Hormones in the womb

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What do you think of the idea that homo/bisexuality may be triggered by hormonal factors during gestation?

http://scitechdaily.com/homosexuality-m ... c-changes/

I read somewhere a while ago that there was a doctor thinking of treating pregnant women with the 'right' hormones to make sure they don't develop a medical condition (or perhaps develop homosexuality):

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/artic ... eroid.html

I'm guessing most of you will be very against this.

I dunno, the whole discovery kind of proves that I'm defective to me. I've long suspected that the way I turned out was due to too much testosterone in the womb. My mum had PCOS and too many androgens when she was younger. The fact that it has a simple cause rather than a complex one makes the whole thing feel like an accident that could've been prevented, rather than a 'good thing' and a legitimate part of my identity. There's crap all I can do about it now, and I don't intend to repress that side of myself, and it's not like it hurts anyone - but I still wish I wasn't.

I find the whole thing very depressing, but I can understand why people would want to do it. I'm thinking in 100 years time, they'll be less queer women around because of these discoveries. Maybe it'll be more common to be a lesbian/bi woman amongst the poor who won't be able to afford the treatment. Ugh.

Even if it was 100% proven fact that homo/bi/pan sexuality was due entirely to hormonal factors I don't think that that would make it a 'defect' in any way. Diversity is good, we're not all supposed to be the same: the binary of sex differentiation is a fiction, reality is not like that. As a species we would never have evolved to what we are without natural variations existing. We are all an 'accident' since it is random chance which copy of each of our parents' chromosomes we get. I don't think whether a fetuses sexuality could be altered by hormonal regulation has any bearing on whether something is bad, or a defect. The very term 'treatment' (and in a medical context 'preventable') is inherently loaded with the notion that what is being talked about is a 'bad' thing. One could also talk about the possibility of using hormonal interventions to 'treat' heterosexuality, which highlights the problem with using such language!

I think humanity will be worse off it prevents the birth of queer females but that's the way things will go in the future. The fact that is has such a simple cause makes it very easy to medicalise non-heterosexuality. If it was still something that was beyond humanity's ability to 'treat' we'd be in luck (and I'd feel better about myself) but it looks like it's very 'treatable'.

Puddingmouse, please be assured that that is NOT the future. The idea that homosexuality (and other related gender-incongruences) are caused by something so simple and that homosexuality could be turned on or off by hormone administration is laughable. It is also an extremely dangerous idea to mess with such a thing - hormone levels have a powerful effect on many aspects of the developing brain of a baby (NOT just sexuality and gender identity) and in any humane society it would be impossible to legally acquire a license to tamper with the brains of developing babies in such a way. We don't understand anywhere near enough about the way the human brain works (even after having the technology to study the brain in detail for so many decades) to tamper with such things and that isn't going to change in the forseeable future. By the time it does, I'm sure society will have moved on enough that homosexuality is considered normal variation. LGBT people are becoming more of a social norm with every new generation. It's unusual to come across a young person in the western world who doesn't consider homosexuality normal, unless they have been raised in an extreme religious environment. Those are the people who will be running the world in another twenty years or so.

Many people's sexuality or feelings about their gender change throughout the course of their lifetime. If these things were fixed before birth, either by hormones or genetics, that would be impossible. I think we can safely say that, like autism (which seems to have similar causes) there is a complex mix of genetic, hormonal and environmental factors going on. Of course, it's also a spectrum which ranges from homosexuality to bicurious to bisexuality/pansexuality to asexuality and every twist and turn in between, not something black and white. Therefore, the idea of finding an on/off switch for homosexuality is both naive and silly.

I'm also very much against that type of treatment.

I find this idea wantonly irresponsible, not because of the objective that it seeks to achieve (although that repulses me, too), but because it constitutes experimentation on human subjects.

There is absolutely no evidence that hormone levels in utero are causative--or even contributory--to homosexuality. To claim that administration of hormones to a pregnant woman can prevent homosexuality is a downright fraud. Until their is clinical evidence to demonstrate not only the causal link, but also the therapeutic dosages required to mitigate that causation, there is absolutely no basis on which to permit this type of professional misconduct.

That still leaves open a much larger, more vexing medical-ethical question. Is it ethical to inquire into the causes of homosexuality with a view to mitigating or eliminating those causes? Is this ethically different than screening for, say, Down's Syndrome, and if so, why?

As a rule of thumb, if it has anything to do with science and is in the Daily Mail, it is wrong and/or a gross misrepresentation. Of course, that probably goes for a lot of what's in the Daily Mail...

I think "defect" is a difficult word to use regarding the origin of homosexuality and transsexualism, due to offensive interpretations. I see "defects" as deviations from the norm, which homosexuality and transsexualism are. So to me, they are defects, and birth defects in particular.

However, they are common defects that occur naturally for unknown reasons. Neither the parents nor the child are at fault - nobody is at fault. Discrimination is unfair, much like discrimination against someone who has a birthmark.

Thinking of yourself as defective if you're gay or transgender is not helpful, though. This is because every human is defective in some way. By sheer probability, being born perfect is impossible.