Everybody's Gay: LGBTQA Support Thread

[Galaxy Man]

yeah i read something about like, women having only so much testosterone they can give to their children? so every new kid has less and less, and that can lead to gay maybe.

i read it forever ago and i have heard nothing else from or about it so i have no idea if it's true

[SaintCrazy]

There's a whole field called Epigenetics, which basically studies not only the base genetic material you inherit from your parents, but also how the expression of your genes can vary based on stuff like hormone levels in the womb, or other chemical stuff you might be exposed to throughout life. Some genes get turned on/off early on in life and might change the whole way you grow and end up living as an adult. There might even be changes that are made to your base DNA that stick with you permanently. So the mechanisms involved might have some genetic basis, some epigenetics, and some environmental/social/psychological basis.

So tl;dr shit's complicated yo.

[Alkarii]

Well, a woman can get testosterone from a man through his saliva by deep facebattling (aka French facebattling), so maybe facebattle her a lot during pregnancy?

On a different note, I occasionally wonder if it would solve a lot of social issues if we altered the human genome so that everyone is a fully functional hermaphrodite. Like the male versus female, or homo/hetero, or transgender issue.

Myself, I don't see any real problem with someone being gay or transgender, or whatever. It seems that the only real reason someone would have an aversion to it is that those individuals aren't procreating, but think of how long it took for the global population to reach one billion. Then compare that to how quickly we went from six billion to seven billion. It doesn't take a scientist to figure out that we won't go extinct if some of us aren't breeding.

Besides, most people who are anything other than straight or are transgender (is there a difference between transgender and transsexual?) aren't going to force someone to engage in sexual activity with them.

[[Citation Needed]]

I read once that one factor of homosexuality might be having a lot of older siblings, but I have no idea if thats true or not.

There are a lot of different theories, and some are more outdated than others. I'm not 100% sure on this theory, but I'm bi with three older straight siblings and one younger straight sibling. shrug

[Turbro]

Honestly I don't trust those "scientists have scanned the brains of cis/straight people and found them to be consistently different" because duh? It's like when people say that queer and trans people are more likely to be depressed/commit suicide. That should be obvious, but it's not a direct cause of the situation, it's the strain of being "different" in a society built around straight cis people, in many cases also being harassed because of it.
I imagine it's much the same with the brain. It's not the brain causing you to be queer/trans, it's the external factors being queer/trans brings you that changes your brain.

Also I don't exactly enjoy the implication that sexuality is "controlled" by a specific section of the brain because then we're going to get a bunch of people trying to push for research into how to change that up for you.

[Wiffle]

Actually the organization of a trans person's brain has been shown to most closely resemble the organization of the brains of the cisgendered members of the gender they identify with.

[Turbro]

Until it successfully manages to predict what gender a person is, without said person knowing they're trans, I'm still going to be skeptical.

[Riku]

Anecdotal evidence and all that, but having talked to a neurosurgeon, I have it on what I'd assume is good authority that there are no physiological differences in the brain of a biological male as opposed to a female. There will be variation between individuals to be sure, but you can't look at a brain and determine "yup, this was a dude". So gender/sex does not affect the structure of the brain. However, there may be some natural hormonal differences relating to gender and orientation. But not being a biology major myself, I am not sure what those would be.

[Wiffle]

My consultation is tomorrow and I am almost nervous. I hope I can get booked soonish for my top surgery. Obviously it'll be a long while until my bottom surgery because I still need to heal for 6 months after this one (which will probably not be for months) and then get a hysterectomy after healing for a minimum of 6 months after that first. Still, PROGRESS!

[[Citation Needed]]

My consultation is tomorrow and I am almost nervous. I hope I can get booked soonish for my top surgery. Obviously it'll be a long while until my bottom surgery because I still need to heal for 6 months after this one (which will probably not be for months) and then get a hysterectomy after healing for a minimum of 6 months after that first. Still, PROGRESS!

Glad to hear things are moving along well for you!

Why does it take six months to recover, though? I will admit I know NOTHING about this sort of operation (or any operation at all, as I am not a doctor of any sort), but it doesn't seem like it'd take six months to heal.

[Galaxy Man]

Operations just take forever to recover from, at least completely. You're usually back in working order sooner than you've actually healed completely, is the thing.

My dental surgery was the middle of last year, I still have nerve damage from it, and it won't be fully healed for a while still, but it only took two months for me to get my ability to eat back. This is more serious and life changing than a few teeth being removed, so I'm honestly surprised it'll only be six months until a full recovery.

[Wiffle]

Yeah often times with top surgery you take almost a year to get a full range of sensation back. Of course erogenous sensation sometimes doesn't come back at all but I don't particularly care if the case for me since I don't do any sexual activities with people anymore.

The healing process is long but if I take care of everything right the scars will be minimal in a year or two. More time makes them less and less apparent.


Editing for clarification: The 6 months is minimum because it's enough time to heal without compromising your health during your next surgery, but it's considered ideal to wait at least closer to a year.

[[Citation Needed]]

Okay so I sort of have a crush on this guy I work with OCCASIONALLY.

The gas station I work for is part of a company that spans like 20 states. Every store is corporate owned, but they are all divided up into regions which are divided into districts. He's a co-manager trainee for our district which means he basically gets fucked as far as work schedules are concerned because he fills in at every store in the district when needed. I rarely work with him, is what I'm saying.

But when we do work together~ <3

There are some downsides to this uncontrollable animalistic lusting crush, namely that he is straight to a fault. First of all he is in a committed relationship and recently became a father, so that also removes every chance of anything happening ever. But he also doesn't know I "bat for both teams", so to speak. He's kind of... sort of... really, really, offensively homophobic. -.- Which isn't uncommon for the area and people who grew up/live here, admittedly. For example: a guy who is '''obviously''' not hetero in some way comes in (could be anything from a slight lisp to having unnatural hair colors (only on guys - he likes crazy colored hair on girls). I adore unnatural hair colors, for some reason. It's a fetish or something idk) and when they buy their stuff and leaves he says something like "ugh, that guy was such a fucking queer". Now re-read that but have your mental voice sound 10x more disgusted and condescending. Hurts a little bit every time but woops not publicly out and don't plan on ever being publicly out while I still live in the bible belt.

He's like 5'4 and tries so hard to be super manly but fails crazy hard and it's so adorable, though.

[Wiffle]

Maybe he's secretly in the closet. You know how those guys are.

[Vax]

Okay so I sort of have a crush on this guy I work with OCCASIONALLY.

The gas station I work for is part of a company that spans like 20 states. Every store is corporate owned, but they are all divided up into regions which are divided into districts. He's a co-manager trainee for our district which means he basically gets fucked as far as work schedules are concerned because he fills in at every store in the district when needed. I rarely work with him, is what I'm saying.

But when we do work together~ <3

There are some downsides to this uncontrollable animalistic lusting crush, namely that he is straight to a fault. First of all he is in a committed relationship and recently became a father, so that also removes every chance of anything happening ever. But he also doesn't know I "bat for both teams", so to speak. He's kind of... sort of... really, really, offensively homophobic. -.- Which isn't uncommon for the area and people who grew up/live here, admittedly. For example: a guy who is '''obviously''' not hetero in some way comes in (could be anything from a slight lisp to having unnatural hair colors (only on guys - he likes crazy colored hair on girls). I adore unnatural hair colors, for some reason. It's a fetish or something idk) and when they buy their stuff and leaves he says something like "ugh, that guy was such a fucking queer". Now re-read that but have your mental voice sound 10x more disgusted and condescending. Hurts a little bit every time but woops not publicly out and don't plan on ever being publicly out while I still live in the bible belt.

He's like 5'4 and tries so hard to be super manly but fails crazy hard and it's so adorable, though.

I can not imagine having a crush on someone who is that much of a douche bag. Like all I'd need for them to do is open their mouth and whatever physical attractiveness they might have had would p much vanish.

Also any time a co-worker says something like that while I'm working with them I honestly call them out on it. Not in like an overly serious way, but I still make my distaste known. I live in upstate NY so it doesn't really happen very often, but when it does I honestly can't NOT address it.