What Causes Homosexuality According to Science?

In this video we discuss the biology of homosexuality, psychology behind it, neuroscience of homosexuality, and more. We even dive into "the gay brain" and more and what causes homosexuality on a biological level that we know of and other opinions on it. And we even discuss myths regarding homosexuality.

Timeline:
0:00 Introduction
0:20 Prenatal Testosterone Explained
0:51 How To Measure Prenatal Testosterone
3:08 How Does Prenatal Testosterone Effect Sexuality?
6:06 Neurological Differences In Homosexuals
6:53 We Dont Actually Know
7:46 Is Homosexuality Environmentally Effected?
12:04 Conversion Therapy Explained

Sources:

Music Used: Kool Kats - Kevin Macleod

[MostRightWingManInBritain]

We're getting demonetised with this one 🔥🔥🔥

[KarmicID]

People : why are people LGBT?
Scientists : idk
LGBT : idk
Straights : idk
The old mage in every RPG game that seem to know everything : idk

[yukiyuko]

I'm a gay guy who studies health sciences and medchem. To be honest, I do think there are both biological AND environmental factors. Speaking from a personnal experience (not very scientific), I had a good childhood, good parents even though my dad had PTSD that led him to be kind of controlling but nothing traumtazing. i've never been assaulted nor groom.
For as long as I can tell, I've always found men attractive and not women, even at the young age of 3 when I said that I wanted to be a princess and have a prince, which hum, made my dad kinda angry at first.
Regarding my personality, I've always been a kind, emotional, and caring person, , which are usually "feminine" traits, and people often told me I acted like a girl, but that didn't make me any less than a man. From there, we found I was a "gifted" child from a pedopsychiatrist, who said I had a huge emotional and social intelligence.
Nowadays, I study medchem and health sciences in order to help people get better, especially in psychiatry which I find fascinating. I still don't like women as romantic or sexual partner, only men, even though I emotionnaly bond more easily with them.
I don't think I want to change my sexuality, nor do I want to change my gender, these are things I'm born with that don't harm anyone, nor causes troubles to others. However, I do have therapy, as I suffer from BPD, which, even though it is something somewhat natural, can harm myself, and others, which is not a good thing.
Nonetheless, I think that if gay people wanna change their sexuality, they should be able to ! From the moment it doesn't harm anyone, and make people happier, more productive, more useful, I think people are free to do as they feel.
On the topic of lust and multiple partners. I had a relationship that lasted for more than a year, though we broke up due to work related issues, and the fact that our lives were way too different to be able to live happily. Though, I don't want to sleep around, I'd rather much prefer to meet the right guy, with whom I'll be able to stay my whole life with, get married, have a family, a home, and love forever. That might come as a surprise to some, but we aren't all lustful beasts.
In the end, isn't being happy the only thing we should care about and stop judging others for what they are if it doesn't hurt or harm us in any way ?

PS : sorry if there are mistakes, english isn't my first language

TL:DR : I'm gay, okay with myself, okay with people wanting to change it.

[Akultic]

That’s so crazy people are so dumb as to hate someone because we live in a society that just focuses on the surface, “the gay voice” instead of people being on a spectrum of many different chemical make ups. Then the fact we don’t know what makes a masc or fem gay shows how long we’ve neglected this necessary research

[mihailo]

as a med student, i come to think that there arent any causes to homosexuality, it is simply how humans are. it is their physiology to have different sexual preferences. it is the same as if we asked what is a cause of experiencing emotions for example, we have understanding of them, but we can not yet cover the entirity of it. we can go into neuroscience of it, but i doubt we will ever come up with answer that explains it to average person more plainly than 'it is just the way human nature is'.

[crossroads]

The bird study doesn't say the birds "became gay". They simply struggled to attract females because didn't learn how to sing a normal mating call from their fathers. In addition, most of them still would mount a female if they had access to one. So this seems incorrect, dude.

[sandrew]

I’m a 60 year old gay man from the UK. My personal opinion, for what it’s worth, is that “gay” is not a single thing. Up until fairly recently anyone who found that they were attracted to same sex partners (sexually, or sometimes romantically) described themselves as “gay”. These days people have a variety of terms they can use to describe themselves. Setting that aside, even for those people who embrace the term “gay” for themselves there seems to be subdivisions. Gay people are not all the same, and it seems likely to me that this is the result of multiple factors affecting the outcome. For me personally, although I have always been sexually attracted to men, from my earliest sexual awakening (say around 11 years old) if I was asked to describe what it was like to be gay, I would say that sexual attraction is only a small part of it. The thing that I’m most aware of is that I am drawn to men romantically. My friendships with women have never included any sexual or romantic frisson, but I fall in love with men. Now, what “falling in love” actually means I’m still not sure about, all I know is that it’s incredibly strong. This is just me though. I’ve encountered loads of self-proclaimed “gay” men for whom their experiences are different. Trying to identify a single cause for homosexuality, I think, is probably pointless. As someone else pointed out on here, we don’t try to pin down the causes of heterosexuality, or try to change straight men to gay - except in fantasies lol😂. This suggests that we still consider same-sex attraction as an aberration instead of a natural variation. We no longer make a big fuss about lefthandedness, we don’t try to “correct” hair colour.

[rabies]

i have to admit im honestly surprised at how interesting sitting down and hearing someone talk about how some people are gay was

[cffobju]

I think the difference between allowing a homosexual to accept their orientation versus a transgender to accept their biological gender is probably because a homosexual who wants to change their sexuality is from an environment/culture that doesn't support that behavior (generally). So I guess the idea of telling homosexuals to accept their sexuality is supposed to dismantle the culture around it. While a transgender is a result of body dysphoria which is distinct from general body dysmorphia. Which makes the treatment for it very different.

I don't know, maybe it is a matter of perspective. This topic is just too complex lol.

[phloopy]

My theory is this: low testosterone exposure in the womb causes “feminine homosexuality”, while high exposure causes “masculine homosexuality”. A standard, middle-level exposure leads to being heterosexual. In between the low and the mid exposure, and in between the mid and high exposure causes bisexuality.

[nebulabunny]

This is a very slippery slope to go down. It's easy to go from "your identity can be changed" to "your identity should be changed", especially for kids, who are still malleable. Queer people are a very marginalized group, everywhere, even in developed countries, no one is free from discrimination, this information can easily be used against them. I think we should focus on normalizing and making it into something that everyone else has to respect and not question rather than giving people tools to discriminate and say "but you can be changed! just stop being gay". Most people I know would never stop being themselves, and those who I know who have gone through conversion were simply repressing their real selves, for one reason or another.

Were those studies religious? or funded by religious organizations? If so, I think the information might have been biased to show a positive result/ the participants might have been influenced in some way to show positive results, perhaps even some sort of religious thinking.

Edit: The Catholic University Of America. yeah. No. Nuh uh. Sorry that's not a credible source.

[BoxEnjoyer]

The kinsey scale has 3 being equally attracted to men and women. A reduction to a 4.1 might be a reduction, but it is still majorly homosexual. The major affiliation is The Catholic University of America who fired someone for his views on gay people and birth control. This is where the lead researcher works. Typically with religious conversion therapy, being gay is associated with being morally bad. On top of that it was affiliated to The Ruth Institute, which is a severe conflict of interest. Like I can't explain just how bad that is.
It seems like you just read the abstract of a few studies without using critical thinking skills. I looked into the study and 76% of participants were christian. A really fun thing from that study is that heterosexual "doin it" (Youtube won't let me comment the real thing) didn't increase in a statistically significant way. Dude, that study is terrible.

[landonkam]

I think youve misunderstood a lot of things youve talked about, and also took information from biased and flawed sources, mainly the conversion 'study' at the end. Im not trying to come off as combative, I'm trying to be constructive with my criticism, though I may come off as inflammatory and combative due to being autistic.

First off, I wanna touch on the whole amniotic testosterone thing. I think its a bunch of bogus. From what I understand, you're thinking that the way the brain develops pathways is linked to the amount of testosterone, which influences if someone is gay or not. You pointed out the similarities between gay men and women's neural pathways. I have a couple issues with this, first it doesnt explain gay women; second, correct me if im wrong but those are adult brains. Neurological pathways change throughout your life. Third, this implies that other brain conditions, such as ASD, ADHD, and BPD are similarly effected by testosterone. I dont think this is the case, because, at least for autism, while men are more likely to have a diagnosis, there is also a common consensus that women go underreported and underdiagnosed for it. It also doesnt account for bisexuals or asexuals. So i dont think the testosterone theory holds much, if any water.

Secondly, conversion camps. You say you personally know people who changed their sexuality, but without any sort of testimony or knowledge of how close you are, this could be them lying to defend themselves. The study you show toward the end of the video is by Paul Sullins, and looking at his past publications, he seems to be pushing a narrative of homophobia and intolerance. Denying a link between conversion camps and suicide, claiming a link between depression and having same sex parents. Not only that, but the size and methodology of this study are problems as well. For one, only 150 people were studied, to Sullins' credit, in the methods section he states this being a detriment, as well as stating that women were unable to be studied as they only had 8 in the survey. The methodology doesnt account for romantic inclinations, it just categorizes that as sexual, despite the two being different. I believe due to the insanely small data set alone it should be thrown out because it cannot accurately show anything. A sample size of 150 people is small for anything, could be a useful preliminary study, for others to base their hypotheses off of, but cannot hold its own. This is entirely ignoring the fact that sexuality isnt an entirely solid thing anyway, it can change as you discover more about yourself; or the fact that this study was run in association with the Catholic University of America. This is another reason to doubt this study, the Catholic church is known to be homophobic and pro conversion camps, this data is not reliable.

Third, trying to help trans people accept their own bodies instead of "mutilating" them. I find this statement to be disingenuous and out of distain rather than compassion. This could be me misinterpreting your tone though, as I am autistic and this wouldnt be the first time I've mistaken passion for agression. But I find the argument itself to be based in ingnorance, as in, it ignores the fact that trans people dont get up one day and decide to get a sex change operation (which is a clinical operation, not a form of mutilation). Transitioning is a long and often emotionally painful process, as is being gay. It is not a decision, it is how people are. Trans individuals try to accept themselves the way they are but they simply cant do it, because they feel a mismatch between their body and mind. Im no expert on trans people, nor am I an expert on gays or autists (though i can speak from personal experience on the latter two).

I hope I explained myself clearly, why I have issues with this video, and that we all leave with a better understanding of life and all that.

[wannabe_scholar]

I remember seeing a study saying that the amount of older brothers a guy has increases his chances of being gay, have you read anything on that?

[Dontlikeyellow]

Now the real double standard is, why isn’t anyone looking into turning gay?

[Bryan_BeBe]

i think the difference between homosexuals and transsexuals comes down to how the individual wants to live their life. i would consider myself a pretty feminine/not masculine gay man but i’ve never once thought of being a woman or thought of having different body parts.
i do think social environment may play a bigger role than biology but idk if i had a totally different experience growing up. at the end of the day, you can CHOOSE to suppress any homosexual tendencies you have or embrace it, just don’t fake being gay or straight ♡ (you’re loved no matter what you are)

[hassansci]

As a med student:
Bad research
Bad conclusion
While not entirely biological essentialism it is to a large degree

[tobiosp]

6:02 i was playing with lego, genocide in lego starwars, building lego minecraft and building portal 2 based scenery, never played dolls oe feminie toys. then with 15 i realized i was gay. Also i dont speak like most gays and my voice is averagely deep for an guy. interesting video tho.

[robsherrard]

In your opinion gay men tend to be more effeminate? That's just your perception because effeminate men in general are easy to spot. There are plenty of straight men that are effeminate too. You would just presume these are also gay.

[ajbroome]

Another point to consider. Identical twins with different sexualities. Wouldn’t they both have the same exposure to testosterone in the womb?