Researchers at China’s prestigious Zhejiang University in Hangzhou are just about wrapping up a controversial study in which they’ve spent the past two years spraying oxytocin up the noses of homosexual men to see how it affects their sexual orientation.
For those unfamiliar, oxytocin (not to be confused with oxycontin) is a hormone that is produced in the brain. It’s involved in childbirth and breastfeeding, and is more broadly associated with things like trust, empathy, and sex. It’s sometimes called the “love hormone” or the “cuddle hormone” because levels of oxytocin shoot way up during hugs and orgasms…
Sup China’s Jiayun Feng notes that the study generated quite a bit of controversy upon its initial posting on the Chinese Clinical Trial Registry earlier this year after it was discovered that on the space in the form for “target disease,” someone had written “male homosexual…”
And we’re curious to see what they find out. Back in 2015, researchers at Universidad Veracruzana in Mexico found that they were able to induce a conditioned homosexual preference in male rats by giving them oxytocin and the psychoactive drug quinpirole.
Supposedly, according to one researcher, 30-40% have “changed,” presumably reverting to heterosexuality.
The book cites a study which showed that long-form DRD4 carriage was associated with homosexual behavior. oxytocin has been shown to also blunt dopamine activity:
Oxytocin, a neurohypophyseal neuropeptide, also partially antagonized cocaine-induced motor hyperactivity. Moreover, oxytocin antagonized the increased utilization of dopamine, elicited by cocaine in the nucleus accumbens. The data suggest that oxytocin may influence the behavioural effects of cocaine by affecting dopaminergic neurotransmission in some regions of the brain.
If gays are pursuing aggressive sexual stimuli to elicit dopamine as a means of self-medicating to make up for deficient dopamine receptor function, then the fact oxytocin attenuates dopamine activity might blunt that urge by blunting the dopamine reward for it. If so, it probably initially diminishes the need for sex among gays. If, however, the diminished dopamine produces increased amygdala-usage, it is possible it could cause some amygdala-remodeling.
It would be interesting if oxytocin makes dopamine less effective. Since dopamine is a good amygdala-relaxer, seeking it out can be a good way to avoid having to confront amygdala. When stress comes, you just take a hit, almost like heroin, your amygdala shuts off, and you ignore the stress. If oxytocin makes that not work, suddenly you have stress which can only be overcome by confronting it and overcoming it. Your amygdala will haunt you until you deal with it.
It is interesting if you think about it. Oxytocin is the love molecule. It is what binds you to those you love. Now suppose stress happens due to a threat, and you are on your own. You might ignore the threat. You have the typical single-male’s devil may care attitude.
Now suppose the threat happens while you have someone you love, like a child or wife, who is also under threat. You can’t ignore that threat so easily. It is kind of like the oxytocin interrupts your hedonism, to make you care about the amygdala-stimulant, and to prevent you from simply drowning your concerns in dopamine.
Now picture oxytocin in the context of reproductive strategy. You meet, fall in love, pair-bond, and begin releasing oxytocin. As a result, your sex-drive diminishes, and not only can you reallocate that energy and focus elsewhere, but you are also rendered less likely to cheat. Conversely, pair up with cheater after cheater, rendering you cynical and destroying your ability to bond, and you diminish oxytocin and now you are off to the rabbit races, mating-wise.
If that all is the case, and this is a treatment for homosexuality, it could also be a treatment for rabbitry. If homosexuality is just an accidental over-expression for the r-strategy, as this site alleges, then cure homosexuality and you will cure rabbity.
Interestingly it would also point to Europe as only needing some oxytocin to generate love and bonding for their fellow Europeans so that threats could not be ignored, and the migrant rapists and murderers would soon be getting sent on their way.
It will be interesting if cutting dopamine, or just making its secretion more pulsatile, will increase oxytocin, or if there are other stimuli we could present to elicit a greater secretion of oxytocin, and a greater drive to see amygdala-stimuli dealt with, rather than ignored.
Technically the Muslims have a cure for Homosexuality too … just sayin’. “p
Regarding the interplay of dopamine and other chemicals, Scott Alexander at SSC had a post about that recently:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/10/ssc-journal-club-serotonin-receptors/
Spray the gay away.
Curing homosexuals! When they hear this they will be out of their minds furious. Completely batshit insane. Their whole persona is tired up in being “the other”. To think they could be possibly be forced, not likely but it could happen, to be of all things…normal. ARRRRGRGGGGGHHH, I can see them screaming endlessly.
That the Chinese are doing this might could be worked in our favor, headlines,”Chinese force Homosexuals to be Chemically Cured”!
Imagine when it becomes parents choosing to apply something like oxytocin to their effete children to make them grow up to be straight, and suddenly there are no more gays.
Massive meltdown.
I know of women (single mothers of course) who are actively rubbing lavender oil on their toddler boys and feeding them soy milk. It’s infuriating.
The deaf community did when the Rubella vaccine became wide spread. Many people were born deaf from exposure to rubella in the womb of their then pregnant mothers. The amount of people born deaf has gone down dramatically now that we widely vaccinate. First to provide ‘herd’ immunity to those mothers and then as years have progressed and daughters have grown into mothers themselves.
I’m not sure that would work in all cases.
Ok, I’ve seen several explanations for why men are gay. We could look at mousetopia and see that women (female mice) become nasty and the male mice go away – or it could be male mice go away and female mice become nasty… but either way that suggests that resource gluts cause behavior disorders of this sort. (r/K theory)
Another idea I found suggested that like t.gondi can screw up mice (mice again!) so that they no longer fear cats, perhaps a pathogen is out there that is messing up the minds of the young men and causing rewiring permanently. (r/K theory related in that K’s ‘disgust’ of gays is because of a primal fear of the disordering. Like being afraid of a sick person and that the contagion would spread. – not saying this is the cause but again the explanation fits available info)
A third idea I tripped across from a TED talk suggested an evolutionary adaption of epigenetics. The talker mentioned how males who are have multiple older brothers (and no intervening sisters) are more likely to be gay. Also if the mother is under severe stress when pregnant he is more likely to be gay. Either she was stressed, presumably 40K ybp lacking food and thus the child is setup to not have his own children, or with so many boys, the effect is to reduce the male competition for mates. Again, it fit the data, as the argument went prenatal effects on the mother caused gay children. There probably can be teased out of this some r/K relations but I’d have to think on it some. As it seems to run counter to the resource restriction idea causing K.
I can see all 3 in action and they are not exclusive to each other as they are largely independent causes for the same effect. I mean is my sore throat (effect) the result of strep, cancer, or just yelling to loud at a rock concert? (3 different causes) And if we have 3 or more different throats(people), we could have all 3 causes.
The flaw in this plan is that oxytocin is released upon intimate contact with a partner, but that response drops off after five and seven years of regular sex. That’s the “seven year itch”, and it’s an evolved response to increase the chance of offspring survival (5-7 years is about the age a homo sapiens sapiens can avoid predators on its own; prior to that it needs the sire around to keep it alive and safe). Once the offspring can survive on their own, the sire moves on to another dam and produces more offspring.
40,000 years later that evolved response is still there, and most of human society pre-20th century is about finding incentives to keep the husband around after the oxytocin fades.
Well, looks like the chinese wanna intensivy the competition for their already outnumbered female population. They still think you can make boner pills from rhino horns but now they gona spray homos into heteros. Maybee they make this stuff for exports where they gona trade it with the russians for dried up siberian tiger dicks.
on the other hand, however:
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/08/17/german-scientists-drug-public-oxytocin-promote-acceptance-integration-migrants/