Why are siblings sometimes gay
Navigating one son's coming out can be a big deal. For parents with several gay children, it can be overwhelming
Anne Considine bristles when people narrate her, if their child was same-sex attracted, it'd be "no big deal".
She finds it diminishing. "It's skillfully meaning, but I feel it disrespects what my boys went through," she says.
Anne should recognize. Not one, but two of her sons are queer. Chris, 33, came out to Anne when he was 19. His brother Anthony, 31, came out six years later.
Coming out to your parents is a huge moment in a child's life, but it can be a difficult mental and emotional shift for parents, too — even if they've gone through it before. Families like Anne's with several homosexual siblings often grapple with unique challenges as they navigate the coming out process — issues she explores in her new book, From Outside the Closet.
"Until that person is standing in my shoes, they possess no idea how they'll react," Anne writes.
"As a mother, all I could think about at first was their mental health, discrimination, HIV, the party, alcohol and drug scene and the difficulty of conclusion a partner in a diminished matchmaking app poo
The evolutionary puzzle of homosexuality
These figures may not be high enough to sustain genetic traits specific to this group, but the evolutionary biologist Jeremy Yoder points out in a blog post, external that for much of latest history gay people haven't been living openly lgbtq+ lives. Compelled by population to enter marriages and have children, their reproduction rates may have been higher than they are now.
How many lgbtq+ people have children also depends on how you define being "gay". Many of the "straight" men who have sex with fa'afafine in Samoa move on to get married and have children.
"The category of same-sex sexuality becomes very diffuse when you take a multicultural perspective," says Joan Roughgarden, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Hawaii. "If you go to India, you'll find that if someone says they are 'gay' or 'homosexual' then that immediately identifies them as Western. But that doesn't mean there's no homosexuality there."
Similarly in the West, there is evidence that many people go through a phase of homosexual activity. In the 1940s, US sex researcher Alfred K
New research shows having a greater number of older brothers increases the probability of a person entering a same-sex union at some point in their lives.
This finding, detailed in our paper published today in the Journal of Sex Research, applications a rare insight into the origins of sexual orientation.
The origins of sexual orientation
In recent decades, many countries have achieved extraordinary progress towards equal treatment of LGBTIQ+ people, including greater public support and more protective legislation. But despite these encouraging developments, sexual minorities still encounter high levels of stigma – and the origins of sexual orientation endure a matter of debate.
Read more: How stigma impacts LGB health and wellbeing in Australia
A growing body of investigate is attempting to shed light on why some people experience same-sex sexual attraction and others don’t. These studies have substantial implications for public notion and debate, and subsequently the treatment of LGBTIQ+ people.
For example, we comprehend people who view sexual orientation as a product of biological factors (such as hormones or genetics) are more likely to support sexual minorities and their
We may know why younger brothers are more likely to be gay
The more older brothers a teen has, the more likely he is to be gay when he grows up – an outcome called the “fraternal birth order effect”. Now it seems that increasing levels of antibodies in a mother’s immune system could play a role.
Anthony Bogaert at Brock University, Canada, and his team consider that some women who are pregnant with boys develop antibodies that goal a protein made by the Y chromosome. Our immune systems make antibodies to recognise foreign molecules, which have the potential to be from perilous bacteria. But pregnant women sometimes also produce antibodies against fetal molecules – for example, if their fetus has a alternative blood group. Bogaert’s team wondered if maternal antibodies might play a role in shaping sexual orientation.
The team collected blood from 142 women, and screened it for antibodies to a particular brain protein that is only made in males. They reflection this would be a good candidate, because it plays an important role in how neurons transmit with each other, and because it is produced on the surface of brain cells, making it relatively easy for antibodies to find
If someone is LGBTQIA+, is it likely their siblings will be too?
The fleeting answer is that it’s complicated. If you identify as LGBTQIA+ there is a small chance your sibling will too, but other factors may include a larger influence.¹⁻⁴
LGBTQIA+ includes a spacious range of sexual orientations and gender identities. It stands for lesbian, queer , bisexual, genderqueer or questioning, intersex, and asexual. The ‘+’ refers to other non-straight-identifying people.
Some studies suggest that sexual orientation is a combination of genetic, environmental, and hormonal factors. However, these studies usually only include people who identify as homosexual or lesbian. Bisexual person, transgender, and other genderqueer-identifying folks are typically left out.
Here I’ll sum up what we perceive about the broad range of factors that influence LGBTQIA+ identity.
Sexual orientation vs. gender identity
As I mentioned, the LGBTQIA+ community includes a wide range of sexual orientations and gender identities. Even though we often group all of these together, they are very alternative. It’s also vital to keep in mind that the terminology is always evolving.
Sexual orientation is different from gender identi