h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

a) By gender, I mean if your a bloke or a bird, what an absurd question.

b) Physical as mentioned earlier as not being Genetic.

Do try and keep up!

Sorry Cupid, but oddly enough, it's not necessarily that absurd, you'd be surprised what some people mean by the word gender. In the 'Gender Studies' sense, some people interpret the word to mean the product of entirely social pressures.

Physical sex determination (in humans at least) is essentially genetic, through the production of and developmental response to sexual hormones.
In rare cases, external factors (often maternal hormones or antibodies, sometimes hormonal drugs) can influence development, by interfering with the hormone balance.

Though such chemical effects can influence development, it's very rare that they do so significantly, and I'm not sure that they ever lead to a complete reversal, compared to the expected genetic gender.

Well, someone said it could earlier! How far can things go wrong under those sort of circumstances? (physically i mean)

I'm wondering about moving this particular part of the discussion somewhere else.
Though I'm very happy to talk science, given the nature of the original topic, I do feel a little uncomfortable that people may think I'm dragging debate in the wrong direction (even if I didn't start the whole finger length thing.)

I do have a temptation to add a 'Whatever the biology, it's irrelevant to the initial human/moral question' disclaimer to each gene-related posting', which could get rather dull.

Should I keep it here, or start a discussion on my home page?

Move it, this takes months to load.

OK - I'll stick a link here when I've time to start the article.

(I'm otherwise occupied at the moment - my company got hit by the new ILOVEYOU .VBS email virus today, and I'm still running round trying to clean everything up. Fortunately, I caught it early + pulled our net connection, so we'd only mailed copies to *half* the major London financial institutions)

(*sympathy* today's message of the day said to delete it on sight)

At least it mainly munched .JPG files, and we nipped it in the bud very early, though admittedly as much by luck as judgement. If it hadn't been possible to disinfect without waiting for antivirus software to be written, we'd have been much worse off.

I'm sure there are some people really suffering out there.

Well, the FBI is after it, so we're doomed!

Well I did hear they were tracing some 16 year old in Engalnd.

Don't Be Childish DD.

Whoops wrong country apparently that should be New England.

Very Well covered up.

I thought so

Very Funny.

I haven't read all the postings here yet, but I would like to say that it is always the appropriate forum to discuss this very serious issue. I live in Montréal Canada and I`m gay.
I myself have been gaybashed a several times. Thank-you all for having the courage to discuss this subject in public.
It is only through public discussions like this one that hatred will be conquered. Thanks to the internet, we all now have an effective tool of communication and democracy.
Thanks to you all.

"Faggot" is a measurement of a certain amount of wood. In fact, a "faggot" of wood is the amount of wood needed to burn a homosexual or a witch at the stake. This is where the name comes from. I read this in a history book on homosexuality.

I've only been hit once, and that was because the guy was in the worst of moods when i asked him out. well, told him i fancied him, whatever.

Mind you, i don't ever remember seeing him in a good mood.

BAck on the finger thing I saw it reported again. Here's the text.

Berkeley researchers have uncovered a link between finger length and sexual orientation. Their study, published in this week's Nature, found that lesbians are more likely than straight women to have shorter index fingers than ring fingers -- a typically masculine trait. Likewise, men with older brothers are both more likely to be gay and to have relatively shorter index fingers. Why? The investigators hypothesized that the exposure to a higher level of male sex hormones in the womb may increase the incidence of both homosexuality and different finger lengths.

The study is just the latest blow thrown in the ongoing "nature vs. nurture" debate over the origins of homosexuality. Since the early 1990s, scientists like Simon LeVay have studied the anatomical differences between gay and straight people. Among other things, they have discovered that gay men's brains differ physically from those of straight men, and that lesbians' inner ears function somewhat like men's. But scientists continue to warn against concluding that sexuality is either 100 percent biological or 100 percent social.