User:Sxologist/Sexual abuse and sexual orientation

The hypothesis that sexual abuse causes sexual orientation, specifically homosexuality, has been a subject of speculation and research. There has been no conclusive evidence to suggest that sexual abuse causes male homosexuality. Instead, research has demonstrated that gay and bisexual men are more likey to be targeted for childhood sexual abuse to their gender nonconforming behaviour (femininity), which is visible from a young age and is a strong predictor of adult homosexuality. Childhood sexual abuse often includes a variety of different experiences typically before age 18, not simply early childhood. Gay males are more likely to engage in age discrepant relationships during teenage years due to hiding their sexual orientation and a lack of available partners, which may be qualified as sexual abuse, but is not evidence of a "cause" of their sexual orientation.

Cross-cultural evidence also speaks against the notion that a first sex partner influences a person’s ultimate sexual orientation. In some non-Western cultures, such as that of the Sambia of New Guinea, beginning between age 7 and 10, all boys are required to engage in sexual contacts with older male youths for several years in cultural rituals before they have any access to females, yet the vast majority of these boys become heterosexual men, and only a very small proportion of males have homosexual attractions, at a similar level as found in Western cultures.

Typically the belief for females is that sexual abuse would make them averse of males, causing them to seek comfort with women women but that it somehow makes males attracted to the same sex, which has been described as contradictory. There is evidence that female sexual orientation may be more responsive to external or social influences. There are numerous other factors which are known as cofounders, which can distort causation and correlation relationships which have no proven causation. nor has a plausible mechanism been provided for why evolution would have favoured a response to abuse for a male becoming homosexual.

A 2016 review authored by six experts in the fields of sexology, psychology, biology, neuroscience and endocrinology concludes that "it would also be less surprising to us (and to others) to discover that social environment affects female sexual orientation and related behavior" but "that possibility must be scientifically supported rather than assumed".

Finally, for abuse to "cause' male homosexuality, one would need to provide a plausible evolutionary explanation why humans would not simply favour resilience rather than 'flipping' a switch, nor has any direct evidence of this occurring been provided. The prenatal brain is sensitive to masculinization and feminisation effects under the influence of hormones, and no good evidence socialization has ever been shown to produce homosexual behavior in males, while it has been shown to potentially have a minor effect in females. Finally, the belief that sexual minorities are more likely to abuse children has not been supported. While single studies have alleged to claim it has an impact such as Roberts (2013), which claimed it may have an impact on male sexual orientation and not female orientation, this has been highly criticised by statisticians for making unjustified assumptions in the instrumentals regression and that it should, based on better known evidence, have some effect on women, not men.

The prenatal brain is particularly linked, for which there is more evidence of significant genetic influence in males than females, and evidence of maternal immune responses. Additionally, responses are typically the result of evolution and no plausible explanation as to why a male would 'turn' gay because of abuse has ever been provided, since evolution would select against such a possibility, and there is agreement that male sexual orientation is largely fixed and innate.

Male sexual orientation
The belief that homosexuality is caused by sexual abuse is common but is contrast to the idea that a woman who is abused at the hands of a man becomes "averse" to men, while men would somehow become attracted to men.

Childhood gender nonconformity is the strongest predictor of adult homosexuality and it has been suggested that homosexuality may arise from some forms of incomplete masculinisation of the fetal brain. Experiments which sought to sex-reassign infant and newborn boys into girls, who were then reared as raised as female, did not make them feminine in behavior, nor attracted to males. All available cases grew up to be strongly attracted to women, not men. This is indicative that a combination of gestational effects involving genes, hormones and the gestational environment is involved in the formation of sexual orientation, There is no evidence that sexual abuse causes male homosexuality.

Instead, research has demonstrated that gay and bisexual men are more likely to be targeted for childhood sexual abuse due to their gender nonconformity, which is visible from a young age and is the strongest predictor of adult homosexuality. Childhood sexual abuse also includes all experiences before age 18, and thus does not focus exclusively on ‘early’ childhood. Homosexual males are more likely to engage in age discrepant relationships during teenage years due to hiding their orientation, which may be qualified as abuse, but not "causal" of their same sex attraction. Cross-cultural research in New Guinea tribes such as the Sambia tribes which make younger males to perform oral sex on older males over several years for ritual reasons which does not "imprint" homosexual attraction in them, and the vast majority are heterosexual at similar levels observed in other countries studied. Research of both males and females who attend same-sex boarding schools where homosexual behaviour and abuse is more common found that students are no more likely to be gay than those who did not attend such schools. The prenatal brain is more sensitive to hormonal masculinisation and feminisation effects under hormones than the postnatal brain. Research in this area is considered poor standards, for example, a 2013 study by Andrea Roberts which purports to claim that childhood sexual abuse might effect male sexual orientation, but not women’s, has been strongly criticized and rejected for making unjustified assumptions in it's application of statistical instruments, which have been judged as unfit to prove causality. Additionally, it failed to find evidence that it can effect female sexual orientation, a belief which has at least support based on better known evidence. A large finding that most published results are false, due to P-fishing, which is required as reaching statistical significance and inferring that X caused Y, when it can be offset by multiple other confounding variables.

According to neuroscientist Simon LeVay, another research group found evidence "supporting the original idea" that an increased rate of childhood sexual abuse among gay men is entirely due to being targeted for their childhood gender-nonconformist behaviour. This research found that, gay, bisexual and straight men who were gender nonconforming in childhood were equally as likely to report experiencing childhood sexual abuse, while gay, bi and straight men who were typically masculine in childhood were significantly less likely to report experiencing sexual abuse. LeVay concludes that "the evidence does not support the notion that childhood abuse is a causal factor in the development of homosexuality", and is an especially dubious link since most homosexuals were not sexually abused, and one would also have to explain why even in countries with widespread sexaul abuse, they do not grow up to be homosexual.