you see. Is it possible you have no interest in seeing at all and so have concluded that no one else should either? Perhaps not, but the use of words like “offensive” and “prejudice” are common rhetorical devices often meant to stifle discussion rather than debating the points on their own merits.

If I’ve caused offense, I am certainly not happy about it, but your words suggesting offense won’t silence me. If you are offended, you have the option of not reading what those who are likely to offend you say. Or, you can engage in a discussion and agree to disagree. However, one ought not expect that because something might be offensive, it won’t be uttered. Of what use is such a forum as that?

Debates in other forums on other topics, the hot issues of our times–the stimulus or pork package (depending on how one views it), immigration reform, border control, bank and homeowner bailouts, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the genocide in Darfur, the West Bank settlements, etc. would also bring about comments that might offend, but saying “that’s offensive” is not reason to stop debate.

This is, in part, a science blog; one of Warren’s major topics is sexuality. Comments about science research– hypotheses, theories, etc. about sexuality– are appropriate and to be expected.

We know, in a sense, the cause of heterosexuality–the evolutionary directive to reproduce, even if we haven’t identified the mechanisms, the specific cells/neurons that identify a target mate for reproductive success. Thus, scientists usually study the anomaly, not the norm.

So, since science hasn’t identified the cause of homosexuality, do you presume to tell scientists and those who read science research blogs that they ought not consider certain etiologies because they offend your sensibilities?

You seem to be saying, “Go ahead and study, but be sure you don’t propose a hypothesis to test which I don’t like; be sure you don’t come up with an outcome I don’t like.”

That’s just not the way it works.

I assume he is speaking of straight boys. At age six, I had definite interest in boys, not girls. The only interest I had in girls was how Rita kept beating me in the Spelling Bee.

This whole discussion of what causes gayness is offensive, because unlike heterosexuality, gayness is presented as some sort of brokeness or disease. It is assumed to be the result of trauma, developmental deficits, bad parenting, abuse, etc. It’s a illness model — and that reveals the underlying, unscientific (usually religious) prejudice.

For the foreseeable future, posts about topics related to my book-in-progress will come up frequently, punctuated with articles regarding my new medical interest – PANDAS.

Warren, I look forward to your posts related to your bookm and I’m equally pleased you are researching PANDAS. I was wondering if, as a mental health professional, you have studied the Borna virus and its role in mental health/mental illnesses?

A Google search on Borna results in a myriad of studies linking it to problems with mental health. Researchers know that it’s implicated in mental illness and behavioral disturbances but the mechanisms by which it operates is still a mystery. Each year, they add to their body of knowledge about this pathogen, however. This whole field of behavior and pathogens is exploding.

On the subject of developmental delays. Personally I noticed that men with deficits in self-confidence and who are anxious by temperament have a hard time adjusting to the world of men and going through all the steps that make someone evolve into a balanced adult. There is evidence that, for instance, (straight) men who are more masculine have a lower age of first sexual experience and a greater number of sexual partners than less masculine men. On the other hand, there is also evidence that individuals who are atypical in terms of gender traits are rejected, harassed and labelled by their gender peers, whether or not they identify with those labels.

We have debated in the past, on this blog, on the subject of homophobia. Homophobia, as far as a few studies show, is an aggressive reaction to stimuli that one perceives as confusing (or offensive) to one’s sexual identity. If I remember well the experiments, most men who reacted aggressively to self-identified gay men were those who showed signs of arousal when seeing men-to-men pornography. More recently, a brain study which identified the neural correlates of hate concluded that hate and love share many common areas. Actually, one could say after looking at the brain areas that hate is a reaction of rejection to something viewed attractive or emotionally binding (hate for someone who has a better job and is more successful, hate for someone who does not respond to one’s love, hate for someone to whom one is attracted to but is considered inappropriate).

I don’t think children could be suspected of being attracted to the atypical individuals they reject. This study and others were done on adults, so children most likely reject based on other feelings. So adolescence does make a difference in settling (or confusing) sexual feelings. But it cannot be ignored that rejection and harassment at any age can isolate an atypical individual and can make him/her miss some stages of development which depend a lot on socialisation. Someone who is isolated and rejected can hardly develop a sense of self-confidence, for instance, which is critical for men’s development. Early sexual experiences could play a role for some individuals, but it’s not so evident that early same-sex experiences could lead to adult same-sex attractions. Some adult same-sex attracted might have opposite-sex sexual experiences in their childhood, abusive or not.

what if socially/sexually a guy was stuck developmentally at a state when most boys are not interested in girls.

From my experience, boys are interested in girls way before puberty hits. It could be different for different people, but I think attractions can be felt very early on (I felt attracted to girls when I was 4-5, then in primary and 2ndary school and so on). Boys are not interested in playing with girls because it’s not exciting (different play styles, dynamics, toys), but they are attracted to girls quite early. It could be, in some cases, that a boy who is too interested in girls very early on may push the hedonic setpoint in his opposite-sex attractions so high that in adult age he would need very strong opposite-sex experiences to feel attracted and aroused. But this is surely not the case for obvious gender-nonconforming boys, the so-called sissies. There are more gays and SSA-ed men than have been sissies, though, and that must have something to do with development.

You write, “GNC has recently been related to pre-natal testosterone (T) levels.” I would agree with this. I am inclined to believe that GNC is biological. I was not nurtured into being a tomboy, for example. GNC, from everyone I know, is very personality ingrained–though it may be accentuated further by environmental factors (I saw that in my own life).

You write: “GNC could predispose to SSA via a sense of differentness from the same-sex in puberty (e.g., Bem’s theory).” This is more of what I am getting at. How the environment reacts to GNC and in turn how the person responds to the environment’s reaction to him/her.

GNC is a broad term. I was GNC-but I think for me and many others that it is merely a manifestation of normal femaleness/maleness. Its not that we were so much “gender non-conforming” as much as we did not conform to rigid stereotypes. We didn’t fall into the median on the Bell Curve, but we are still on the bell curve. People just get used to what is in the middle of the Bell Curve because its seen more frequently. I think we would see a broader swipe of what “normal” gender behavior looks like if we didn’t have rigid role requirements within certain cultures. That have seen this in some studies with girls who were very opininated and atheletic as 8 years old, but became more inhibited as they got older based on cultural pressure to fit other people’s expectations of what a girl is.

On the other hand, there are those who are gender-nonforming in the sense of wanting to be more like the other gender. So, one 14 year old boy I spoke to who dressed and acted like a girl because he felt so overwhelmed by what he believed was expected of him as a man. He wanted to be a girl to escape the impossible task of being a man. So environmental influences. I wonder if the studies make a distinctions between those who merely don’t fit the bell curve norm and so are labeled GNC, and those who exenuate their GNC because of other issues (like the boy above or girls who make themselves look and act like boys to avoid sexual abuse/harassment).

You write: “Storms in 1980 proposed something like this based on some erroneous data that gay males reached puberty quicker than straights. He thought the same association might work. However, newer better data find that straights get to the physical changes sooner.”

I am not sure what gays reaching puberty sooner or later than straights has anything to do with psychological development. It really wouldn’t matter when puberty hits or how it compares to anyone else. It would just matter where that person is psychologically. The question is really about psychological development at the time of puberty, not the timing of puberty.