8
62 votes
We know about Ray Blanchard discovering the ‘fraternal birth order effect’ for gay men, as well as writing about AGP.
Blanchard has hypothesised that this effect does not exist for women, either heterosexual or homosexual.
I was curious about whether this effect does in fact exist for lesbians - Blanchard seems to have blind spots when it comes to women, and we have no idea who was surveyed for his study as people lie about their sexual orientation (some ‘heterosexual’ women are in fact bisexual and some ‘lesbians’ are bisexual women using the term for the sake of convenience). So given the current state of things, I wanted to ask the most reliable sample of lesbians that we have - which is Ovarit - whether they have at least one older brother
I've heard/read that no such effect has been noticed when it comes to lesbians, at least as of now. Which could also mean that lesbians haven't been studied enough to notice the possibility of the effect, or of any other potential pattern. It could be that the biological aspect of it is either different or the same but it doesn't manifests in the same way.
That said, I have an older sister! No brothers.
I have an older brother, but I'm adopted so I don't know how that would impact things. I wasn't raised with sisters, but I have at least two older half sisters that I know of.
I have an older half brother but I only met him once. I wasn't raised with him around. My influences in life have been mostly women: my sisters, my aunts, my cousins, my mother, my grandmother, my great grandmother. All of these women were feminine and straight -- except my great grandmother, who was suspected to be bi by the family (had a girlfriend that she left her husband for).
My older brother is a non entity. Yet here I am, gay as a rainbow.
The birth order effect still affects men who had biological older brothers but weren't raised with them, which is why it's theorized that there's a biological change with each male pregnancy that increases their odds of being gay. So, if there were a birth order effect for women, it could also be attached to your mother's prior pregnancies, rather than who you grew up with.
There has been some interesting research into this. I recall the book, Adam's Curse. It talks about how the Y chromosome is weakening. One theory suggests that the Y chromosome and males only exist for genetic sharing/diversification.
I’ve heard that the gay/lesbian gene skips a generation theory. No source where I saw that though. It does apply to my family tree.
I suspect my mother could have been bi had she had more options so no generation skip in my case
Edit: Come to think of it, you say gay/lesbian and I’m thinking bi for my mother which is different. Maybe it did skip a generation after all..
I'm a firstborn lesbian with zero heterosexual siblings out of half a dozen.. but my mother, despite her chosen religious tradwife lifestyle, I'm pretty damn sure is not straight.
So when we all started cautiously coming out to each other as adults it was pretty hilarious, but we can only assume either it's genetics or some very powerful witch hit our homophobic parents hard with the "may you have a gay kid and have to deal with your homophobia or lose your kid" curse lmao.