Another Gay Brain Study

Timothy Kincaid

May 23rd, 2007

It has long been known that men and women, collectively, do not perform mental tasks identically. And previous research has suggested that gay men and women perform mental tasks in a manner closer to that of the opposite sex.

An article in the April 2007 Archives of Sexual Behavior discusses a study by University of Warwick researchers of 109,612 men and 88,509 women which confirmed these observations. Although I’ve not yet seen the article, a summary was presented at Physorg.com.

In general, over the range of tasks measured, where a gender performed better in a task heterosexuals of that gender tended to perform better than non-heterosexuals. When a particular gender was poorer at a task homosexual and bisexual people tended to perform better than heterosexual members of that gender.

The results seem to be a tiered effect in which orientation correlated with gender expectations for mental tasks.

For instance in mental rotation (a task where men usually perform better) they found that the table of best performance to worst was:

— Heterosexual men
— Bisexual men
— Homosexual men
— Homosexual women
— Bisexual women
— Heterosexual women

The summary did not report as to the extent of the variation so I don’t know how much significance can be placed on the information. But to me this is further indication that orientation is “hard wired” and pre-natal.

Others may argue the order of causation (ie. that homosexual behaviors or thinking resulted in change in brain functioning). But in either case, this is another study on the large and growing pile that compellingly argues that orientation is not simply selected behavior and that it impacts more in one’s life than the object of one’s attraction.

The study also reported an item of bad news for gay men and good news for gay women.

However age was found to discriminate on gender grounds but not sexual orientation. The study found that men’s mental abilities declined faster than women’s and that sexual orientation made no difference to the rate of that decline either for men or women.

Sorry guys, both straight and gay.

risa bear

May 24th, 2007

So, when do we get a study of transpeople along these lines?

quo

June 1st, 2007

Gay activists keep saying that science has shown that people are born gay. The really amazing thing about this is that they go on welcoming new scientific findings that supposedly show this – if science already has shown this, what, precisely, is the point of conducting more studies? Keeping researchers employed? That’s leaving aside the obvious objection that studies like the one mentioned above don’t remotely prove that sexual orientation is inborn.

Purple Magic | Sex on the Brain

February 21st, 2017

[…] studies have included bisexuals and have apparently shown gradiated transitions between the sexes and sexualities, which don’t corrolate exactly with the results shown above, with gay men closer to straight […]

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