Buckle your seatbelts, everyone.
Published by Kyso Kisaen May 8th, 2006 in Punkass!, HealthBecause this could be a fun ride-if it gets into the hands of the right people:
Lesbians’ brains reacted somewhat, though not completely, like those of heterosexual men, a team of Swedish researchers said in Tuesday’s edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
A year ago, the same group reported findings for gay men that showed their brain response to hormones was similar to that of heterosexual women.
Now this is a scientific study of a small sampling of people that does what most scientific studies do-takes us one baby step closer to the answer of one particular question, while opening up a bunch more.
“It shows sexual orientation may very well have a different basis between men and women … this is not just a mirror image situation,” said Sandra Witelson, an expert on brain anatomy and sexual orientation at the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.
“The important thing is to be open to the likely situation that there are biological factors that contribute to sexual orientation,” added Witelson, who was not part of the research team.
It’s an interesting study, and of course any excuse for brain scans is a good one, because there is something cool about the term “brain scan.” Read the article and take from it what you will-my initial reaction actually had little to do with the methodology of the study, or even homosexuals in general.
I just want to find out what James Dobson or the Concerned Women or even the folks over at Little Green Footballs would do with an article that includes such choice, ripe-for-the-plucking-from-context-quotes such as:
Lesbians’ brains reacted somewhat, though not completely, like those of heterosexual men
or
A year ago, the same group reported findings for gay men that showed their brain response to hormones was similar to that of heterosexual women.
or
They found that the brains of gay men reacted more like those of women than of straight men.
Let the armchair evolutionary biologist (or better, psychologist!) spew-fest begin!
http://echidneofthesnakes.blogspot.com/2006_05_01_echidneofthesnakes_archive.html#114717424097837049
Echidne has insights.
I’m looking for something a little more insane. Less criticism about the small sample size and obvious drawbacks, and more siezing of the potential to use such a study to justify prejudice. Because while the study doesn’t do much more than suggest an direction in which to do way more research, the reporting of it does provide a way for a certain type of person to squee with joy before making a complete ass of him-or-herself.
I don’t really see anything super awesome or interesting there, except for the bit about where men and women processed different phermones. I would not claim to draw any conclusions from this study until I understood that bit a lot better. That caveat will not stop some people, however. I think that if I were the science reporter, and I chose to even cover this study, I would have done it differently. The way it is written now almost demands that it be used in a dishonest way by persons with agendas.