Gender identity, sexual orientation and adverse sexual exper

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Please, show respect to each other's experiences, even if they totally differ from yours.
Also, let's clarify some terms so we understand each other when we use them:

Gender:

https://www.who.int/health-topics/gender#tab=tab_1

Gender identity: https://emedicine.medscape.com/article/917990-overview

Gender stereotype: https://eige.europa.eu/thesaurus/terms/1222

In particular, cultural concept of gender is not the same as gender stereotypes, just like nationality is something completely different from stereotypes about nations.

While the above interact with each other (and with biological sex) within a given culture, they are separate concepts and confusing them can lead to unintentional offending - something we all should avoid.

Well, with such a kind request like that how could I say no?

First, I would like to disclose that although I am a biologist holding a PhD, my research area is unrelated to autism, sexual orientation, or humans at all really. I am an LGBT+ female on the spectrum myself. That being said, my thoughts and feelings on the matter are mine alone and none of what I express is meant to represent the feelings and opinions of any group to which I belong at large.

On a whole, I found the statistical approach of this study appropriate. Yes it is largely an observational a.k.a. "non-manipulative" study, but I don't find this to be a problem. My reasons for this:

1. This study investigates the broad topic of how different aspects of human identity and experiences co-occur. We actually need a really good sense of these relationships before we can design good next-step studies that get more into the details of mechanistic or causational factors in why we see these patterns. Basically, we need to know what the patterns are before we can ask why they are. It's two separate lines of questioning, and I am OK with both not being in the same paper (it would be a massive monograph if it were).

2. Yes, "correlation is not causation", but the authors conclude association, not causation. The ultimate take-home messages here are really just "look, these groups of intersectional people seem really highly at risk for abuse. We should be more aware of that."

3. The authors are also very forthcoming about the limitations of this study (see the section entitled "Limitations"). In addition to selling you on what they found, they did their due diligence to disclose what is poorly sampled, and what it can't tell you.

4. Sometimes in science, as is the case here, it is either impossible or unethical to design a manipulative (aka "experimental" a.k.a "high constraint") study. What I mean is that we can't experimentally give someone an axis of their personal identity like autism or gender identity or sexual orientation -and even if we could it would be unethical to do so. Although in general we can add or simulate life experiences experimentally, is highly unethical to cause someone sexual trauma as part of an experiment. As such, often the most ethical approach for these kinds of topics is actually a non-manipulative study such as this one.

My only real statistical criticisms are that they don't use graphs (why?) and their p-values were reported inconsistently. Half of the time they reported p-values as above or below a 95% or 99.9% confidence intervals, and the other half of the paper they provide the actual p-value itself. I would have preferred it if they just did the latter throughout. I'm not sure why they did that. It could just be differences in standard practice between our fields though.

I also think that the language used in this study to discuss the intersection of neurodiversity, sexual orientation, gender identity, and adverse sexual experiences was fairly respectful and appropriate, although the provided definition of a "regretted sexual experience" seemed a bit closed-minded toward polyamory:



The discussion does get a little sticky, but I think that is because the history of the field is kind of rough, and they have to tie their data into it here. This included touching upon several popular mechanistic explanations (which were not the focus of this study), and asking if the data here allow us to chop them down. Correlation does not mean causation, but lack of correlation does suggest lack of causation. This study really wasn't about "extreme male theory". In fact, that phrase appears to have never occurred anywhere in the manuscript. They do discuss testosterone-based mechanistic hypotheses in the end of the paper, but this appears to mostly justify the idea that there is more work yet to be done in the field and that we don't yet have a full understanding (which is true). Really though, that is just one of several bodies of theory they review in the end though. I am not crazy about several of these, but again, this is just reviewing the field at large and was not representative of ideas developed by these researchers.

Agreed. The method used is quite appropriate.



Whenever somebody talks about testosterone it is pretty clear that they refer to the extreme male theory, and this doesn't need to be explicit. The big question is WHY they decide to discuss this, and why they don't make clear that their findings are inconsistent with it.

As for correlations and neurodiversity, I showed that correlation between traits can be predicted by how relevant a trait is for neurodiversity. This means that if a trait has high relevance for neurodiversity or ASD, then it is expected to be correlated to every other neurodiverse trait even if there is absolutely no causative link. Thus, correlation alone often have nothing to do with causation for traits that are relevant for neurodiversity.

Ref:
Leif Ekblad (2013). Autism, Personality, and Human Diversity: Defining Neurodiversity in an Iterative Process Using Aspie Quiz SAGE Open July-September 2013 3: 2158244013497722

When it comes to sample size, I've checked many ND traits, in almost 100 different "runs" of Aspie Quiz, and too me it is pretty clear that a sample size of 1,000 - 2,000 is required to draw conclusions about how traits relate to each other, but results get better with 5,000 - 10,000. With only 200-300 answers, it's possible to draw a conclusion that it relates to neurodiversity / ASD if it has sufficient relevance, but it's not possible to judge how it relates to other traits.

Like fern, I had no problems with the study. It is certainly a pretty usual study in the field and they are clear about the significance and limits.

As far as the correlation of testosterone to ASD in the discussion, it was clear as well. One study they did reference was from Simon Baron-Cohen. I have found those that are passionately against the Extreme Male Brain theory have not actually read the research conducted by Baron-Cohen. People tend to project a great deal of things into the theory. Given that there is an under-diagnosis problem in women with ASD, a study by Baron-Cohen with over half a million participants, not only showed a divergence between the control male and female populations, this divergence was seen between the autistic male and female populations. It would seem that the theory could be one piece of the puzzle explaining why making diagnosis in women trickier.

There seem to be a very deterministic and prescriptive view of science at WP. Yes, some science can be pretty cut and dry. But other fields are more complex--I am a trained social scientist (I am also trained in applied science research). ASD is defined by behavioral criteria, even though it is a cognitive difference. The fact no better methodology can be made to diagnose ASD kind of indicates the complexity. It seems people want a single explanation to ASD. That is a nice idea, but given the amount of research already conducted, ASD is probably going to stay a complex condition that is not going to be defined in a nice, neat little package. But then science is not about giving simple answers, but actual answers, simple or not.

The gender and sex question in research and ASD is a complex issue. Naturally, teasing out the factors between nature and nurture are really complex. How significant gender or sex differences are will always be debated. Obviously, it will never be a deterministic factor. But then to say it is completely irrelevant is not very scientific. Steroids will not make anyone a world class athlete. Steroids just change the background state slightly (just like atmospheric carbon changes the background state of our planet slightly). When you are dealing with outliers, high performing athletes, atmospheric chemistry, or neurodivergent psychology, a small change in the background state can have significant outcomes. I am pretty sure we can agree steroids change outcomes. Yet, not testosterone? Personally, I will keep reading the ASD research and see where it leads. So far I have not seen a definitive study. Nor am I an advocate for any particular position, except for maybe the scientific method.

The clinical ASD definition is not scientific, and no research should be conducted using it. I defined neurodiversity with factor analysis in the paper I referred to above. That's a definition that is scientific.

How was selection bias accounted for? The paper does state the sample was not random. Is it simply taking a known population and able to solve for that population? It seems the model is simply optimized for a specific population. Has it been tested with a random population? I did note it uses criteria from Baron-Cohen, the AQ.

Also, how accurate is it in making a diagnosis for ASD? Can it detect ASD in a person from Japan, for example? How does it explain ASD? Does it give a cause?

If the clinical definition is not scientific, what is it?

Thing is quite a bit of the autistic people i known tend to have impressively long relationships, like 8-14 years or longer.

Then there is the thing we dislike to stay in some relationships where we aren't understood or taken care of in the certain way we need.

I'm going to assume you mean my paper "Autism, Personality, and Human Diversity: Defining Neurodiversity in an Iterative Process Using Aspie Quiz".

As for sample selection, it's practically impossible to test neurodiversity (the broader autism phenotype) with a random population since so many known & unknown issues relate to neurodiversity. I'd say no autism study has done this. For instance, using psychology students as a control group biases it towards NTs. Using diagnosed ASD (or ADHD, Dyslexia, Tourette, Schizophrenia and a set of other DSM labels) biases the sample towards NDs. Using any subculture (like the LGBT) might also bias a sample towards NTs or NDs. However, sample bias was an issue in the research since sample composition didn't affect factors until it became extreme. The population used was 100s of different forums / blogs / other sites that posted a link, and then discussed their scores. The sites were varied, and some had many NDs while other had few. Actually, this is an ongoing project since 2004, and with a dataset of over two million participants, the results are robust and still the same.

It doesn't use criteria from the AQ test. It was tested along with the AQ test to validate correlation. The items selected for Aspie Quiz was based on forum discussions and personal preferences, and relevance (correlation to total score) decided which items to keep.



The aim to predict ASD diagnoses was dropped when the factor structure was discovered and scoring used this to weight items based on factor loadings. Still, it has good predictive properties.



It was built based on the hypothesis that ASD is the legacy of Neanderthal interbreeding, a hypothesis that still has good validity.



The clinical definition builds on problems in the interaction between autism and NT culture, and so cannot seriously be used to research causes of ASD. All the positive traits simply are missing in the clinical definition, and if you don't know those, you cannot find the cause.

My question is:

Why would a cis het guy be interested in this stuff?

There is a long held stereotype that people aren't really lesbians but are raped into it.

Ironically the opposite of the theory that gays are 'converted' into it via rape as a boy.

Penis isn't powerful enough to do either imo. People are born as they are.

People are born with their sex, not their gender identity or sexual orientation. The latter are formed in interaction with NT culture.

I believe people are born with their sexual orientation.

Gender identity is learned.

No matter the influence of “NT culture,”
a person who is born gay will become gay. The person cannot help it. A heterosexual-oriented society will not change this.

If this was a homosexual-oriented society, I would be SOL. I can’t help my heterosexuality. I was born with it. Thinking of kissing a man disgusts me.

Sure, but it is one thing how you feel about it and another what you tell people. If LGBT is illegal, few people will identify openly as LGBT. If you dislike hook-up culture, you might identify openly with something that makes it less likely you will get dirty suggestions related to hook-up culture.

<<
“It is very likely that while there may be a modest number of ‘gateway’ genes, there will be a number of multi-gene interactions combined with developmental factors, including maternal hormone levels at crucial times during gestation, for example, that affect the development of a person’s sexuality and gender identity.

“Height is a complex trait and we can measure it unambiguously, and it’s one dimensional.

“The last time I looked, a big GWAS study on height found that some 200 genes were involved, and surprisingly nutrition, childhood illness and the like play a relatively small role. So there is no height gene, even though height is very strongly genetically determined, with some environmental modulation.

“No one argues that being tall is a choice"
>>

https://cosmosmagazine.com/science-of-sexuality/


'Sexuality cannot be pinned down by biology, psychology or life experiences[...] sexuality is polygenic — meaning hundreds or even thousands of genes make tiny contributions to the trait. That pattern is similar to other heritable (but complex) characteristics like height or a proclivity toward trying new things. (Things like red/green colorblindness, freckles and dimples can be traced back to single genes). But polygenic traits can be strongly influenced by the environment, meaning there’s no clear winner in this “nature versus nurture” debate.'

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/there-is-no-gay-gene-there-is-no-straight-gene-sexuality-is-just-complex-study-confirms


Something fun from the 1st link

<<The female fish found the males more attractive after the male had a same-sex interaction in the same way they did with opposite sex interaction.

“Hence, direct benefits for males of exhibiting homosexual behaviour may help explain its occurrence and persistence in species in which females rely on mate choice copying as one component of mate quality assessment,”>>

I call bs on this one. I have yet to meet anyone who said they didn't know they were gay/bi/trans/whatever until they interacted with their culture. Everyone I have ever met who was gay/bi/trans/whatever has known since they were very young. What we learned from interaction within our culture are things like if we needed to hide it for self protection or not. We find these things out the hard way sometimes. Personally, I've never been attacked, threatened, worse, for being who and what I am. Not everyone is so lucky.

We learn from our culture as we grow exactly how different we are from your average cis/het person. Does that make sense? We are still the same, we just understand ourselves in context of society as we grow and interact with others. Society doesn't shape us into these things, it gives us words to express ourselves though. We are not formed through interactions, we grow to understand how different we are from the majority through interactions in society. I feel redundant. Am I making sense here?



Of course what you feel about these things and what you tell people are different. If I tell you I'm straight, it doesn't magically make me straight. In my case all it would make me is a liar.

And what does hook up culture have to do with any of this? I'm confused.

You methodology seems very similar to p-hacking. And when you are using personal preference in the selection of your questions, that is very putting more bias into the model. I am not convinced.



What has it predicted? How did you determine the accuracy of the prediction?



So, you are only testing one hypothesis? And I think that is the weakness of your position--I feel like you have decided there is only one correct way to look at ASD and only one way to approach it.



That is not my question. You said the DSM criteria was not scientific. All you are saying it you don't like it.

You are a passionate advocate. Science is not about advocacy.