Wednesday, June 25, 2008

BOYS WILL BE BOYS...
OR, WELL... GIRLS...

Another little bit of politically incorrect truth hits the tarmac:

Years ago, Mae West opined that gay men were women trapped in men's bodies. One can only assume that she assumed something similar about lesbians, but as far as I know, it hasn't been reported. Mae West could get away with saying whatever she damn well pleased, but the rest of us have been under considerable pressure from our "community" not to say things like this.

On the other hand, ask any lesbian how to get something done efficiently, and she will tell you to get some lesbian [or even a straight man] to do the job: no fuss, no mess, no wringing of hands or drama. Now, why does that sound less like "sisterhood is powerful" and more like misogyny?

Meanwhile, the BBC reports that back in SWEDEN, the news is that:

Scans see 'gay brain differences'

The brains of gay men and women look like those found in heterosexual people of the opposite sex, research suggests.
The Swedish study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, compared the size of the brain's halves in 90 adults. Gay men and heterosexual women had halves of a similar size, while the right side was bigger in lesbian women and heterosexual men. A UK scientist said this was evidence sexual orientation was set in the womb.

Scientists have noticed for some time that homosexual people of both sexes have differences in certain cognitive abilities, suggesting there may be subtle differences in their brain structure. This is the first time, however, that scientists have used brain scanners to try to look for the source of those differences.

A group of 90 healthy gay and heterosexual adults, men and women, were scanned by the Karolinska Institute scientists to measure the volume of both sides, or hemispheres, of their brain.
When these results were collected, it was found that lesbians and heterosexual men shared a particular "asymmetry" in their hemisphere size, while heterosexual women and gay men had no difference between the size of the different halves of their brain. In other words, structurally, at least, the brains of gay men were more like heterosexual women, and gay women more like heterosexual men.

A further experiment found that in one particular area of the brain, the amygdala, there were other significant differences. In heterosexual men and gay women, there were more nerve "connections" in the right side of the amygdala, compared with the left. The reverse, with more neural connections in the left amygdala, was the case in homosexual men and heterosexual women. The Karolinska team said that these differences could not be mainly explained by "learned" effects, but needed another mechanism to set them, either before or after birth. '

Dr Qazi Rahman, a lecturer in cognitive biology at Queen Mary, University of London, said that he believed that these brain differences were laid down early in foetal development. "As far as I'm concerned there is no argument any more - if you are gay, you are born gay," he said...

"In other words, the brain network which determines what sexual orientation actually 'orients' towards is similar between gay men and straight women, and between gay women and straight men.
This makes sense given that gay men have a sexual preference which is like that of women in general, that is, preferring men, and vice versa for lesbian women."


In other late-breaking news, the New York Times reported recently that:

Lesbians react to the smell of certain bodily odors in ways similar to heterosexual men and different from heterosexual women, new research suggests. Building on their previous studies that showed significant differences in the ways heterosexual and homosexual men's brains process odors, the researchers may be narrowing the search for the elusive human pheromone...

In previous research, Dr. Ivanka Savic and her colleagues established that brain responses to these odors were reciprocal in heterosexual men and women. Heterosexual women responded to the male sweat odor in the hypothalamus rather than in the olfactory portions of the brain, and heterosexual men responded to female estrogen in the hypothalamus. Homosexual men processed the smells in the same way as heterosexual women.

Despite the similarities, lesbians do not respond to these two odors in exactly the same way as heterosexual men, so the analogy with gay men and heterosexual women is imperfect.

I'm as picky about smell as the next person, and probably more so.

So, where does this all leave us?
Drag queens of the world, unite...
C

2 comments:

  1. As far as "being born gay," it would seem my brother and I fit that quite well. And considering my father's side has many gay and lesbian members. Thanks for sharing!

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  2. My play "COURTING MAE WEST" - - which opens on 19 July 2008 in NYC - - discusses Mae's play "THE DRAG" and other true events in her life during the Prohibition Era. MaeWest.blogspot.com

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