To the general public, genetics means "My dad had blue eyes, so I have blue eyes, right?" To a geneticist, such statements are expected, with frustration. Getting straight to the point, the question arises on this forum "Is crossdressing a genetic thing?" The question is reasonable and clear. Unfortunately, the ultimate answer is likely to be anything but so simple.
Genetics is the study of heredity, or the resemblance between parents and offspring. Some things are obvious - two Chinese parents don't have children that look like Africans. Others may be more subtle. Tall parents may tend to have tall children, but you need to look at a lot of tall parents and their children to prove the general statement. And in fact, a tall man and woman may produce shorter than average children. So heredity is sometimes direct, and sometimes it's subtle. In both cases, the genetic mechanisms can often be traced down and explained in detail, but for the casual observer, the sometimes/kinda nature of heredity can be confusing to say the least.
A constant stream of articles in the media announce a new "cancer gene" or "obesity gene". So there's an idea out there that diseases are "genetic" in some way. If you actually delve into the research, things get murky. A "major" breast cancer gene may account for 5% of breast cancer cases. Hmmm.... should we be impressed? The researchers are certainly proud of themselves! If you ask them, they would say something like this:
1. There are many independent causes of breast cancer.
2. Some of the causes are due to your genetic background.
3. Some are due to environmental causes.
4. Some are due to interactions among genetic causes.
5. Some are due to interaction among genetic and environmental causes.
6. Some are neither genetic nor environmental, but due to developmental failures.
Pretty messy, no?That's the way genetics works. No geneticist expects a one-to-one relationship between DNA and outcomes. The classic examples that biology students learn are "get the red gene, get the red flower color", but those are exceptions that were discovered precisely because they are so simple. Human eye color is often described in such a simple manner - blue pigment is a recessive allele, brown is dominant - but in fact eye color is much more complicated that that. The rule holds, except when it doesn't.
A critical subject in the study of heredity is the notorious "nature-nurture" thing.This subject has been beaten to death so often that I won't get into it other than to give a very general example.
The question is: are you the way you are because you inherited the trait from your parents, or did the environment you grew up in shape you somehow? A classic example to look at is the disease phenylketonuria. People who suffer from this disease cannot break down the substance phenylalanine, which is common in many foods. The result is mental retardation and seizures. This inability to process phenylalanine is genetic - inherited from your parents. But....(big but
Both cancer and phenylketoruria are examples of genetically based diseases. They both also show the subtle ways that genetics can "cause" effects. When we think about crossdressing - I finally got around to it
Over the years, the nature/nurture debate has been an ugly one, with boneheads on each side making laughably foolish claims, many based on little more than social prejudice. It's always best to start sceptical, and look carefully at the evidence. An educated guess might be that crossdressing is a mult-causal phenomena - I think someone said that already above - and that the explanation that fits your situation may not fit mine. And none of the explanations will suggest or require a "cure". My brown eyes - and Moms' - don't need to be cured, but I do like having some idea why my brother's eyes were blue - like Dad's. Knowledge is never harmful - it's what you do with it that causes the problems.
Originally Posted by Salandra
[/SIZE]