I was most taken by chapter five on psychological testing of sexuality preference. I was always curious how it is possible to take this intangible and abstract feeling of sexual attraction and turn it into concrete data. It is natural for a psychologist to attempt to turn abstract data into concrete data where they can diagnose and treat symptoms of a disorder. Now, on their own, the diagnostics tests can gleam valuable information about a person’s inner psychology. However their terrible power lies in the interpretation and application of the results. People love to correlate things together. Gay? They will say something like “ oh he always wore pink. It’s no wonder why he is gay” despite the fact that pink color may have no real link to being gay. People feel comfortable if they see the link between the effect and the cause. .Kinsey wrote of this trait, “ Only the human mind invents categories and tries to force facts into separate pigeon-holes” (p.123, Finding Out) In other words, he just paved a way for humans to use to segregate themselves with the tests. So did other psychologists like Kauth, Storms, Benjamin, and Klein continue to create more tests for humans to differentiate their sexuality. Maybe that’s why people are desperate to have something tangible to test for such as a “gay” gene. In 1993, Dean Hamer, an American geneticist claimed that he found the particular gene in gay men. However there was no defining proof for this claim ( Hamer, 2000). Yet it is downright dangerous to use such test on people based on biological reasons. I flinch to imagine the impossible scenarios of moms aborting their children because of their “gay” gene or forcing a solider to take the test to find out his preference. I can easily imagine this because it already happened to deaf people. A certain group of people actually does carry a gene for deafness. My good friend is from a family of nine siblings, all of them deaf because both of her parents had the “deaf” gene. Luckily their parents embraced the deaf culture and did not mind their children being deaf. It could be easily be a different situation for her parents. They could have tested for this gene first and decided to not have any children. Then my good friend won’t exist. There is an good example of a nature-nature theory gone bad.
Reading this article, it kind threw me off in a very unexpected way. I actually saw the article a little hard to follow at times. At first it was smooth and understanding, but then I found myself getting all confused with which case they were talking or referring to. My overall impressions of the material in the article were positive. I liked how they talked about the different kind of personalities that there are out there. And I also liked how it touched on the how the case of that psychologist trying to deny his point of weakness for allowing an emotional influence to have developed for his patient. The topic actually sparked in interest, because I would like to know how or what psychologists do in times when Eros interferes. Furthermore, Our sexual desire is not just the desire to have sex,
Overall, the eugenics movement was meant to discourage Deaf people from socializing, intermarrying, and reproducing with each other. But these goals are very much unachievable. When Deaf children are growing up in a residential school, they have no choice but to socialize with other Deaf children. Since they all pretty much use the same language, socialization is not a problem for them. Because these children grow up with others who use their language, they tend to remain close to their friends and often intermarry. Many people, including A. G. Bell, were opposed to Deaf marrying other Deaf. Bell said that sign language "causes the intermarriage of deaf-mutes and the propagation of their physical defect" (Lane, 1996:382). Bell also claimed that society was condoning the spread of "a defective race of human beings" by allowing Deaf people to socialize with each other (Jankowski, 1997:53). Since others too saw deafness as a physical defect, they agreed with Bell and started adopting oral schools for the Deaf where signed language is prohibited. If oral schools ended up being the only schools for Deaf, then their signed languages would have diminished along with a part of their heritage and culture. A long time ago, m...
The. Freud, S., 1962. Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. New York: Basic Books, Inc. Post-traumatic Stress Disorder: Malady or Myth?
The finding mean usually relies in the shadow of the fathers' absence. This could be changed if a father properly trains his son to be candid on his instilled values becoming a man. Therefore, it is not an uplifting question of why homosexuals occurs in the post-modern era. Genes may be related to the development of sexual orientation, recent studies shows that an increased choice of homosexuality in men whose mothers previously carried to many male children.
This represents a change in avenue of attack, not a broad ideological shift from historic eugenic arguments. Similarly, the search for the "gay gene," while a relatively new scientific concept, is highly reminiscent of previous understandings of queer sexuality, which located deviance in physical and/or hormonal "abnormalities." The idea that queer people's queerness is loc...
By analyzing my very own personal investment in the idea that heterosexuality is normal, I have realized that I am currently and that I used to deliberately present myself in a heterosexual persona to the world at large. Personally, when I was young, I used to be uncomfortable with women who broke the social norms of heteronormativity in public. I remember feeling anxious, and believing that one day soon society would perceive me as a divergent towards the norms because I hang out with women who didn’t present a heterosexual persona. I feared unspeakable things that would happen to me once I lost my privileges of being perceived as the ‘good’ heterosexual female. The lost of my social standing in society scared me; I was already a minority,
The Human Genome Project is the largest scientific endeavor undertaken since the Manhattan Project, and, as with the Manhattan Project, the completion of the Human Genome Project has brought to surface many moral and ethical issues concerning the use of the knowledge gained from the project. Although genetic tests for certain diseases have been available for 15 years (Ridley, 1999), the completion of the Human Genome Project will certainly lead to an exponential increase in the number of genetic tests available. Therefore, before genetic testing becomes a routine part of a visit to a doctor's office, the two main questions at the heart of the controversy surrounding genetic testing must be addressed: When should genetic testing be used? And who should have access to the results of genetic tests? As I intend to show, genetic tests should only be used for treatable diseases, and individuals should have the freedom to decide who has access to their test results.
In today’s world, people are learning a great deal in the rapidly growing and developing fields of science and technology. Almost each day, an individual can see or hear about new discoveries and advances in these fields of study. One science that is rapidly progressing is genetic testing; a valuable science that promotes prevention efforts for genetically susceptible people and provides new strategies for disease management. Unnaturally, and morally wrong, genetic testing is a controversial science that manipulates human ethics. Although genetic testing has enormous advantages, the uncertainties of genetic testing will depreciate our quality of life, and thereby result in psychological burden, discrimination, and abortion.
The first possible cause of homosexuality is genetic factors. Homosexuality is a trait from birth (Buchanan, 2000). Studies found that identical twins share many common traits. A study found that identical twins normally share homosexual behavior if one of them is homosexual. This proved that genes are likely to cause homosexuality. In addition, according to (Santinover, 2002), homosexuality is a heritable behavior. Based on heritability studies, almost any human trait is heritable including the homosexual behavior. He stated that behavioral genes are found in specific chromosome. Thus, the behavior is obviously heritable. Moreover, Italian University of Padova (2004) believes that homosexual trait is passed from mother to male offspring by natural ...
Not meaning necessarily your dad or mom but maybe their cousin or your aunt or uncle, literally anyone that is in your family that is above your generation. In the article “How our genes could make us gay or straight”, Jenny Graves claims: “We can detect genetic variants that produce differences between people by tracking traits in families that display differences. Patterns of inheritance reveal variants of genes (called “alleles”) that affect normal differences, such as hair color, or disease states, such as sickle cell anemia. Quantitative traits, such as height, are affected by many different genes, as well as environmental factors” (Graves, Jenny, The Washington Post). Graves is stating that there are many things in the human affected by genes, and that being gay or straight is affected by genes. Genes could tell you a lot about the human, from height, to dangerous diseases. Not saying that being gay is a disease because it is obviously not. Homosexualty is
Perhaps I am overthinking the process of parenting, but what I can say is this- if I ever find myself considering parenthood, I want to be prepared for potential health problems. And perhaps deafness is not always a problem, but no matter what I would want my child to be free to make their own choices about what they do with their body, wellbeing, and potential
From the moment people born, there are certain basic functions that will be with them throughout their lives. The abilities to eat, breathe, sleep, or to have the capacity to learn are a natural occurrence for most people. There are, however, traits that are specific to each individual. They are traits that set them apart from everyone else. The traits such as eye color, ones dominate hand, or susceptibility to a specific disease are a few traits that aren’t easily changed. However, there are some that are controversially questioned as to whether or not one is born with the trait or if it is a learned behavior. One of the biggest of these controversies is the question of whether sexual orientation is a choice or something that is beyond the individual’s influence. Although the evidence is commonly disregarded because of personal beliefs or opinions, sexual orientation is not a choice.
Genetic testing has become very popular as technology has improved, and has opened many doors in the scientific community. Genetic testing first started in 1866 by a scientist known as, Gregor Mendel, when he published his work on pea plants. The rest was history after his eyes opening experiments on pea plants. However, like any other scientific discovery, it bought conflicts which caused major controversies and a large population disagreed with the concept of playing with the genetic codes of human beings. Playing God was the main argument that people argument that people had against genetics. genetic testing became one of the major conflicts conflicts to talk about, due to the fact that parents could now have the option of deciding if they
Friedman, R. C., Downy, J.I. (1995) Biology and the Oedipus complex. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 64, 234-264
In order to discuss the biology of gender identity and sexual orientation, it is necessary to first examine the differences between multiple definitions that are often mistakenly interchanged: sex, gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Sexual orientation is defined by LeVay (2011) as “the trait that predisposes us to experience sexual attraction to people of the same sex as ourselves, to persons of the other sex, or to both sexes” (p. 1). The typical categories of sexual orientation are homosexual, heterosexual and bisexual. Vrangalova and Savin-Williams (2012) found that most people identify as heterosexual, but there are also groups of people that identify as mostly heterosexual and mostly gay within the three traditional categories (p. 89). This is to say that there are not three concrete groups, but sexual orientation is a continuum and one can even fluctuate on it over time. LeVay (2011) also defines gender as “the ...