Nature or nurture?

Just over a week ago, I went to a lecture titled "Nature, nurture or neither?" which was given by a geneticist. In this context, 'nature' means that a particular characteristic is determined only by someone’s genes, and 'nurture' means that a particular characteristic is determined only by someone’s environment.

Although the subject of gay genes didn't come up, similar questions about other characteristics did. For example, the question of whether particular genes relate to crime was mentioned. The lecturer was quite clear that it existed, namely the genes on the Y-chromosome, because being a criminal is very strongly correlated with being male! However, the lecturer was also equally clear about something else.

"It's almost never nurture or nature that gives rise to a particular characteristic," he said, "because it's pretty much always both!"

I think that makes a lot of sense. There's more gay action in all male environments, such as in prisons, or on board ships before women were allowed to be sailors. The environment definitely seems to affect the way that guys behave in those examples.

But another thing I've noticed is that a lot of gay men that I know were brought up in a very female environments, or come from families where the mother has a much stronger character than the father. My parents got divorced when I was around 10 years old, and after that, me and my sister were brought up by my mother. So I lived in a house with two females and no other males. Boyfriend T, ex-boyfriend P and ex-boyfriend S can also all tell stories which about how their childhood was dominated by females. It may be that we'd have ended up being straight if we'd been brought up in male environments, but because of something in our genes, being brought up in a female environment conditioned us to be gay. I don't know whether anyone can test this theory, but there's one thing that I'm sure about. Whatever the reason, by the time I was old enough to be interested in boys, I definitely didn't have any choice in the matter!