So as I understand it, the fraternal birth order (FBOE) is not linked to just any kind of gay but is specifically linked to the kind of gay that goes hand in hand with effeminacy. The most extreme expression of this kind of gay is called ‘homosexual transsexualism,’ which is when gay men are so effeminate and cross-sex shifted that they get clinical gender dysphoria and medicalize into transgender women. But homosexual transsexuals are not the only gay men with a cross-sex shift. There are gay men who have a lesser degree of it or the same degree of it but just don’t transition for x, y or z reasons. All this to say that the FBOE is more accurately and specifically described as a non-genetic but inborn phenomenon that causes cross-sex shift in males. The downstream effect is male androphilia/homosexuality but because male effeminacy/gender-nonconformity shows up before puberty in FBOE-affected males and is what leads some of them to become gender-dysphoric, I think it’s more helpful to talk about FBOE as causing cross-sex shift in male neuronanatomy. I know this might not have answered all your questions. I’m not good at finer stats so avoided those questions but hope this helps anyway.
Having never heard of the sibling order to gayness idea before, to me it's just blindingly obvious that older sisters will make you more gay than older brothers. If you're an 11-year-old boy with a bunch of older sisters, you never get to be the man of the house, your environment is filled with pouty gossip, carefree prancing and reflexive social performance - of course you'll give in a little. The presence of older brothers only gives you the "bottomness" without the additional feminine social elements. Being an autistic only child and beaten-down class clown, bottom of the totem pole, I did have a brief phase of sharp, lip-bitey taunting in the classroom, partially self-defensive. I kept it subtle, but present. I remember identifying a little bit with Summer Glau's over-the-top kpop pose with a sword on the Serenity DVD cover. I can very easily mentally plot out another life where that mode of social-sexual interface could get locked into place for me. Boys are more feminine than men, obviously, so they're able to dip into that fresh-faced flirtatious mode.
But can that change your *orientation* as opposed to your gendered presentation of how much you identify with masculine culture?
I know "born this way" is a political statement, but I'd be surprised if the childhood environment could be socially "hacked" like that to make more (or fewer) gays.
Otherwise I'd expect the born again Christians to be super involved in this rather than ineffective conversion therapy attempts.
In my case, regarding attraction to burly men, I can say "I get it" more than other straight men. I suspect this is more difficult for straight men to understand than straight women: straight men think, "well, of course she drives me wild - she's Scarlett Johansson", like it's right there in the jpg. Unlike the "bottom mode," you don't need to imagine yourself as a king or knight to find Scarlett hot. Men think sexual attraction is just a brain switch telling you to go to [burly hairy form/soft dainty tender form]. The masculine self-image (which is mostly null and blank to begin with) isn't necessary for "getting" why girls are hot.
This confusion led to Burt Reynolds posing for the supposedly-female readers of Playgirl. Even women got confused - Helen Gurley Brown, pioneer of male centerfolds at the time, asserted that "women have the same visual appetites as men". I guess the observation that women are more interested in seeing themselves in the sexual dynamic wasn't widely understood.
But for "getting" why guys are hot - most men understandably wince at the first notion of a strong hairy arm bracing your torso. That wincing is a protective barrier. The flirtatious pouty "bottom" mode necessarily breaks that protective barrier and puts you into a two-person self-image dynamic where you are the dainty thing to be tamed. I absolutely think that can shift your attraction from women to men if you let this mode take root, especially when you're young (e.g., Dorian Grey).
Straight men are attracted to women, and straight women are attracted to themselves under a capable man (with a little bit of "well, he is handsome, I guess"). By "capable" I mean, well - heartthrobs like Paul McCartney with bowlcut coming off the plane are hot with teenage girls because they're hot with teenage girls. The attraction is vastly more complex and socially-involved than just "nice curvy Scarlett body". All this translates perfectly to gay bottom behavior and lesbian top behavior. I don't think you can generally act out one mode of social performance (or men's lack thereof) without the corresponding mode of sexual attraction.
Gay tops, though, I don't even begin to understand.
I'm not one (I think), but I'd guess the only thing manlier than topping a woman is...topping a man! Look at Greco-Roman attitudes toward bisexuality; bet you a gay top came up with those. "It's not sissy if you're on top!"
Ive always struggled to understand gay bottoms. This SUPER HELPED ME.
As a reward ill explain gay tops which has always come naturally to me. I think a really feminine male is hot to dominate because it feels less fragile then women which were socialized to be careful with. Also the mutual empathy empathy with shared sexual organs imply enhanced the experience in various ways.
Also there is a domination kink element like im “making a bitch” out of them. The contras of masculine man and dominated smaller man/boy).
Theres also a security element. Having your object of desire be a feminine male, which socially is less desired then women, feels safe and like you dont have to jump through hoops. Idk hard to explain. This safety feels sexy
Depending upon whether or not you believe and accept transgender people as a group and individuals who deserve their own agency, rights, protections, etc. specific to their group’s needs as society considers most other political groups? For me, I do believe the above and advocate for such policies and social acceptance, so orientation can’t be changed as some people argue and push back against. Additionally, gender can’t be changed—think of it like this for gender:
You have a big present in your driveway wrapped in wrapping paper (probably can tell it’s a car), but you can’t tell what type of gift 🎁 it is. Once you’ve wrapped the gift, you can see, understand—more importantly—ACCEPT with a 100% certainty your new car is a [insert any make/model] and not a big ball of wrapping paper or cardboard car cutout wrapped tricking you into thinking and believing something that is not true or real.
Therefore, if you agree with the premise of this analogy, you should be able to understand why gender and orientation can’t change. A trans person is the born male, female, etc., but, to the outside observer, these individuals struggle with accepting this truth because the trans person has the wrong wrapping. Moreover, this analogy applies to orientation as well—outside observers see a male to female trans person presenting male (before they start transitioning) hooking up with say a born male and born identifying male (same singular person), which individual is gay and which individual is not? More than likely, if you were to ask the two individuals they would have all sorts of answers depending upon the person, yet I my experience the “born male” and trans person would say born male is gay and trans person is straight just still pre transition.
Hopefully, this is clear to understand and adds to the conversation.
I think most born-again Christians are far more involved with hacking the childhood environment to make boys less gay! Conversion therapy is a comparatively rare "last resort", but it's controversial, so it makes the news.
I've seen this hyper-aggressive cleverness signalling on Stack Overflow. Nassim Taleb too - a shield against academic social pressure?
My (diagnosed, disabled) autistic quirk is to be hyper-observant of my internal phenomena. I'm called out on this sometimes for sounding odd. I invent lots of neologisms. But my description of my experience and others' behavior is pretty solid and mundane. If anything, I was expecting pushback on how obvious it was. "Idle speculating from ignorance" seems to indicate a wild lack of introspection if you think anything I said is even approaching a leap.
Apologies for my lack of rigorous data, but Aella showing surprise for what seems blatantly obvious to me warranted a casual comment.
What seems blatantly obvious to you is more a reflection of you than the general population. Your sample is insignificant, and your susceptibility to this very common error isn't a feature particular to autism. Get over yourself.
I agree and it's pretty obvious when someone says, "the gays" that it's not a scientific blog. Seems to me that it's instead, a bunch of ignorant people discussing some junk, opinion rather than anything based in scientific fact.
I definitely made it sound too light. Sisters are savages, so I hear. And I don't know what brothers are like either, or people's normal experience in general. Nonetheless I think there's an element of that "carefreeness" in every identifiable style of femininity. Even (I risk seeming moviebrained here) Meadow Soprano brats, school gossip bullies, tomboys, music festival noserings. Performatively "breaking out" and "pretending not to care" is the throughline, playing off against the cell cages served by masculine order (which men don't even seem to be aware they're producing). The big exception to this is the fact that most people aren't being feminine or masculine most of the time. For me it's 0% of the time. These are just shared, recognizable languages of character that don't necessarily apply to an individual, and, when put in exaggerated focus like I'm doing, may just seem like fictional movie archetypes foolishly mistaken for reality ("girls enjoy carefree singing and prancing on an Alpine meadow").
Big asterisk on all this: I have no real social experience in any of this. This is intuition applied to other people's self-accounts (and movies) and mostly came to me via a stone tablet in a dead language in a fever dream.
Lol those dream stone tablets, eh? 😉 I had an older sister, and mostly what I remember was a lot of stomping up and down stairs, door slamming, and screaming of "you're ruining my life!"
If Aella's sample departs so markedly (1in6Bn) from other surveys that don't identify older sisters as having an immunological impact on a boy's adult 'gayness' then this is persuasive evidence of 2 things: Aella's sample is unlikely to be representative of human behaviour and her measure of 'gayness' is very likely to be a cultural creation.
Presuming most of Aella's survey respondents identify as 'liberal/progressive', maybe there is something in this society that encourages boys/young adults with several older sisters to develop 'gay' behaviours as they grow to adulthood ie just as you describe.
Not sure if you meant older brothers (which I would have expected to make you more lesbian). Either way, my intuitive answer is that the feminine-receptive mode is more transmissible - it's more of an active social position (and people follow the herd), whereas the masculine-active mode is socially blank and null. It's hard to get socially absorbed into a group of blank pages. Plus the masculine mode simply *allows* for attraction to femininity, which seems much more simply brain-chemical like I mentioned earlier.
Specifically in the case of older brothers (as opposed to younger like you said), a young girl could either get absorbed as "one of the boys" (many such cases) doing woodwork in the garage, being unkempt and hollering at young things passing by - OR the girl could be cute and feminine by playing off against her brothers. So it optionally allows for the heterosexual "style" in a way that is perhaps more vivid than what's available to an emasculated younger brother of older sisters.
Again, this is all intuition and tea leaf reading - I'm just reporting that my personal tea leaves are pretty insistent.
The birth rate per woman has been going down, which should make men with more siblings older on average. Also, someone 14 years old hasn't had as much time to acquire more siblings. These factors might help explain why the percentages decrease as siblings increase: older men grew up in less gay-friendly times.
If siblings tell siblings about Aella, then taking Aella's survey correlates with a sibling taking Aella's survey, and then lower birth-order people would be older on average, and that could help explain their lower gayness.
So I'd control for birth year. The simplest thing to try would be to pick a 5-year span and use only people born in those years. You've got enough data.
I’m not sure that control would work. The distribution of parents of people born in a 5-year span that have 3 siblings is very different from those with no siblings. (Because a lot of the latter will not go on and produce more children.) Does that change things in important ways? Who knows.
I don't understand what you mean by "the distribution of parents"; we have no information about the parents. I can't tell what distributions you think will be different.
I have a couple of thoughts about measures and possible confounds:
"I took the top right four boxes. I don’t really see how this could be responsible for the mysterious older sister phenomenon here."
I agree, but just to test this, I would suggest looking at the effects for each of the two measures separately.
What I think could perhaps explain the effect and the divergence from prior research combines both the specific measures and some other observed correlates of having a female sibling. Prior research has suggested that older female siblings is associated with more feminine traits. One possible explanation of your results and the divergence in other studies is if your measures are more strongly associated with general feminine traits (and less strictly homosexuality), whereas rates of gay marriage serve as a stricter test of homosexuality (it's a higher bar).
It could potentially be informative to look at the effect of birth order*sibling_gender across the whole scale of the homosexual measures (rather than treating it as binary) to see if it's non-linear. I think both theories are compatible with the effect being linear, but if the effect were observed particularly strongly at the lower levels of the scale, I think that would count in favour of the general female traits explanation.
I see that you note the possibility that they are signaling liberalism, but then show that they aren't more liberal: so I should be clear that I think that this could potentially concern feminine traits distinct from liberalism.
I say this because real interest in the subject, and I thought for the most part it was fascinating. However, in the hopes of providing constructive criticism or feedback, the subject of the survey seems flawed and not what the results reflect, which is unfortunate and knowingly or unknowingly promotes the negative connotations embedded in society. Specifically, you establish the topic of research as gay or gayness, and then defined it as attraction. When you ask:
are you attracted to a same sex person or enjoy a penis or vagina? This question no matter what a person says doesn’t mean the individual is gay but rather maybe the phrasing of the question was understood to ask can the person taking the survey see or recognize attractiveness within the same sex. Similarly, on the sexual aspect, there are a whole range of different kinks, fetishes, etc. (eg. pegging) people enjoy partaking in, yet they themselves don’t and would never identify as being “gay”. Basically, my point is, for me, I wish there was more nuance to the discussion but also any discussion because society could really benefit from more not less of it.
Disclaimer, because of the issues with definition and methodology, I struggled to read with full attention, so I need to say that. Additionally, feedback is purely my reading of your work and to provide constructive criticism and not a dig or pejorative comment in anyway—unfortunately, most people take feedback negatively, which I am not trying to be towards anyone, but I always try to be honest, respectful, and thoughtful in writing back. Because of my comment, please let me know if I missed something where you acknowledge or explain more about the definition and I will go back to reread everything, especially, the fact humans are complex, full of contradictions, so we as a species need to first comprehend sexual desires, pleasures, etc. does not always equate to homosexuality in how it’s broadly understood and thought about being in a same sex romantic relationship (and even saying this is not fully inclusive and a universal statement). Finally, thank you for the work and subject matter; it’s always appreciated and interesting.
"Maybe the phrasing of the question was understood to ask can the person taking the survey see or recognize attractiveness within the same sex."
Yes, having older sisters might make a boy more likely to imagine girls' point of view and empathize with their attraction toward males - without that necessarily becoming strong enough to make them gay enough to marry a man, absent the FBOE that comes from having older brothers.
Could it be how you asked the "gay" question? You say you asked if people "prefer" penises or vaginas and you label that axis of the chart as "penis interest". Unless it was clear in your actual questions that you meant preference/interest *in sexual partners*, there could easily be a fair number of straight guys who love their penis and so would say that they prefer penises (thinking that they wouldn't want a vagina instead), or that they have a strong interest in penises (how does my penis's size compare, how do I keep it healthy, how best to pleasure it, etc).
We are facing a replicability crisis that scales with the amount of money invested and the political pressure involved.
It's entirely possible that your study is correct and all the others are false.
The recognition that older sisters increase gayness damages the notion of biologically innate homosexuality.
And implies that it is actually at least somewhat conditioned.
This alone is enough to make researchers squeamish about publishing it.
Note also that the effect was discovered in 1990. A time when there was a need to prove it was innate.
If it were real, it would have been discovered much earlier, probably by 1900 when large scale research on such topics was popular.
People will say to this, "Ah but people wouldn't have admitted to being gay then because it was a crime"
However, the answer to this is that they often studied criminals and there was actually a belief that some people were born with a "criminal gene" that predisposed them to it.
They were obsessed with finding a genetic reason for everything, and they did carry out extensive research on gayness, or degeneracy as they liked to call it, looking for familial patterns that could be used to predict it.
It's likely they would have noticed a fraternal birth order pattern.
They did, however, discover that family dynamics were heavily influential.
In all likelihood, the real reason for this pattern is that younger siblings end up in a submissive position for much of their upbringing. It is easier to endure this if they learn to like it, so they become inclined towards being dominated.
This is also why the girls don't respond this way, because the submissiveness is normal for same sex relationships.
In other words the big brother little sister dynamic tends to feminise rather than make them a lesbian.
Apologies for being dismissive, but from what I've seen older sisters are more assertive and more likely to be lesbian or bisexual.
Iirc this study actually does show a tiny increase in vagina preference.
In any case, the effect is probably small because as stated family dynamics are what's important rather than birth order.
If the older sister is not much older, or treated worse in a traditional setting because of their gender then it probably won't happen.
Or if a girl doesn't have a stable father figure, it can lead to a desire for male attention to provide what they lack.
This trend has become a stereotype in escorts, strippers and prostitutes.
It combines with all the other factors to produce a complex tangle of results.
Neglectful or absent father plus dominant family role could equal a desire for submissive men.
Loving father, absent mother plus submissive role could equal a desire for dominant women to mummy them.
Or the opposite, they could hate women and want a sugar daddy.
I knew a girl who was attracted to really old men with wrinkles. They were raised by their grandfather who they adored.
People's romantic and sexual tastes are almost always either an attempt to balance out what they feel is missing, fix their past, or hold on to something familiar.
I am yet to meet anyone whose preferences didn't reveal something about their past.
For a more controversial reference point, pedophiles are a group that suffers a disproportionate amount of childhood abuse and neglect.
"Furries" appear to be often the victims of bullying, social exile, or overwhelmed by society, so they become obsessed with animals or becoming animals.
Similar to the people who want to be babies.
In conclusion, while genetics obviously plays a fundamental role and predisposes a person to particular desires, mostly heterosexuality, the maternal antibody theory is not proven, it's just a conjecture that hinges entirely on what I believe is a fraudulent result.
It might sound plausible, but that's all.
I have read that being pregnant with a daughter is more likely to make the mother inflamed and physically ill, which throws a wrench in the whole concept.
If it's about immune activation altering brain development, then it should happen to girls too.
Final point related to my claim that sexuality is more socially constructed than our politically correct narrative.
Gender isn't socially constructed, it's mostly genetic. In my opinion, it's far more genetic than sexuality.
Sexual preferences are far more fluid than genitalia and the ability to conceive children.
They are wrong about everything, and what they are teaching children is back to front and upside down.
"People's romantic and sexual tastes are almost always either an attempt to balance out what they feel is missing, fix their past, or hold on to something familiar."
Ok. You believe genetics don't play a part in sexual choices. Hence you dismiss numerous well founded studies referenced by Perplexity.ai (I checked some, so they aren't all hallucinations) that sexuality is something like 25% to 75% genetically inherited.
"Gender isn't socially constructed, it's mostly genetic. In my opinion, it's far more genetic than sexuality."
Ok. You believe gender is not a social construct. Rather that it is solidly founded in the genome. That's quite a reversal! I'm trying hard to get my head around your thinking. Have you evidence beyond your belief?
You weren't dismissive at all, I just didn't have time to respond!
I think you are probably right overall, but the maternal antibody does explain the weird asymmetry factor--she checked if more siblings made girls lesbian, and it doesn't. I imagine anything as complex as human sexuality has a bunch of initiating factors.
Gay: A man who is emotionally ,romantically or sexually attracted to other men. sometimes used to refer to all homosexual people.
Birth order. Birth order theory is actually a psychological theory that suggest a person's position in the family e.g. first born ,middle child , youngest, or only child can influence their personality , behavior and life outcomes.
I think this theory is not absolute because personality is shaped by many other factors like parenting style ,culture, life experiences.
Recent research shows mixed evidence --------some findings supports birth order effects ,others not.
Thanks for your contribution to discussion and was waiting to read it being brought up—romantic co-mingling relationships!!! For me at least, this part is pivotal for “gayness” or an individual who is “gay” because sexual activities are not and cannot be gay but rather forms of pleasure individuals identify as being something they like and enjoy. Whereas, again my simple and narrow definition of understanding, a homosexual [insert gender] is an individual who desires, wants and capable of being in a sexual, intellectual, and physical committed relationship way each other (narrow yet broad because so many things, actions, and individuals seemingly not being considered by me but if I make every qualification the post would be too convoluted and long just know I have each in my brain and care). The reason I currently have my definition this sort of is for several reasons of which come from conversations with different members of groups because private conversations with my close friends, so if you or anyone wants me to clarify better please DM because I don’t want to broadcast personal things so publicly and violate potentially a friend’s personal conversations with me.
thank you for this! It's so fascinating to read. I didn't realise that birth order and male homosexuality was considered one of the most consistent biodemographic correlates of sexuality in men! As for your predicament I'll give it some thought, hoping someone else comments with the answer in the meantime...
Wait a minute. In your big kink survey you have all these how-much-you-prefer-dicks questions, but you didn’t add questions like “are you gay”? It would have been interesting to see how self-id correlates with the actual behaviors and preferences.
And you have questions about siblings but not “are you married and what is their gender”? That seems counter-intuitive, why did you decide to make it that way?
I’d guess that it’s an artifact from the questions you’re asking. Specifically, if people “prefer masculinity or femininity.”
I’m a cis het guy who presents quite masculine. But I REALLY love women and often prefer their company in any circumstance. Nevertheless, I also REALLY enjoy my own masculinity.
So if you asked me that question, I’m not sure which gender I would say I preferred, despite being very firmly heterosexual. And I can imagine others in the same bind, especially men who are vaguely anti-feminine.
I would guess that this question is the main cause of your of odd results. It’s also possible the bulk of science is wrong in this matter. But scientists are pretty incredible, in aggregate and over time. So that seems less plausible
"This effect has been attributed to a mother’s immune reaction to proteins produced by a male foetus. The proteins enter the mother’s bloodstream and trigger the production of antibodies that influence the sexual development of subsequent children.
These maternal antibodies accumulate over successive pregnancies with male foetuses, which means men with more older brothers are more likely to experience same-sex sexual attraction."
Otherwise, small families would have been preferentially selected for. In the past (and perhaps in subsarahan Africa now?) levels of infant mortality were such that multiparity (6 and more births?) was required to sustain human population.
There were some old studies I quote in my book that found maternal stress correlated with homosexuality in offspring. I suspect that’s what is going on here- the more kids you have, the harder it is on the body, the more stressed the body becomes, and the less resources it has to give the offspring.
Interestingly, bi individuals often catch harassment from all sides, gay, straight, or whatever, which is disrespectful and harmful, but it’s completely rude, hurtful, etc from the gay community, or really any marginalized group, because they each fight and promote equality, inclusion, acceptance of their group but dismiss bisexual as a person who is just a gay person who isn’t ready to come out of the proverbial closet rather than a person who wants, capable of being romantically linked to a person from whatever group.
Language seems to be the largest concern for people. I do try to consider everyone and their individual factors and needs in their life, but many times these days people keep adding wordings, placing normative values on words, judging people’s word choice rather than listening or reading what the person’s point, perspective, intention, understanding, etc. Because of this qualitative approach to using language and how words are received, I struggle with not coming off as a complete asshole to people.
I do think it's about definition. You seem to think your definition of gayness is too wide, but it seems rather more narrow than usual. I understand that this is an attempt to square the circle on "male+cis man" vs. "male+trans man" vs. "male+trans woman" but if someone says, say, 7 on penises, 4 on (outward) masc/fem, I believe both their life trajectory and the general word usage would characterize them as gay not bi (when they want outward fem, they'll probably go for a pink-boa boy, not for a girl, whether cis or trans). (What about the reverse, 4-7? I notice my expectations are confused here, but then again, "boypussy" genre of fanfiction exists.)
That said, these are still interesting data, and if this is the difference, it is interesting in itself.
Fwiw, i think there is a problem with how you defined who is gay. You took only the people with the highest self reported scores of both affinity for masculine and penis interest as gay. But that is not what gay means and certainly some gay people are not going to answer those questions in a way that would count them.
I think the data would be more useful if instead there was simply a question about sexual identity
So as I understand it, the fraternal birth order (FBOE) is not linked to just any kind of gay but is specifically linked to the kind of gay that goes hand in hand with effeminacy. The most extreme expression of this kind of gay is called ‘homosexual transsexualism,’ which is when gay men are so effeminate and cross-sex shifted that they get clinical gender dysphoria and medicalize into transgender women. But homosexual transsexuals are not the only gay men with a cross-sex shift. There are gay men who have a lesser degree of it or the same degree of it but just don’t transition for x, y or z reasons. All this to say that the FBOE is more accurately and specifically described as a non-genetic but inborn phenomenon that causes cross-sex shift in males. The downstream effect is male androphilia/homosexuality but because male effeminacy/gender-nonconformity shows up before puberty in FBOE-affected males and is what leads some of them to become gender-dysphoric, I think it’s more helpful to talk about FBOE as causing cross-sex shift in male neuronanatomy. I know this might not have answered all your questions. I’m not good at finer stats so avoided those questions but hope this helps anyway.
Having never heard of the sibling order to gayness idea before, to me it's just blindingly obvious that older sisters will make you more gay than older brothers. If you're an 11-year-old boy with a bunch of older sisters, you never get to be the man of the house, your environment is filled with pouty gossip, carefree prancing and reflexive social performance - of course you'll give in a little. The presence of older brothers only gives you the "bottomness" without the additional feminine social elements. Being an autistic only child and beaten-down class clown, bottom of the totem pole, I did have a brief phase of sharp, lip-bitey taunting in the classroom, partially self-defensive. I kept it subtle, but present. I remember identifying a little bit with Summer Glau's over-the-top kpop pose with a sword on the Serenity DVD cover. I can very easily mentally plot out another life where that mode of social-sexual interface could get locked into place for me. Boys are more feminine than men, obviously, so they're able to dip into that fresh-faced flirtatious mode.
But can that change your *orientation* as opposed to your gendered presentation of how much you identify with masculine culture?
I know "born this way" is a political statement, but I'd be surprised if the childhood environment could be socially "hacked" like that to make more (or fewer) gays.
Otherwise I'd expect the born again Christians to be super involved in this rather than ineffective conversion therapy attempts.
In my case, regarding attraction to burly men, I can say "I get it" more than other straight men. I suspect this is more difficult for straight men to understand than straight women: straight men think, "well, of course she drives me wild - she's Scarlett Johansson", like it's right there in the jpg. Unlike the "bottom mode," you don't need to imagine yourself as a king or knight to find Scarlett hot. Men think sexual attraction is just a brain switch telling you to go to [burly hairy form/soft dainty tender form]. The masculine self-image (which is mostly null and blank to begin with) isn't necessary for "getting" why girls are hot.
This confusion led to Burt Reynolds posing for the supposedly-female readers of Playgirl. Even women got confused - Helen Gurley Brown, pioneer of male centerfolds at the time, asserted that "women have the same visual appetites as men". I guess the observation that women are more interested in seeing themselves in the sexual dynamic wasn't widely understood.
But for "getting" why guys are hot - most men understandably wince at the first notion of a strong hairy arm bracing your torso. That wincing is a protective barrier. The flirtatious pouty "bottom" mode necessarily breaks that protective barrier and puts you into a two-person self-image dynamic where you are the dainty thing to be tamed. I absolutely think that can shift your attraction from women to men if you let this mode take root, especially when you're young (e.g., Dorian Grey).
Straight men are attracted to women, and straight women are attracted to themselves under a capable man (with a little bit of "well, he is handsome, I guess"). By "capable" I mean, well - heartthrobs like Paul McCartney with bowlcut coming off the plane are hot with teenage girls because they're hot with teenage girls. The attraction is vastly more complex and socially-involved than just "nice curvy Scarlett body". All this translates perfectly to gay bottom behavior and lesbian top behavior. I don't think you can generally act out one mode of social performance (or men's lack thereof) without the corresponding mode of sexual attraction.
Gay tops, though, I don't even begin to understand.
I'm not one (I think), but I'd guess the only thing manlier than topping a woman is...topping a man! Look at Greco-Roman attitudes toward bisexuality; bet you a gay top came up with those. "It's not sissy if you're on top!"
Ive always struggled to understand gay bottoms. This SUPER HELPED ME.
As a reward ill explain gay tops which has always come naturally to me. I think a really feminine male is hot to dominate because it feels less fragile then women which were socialized to be careful with. Also the mutual empathy empathy with shared sexual organs imply enhanced the experience in various ways.
Also there is a domination kink element like im “making a bitch” out of them. The contras of masculine man and dominated smaller man/boy).
Theres also a security element. Having your object of desire be a feminine male, which socially is less desired then women, feels safe and like you dont have to jump through hoops. Idk hard to explain. This safety feels sexy
Context: im 98% straight 2%percent gay top
Depending upon whether or not you believe and accept transgender people as a group and individuals who deserve their own agency, rights, protections, etc. specific to their group’s needs as society considers most other political groups? For me, I do believe the above and advocate for such policies and social acceptance, so orientation can’t be changed as some people argue and push back against. Additionally, gender can’t be changed—think of it like this for gender:
You have a big present in your driveway wrapped in wrapping paper (probably can tell it’s a car), but you can’t tell what type of gift 🎁 it is. Once you’ve wrapped the gift, you can see, understand—more importantly—ACCEPT with a 100% certainty your new car is a [insert any make/model] and not a big ball of wrapping paper or cardboard car cutout wrapped tricking you into thinking and believing something that is not true or real.
Therefore, if you agree with the premise of this analogy, you should be able to understand why gender and orientation can’t change. A trans person is the born male, female, etc., but, to the outside observer, these individuals struggle with accepting this truth because the trans person has the wrong wrapping. Moreover, this analogy applies to orientation as well—outside observers see a male to female trans person presenting male (before they start transitioning) hooking up with say a born male and born identifying male (same singular person), which individual is gay and which individual is not? More than likely, if you were to ask the two individuals they would have all sorts of answers depending upon the person, yet I my experience the “born male” and trans person would say born male is gay and trans person is straight just still pre transition.
Hopefully, this is clear to understand and adds to the conversation.
I think most born-again Christians are far more involved with hacking the childhood environment to make boys less gay! Conversion therapy is a comparatively rare "last resort", but it's controversial, so it makes the news.
I think that identity is what wobbles based on social pressure (and IQ and college education.)
This is a joke, right? I thought this was a science blog, not idle speculating from ignorance. Why are you here?
I've seen this hyper-aggressive cleverness signalling on Stack Overflow. Nassim Taleb too - a shield against academic social pressure?
My (diagnosed, disabled) autistic quirk is to be hyper-observant of my internal phenomena. I'm called out on this sometimes for sounding odd. I invent lots of neologisms. But my description of my experience and others' behavior is pretty solid and mundane. If anything, I was expecting pushback on how obvious it was. "Idle speculating from ignorance" seems to indicate a wild lack of introspection if you think anything I said is even approaching a leap.
Apologies for my lack of rigorous data, but Aella showing surprise for what seems blatantly obvious to me warranted a casual comment.
What seems blatantly obvious to you is more a reflection of you than the general population. Your sample is insignificant, and your susceptibility to this very common error isn't a feature particular to autism. Get over yourself.
Oh, go suck on a lollipop.
I agree and it's pretty obvious when someone says, "the gays" that it's not a scientific blog. Seems to me that it's instead, a bunch of ignorant people discussing some junk, opinion rather than anything based in scientific fact.
Clearly you don't have sisters, if your idea of what it's like is "carefree prancing". That did make me laugh though.
I definitely made it sound too light. Sisters are savages, so I hear. And I don't know what brothers are like either, or people's normal experience in general. Nonetheless I think there's an element of that "carefreeness" in every identifiable style of femininity. Even (I risk seeming moviebrained here) Meadow Soprano brats, school gossip bullies, tomboys, music festival noserings. Performatively "breaking out" and "pretending not to care" is the throughline, playing off against the cell cages served by masculine order (which men don't even seem to be aware they're producing). The big exception to this is the fact that most people aren't being feminine or masculine most of the time. For me it's 0% of the time. These are just shared, recognizable languages of character that don't necessarily apply to an individual, and, when put in exaggerated focus like I'm doing, may just seem like fictional movie archetypes foolishly mistaken for reality ("girls enjoy carefree singing and prancing on an Alpine meadow").
Big asterisk on all this: I have no real social experience in any of this. This is intuition applied to other people's self-accounts (and movies) and mostly came to me via a stone tablet in a dead language in a fever dream.
Lol those dream stone tablets, eh? 😉 I had an older sister, and mostly what I remember was a lot of stomping up and down stairs, door slamming, and screaming of "you're ruining my life!"
Very perceptive comment.
If Aella's sample departs so markedly (1in6Bn) from other surveys that don't identify older sisters as having an immunological impact on a boy's adult 'gayness' then this is persuasive evidence of 2 things: Aella's sample is unlikely to be representative of human behaviour and her measure of 'gayness' is very likely to be a cultural creation.
Presuming most of Aella's survey respondents identify as 'liberal/progressive', maybe there is something in this society that encourages boys/young adults with several older sisters to develop 'gay' behaviours as they grow to adulthood ie just as you describe.
Then why don't younger brothers make you lesbian?
Not sure if you meant older brothers (which I would have expected to make you more lesbian). Either way, my intuitive answer is that the feminine-receptive mode is more transmissible - it's more of an active social position (and people follow the herd), whereas the masculine-active mode is socially blank and null. It's hard to get socially absorbed into a group of blank pages. Plus the masculine mode simply *allows* for attraction to femininity, which seems much more simply brain-chemical like I mentioned earlier.
Specifically in the case of older brothers (as opposed to younger like you said), a young girl could either get absorbed as "one of the boys" (many such cases) doing woodwork in the garage, being unkempt and hollering at young things passing by - OR the girl could be cute and feminine by playing off against her brothers. So it optionally allows for the heterosexual "style" in a way that is perhaps more vivid than what's available to an emasculated younger brother of older sisters.
Again, this is all intuition and tea leaf reading - I'm just reporting that my personal tea leaves are pretty insistent.
Sure, but we have data thanks to Aella, and apparently male homosexuality varies with number of siblings in a way female doesn't.
It's entirely possible both environmental and genetic factors impact this. It's true in most cases!
The birth rate per woman has been going down, which should make men with more siblings older on average. Also, someone 14 years old hasn't had as much time to acquire more siblings. These factors might help explain why the percentages decrease as siblings increase: older men grew up in less gay-friendly times.
If siblings tell siblings about Aella, then taking Aella's survey correlates with a sibling taking Aella's survey, and then lower birth-order people would be older on average, and that could help explain their lower gayness.
So I'd control for birth year. The simplest thing to try would be to pick a 5-year span and use only people born in those years. You've got enough data.
I’m not sure that control would work. The distribution of parents of people born in a 5-year span that have 3 siblings is very different from those with no siblings. (Because a lot of the latter will not go on and produce more children.) Does that change things in important ways? Who knows.
I don't understand what you mean by "the distribution of parents"; we have no information about the parents. I can't tell what distributions you think will be different.
I have a couple of thoughts about measures and possible confounds:
"I took the top right four boxes. I don’t really see how this could be responsible for the mysterious older sister phenomenon here."
I agree, but just to test this, I would suggest looking at the effects for each of the two measures separately.
What I think could perhaps explain the effect and the divergence from prior research combines both the specific measures and some other observed correlates of having a female sibling. Prior research has suggested that older female siblings is associated with more feminine traits. One possible explanation of your results and the divergence in other studies is if your measures are more strongly associated with general feminine traits (and less strictly homosexuality), whereas rates of gay marriage serve as a stricter test of homosexuality (it's a higher bar).
It could potentially be informative to look at the effect of birth order*sibling_gender across the whole scale of the homosexual measures (rather than treating it as binary) to see if it's non-linear. I think both theories are compatible with the effect being linear, but if the effect were observed particularly strongly at the lower levels of the scale, I think that would count in favour of the general female traits explanation.
I see that you note the possibility that they are signaling liberalism, but then show that they aren't more liberal: so I should be clear that I think that this could potentially concern feminine traits distinct from liberalism.
I say this because real interest in the subject, and I thought for the most part it was fascinating. However, in the hopes of providing constructive criticism or feedback, the subject of the survey seems flawed and not what the results reflect, which is unfortunate and knowingly or unknowingly promotes the negative connotations embedded in society. Specifically, you establish the topic of research as gay or gayness, and then defined it as attraction. When you ask:
are you attracted to a same sex person or enjoy a penis or vagina? This question no matter what a person says doesn’t mean the individual is gay but rather maybe the phrasing of the question was understood to ask can the person taking the survey see or recognize attractiveness within the same sex. Similarly, on the sexual aspect, there are a whole range of different kinks, fetishes, etc. (eg. pegging) people enjoy partaking in, yet they themselves don’t and would never identify as being “gay”. Basically, my point is, for me, I wish there was more nuance to the discussion but also any discussion because society could really benefit from more not less of it.
Disclaimer, because of the issues with definition and methodology, I struggled to read with full attention, so I need to say that. Additionally, feedback is purely my reading of your work and to provide constructive criticism and not a dig or pejorative comment in anyway—unfortunately, most people take feedback negatively, which I am not trying to be towards anyone, but I always try to be honest, respectful, and thoughtful in writing back. Because of my comment, please let me know if I missed something where you acknowledge or explain more about the definition and I will go back to reread everything, especially, the fact humans are complex, full of contradictions, so we as a species need to first comprehend sexual desires, pleasures, etc. does not always equate to homosexuality in how it’s broadly understood and thought about being in a same sex romantic relationship (and even saying this is not fully inclusive and a universal statement). Finally, thank you for the work and subject matter; it’s always appreciated and interesting.
Warm regards,
Scott
"Maybe the phrasing of the question was understood to ask can the person taking the survey see or recognize attractiveness within the same sex."
Yes, having older sisters might make a boy more likely to imagine girls' point of view and empathize with their attraction toward males - without that necessarily becoming strong enough to make them gay enough to marry a man, absent the FBOE that comes from having older brothers.
Could it be how you asked the "gay" question? You say you asked if people "prefer" penises or vaginas and you label that axis of the chart as "penis interest". Unless it was clear in your actual questions that you meant preference/interest *in sexual partners*, there could easily be a fair number of straight guys who love their penis and so would say that they prefer penises (thinking that they wouldn't want a vagina instead), or that they have a strong interest in penises (how does my penis's size compare, how do I keep it healthy, how best to pleasure it, etc).
I am sure there are also many men who hate vaginas but still consider themselves straight.
Most clinical studies are false.
We are facing a replicability crisis that scales with the amount of money invested and the political pressure involved.
It's entirely possible that your study is correct and all the others are false.
The recognition that older sisters increase gayness damages the notion of biologically innate homosexuality.
And implies that it is actually at least somewhat conditioned.
This alone is enough to make researchers squeamish about publishing it.
Note also that the effect was discovered in 1990. A time when there was a need to prove it was innate.
If it were real, it would have been discovered much earlier, probably by 1900 when large scale research on such topics was popular.
People will say to this, "Ah but people wouldn't have admitted to being gay then because it was a crime"
However, the answer to this is that they often studied criminals and there was actually a belief that some people were born with a "criminal gene" that predisposed them to it.
They were obsessed with finding a genetic reason for everything, and they did carry out extensive research on gayness, or degeneracy as they liked to call it, looking for familial patterns that could be used to predict it.
It's likely they would have noticed a fraternal birth order pattern.
They did, however, discover that family dynamics were heavily influential.
In all likelihood, the real reason for this pattern is that younger siblings end up in a submissive position for much of their upbringing. It is easier to endure this if they learn to like it, so they become inclined towards being dominated.
This is also why the girls don't respond this way, because the submissiveness is normal for same sex relationships.
In other words the big brother little sister dynamic tends to feminise rather than make them a lesbian.
Then being a big sister should make women more likely to be lesbian, and it doesn't seem to.
I think the explanation about maternal antibodies actually kind of makes sense.
I agree Aella's probably our best chance to get real sex research that isn't ideologically motivated at this point.
Apologies for being dismissive, but from what I've seen older sisters are more assertive and more likely to be lesbian or bisexual.
Iirc this study actually does show a tiny increase in vagina preference.
In any case, the effect is probably small because as stated family dynamics are what's important rather than birth order.
If the older sister is not much older, or treated worse in a traditional setting because of their gender then it probably won't happen.
Or if a girl doesn't have a stable father figure, it can lead to a desire for male attention to provide what they lack.
This trend has become a stereotype in escorts, strippers and prostitutes.
It combines with all the other factors to produce a complex tangle of results.
Neglectful or absent father plus dominant family role could equal a desire for submissive men.
Loving father, absent mother plus submissive role could equal a desire for dominant women to mummy them.
Or the opposite, they could hate women and want a sugar daddy.
I knew a girl who was attracted to really old men with wrinkles. They were raised by their grandfather who they adored.
People's romantic and sexual tastes are almost always either an attempt to balance out what they feel is missing, fix their past, or hold on to something familiar.
I am yet to meet anyone whose preferences didn't reveal something about their past.
For a more controversial reference point, pedophiles are a group that suffers a disproportionate amount of childhood abuse and neglect.
"Furries" appear to be often the victims of bullying, social exile, or overwhelmed by society, so they become obsessed with animals or becoming animals.
Similar to the people who want to be babies.
In conclusion, while genetics obviously plays a fundamental role and predisposes a person to particular desires, mostly heterosexuality, the maternal antibody theory is not proven, it's just a conjecture that hinges entirely on what I believe is a fraudulent result.
It might sound plausible, but that's all.
I have read that being pregnant with a daughter is more likely to make the mother inflamed and physically ill, which throws a wrench in the whole concept.
If it's about immune activation altering brain development, then it should happen to girls too.
Final point related to my claim that sexuality is more socially constructed than our politically correct narrative.
Gender isn't socially constructed, it's mostly genetic. In my opinion, it's far more genetic than sexuality.
Sexual preferences are far more fluid than genitalia and the ability to conceive children.
They are wrong about everything, and what they are teaching children is back to front and upside down.
"People's romantic and sexual tastes are almost always either an attempt to balance out what they feel is missing, fix their past, or hold on to something familiar."
Ok. You believe genetics don't play a part in sexual choices. Hence you dismiss numerous well founded studies referenced by Perplexity.ai (I checked some, so they aren't all hallucinations) that sexuality is something like 25% to 75% genetically inherited.
"Gender isn't socially constructed, it's mostly genetic. In my opinion, it's far more genetic than sexuality."
Ok. You believe gender is not a social construct. Rather that it is solidly founded in the genome. That's quite a reversal! I'm trying hard to get my head around your thinking. Have you evidence beyond your belief?
You weren't dismissive at all, I just didn't have time to respond!
I think you are probably right overall, but the maternal antibody does explain the weird asymmetry factor--she checked if more siblings made girls lesbian, and it doesn't. I imagine anything as complex as human sexuality has a bunch of initiating factors.
Gay: A man who is emotionally ,romantically or sexually attracted to other men. sometimes used to refer to all homosexual people.
Birth order. Birth order theory is actually a psychological theory that suggest a person's position in the family e.g. first born ,middle child , youngest, or only child can influence their personality , behavior and life outcomes.
I think this theory is not absolute because personality is shaped by many other factors like parenting style ,culture, life experiences.
Recent research shows mixed evidence --------some findings supports birth order effects ,others not.
If you include "emotionally", doesn't that capture any man with close male friends - like most men before the stupid "one drop of gay" culture.
Surely "male close friends but only gets aroused by women" isn't gay unless you stretch the term beyond breaking point?
thanks on appreciation .
Thanks for your contribution to discussion and was waiting to read it being brought up—romantic co-mingling relationships!!! For me at least, this part is pivotal for “gayness” or an individual who is “gay” because sexual activities are not and cannot be gay but rather forms of pleasure individuals identify as being something they like and enjoy. Whereas, again my simple and narrow definition of understanding, a homosexual [insert gender] is an individual who desires, wants and capable of being in a sexual, intellectual, and physical committed relationship way each other (narrow yet broad because so many things, actions, and individuals seemingly not being considered by me but if I make every qualification the post would be too convoluted and long just know I have each in my brain and care). The reason I currently have my definition this sort of is for several reasons of which come from conversations with different members of groups because private conversations with my close friends, so if you or anyone wants me to clarify better please DM because I don’t want to broadcast personal things so publicly and violate potentially a friend’s personal conversations with me.
thank you for this! It's so fascinating to read. I didn't realise that birth order and male homosexuality was considered one of the most consistent biodemographic correlates of sexuality in men! As for your predicament I'll give it some thought, hoping someone else comments with the answer in the meantime...
i mean the brother thing is probs genetics, the mothers body trying to decrease the amount of family growth and just a evolutionary trait thing,
but socially now its just the larger exposure of male culture that probably makes you gay but then that gets even more increased via sisters.
Wait a minute. In your big kink survey you have all these how-much-you-prefer-dicks questions, but you didn’t add questions like “are you gay”? It would have been interesting to see how self-id correlates with the actual behaviors and preferences.
And you have questions about siblings but not “are you married and what is their gender”? That seems counter-intuitive, why did you decide to make it that way?
I’d guess that it’s an artifact from the questions you’re asking. Specifically, if people “prefer masculinity or femininity.”
I’m a cis het guy who presents quite masculine. But I REALLY love women and often prefer their company in any circumstance. Nevertheless, I also REALLY enjoy my own masculinity.
So if you asked me that question, I’m not sure which gender I would say I preferred, despite being very firmly heterosexual. And I can imagine others in the same bind, especially men who are vaguely anti-feminine.
I would guess that this question is the main cause of your of odd results. It’s also possible the bulk of science is wrong in this matter. But scientists are pretty incredible, in aggregate and over time. So that seems less plausible
"This effect has been attributed to a mother’s immune reaction to proteins produced by a male foetus. The proteins enter the mother’s bloodstream and trigger the production of antibodies that influence the sexual development of subsequent children.
These maternal antibodies accumulate over successive pregnancies with male foetuses, which means men with more older brothers are more likely to experience same-sex sexual attraction."
I imagine the effect must be very small.
Otherwise, small families would have been preferentially selected for. In the past (and perhaps in subsarahan Africa now?) levels of infant mortality were such that multiparity (6 and more births?) was required to sustain human population.
There were some old studies I quote in my book that found maternal stress correlated with homosexuality in offspring. I suspect that’s what is going on here- the more kids you have, the harder it is on the body, the more stressed the body becomes, and the less resources it has to give the offspring.
Random guess, but could the "gay union" data be biased against bi men? I'm guessing that would halve the number of expected same-sex unions.
Interestingly, bi individuals often catch harassment from all sides, gay, straight, or whatever, which is disrespectful and harmful, but it’s completely rude, hurtful, etc from the gay community, or really any marginalized group, because they each fight and promote equality, inclusion, acceptance of their group but dismiss bisexual as a person who is just a gay person who isn’t ready to come out of the proverbial closet rather than a person who wants, capable of being romantically linked to a person from whatever group.
Language seems to be the largest concern for people. I do try to consider everyone and their individual factors and needs in their life, but many times these days people keep adding wordings, placing normative values on words, judging people’s word choice rather than listening or reading what the person’s point, perspective, intention, understanding, etc. Because of this qualitative approach to using language and how words are received, I struggle with not coming off as a complete asshole to people.
I do think it's about definition. You seem to think your definition of gayness is too wide, but it seems rather more narrow than usual. I understand that this is an attempt to square the circle on "male+cis man" vs. "male+trans man" vs. "male+trans woman" but if someone says, say, 7 on penises, 4 on (outward) masc/fem, I believe both their life trajectory and the general word usage would characterize them as gay not bi (when they want outward fem, they'll probably go for a pink-boa boy, not for a girl, whether cis or trans). (What about the reverse, 4-7? I notice my expectations are confused here, but then again, "boypussy" genre of fanfiction exists.)
That said, these are still interesting data, and if this is the difference, it is interesting in itself.
Fwiw, i think there is a problem with how you defined who is gay. You took only the people with the highest self reported scores of both affinity for masculine and penis interest as gay. But that is not what gay means and certainly some gay people are not going to answer those questions in a way that would count them.
I think the data would be more useful if instead there was simply a question about sexual identity