well I know I for sure underestimated the numbers.  and statistics aren't much help because of denial.

and I think we've gone through a tipping point.  

I first came across the idea of brain plasticity when my mother had a stroke.  They talk about a two week window in rehab.  for the first two weeks after the stroke you can recover function fast but after that it is a slow to impossible process.  There was this one man, his father had a stroke and his brother looked after their father and did 'patterning' with him - making him crawl around on all fours leaning up against the wall at the start.  The father went on to walk and return to his job.  So the man whose father this was was a brain surgeon and he did the autopsy on his father and said you could see the massive damage of the stroke.  The level of function he'd rebuilt was a groundbreaker in the field of stroke rehab.    So yes, brain plasticity is a big deal and I can imagine young teenagers watching porn are going to be very affected by watching it but it is not going to change their orientation, it is not going to change their instincts.  you can't brain plastic a transgender, can you.

yes I feel very much for the young adults - all this and covid too.


 

longwayhome wrote:

Lily, with all due respect - I truly don’t believe this is what is happening.

I think we are on the cusp of some major shifts but like all major shifts in human history, the shift occurs slowly.

In term of our young men especially. We’ve turned things inside out for young males. They are still taught certain male roles. There’s is no denying that. Then we tell them to be strong, men don’t cry. Then we wrap them up, with all these responsibilities, it’s almost an expectation that the must succeed In all things. Same thing for the ladies, but the ladies, they are allowed their emotions growing up.

More and more these young men/woman are taking on more and more to compete with what they have been raised with, but the playing field has drastically changed for our young people. It vey much a materialistic world out there and it’s getting harder and harder to achieve success and maintain it. That’s what is happening in my opinion. Now Enter the virtual world.

The most plausible estimate I have seen suggests  that the ratio of homosexuality to heterosexuality is around 10%. Homosexuality in humans is actually an evolutionary prerequisite for success. If you look at laws of evolution, they are actually centred on the success of each individual species rather than the individual animals. Trait selection for reproduction in humans and many other developed mammals is left almost entirely to the stronger of the two sexes, females. Females have the greatest risk and parental investment cost over males. This is why in general men are less choosy when it comes to how, where and with whom. Females on the other hand are very selective when it comes to mating (take sex out of the equation at this point) with a distinct list of traits that are needed and desired in a mate. These traits are hard wired from millions and millions of years of evolution spent predominantly as hunter gatherers in hostile environments. Women select for genetic physical health, which is visible and obviously includes strength, broad shoulders, hip to waist ratios and facial symmetry. The character traits desired are found through using the human mating ritual, or flirting if you want to give it a name. This leads to the use of the legendary female intuition to filter out deception and overall mental health. One example of this is the good old adage  “he has a great sense of humour that drew me to him”. The sense of humour is a very good indicator of intellect and kindness, both of these are key survival traits for humans to this day. Evolutionary psychology cannot keep up with the advances and pressures of the modern world. You cannot reason away millions of years of development with rational arguments.    

 What we can do is accept the evolutionary requirement for homosexual individuals in society.

 In the millions of years when our ancestors struggled for survival on a daily basis, your chances of survival were firmly linked to the strength of your social group. This group would be based around the immediate family, the extended family and then those with which we have a wider trust, lets call them friends. The generally accepted number for these groups is I believe set at one hundred and fifty (known as Dunbar’s number I think). Not everyone in the group can be hunter gathering or pregnant, or nursing at the same time. As a society, it would be in the greater interest of all if some individuals were not encumbered by paternal responsibility but were free to assist in other activities. They would still have to form close bonds with individuals within the group and would no doubt be appreciated. There is currently a theory that holds water for me that the sexual orientation of a child is dictated by the mother in gestation. It seems that the second and third born sons have a 33% chance of being gay over the first born son. For girls, it seems that the first born daughter is statistically more likely to be gay (I may be wrong on this one so don’t quote me). It would be of great advantage to have some members of the family helping to take care of siblings and other tasks in and around the wider group. The clincher for me was the study of historical records from the occidental exploration of the world by mainly Europeans under religious control. Virtually all indigenous tribes encountered had a healthy acceptance of their “Gay” members and they were frequently found to be venerated as Shaman, mystics and law keepers. It makes sense that in the evolution of our species, the knowledge of the “tribe” could be carried by those who did not have any parental responsibilities at all. Perhaps, all of our problems lie not in the existence of homosexuality but rather the lack of understanding of the role it may well of played as a strategy in our success as a species. Nothing in evolutionary terms exists and persists by accident. It’s like the “seven year itch”. Seven years is the term of romantic deep love between a man and a woman. In evolutionary terms, it is the exact time it takes to mate, give birth and then raise an infant to a state of independence.
The main issue is one of context. In the modern world with it’s comforts and convenience, there is no defined role left in our tribe for those who very much had one of high value in our very, very long past.

Last edited by Ordinary guy (July 7, 2021 10:20 am)

lily wrote:

Lynne, what I meant was you can't use the plasticity of the brain to make a person stop being transgender.  If they are they are.  Can a person be made to believe they are transgender, yes I think you're right in that, we are so easily influenced, but they still are what they are.

You cannot use brain plasticity to alter someone’s sexual identity or orientation. In the DSM prior to 1974 (I think) homosexuality was recorded as a mental disorder. This thankfully is no longer the case, and conversion therapy is a thing of the past because it does not work. Depending on how your brain developed in the womb you could have more feminine traits than male and vice versa. This means that when the personality starts developing, the individual may begin to exhibit cross gender behaviour which would feel entirely natural for them. In this day and age, these individuals can now have the option to medically transform into what they feel is their natural sex. A gay man who presents as feminine can become a transgender woman who’s femininity means that they have a natural attraction to masculinity and therefore become essentially heterosexual. Psychologists will assess those who are requesting gender reassignment to try to weed out those who simply believe that they want to become transgender because it felt like a good idea from those who genuinely identify as being the “wrong” sex. I think it is not a case of having to, or trying to convince someone they are in the wrong body. The individuals would simply know that this is the case.


Longway - why do you not believe the numbers are a lot bigger than generally assumed?  I know I only have my personal viewpoint but that is what I see around me, more MOMs than straight marriages.  OG has told us the statistic is 10% - I don't believe that statistic is accurate.  I think it is much more.  as well as what I see, my logic tells me it's only mathematics as our gene pool becomes increasingly complex, along with the rest of life.

I go with 10% as the figure for biologically gay individuals. It is estimated that only 3% are open about it, meaning potentially 7% have not revealed their sexuality for various reasons. Some of these people will be in MOMs without their spouses being aware it. You could argue a case for homosexuals actually being more likely to marry than a heterosexual individual these days. Whereas some heterosexual individuals may enjoy “playing the field”, the homosexual in an effort to conform to the heterosexual couple archetype could actually not be interested or even be unable to “play the field”. You could see quite a few MOMs as a strategy by a homosexual to try and manage their own same sex attraction issues. I know that marriage rates are still dropping at the moment as young people no longer see the same value in it that older generations did. I would imagine that the number of MOMs would stay the same even if the overall number of marriages continues to decline.

I think there's a lot of instinctive behaviour as well as what's learnt.  Testosterone is a powerful thing - depends on the person's nature as well the influences they come under.
 

 

Last edited by Ordinary guy (July 8, 2021 6:14 pm)

Interestingly, I can think of fifteen people in my circle who are openly gay. This may or not be a high proportion for a heterosexual man. This number is going to be statistically higher if you allow for the 7% of the population who are not out. The exposure to androgens in the womb, seems to have an influence on the orientation of the brain towards either masculine or feminine. The 2d-4d ration of the left hand is thought to show how much androgen exposure there has been. Typically males have a longer ring finger over the index finger. Females have the fingers at either the same length or actually reversed in proportion. This may lead to a higher likelihood of same sex attraction as a natural gravitation toward the corresponding masculine or feminine deficiency. Interesting in that this is the finger that wedding rings go on. Gay women are more likely to have a longer ring finger like men along with other subtle cues such as: The way that they walk, the pattern of speech they use naturally, the way that they hear and perceive sound and for me the one I think is important. The rate at which they blink their eyes is more like a typical man, with typical females having a blink rate of almost twice as high as males. The blink rate is used as part of the flirting ritual between men and women. I think that there is an unconscious key here in that males find this an attractive feminine quality. Hence why the coquettish batting of the eyelids during eye contact is so alluring. Eye contact is the most important part of unconscious communication and gay males probably use this with other gay males as an initial indicator. It is the instinctive reading of these subtle queues that results in the “gaydar” that people describe having. It is not ‘gaydar”, it is actually a skill that all people inherently have for discerning the receptive sexuality of the person we are interacting with. A few of my gay male friends will actually seem to physically change their demeanour when in conversation with me to then become more masculine when their partner is around. It is almost like a switch has been thrown dictating which social behaviour is required. There maybe some mileage in this as to how straight spouses get hoodwinked (deliberate pun) into believing that they are dealing with a heterosexual  partner. If you have had to repress your natural social behaviour to fit in to a heteronormative society it would become second nature to have an almost unconscious disassociated personality, a chameleon sexuality if you like. Perhaps if this is regarded as a normal and conscious way of being the disassociated personality may be self accepted as a bi-sexual self identity, this then changes over time to the full acceptance of a gay identity. There seems to be recurring theme in bi-sexual individuals suddenly identifying as gay after a period of time.

4882 days….

Last edited by Ordinary guy (July 9, 2021 2:33 am)