5 ms·

Also relevant: https://www.psypost.org/2022/06/study-finds-early-exposure-to-testosterone-predicts-gender-role-behaviors-in-boys-63250 https://www.psypost.org/2

Also relevant: https://www.psypost.org/2022/06/study-finds-early-exposure-to-testosterone-predicts-gender-role-behaviors-in-boys-63250 https://www.psypost.org/2022/06/study-finds-early-exposure-t... > Low exposure to gonadal hormones during early gestation and infancy predicts higher recalled childhood gender nonconformity in men, according to new research published in Psychological Science. The findings provide evidence androgens such as testosterone play a role in the development of male-typical gender role behaviors in childhood.

twoxproblematic 4y ago
dehrmann 4y ago
I know someone with a theory that the rise of "the pill" is a factor in male-typical gender role behaviors. Essentially, the pill is only 91% effective over a year in practice, the mother doesn't know she's pregnant, continues taking estrogen pills during the first trimester, and this impacts the development of the fetus. In the US, it wasn't really widely available to around 1970, so it lines up somewhat with increased rates of homosexuality. No idea if it's true, but the timeline and mechanism of action seem plausible. The rise of the pill also happened around a time of greater LGBT awareness, so overall awareness is also a factor.
- Workaccount2 4y ago
  That might also fit with the fact that the youngest is usually the homosexual one. Mom started taking the pill to prevent anymore kids, but one slipped through.
- whatthedangheck 4y ago
  It seems plausible. During the first section of this talk on transgender medical care Dr. Will Powers touches on exactly what you're talking about except in his example it was a highly potent estrogen prescribed to mothers who had had miscarriages to take during pregnancy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fefu33e8O-0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fefu33e8O-0
- zo1 4y ago
  If true, that sounds like something that should have worried and concerned those that "certified" those pills safe for human consumption.
- throwaway0a5e 4y ago
  The pill is probably responsible for a bunch of crap at the societal level just like any other group of hormone changing medications taken by such a wide chunk of the population would be. But it probably has little to do with homosexuality since we have good historical record of prevalence varying inversely with persecution.
  - annyeonghada 4y ago
    >prevalence varying inversely with persecution No, we don't because before we didn't even count. It is possible that 1. there were fewer homosexual men in the past 2. increase in the number of homosexual men is due to less persecution are both contemporarily true.
- jjoonathan 4y ago
  That, and guys tend to medicate their hormones too these days (finasteride). Yes, DHT is "just" a parallel path -- but when is biology ever that cut and dry, especially when there's so much money to be made?
  - scythe 4y ago
    Does anyone actually start taking finasteride before the emergence of sexuality, though? As far as I'm aware, treatment is usually initiated at age 21 or later. In that case, changes in sexuality should be very hard to miss, and we'd know by now.
    - jjoonathan 4y ago
      Yeah, it's after puberty -- but are you so sure it would be hard to miss? Small effects with lots of confounding variables and an enormous profit incentive to miss seem easy to miss.
      - scythe 4y ago
        In order to do due diligence for this reply, I typed "finasteride" into Google Scholar, and the first suggestion was "finasteride side effects", which brings up 20,500 results, including highly cited papers dealing specifically with sexual side effects: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1743609515337863 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S174360951... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1743609515335566 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S17436... https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1557988314538445 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/15579883145384... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0015028219325993 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001502821... I think that in that context, it would be hard to miss!
- brightball 4y ago
  Oh, I've wondered about the societal effects of birth control pills for a couple of decades. Stuff like the above theory, effects on difficulty conceiving when women get off of it finally. Talk to a doctor sometime about the volume of 30+ year old women who are on some type of daily anxiety medication. My understanding is that it's approaching 50% or higher. Was that level of anxiety among women common before birth control? IMO there are a whole lot of questions that come from it.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    You spotted a social phenomena, but you have no reason to blame the borth control pill- it could bechemical pollution, tefllon, etc.
    - brightball 4y ago
      There’s certainly plausible reason to wonder about it. Consider how many women take it, for many many years. Many women go through multiple different types of pills due to the effects certain pills will have on their body, from weight gain to period frequency. You do that for 5, 10, 15…20 years…it’s reasonable to wonder what it will do longer term. At the same time, as you age and have older friend groups it’s hard not to notice a correlation between the friends you have who never took birth control or minimally took it who also have no anxiety issues and those that don’t. Maybe it could be something else but IMO it warrants further study.
- nonrandomstring 4y ago
  As I once read, the contraceptive is not eliminated by the body, so it gets washed out by the kidneys and ends up via sewers in water everywhere. No idea how long-lived it is though. I guess it would break down naturally?
- abeppu 4y ago
  > so it lines up somewhat with increased rates of homosexuality ... but isn't it really hard to distinguish _actual_ rates of homosexuality from visible homosexuality? As public acceptance for LGBT people has increased, more people can feel safe coming out or identifying as gay. Further, if the pill became widely available around 1970, and if this were an impactful factor, wouldn't you expect to see the corresponding change beginning in at least the mid 80s, as those kids grow up?
  - oneoff786 4y ago
    LGBT rates among zoomers is shockingly high to me. 20%, double that of millenials. Millenials are double that of Gen X. I tend to believe there’s a genuine biological phenomenon going on here. The next generation should be just starting to establish their sexual orientations. The data should be interesting…
    - concinds 4y ago
      The increase is almost entirely in bisexuality. I think the biological argument is strong.
    - staticman2 4y ago
      We have records showing male male sex was common in ancient Greece.
      - oneoff786 4y ago
        Yeah, mostly rich older dudes fucking young boys. Greece was not some idyllic free love society. It was just that being a top was super manly and being a bottom was not. You didn’t have wealthy men in openly gay equal relationships with other men.
        Der_Einzige 4y ago
        Pretty sure poor people weren't being allowed into the most elite unit in the Greek world (since you had to buy your armor!) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Band_of_Thebes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Band_of_Thebes
- nkrisc 4y ago
  You have to take "rates of homosexuality" with a huge amount of skepticism considering it was often illegal until recently and could even get you killed. You have to assume any data from the 70s or earlier is severely under-reported. Any research into the subject was also taboo, frowned upon, or even actively discouraged, or outright disallowed.

twoxproblematic 4y ago

dehrmann 4y ago

I know someone with a theory that the rise of "the pill" is a factor in male-typical gender role behaviors. Essentially, the pill is only 91% effective over a year in practice, the mother doesn't know she's pregnant, continues taking estrogen pills during the first trimester, and this impacts the development of the fetus. In the US, it wasn't really widely available to around 1970, so it lines up somewhat with increased rates of homosexuality. No idea if it's true, but the timeline and mechanism of action seem plausible. The rise of the pill also happened around a time of greater LGBT awareness, so overall awareness is also a factor.

Workaccount2 4y ago
That might also fit with the fact that the youngest is usually the homosexual one. Mom started taking the pill to prevent anymore kids, but one slipped through.
whatthedangheck 4y ago
It seems plausible. During the first section of this talk on transgender medical care Dr. Will Powers touches on exactly what you're talking about except in his example it was a highly potent estrogen prescribed to mothers who had had miscarriages to take during pregnancy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fefu33e8O-0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fefu33e8O-0
zo1 4y ago
If true, that sounds like something that should have worried and concerned those that "certified" those pills safe for human consumption.
throwaway0a5e 4y ago
The pill is probably responsible for a bunch of crap at the societal level just like any other group of hormone changing medications taken by such a wide chunk of the population would be. But it probably has little to do with homosexuality since we have good historical record of prevalence varying inversely with persecution.
- annyeonghada 4y ago
  >prevalence varying inversely with persecution No, we don't because before we didn't even count. It is possible that 1. there were fewer homosexual men in the past 2. increase in the number of homosexual men is due to less persecution are both contemporarily true.
jjoonathan 4y ago
That, and guys tend to medicate their hormones too these days (finasteride). Yes, DHT is "just" a parallel path -- but when is biology ever that cut and dry, especially when there's so much money to be made?
- scythe 4y ago
  Does anyone actually start taking finasteride before the emergence of sexuality, though? As far as I'm aware, treatment is usually initiated at age 21 or later. In that case, changes in sexuality should be very hard to miss, and we'd know by now.
  - jjoonathan 4y ago
    Yeah, it's after puberty -- but are you so sure it would be hard to miss? Small effects with lots of confounding variables and an enormous profit incentive to miss seem easy to miss.
    - scythe 4y ago
      In order to do due diligence for this reply, I typed "finasteride" into Google Scholar, and the first suggestion was "finasteride side effects", which brings up 20,500 results, including highly cited papers dealing specifically with sexual side effects: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1743609515337863 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S174360951... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1743609515335566 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S17436... https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1557988314538445 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/15579883145384... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0015028219325993 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001502821... I think that in that context, it would be hard to miss!
brightball 4y ago
Oh, I've wondered about the societal effects of birth control pills for a couple of decades. Stuff like the above theory, effects on difficulty conceiving when women get off of it finally. Talk to a doctor sometime about the volume of 30+ year old women who are on some type of daily anxiety medication. My understanding is that it's approaching 50% or higher. Was that level of anxiety among women common before birth control? IMO there are a whole lot of questions that come from it.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  You spotted a social phenomena, but you have no reason to blame the borth control pill- it could bechemical pollution, tefllon, etc.
  - brightball 4y ago
    There’s certainly plausible reason to wonder about it. Consider how many women take it, for many many years. Many women go through multiple different types of pills due to the effects certain pills will have on their body, from weight gain to period frequency. You do that for 5, 10, 15…20 years…it’s reasonable to wonder what it will do longer term. At the same time, as you age and have older friend groups it’s hard not to notice a correlation between the friends you have who never took birth control or minimally took it who also have no anxiety issues and those that don’t. Maybe it could be something else but IMO it warrants further study.
nonrandomstring 4y ago
As I once read, the contraceptive is not eliminated by the body, so it gets washed out by the kidneys and ends up via sewers in water everywhere. No idea how long-lived it is though. I guess it would break down naturally?
abeppu 4y ago
> so it lines up somewhat with increased rates of homosexuality ... but isn't it really hard to distinguish _actual_ rates of homosexuality from visible homosexuality? As public acceptance for LGBT people has increased, more people can feel safe coming out or identifying as gay. Further, if the pill became widely available around 1970, and if this were an impactful factor, wouldn't you expect to see the corresponding change beginning in at least the mid 80s, as those kids grow up?
- oneoff786 4y ago
  LGBT rates among zoomers is shockingly high to me. 20%, double that of millenials. Millenials are double that of Gen X. I tend to believe there’s a genuine biological phenomenon going on here. The next generation should be just starting to establish their sexual orientations. The data should be interesting…
  - concinds 4y ago
    The increase is almost entirely in bisexuality. I think the biological argument is strong.
  - staticman2 4y ago
    We have records showing male male sex was common in ancient Greece.
    - oneoff786 4y ago
      Yeah, mostly rich older dudes fucking young boys. Greece was not some idyllic free love society. It was just that being a top was super manly and being a bottom was not. You didn’t have wealthy men in openly gay equal relationships with other men.
      - Der_Einzige 4y ago
        Pretty sure poor people weren't being allowed into the most elite unit in the Greek world (since you had to buy your armor!) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Band_of_Thebes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Band_of_Thebes
nkrisc 4y ago
You have to take "rates of homosexuality" with a huge amount of skepticism considering it was often illegal until recently and could even get you killed. You have to assume any data from the 70s or earlier is severely under-reported. Any research into the subject was also taboo, frowned upon, or even actively discouraged, or outright disallowed.