members says something to the effect of, “There weren’t any of those transgender folks back in my day.” I’ve also heard statements like this in real life—that the United States is going downhill because many of us are reconsidering the societal construct of gender and sexual orientation.
Egyptologists discovered two men buried in a tomb (dated approximately 2400 BC) buried in the same position a husband and wife would be buried in. Some researchers thought this meant they were brothers, or twins, but both men were very high-ranking in the society (you had to have serious dough and stature to rate a tomb), and the hieroglyphics for their professions indicated that they were manicurists, probably some of the few people who could actually touch the Pharaoh. Other hieroglyphics indicate that their names, Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep, were joined together as one name, which was an indication of marriage.13
Homosexuality and bisexuality have been practiced in almost every world culture that has been researched by historians. In some times and places, homosexuality and bisexuality were fully accepted and commonplace. In other times and geographies, it was extremely prohibited and taboo.14 Perhaps most known and most referred to is the very licentious sex lives of the ancient Greeks and Romans, but there is also historical evidence in early societies that gay people existed within even our most nomadic and ancient tribes, and far from being ostracized, they were gratefully given orphan children of their relatives and the tribe to raise.
A Hindu medical text dated around 400 BC talks about homosexuality, transgender, and intersex people.15
In Native American cultures, there were “two-spirit” people. These people wore the clothing and did the work of both genders. Native people believe in the existence of male-females, and female-males. Some sort of two-spirit or cross-gender people have been documented in over 155 tribes in pre-European North American. Two-spirit people were often considered special in tribes because of their unique attributes, and were the tribe’s visionaries, healers, medicine people, and the nannies of orphans.16
A pope in the 15th century legalized sodomy in the summer months.17
A Virginia court in 1629 recorded the first gender ambiguity among American colonists. Thomas(ine) Hall was declared both a man and a woman so that colonists wouldn’t be confused. Hall was ordered by the governor to wear both men’s and women’s clothing (together) each day.18
This is by no means even close to an exhaustive list. I’m just giving you a few examples of LGBTQ history. It is, in all seriousness, the history of the world itself.
The Science Behind “Baby, I was Born this Way.”
This section will cover the science behind the LGB in LGBTQ. I will talk more about gender in the upcoming non-binary and transgender chapter.
Sometimes people are reluctant to talk about the science behind sexual orientation because they fear a dark future where gayness is “cured” by gene selection, or perhaps they think scientists are searching for a cure, or that a scientific explanation means that being gay is “not normal,” a message gay people already hear quite enough. I certainly understand all these concerns, because there have been too many times in human history where there have been ethnic or religious cleansings. Societies have always preferred a certain set of traits, and the desire is strong to select for those traits, whatever they may be. So this is not just a LGBTQ concern, it is a concern of any person who has any characteristic that doesn’t conform to whatever the impossible standards are of a given society. My take on the scientific research is that it is actually very reassuring to many LGBTQ people and their families. Our society is still so homophobic and unforgiving that it is a relief to just be able to know, “I was born this way. This is who I am.”
The hereditary (a set of characteristics passed through families) link of LGB has been established for decades now, but scientists knew it was not a strictly genetic link, because there are identical twins who have different sexual orientations. Scientists from the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis theorize that homosexuality seems to have an epigenetic, not a genetic link. LGB is linked to epi-marks—conduits of information that control the expression of certain genes. These epi-marks usually disappear between generations. In LGB people, the epi-marks don’t disappear. Instead, they pass from father-to-daughter or mother-to-son, William Rice, a biologist at the University of California at Santa Barbara and lead author of the study, said. 19
“There is compelling evidence that epi-marks contribute to both the similarity and dissimilarity of family members, and can therefore feasibly contribute to the observed familial inheritance of homosexuality and its low concordance between [identical] twins,” Rice said in a 2012 US World and News Report article.
Rice’s theory makes total sense; if homosexuality was just a genetic trait, scientists would expect the trait to become rarer, because homosexuals would probably not reproduce. But epi-marks helped the parents of the LGB children when they themselves were in the womb. Epi-marks protected the fathers of LGB children from underexposure to testosterone, and protected the mothers of LGB children from overexposure to testosterone while they were developing embryos and fetuses themselves. Rice also said that homosexual behavior is common in the animal kingdom and has been observed in black swans, penguins, sheep, and other animals.
But epi-marks aren’t the whole story. Sex hormones in prenatal life also play a role. Girls born with congenital adrenal hyperplasia, which results in increased levels of male sex hormones, often report same-gender attraction as teenagers and young adults.20 There are also cases of genetic males who, through accidents, or having been born without a penis, were subjected to sex change and raised as girls.21 As teenagers and young adults, these men are typically attracted to girls and women. The fact that you cannot make a straight genetic male sexually attracted to another male by raising him as a female makes any “choice” or social theory of sexual orientation seem pretty unlikely.
A 2015 article in the Guardian22 said that brain scans of gay and heterosexual people show their brains also appear to be organized in different ways. Gay men appear on average to have more female typical organization in brain pattern responses, and lesbian women are somewhat more male typical in their responses. Scans also show differences in cognition between gays and straights. Not bad or worse, just different. But these scans might also help explain why so many LGB people are talented business people, athletes, and original artists. Differences in cognition may mean differences in psychology, personality, and relationships, and difference can also mean creativity and original problem-solving, which are real assets in any society. I like to think that though things are hard for our children, they may have also received gifts along with their challenges.
Another important note from The Guardian article: It’s good to remember that sexual orientation is not a behavior, nor is it the sex acts someone may enjoy. People have had sex with people of the same or different genders without labeling themselves, and the sex acts might still feel good or be enjoyable. Sexual orientation is a “pattern of desire,” it’s who you fall in love with,
