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Your comment makes no sense, and to me makes you seem like a naive bigot. Firstly is there increased rates of homosexuality or transgenderism? Please show me an

Your comment makes no sense, and to me makes you seem like a naive bigot. Firstly is there increased rates of homosexuality or transgenderism? Please show me any data on this. Second what makes you think a low sperm count makes you a homosexual or transgender?

maxbaines 4y ago
Wow this thread has made me feel like ChatGPT today, I'm probably making as many mistakes also.
nonethewiser 4y ago
Well that’s the question
- tsimionescu 4y ago
  Your question assumes something that is unlikely to be true (increased rates of homosexuality and transgenderism), and then asks if it may be linked with something to which there is no plausible link at all, even if your assumption were true - since lower sperm count is obviously not going to increase the rate of homosexual women. "Just asking questions" is not a plausible defense when the question is this leading. It's like asking "Is women being dumber than men possibly linked to lower testosterone?" and claiming that you are just being curious.
  - concordDance 4y ago
    > Your question assumes something that is unlikely to be true (increased rates of homosexuality and transgenderism), Why would this be unlikely? I'm struggling to think of a cause that would result in both a constant rate of these things AND a rate of several percent (de novo mutations aren't anywhere near common enough to get you constant rate given that gay uncles arent going to be doing 2x as much parenting as fathers and theres only like 40 mutations per generation). There's also the evidence of people answering "yes" more to "Are you a man attracted to men? Have you had sex with men?" type questions. Yes, there are other explanations like people being more comfortable answering yes, but it's still evidence.
    - tsimionescu 4y ago
      Because homosexuality and transgenderism are known to have been constants throughout history all over the Earth. While we don't have any kind of reliable numbers, it's a priori unlikely for such a well-trodden low level phenomenon to have suddenly started increasing. Also, given the huge stigma associated with both until extremely recently, a significant increase in survey responses has such huge confounding factors that it's entirely irrelevant. There are even today numerous people living in heterosexual relationships unhappy with their sex life and not realizing, or daring to admit even to themselves, that they are in fact gay.
      - foldr 4y ago
        > There are even today numerous people living in heterosexual relationships unhappy with their sex life and not realizing, or daring to admit even to themselves, that they are in fact gay. This indeed is something that every gay man knows through experience but I suspect that many straight people may not. In many parts of the world (including many parts of the US and Europe) the majority of men available for gay sex do not identify as gay and are not open about their same sex attraction.
      - concordDance 4y ago
        So you're positing that around 6% of people are gay and 1% trans (the Gen Z rates), but that this had such a small effect on reproduction rates that it didn't get selected against strongly enough to offset the new ones introduced by mutation? It just seems implausible to me that a gay man would be as motivated to court a woman as a straight one. The gene fitness reduction would have to be incredibly small (less than a thousandth of a percent) to offset the fact you're only getting a few dozen new mutations per generation in a giant genome where very few of those mutations will make you gay...
        tsimionescu 4y ago
        Why are you assuming that being gay or transgender would be selected against? Transgender people can have children (especially historically, when HRT wasn't available). Genes can be passed on without relying on procreation of the gay individual - if gay family members increase the overall reproductive success of a family, for example, then genes related to being gay can be passed without the gay persons ever reproducing directly. Since gayness is prevalent through the animal kingdom, one of two things must be true: it either helps in group environments (whether you choose to interpret that as group selection or "selfish gene"-style counterintuitive effects) ; or perhaps genes related to gayness happen to be deeply tied to some other very important genes that get easily passed on. Either way, what is your proposed alternative? Do you think 6%+1% is too large a number for historical proportions of gay+trans people? By the way, 1% for trans people seems to match pretty well the number of Hijra people in India (10M+ out of 1.4 billion). Another piece of evidence that suggests these rates are relatively constant across the world in vastly different cultures.
- maxbaines 4y ago
  Its a different question, if asked; or as we're talking about the subject, my opinion is it has more to do with acceptance of such things today that in the past would not be discussed, hidden. or oppressed.
maxbaines 4y ago
Picking up a good few downvotes for this, usually that tells me something is wrong in what I said, looking at my comment, naive bigot may be a little strong, even if before it I wrote 'to me makes you seem'. I thought the comment was out of context, could cause offence to some, and not backed up by any data. No offence intended, to nonethewiser.
- concordDance 4y ago
  Yeah, just avoid attributing traits to other poster's behaviour and that should prevent downvotes.
  - maxbaines 4y ago
    Yes I agree, I should not have said such. The irony is it makes my comment no better than the original.
- xupybd 4y ago
  I don't think the original question conveyed anything negative about homosexuality or transgenderism. Only that they were interested if chemicals could have altered human sexuality. It was asked without the care one would normally use when approaching such a topic and perhaps that reflects badly but I find the question interesting. What if we are so controlled by the environment around us? Are our likes and dislikes something we have control over or is it just a result of the world around?
  - maxbaines 4y ago
    'It was asked without the care one would normally use' yes I agree, equally my comment was made without the care one would normally use. I absolutely think we a are controlled by the environment around us, and we're only properly starting to understand and measure this recently.
  - foldr 4y ago
    HN has a bit of a blind spot around homophobia. If you dig through comment histories, you’ll find that a lot of the people who are “just asking questions” have a definite axe to grind when it comes to gay and trans people. As a gay person I probably have more of an instinct for these sorts of red flags. But for better or worse, anything short of explicit homophobia falls within the HN guidelines, and any criticism of superficially polite posters for repeating the talking points of anti-gay and trans activists does not. Hence this rather disgraceful subthread, where far right panic about gay and trans liberation (clothed in pseudoscientific garb) is being seriously debated without any regard for the gay and trans users of this site. Fortunately there is more to HN than this kind of thread, but it is a repeated occurrence that I am becoming throughly sick of. It’s awfully difficult to complain about this without being flagged into oblivion; but the moderation mechanisms that are supposed to stop discussion veering off in this sort of direction simply don’t work when it comes to homophobia and transphobia.
badcppdev 4y ago
This is a sensitive topic and I think your reply is not well thought out. There are a few topics such as reproductive health and medical health screening (i.e. Trans-women can get prostate cancer) where science has to study links and possible causation vs correlation without being silenced because it sounds similar to what bigots might say. If medical scientists are too scared to study health issues around these topics because they are worried about being called a bigot then I can't imagine that will turn out well for everyone.
- maxbaines 4y ago
  I have already acknowledged below, my comment was not well thought out, in that I could have caused offence to the original commenter with some words, but I absolutely stand by the rest of it. I also do not agree with the remainder of your what you say, and a bizarre comment in brackets I won't repeat. There are plenty of times today and throughout history Science has been bigoted or naive, and as such should not be free to explore any subject uncontrolled or deemed insensitive to society.
  - badcppdev 4y ago
    I was criticising you but didn't mean to offend. I was sure that my bracketed comment was a real thing that doctors have to be aware of and was an example of where science and medicine need to be able to treat a person properly even if they have transitioned. You have really confused me and now I'm worried that this medical issue is taboo or I'm mistaken?
    - linminal 4y ago
      There was nothing wrong with your bracketed comment. The prostate gland does remain intact even for those males who have fully transitioned with cosmetic genital surgery. Though there is also some indication that those who take anti-androgen therapy and estrogens have a somewhat lower risk of prostate cancer. It's still an open area of research due to there not being much data.
    - maxbaines 4y ago
cyber_kinetist 4y ago
Investigating the possibility that environment factors such as plastics and pollution led to a rise in homosexuality/transgenderism doesn’t invalidate the living experiences of these people. Thinking that they need to be corrected because of this is where the bigoted lies. There isn’t really much to be squeamish about environmental factors interfering with sexuality (although I understand this often becomes fodder for right-wingers with an agenda). But I think a more fundamental issue lies under this squeamishness: the thought of dividing “gender” and “sex” (or more broadly “culture” and “nature”, or even the Cartesian notion of “mind” and “body”), whereas the two cannot be separated in reality. And I think this monism is probably something that trans people would actually understand by intuition far better than me, because changing your sex requires a lot of physical and hormonal changes inside your body that interferes with every other social aspect of their lives (and the social pressures in return create substantial changes in their bodies). Sex isn’t just socially constructed, they’re also biologically formed, it’s just that the dynamics surrounding them are just far more complex than what typical right-wingers think of (a clean separation between man and woman).
- foldr 4y ago
  It’s worth noting that a trans person is just someone whose gender identity doesn’t match the identity they were assigned at birth. Not all trans people have gone through (or plan to go through) any kind of medical ‘transitioning’ or ‘sex change’ procedure.
  - cyber_kinetist 4y ago
    Yup I’m obviously not talking about the full range of trans experiences here, but most of the people I’ve heard anecdotes so far have done some kind of medical decision (usually hormonal therapy) because of gender dystopia. I was just saying that in general trans people would be the ones who would understand the physical/biological mechanics of gender in its full capacity.

maxbaines 4y ago

Wow this thread has made me feel like ChatGPT today, I'm probably making as many mistakes also.

nonethewiser 4y ago

Well that’s the question

tsimionescu 4y ago
Your question assumes something that is unlikely to be true (increased rates of homosexuality and transgenderism), and then asks if it may be linked with something to which there is no plausible link at all, even if your assumption were true - since lower sperm count is obviously not going to increase the rate of homosexual women. "Just asking questions" is not a plausible defense when the question is this leading. It's like asking "Is women being dumber than men possibly linked to lower testosterone?" and claiming that you are just being curious.
- concordDance 4y ago
  > Your question assumes something that is unlikely to be true (increased rates of homosexuality and transgenderism), Why would this be unlikely? I'm struggling to think of a cause that would result in both a constant rate of these things AND a rate of several percent (de novo mutations aren't anywhere near common enough to get you constant rate given that gay uncles arent going to be doing 2x as much parenting as fathers and theres only like 40 mutations per generation). There's also the evidence of people answering "yes" more to "Are you a man attracted to men? Have you had sex with men?" type questions. Yes, there are other explanations like people being more comfortable answering yes, but it's still evidence.
  - tsimionescu 4y ago
    Because homosexuality and transgenderism are known to have been constants throughout history all over the Earth. While we don't have any kind of reliable numbers, it's a priori unlikely for such a well-trodden low level phenomenon to have suddenly started increasing. Also, given the huge stigma associated with both until extremely recently, a significant increase in survey responses has such huge confounding factors that it's entirely irrelevant. There are even today numerous people living in heterosexual relationships unhappy with their sex life and not realizing, or daring to admit even to themselves, that they are in fact gay.
    - foldr 4y ago
      > There are even today numerous people living in heterosexual relationships unhappy with their sex life and not realizing, or daring to admit even to themselves, that they are in fact gay. This indeed is something that every gay man knows through experience but I suspect that many straight people may not. In many parts of the world (including many parts of the US and Europe) the majority of men available for gay sex do not identify as gay and are not open about their same sex attraction.
    - concordDance 4y ago
      So you're positing that around 6% of people are gay and 1% trans (the Gen Z rates), but that this had such a small effect on reproduction rates that it didn't get selected against strongly enough to offset the new ones introduced by mutation? It just seems implausible to me that a gay man would be as motivated to court a woman as a straight one. The gene fitness reduction would have to be incredibly small (less than a thousandth of a percent) to offset the fact you're only getting a few dozen new mutations per generation in a giant genome where very few of those mutations will make you gay...
      - tsimionescu 4y ago
        Why are you assuming that being gay or transgender would be selected against? Transgender people can have children (especially historically, when HRT wasn't available). Genes can be passed on without relying on procreation of the gay individual - if gay family members increase the overall reproductive success of a family, for example, then genes related to being gay can be passed without the gay persons ever reproducing directly. Since gayness is prevalent through the animal kingdom, one of two things must be true: it either helps in group environments (whether you choose to interpret that as group selection or "selfish gene"-style counterintuitive effects) ; or perhaps genes related to gayness happen to be deeply tied to some other very important genes that get easily passed on. Either way, what is your proposed alternative? Do you think 6%+1% is too large a number for historical proportions of gay+trans people? By the way, 1% for trans people seems to match pretty well the number of Hijra people in India (10M+ out of 1.4 billion). Another piece of evidence that suggests these rates are relatively constant across the world in vastly different cultures.
maxbaines 4y ago
Its a different question, if asked; or as we're talking about the subject, my opinion is it has more to do with acceptance of such things today that in the past would not be discussed, hidden. or oppressed.

maxbaines 4y ago

Picking up a good few downvotes for this, usually that tells me something is wrong in what I said, looking at my comment, naive bigot may be a little strong, even if before it I wrote 'to me makes you seem'. I thought the comment was out of context, could cause offence to some, and not backed up by any data. No offence intended, to nonethewiser.

concordDance 4y ago
Yeah, just avoid attributing traits to other poster's behaviour and that should prevent downvotes.
- maxbaines 4y ago
  Yes I agree, I should not have said such. The irony is it makes my comment no better than the original.
xupybd 4y ago
I don't think the original question conveyed anything negative about homosexuality or transgenderism. Only that they were interested if chemicals could have altered human sexuality. It was asked without the care one would normally use when approaching such a topic and perhaps that reflects badly but I find the question interesting. What if we are so controlled by the environment around us? Are our likes and dislikes something we have control over or is it just a result of the world around?
- maxbaines 4y ago
  'It was asked without the care one would normally use' yes I agree, equally my comment was made without the care one would normally use. I absolutely think we a are controlled by the environment around us, and we're only properly starting to understand and measure this recently.
- foldr 4y ago
  HN has a bit of a blind spot around homophobia. If you dig through comment histories, you’ll find that a lot of the people who are “just asking questions” have a definite axe to grind when it comes to gay and trans people. As a gay person I probably have more of an instinct for these sorts of red flags. But for better or worse, anything short of explicit homophobia falls within the HN guidelines, and any criticism of superficially polite posters for repeating the talking points of anti-gay and trans activists does not. Hence this rather disgraceful subthread, where far right panic about gay and trans liberation (clothed in pseudoscientific garb) is being seriously debated without any regard for the gay and trans users of this site. Fortunately there is more to HN than this kind of thread, but it is a repeated occurrence that I am becoming throughly sick of. It’s awfully difficult to complain about this without being flagged into oblivion; but the moderation mechanisms that are supposed to stop discussion veering off in this sort of direction simply don’t work when it comes to homophobia and transphobia.

badcppdev 4y ago

This is a sensitive topic and I think your reply is not well thought out. There are a few topics such as reproductive health and medical health screening (i.e. Trans-women can get prostate cancer) where science has to study links and possible causation vs correlation without being silenced because it sounds similar to what bigots might say. If medical scientists are too scared to study health issues around these topics because they are worried about being called a bigot then I can't imagine that will turn out well for everyone.

maxbaines 4y ago
I have already acknowledged below, my comment was not well thought out, in that I could have caused offence to the original commenter with some words, but I absolutely stand by the rest of it. I also do not agree with the remainder of your what you say, and a bizarre comment in brackets I won't repeat. There are plenty of times today and throughout history Science has been bigoted or naive, and as such should not be free to explore any subject uncontrolled or deemed insensitive to society.
- badcppdev 4y ago
  I was criticising you but didn't mean to offend. I was sure that my bracketed comment was a real thing that doctors have to be aware of and was an example of where science and medicine need to be able to treat a person properly even if they have transitioned. You have really confused me and now I'm worried that this medical issue is taboo or I'm mistaken?
  - linminal 4y ago
    There was nothing wrong with your bracketed comment. The prostate gland does remain intact even for those males who have fully transitioned with cosmetic genital surgery. Though there is also some indication that those who take anti-androgen therapy and estrogens have a somewhat lower risk of prostate cancer. It's still an open area of research due to there not being much data.
  - maxbaines 4y ago

cyber_kinetist 4y ago

Investigating the possibility that environment factors such as plastics and pollution led to a rise in homosexuality/transgenderism doesn’t invalidate the living experiences of these people. Thinking that they need to be corrected because of this is where the bigoted lies. There isn’t really much to be squeamish about environmental factors interfering with sexuality (although I understand this often becomes fodder for right-wingers with an agenda). But I think a more fundamental issue lies under this squeamishness: the thought of dividing “gender” and “sex” (or more broadly “culture” and “nature”, or even the Cartesian notion of “mind” and “body”), whereas the two cannot be separated in reality. And I think this monism is probably something that trans people would actually understand by intuition far better than me, because changing your sex requires a lot of physical and hormonal changes inside your body that interferes with every other social aspect of their lives (and the social pressures in return create substantial changes in their bodies). Sex isn’t just socially constructed, they’re also biologically formed, it’s just that the dynamics surrounding them are just far more complex than what typical right-wingers think of (a clean separation between man and woman).

foldr 4y ago
It’s worth noting that a trans person is just someone whose gender identity doesn’t match the identity they were assigned at birth. Not all trans people have gone through (or plan to go through) any kind of medical ‘transitioning’ or ‘sex change’ procedure.
- cyber_kinetist 4y ago
  Yup I’m obviously not talking about the full range of trans experiences here, but most of the people I’ve heard anecdotes so far have done some kind of medical decision (usually hormonal therapy) because of gender dystopia. I was just saying that in general trans people would be the ones who would understand the physical/biological mechanics of gender in its full capacity.