Sunday, September 03, 2006

Thanks 60 Minutes

Hello boys and girls.
Did we all watch 60 Minutes like good little lambs tonight?
Uncle Liam wasn't on tonight, he was too busy getting the stains out of his pants after his warzone debut. (Yeah, Liam... some gigs are tougher than demonising a man with depression as "unfit for office").
Did we all see the report on "why our kids are gay?".
Just so you know, this research about the number of older brothers determining the sexuality of younger brothers is not only 10 YEARS OLD, it has been discredited. The research and the means of gathering the core sample group were flawed. The advertisements only asked for gay people with older brothers in the first place. So there was no control group and the results were fundamentally swayed.
It also touched on crazy theories like handedness and homosexuality which, aside from sounding like a parody Jane Austen novel title, contributed little to the sum total of human knowledge.
The childhood gender non-conformity thing also contributed little to the debate. Every parent and pre-school teacher will be looking at children with new eyes tomorrow morning... separating the homosexuals from the heterosexuals and buying pop-guns for the homos and barbies for the dykes.
The report asked more questions than it answered. Mind you, at least the reporter asked them. But it was slightly irresponsible journalism that did nothing, really, to change the world.
Now if Liam gets shot on assignment, THAT could make the world a better place.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I had, frankly, expected nothing more from 60 Minutes. A few people have mentioned it since last night but seeing as I'm not right handed and have no older brothers I don't quite know how my queerness came about...

Glad to see it discredited, Dan.

Bolton said...

I was so angry I was nearly spitting at the television.

According to the older brother theory, your mother must have carried a male foetus (or at least conceived an embryo) at some point before you were born. The gist is the womb remembers the foreign (male) antibodies/hormones/whatever and then tries to delete them/turn them female.

I'm an eldest/only son too, though my mother did miscarry a boy before me. So it works in my case... but doesn't explain why my sister is a raging dyke. In fact, it doesn't explain lesbianism at all. Surely these are created by the same process? Whether it be genetic, hormonal or environmental.

ThomP said...

It's all a bit dumb. I have had sex with PLENTY of me, and it never made me gay... But seriously, the only box worth putting anybody in is full of spikes, and it's where we put the people who put other people in boxes.

ThomP said...

there needs to be an 'n' on the end of 'me' to make that joke work... Bugger.