confusedkid
5th Jun 2005, 06:52 PM
Ok, so I went out to dinner with my parents, brother and grandmother tonight because they wanted to see me (I have my own apartment) and so we went to Friday's. Anyway, during the meal we're eating and my dad seemingly-randomly speaks up and says, "So. I was reading this journal article today about these genetically-altered fruit flies. It appears that when they took a gene from a male fruit fly and placed it in a female egg, the resulting fly was male. But when they took the gene from a female and placed it in a male egg, the resulting fruit fly was not female, but a male with feminine behaviors. They were looking at it as some type of genetic explanation of homosexuality." And then there was silence. And I can't be sure, but it felt like my mom, brother, and grandmother stopped eating and looked up at me. :icon_eek: I don't know what they were expecting, but I just stayed silent and then after what seemed in my mind to be an eternity my mom moved off the subject and everybody else continued eating. It was just a really awkward moment, I'm not sure what facial expression I had either... My dad's a doctor, he reads tons of journal articles, but he rarely discusses them with us, mostly because they're usually technical and we just don't care unless somebody found a cure for cancer or something. So I'm thinking to myself now, "Well shit. What caused him to bring that up? Do they suspect or know?"
It could be just a random thing he happened to bring up but the fact that people looked up at me after he said it makes me think that they knew he was going to mention something or that they had been talking about me or something like that. When I was home for a 1 week in between moving out of the dorms and moving into my apartment, I had a stack of papers sitting on my desk. Included in those papers was some gay-related stuff that I had printed from the net. Now, I can't be sure because I had stuff scattered throughout my room, but I went out early one night and came back the next morning, it looked like my papers had been moved, especially because the papers that were gay-related were turned the other direction (i.e., they were upsidedown when the rest were correct)... now, I hadn't looked at the papers in a while, so it's quite possible they were just like that because I don't usually remember in what "direction" papers go in when they're sitting in a pile. Haha.
What do you people think? Am I just being paranoid? I probably am, but the whole thing seems like something my folks would do (see why I moved out?) They'd never confront me directly but instead say and do things in order to gauge my reaction or to provoke me into saying something... it's what they do.
-CK
PS: I think the article is bullshit. Haha. And had it not been such an awkward moment, I would've said so. One, they're comparing FRUIT FLIES to people and expect to seriously find some valid correlation between these insects and human beings, especially on a subject as complex as sexual orientation???? Morons. Second, so the flies act femme, so what? Does that mean that there may be a genetic predetermination to a guy being a transvestite or transgender????? (There probably is a genetic component somewhere, but I doubt that we can learn that from a fruit fly.) Also, what does acting femme have to do with being gay? I'm gay but I don't act like a woman (at least I don't think I do... hahaha), so wtf is this article trying to say? Absolutely nothing at all.
Having said that, I think there's a genetic composition to sexuality, but there's a lot more that goes into who we are than just our DNA. And the idea of a "gay gene" is just ridiculous... I was talking to my genetics professor about this idea (I love my professors) and she was saying that a single gene controlling some appearance or behavior is just not possible. Nearly all of our traits are the results of gene-gene interactions and many genes, even if present, are never activated. Sometimes activation is time-related or provoked by environmental stimuli, but many genes are activated by seemingly nothing at all. So really, in conclusion, she said, there's not one way to determine something as seemingly-simple as eye color, let alone human sexuality. So there. :tongue: hahaha
It could be just a random thing he happened to bring up but the fact that people looked up at me after he said it makes me think that they knew he was going to mention something or that they had been talking about me or something like that. When I was home for a 1 week in between moving out of the dorms and moving into my apartment, I had a stack of papers sitting on my desk. Included in those papers was some gay-related stuff that I had printed from the net. Now, I can't be sure because I had stuff scattered throughout my room, but I went out early one night and came back the next morning, it looked like my papers had been moved, especially because the papers that were gay-related were turned the other direction (i.e., they were upsidedown when the rest were correct)... now, I hadn't looked at the papers in a while, so it's quite possible they were just like that because I don't usually remember in what "direction" papers go in when they're sitting in a pile. Haha.
What do you people think? Am I just being paranoid? I probably am, but the whole thing seems like something my folks would do (see why I moved out?) They'd never confront me directly but instead say and do things in order to gauge my reaction or to provoke me into saying something... it's what they do.
-CK
PS: I think the article is bullshit. Haha. And had it not been such an awkward moment, I would've said so. One, they're comparing FRUIT FLIES to people and expect to seriously find some valid correlation between these insects and human beings, especially on a subject as complex as sexual orientation???? Morons. Second, so the flies act femme, so what? Does that mean that there may be a genetic predetermination to a guy being a transvestite or transgender????? (There probably is a genetic component somewhere, but I doubt that we can learn that from a fruit fly.) Also, what does acting femme have to do with being gay? I'm gay but I don't act like a woman (at least I don't think I do... hahaha), so wtf is this article trying to say? Absolutely nothing at all.
Having said that, I think there's a genetic composition to sexuality, but there's a lot more that goes into who we are than just our DNA. And the idea of a "gay gene" is just ridiculous... I was talking to my genetics professor about this idea (I love my professors) and she was saying that a single gene controlling some appearance or behavior is just not possible. Nearly all of our traits are the results of gene-gene interactions and many genes, even if present, are never activated. Sometimes activation is time-related or provoked by environmental stimuli, but many genes are activated by seemingly nothing at all. So really, in conclusion, she said, there's not one way to determine something as seemingly-simple as eye color, let alone human sexuality. So there. :tongue: hahaha