Seems too simplistic to me
A new study by British psychiatrists published in the journal Neuropsychology, reports that gay men’s brains work more like women’s, and lesbian’s brains work more like men’s.
The researchers conducted a series of neurocognitive tests of spatial skill – the ability to mentally reposition shapes and objects and judge the orientation of lines. They found that gay men performed less well than heterosexual men, but matched the ability of women. But gay men performed better than heterosexuals and as well as women at remembering the locations of objects in an array.
In several language tests, traditionally a female strong point, gay men did as well as heterosexual women. Lesbians, on the other hand, performed the tests as poorly as “straight” men. (more...)
The researchers speculated that the differences were caused by differing levels of exposure to testosterone before birth, which had the effect of “hard-wiring” the brain.
I look forward to reading this study once the April issue of Neuropsychology
is posted online. But, I’m skeptical of these results. When talking about human behavior, any theory that makes broad general statements concerning whole groups of people and does it in such a simplistic manner is suspect. And gender studies have traditionally been tricky. There’s more to us as humans than the hormones that we were ‘bathed’ in before birth, what kind of
toys we played with as children, or which parent we felt closest to. Any effect that is statistically significant for the gay population has its counterpoint in large numbers of heterosexuals who had the same experience with differing results. Sexuality is a very complex issue and I don’t believe that the answer will be a simplistic one. To me it makes as much sense to try and figure out why some people are sexually aroused by breasts, some by legs, some asses,
some by hands, etc, or to try and figure out why we fall in love with the person that we do. When it comes to love and sexuality, I think the poets know more about human behavior than the psychiatrists.
9:42:55 PM 
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