I don't get it, isn't this the whole point of the study? The G in LGBTQ stands for "gay", did they exclude people who self-identify as gay from a study meant to find the genetic basis of being gay?
I don't get it, isn't this the whole point of the study? The G in LGBTQ stands for "gay", did they exclude people who self-identify as gay from a study meant to find the genetic basis of being gay?
If, hypothetically, being trans inverted the expression of the gene for being gay, you'd have a harder time finding the gene until you accounted for it. By eliminating the possibility, you make it easier to find the gene you're looking for.
If you can't find the gene in the smaller pool of subjects, you weren't going to find it in the larger one. But if you did find it, you can learn how it affects everyone in a different study.
That, although always possible, seems pretty far-fetched.
> If you can't find the gene in the smaller pool of subjects, you weren't going to find it in the larger one.
Except that here the larger one includes precisely the community of people that has the highest incidence of same-sex attraction. Imagine trying to determine the influence of genetics on skin colour after having removed from your study everyone who self-identifies as black.
So they likely excluded transsexual men (biological women) who are attracted to men and vice versa.
It also says "people whose biological sex and self-identified gender did not match" which seems to include biological males who identify as women. (But maybe you're right and the article is imprecise, and what they meant is just that they excluded F to M transsexuals).
Then we could also question whether there is or not a a higher probability for gays to also initiate a gender transition- my hunch is that there is, although of course being gay doesn't per se imply a desire to transition to the opposite sex.
While there's probably a slightly higher probability, the perils and feelings that most trans persons will describe are not something that will match with the experience of someone who is gay.
Imagine you suffered serious injury to most of your body, disfiguring you and making it hard or painful for you to recognize yourself in the mirror. That's effectively what puberty was to me. As a young child, I was aware that I was different, but I was mostly okay until my body started changing in the wrong way.
I've found that most (though certainly not all) trans persons I've talked to resonate with that description. Interestingly, among transwomen in America studies have shown that roughly 60% report experiencing attraction to women, and it's only around 20% that report exclusively feeling attracted to men.