This explains *so* much...

[kengr]

UC Berkeley psychologist finds evidence that male hormones in the womb affect sexual orientation.

What gets me is the bit about the likelihood of a son being gay goes up the more sons a mother has.

Why? Well consider that the more rabid sorts of fundie also tend to want big families and lots of sons. So that means the odds of their having gay kids are higher than the folks who go for smaller families.

Comments

Simple statistics

[morgan-gw.livejournal.com]

Of course the odds of having a gay son increase the more sons there are. One could also say that the odds of any one male in a random group of males being gay goes up the more men are in the group, too. The larger the (reasonably random) group, the more likely there will be at least one guy in a given sub-group, be it gay, or color blind, or left-handed, or...

Or, the analogy that the odds of rolling a one on a die (d6) are 1/6, but the odds of getting at least one "one" increases with the number of rolls. Roll enough dice, or gather enough random men into a group, and the odds of getting the event in question approach 1:1.

Re: Simple statistics

[(Anonymous)]

I suspect you are thinking of odds for a total group. I think the article is referring to the odds of an individual member. So, first born has odds x, second is x+e, third is x+2e, etc...

Re: Simple statistics

[morgan-gw.livejournal.com]

Just reading your comment, I got the impression they were talking about the odds of one of the boys being gay. Reading the article, I see they meant more what you just described.

Still, looking at my hand, I have more of a male pattern for my fingers, and I definitely prefer male partners. Then again, I seem to be an exception to a great many rules :-).

Re: Simple statistics

[kengr]

correlation <> causation. :-)