Egregoros

@anokasion @feld @georgia @scathach

sexual attraction comes about because of the genetics and environment (ie early hormonal exposure) of each individual, e.g. there's a statistically significant difference in the ratio of finger lengths and facial ratios between men attracted solely to women and men attracted to other men even before these sexual feelings develop

couple of studies i found on differences in body structure based on male sexuality:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12872893/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24132775/

@anokasion @feld @georgia @scathach Imo its mainly to do with natal exposure to andogrens and estrogen affecting the parts of the brain that will later cause sexual attraction — even though we don't understand how that works properly, we can very easily see the other effects of excess exposure to estrogen in the womb like slimmer facial ratios and longer index fingers compared to ring fingers.

Anecdotally, a while ago all my male friends posted pictures of their left hands in our gc while discussing this and only my bisexual friend and I (gay) had longer index fingers

@MossGrowsOnNormanRuins @feld @anokasion @georgia @scathach if thats what you took from it im afraid theres no real point in arguing here . also youre being rlly mean to me and i rlly dont respond well to me given my 1.345% excess in forearm hair growth rate , indicative of general incapacity to argue with someone . if you read the study by dr. Racist McNazis on the matter where he conveniently omits the statistical analysis only pointing numbers and saying “oogabooga number big = correlation” youd know how serious this is .

@fiore @feld @anokasion @georgia @scathach there's a big gap between "100% of the population with a 2D:4D ratio over 1.000 are gay" and the claim that there's 0 predictive power. The reality is that gay men have an x% higher mean 2D:4D ratio and are much more homogeneous worldwide whereas there's far more regional difference between straight men.

It's the same way we can say "not everyone with white skin has European genetic heritage and not everyone with European genetic heritage has white skin, but they're far more likely to than the average person worldwide"

@georgia @MossGrowsOnNormanRuins @feld @scathach yeah i agree that "gender is a feeling" is reductive and counterproductive but i also think that the neuroscience of gender is kinda dubious , lowkey eugenics-coded , and reinforces the psychiatric-state-industrial complex so i do think that we ought to use something somewhat better . same thing for the "gay brain" . using these things is not conducive to a liberatory biopolitics . my foundational text for this is "American Eugenics" by Nancy Ordover , i highly highly recommend it

@MossGrowsOnNormanRuins @feld @georgia @scathach part of the issue is that i just categorically disagree with the idea that there is objectively a gay brain and a straight brain lol , i have not seen any science that is sufficiently convincing to prove this and to my knowledge we have such a poor understanding of what's even going on in there to say that gay and straight cognition and behavior emerge from some preexisting condition of the brain or whether some other shit is going on . maybe im wrong about this and there's some new science about it since then that somehow proves this but it's all very dubious to me

@ikeWren @feld @georgia @scathach this is just a woke rework of the homophobic argument about how gay people choose to be gay and could stop if they wanted to, I don't have the choice to not be attracted to men and straight men don't have the choice to be attracted to men.

Literally just a day or two ago Clarence Thomas made the argument that transness is a choice that anyone can make or not make and not an immutable characteristic as justification for stripping trans people of their further rights.

@chjara @feld @ikeWren @georgia @scathach im trying to write drafts for my film thread rn oomf, so not going to continue this for long.

But no, we shouldn't claim things are a certain way for political convenience (regardless of what others' in this thread want to do), scientific studies should go forward, test out what's true and statistically significant or not for the sake of establishing whats most likely true and not and ideology should adapt to reality rather than try to hammer reality into its preferred shape. My point's just that people in this thread aren't just scientifically reactionary but also directly aiding political reactionaries.