Lesbians like straight men, researchers find why asymmetric brain structure

By Lester Haines • Get more from this author

Posted in Biology, 17th June 2008 10:26 GMT

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A study at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm has provided strong evidence that sexuality is a biologically fixed trait demonstrated in physical brain differences, New Scientist reports.

Specifically, key brain structures in homosexuals which govern "mood, anxiety and aggressiveness" resemble those in heterosexuals of the opposite sex - something likely to have been "forged" in the womb and not the result of later learning processes.

Ivanka Savic and Per Lindström chose to probe these specific brain parameters to avoid the pitfalls of previous studies which, while demonstrating "differences in brain architecture and activity" between gays and straights*, mostly relied on "sexuality-driven cues" which could have been "altered by learning or cognitive processes", as Savic put it.

Savic and Lindström put a group of 90 volunteers through the MRI scanner - 25 heterosexuals and 20 homosexuals of each gender - to determine their overall brain shape and volume. The results showed that straight chaps boasted asymmetric brains, "with the right hemisphere slightly larger", something they shared with lesbians.

Gay men, however, demonstrated symmetrical brains, in common with straight women.

The guinea pigs were then subjected to PET scans to "measure blood flow to the amygdala, part of the brain that governs fear and aggression". The resulting snaps (see below) showed how the amygdala "connected to other parts of the brain, giving clues to how this might influence behaviour".

Amygdala activity in heterosexual men and women (HeM and HeW) and homosexual men and women (HoM and HoW)

Sure enough, in straight men and lesbians, the amygdala sent signals "mainly into the sensorimotor cortex and the striatum, regions of the brain that trigger the 'fight or flight' response". For gay men and straight women, meanwhile, "the connections were mainly into regions of the brain that manifest fear as intense anxiety".

Savic described the former as "a more action-related response than in women", while noting that in the latter, "regions involved in phobia, anxiety and depression overlap with the pattern we see from the amygdala".

This is significant, Savic noted, because it "fits with data showing that women are three times as likely as men to suffer from mood disorders or depression". Savic added that while homosexual men also suffer higher rates of depression, she cautioned that "it's difficult to know whether this is down to biology, homophobia or simply feelings of being 'different'".

Qazi Rahman, a sexual orientation researcher at London's Queen Mary college, said of the findings: "This study demonstrates that homosexuals of both sexes show strong cross-sex shifts in brain symmetry. The connectivity differences reported in the amygdala are striking."

Savic concluded by admitting it remained to be seen whether the brain differences are "inherited, or result from abnormally high or low exposure in the womb to sex hormones such as testosterone". The research is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. ®

...

Bikini-clad Women Make Men Impatient

Note from Reclaiming Natural Manhood site: 

While these researches carried out by Forces of Heterosexualisation jump to any far fetched conclusions on assumptions about male heterosexuality that have no validity but that they constitute the common public opinion, they are not questioned by peer-review or other parts of the scientific institution. Notice also how they generalise the eperiences of some men as characteristics of all men.

At the sametime, the researches about man's apparent or hidden sexual acts by men outside of the gay population, don't even want to consider the probability that straight men could harbour any sexual thoughts for other men. The scientific institution, controlled by the Forces of Heterosexualization, including its peer-review process will shred to pieces the most logical conclusions about straight male sexuality, if it leads towards other men.

ScienceDaily (June 2, 2008) — Images of sexy women tend to whet men’s sexual appetite. But stimulating new research in the Journal of Consumer Research says there’s more than meets the eye. A recent study shows that men who watched sexy videos or handled lingerie sought immediate gratification—even when they were making decisions about money, soda, and candy.

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See also:

Mind & Brain

• Gender Difference
• Racial Issues
• Consumer Behavior
• Nutrition Research
• Relationships
• Psychology

Reference

• Lateral thinking
• Illusion of control
• Sensory neuron
• Pheromone

Authors Bram Van den Bergh, Siegfried DeWitte, and Luk Warlop (KULeuven, Belgium) found that the desire for immediate rewards increased in men who touched bras, looked at pictures of beautiful women, or watched video clips of young women in bikinis running through a park.

“It seems that sexual appetite causes a greater urgency to consume anything rewarding,” the authors suggest.  Thus, the activation of sexual desire appears to spill over into other brain systems involved in reward-seeking behaviors, even the cognitive desire for money.

“After they touched a bra, men are more likely to be content with a smaller immediate monetary reward,” writes Bram Van den Bergh, one of the study’s authors. “Prior exposure to sexy stimuli may influence the choice between chocolate cake or fruit for dessert.”

The authors believe the stimuli bring men’s minds to the present as opposed to the future.  “The study demonstrates that bikinis cause a shift in time preference: Men live in the here and now when they glance at pictures featuring women in lingerie. That is, men will choose the immediately available rewards and seek immediate gratification after sex cue exposure.”

Do all straight men respond the same? Actually, no.  Some men are highly responsive to rewards while others are not so sensitive, and the more reward-sensitive men are the impatient ones.

In fact, doing a task designed to inspire financial satisfaction reduced the bikini-inspired impatience, just as feeling full reduces food cravings.  Men may want to be aware of bikinis’ effects on their bank accounts and waistlines.

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Journal reference:

1. Bram Van den Bergh, Siegfried DeWitte, and Luk Warlop.Bikinis Instigate Generalized Impatience in Intertemporal Choice%u201D. Journal of Consumer Research, June 2008

Adapted from materials provided by University of Chicago Press Journals.

Study finds sex differences in relationship between arousal and orientation

Northwestern University psychologist J. Michael Bailey, PhD, says he is used to getting attention, both positive and negative, for his research on sexual orientation. "It always provokes mixed reactions," he says. But when an article titled "Federally funded study measures porn arousal" appeared in The Washington Times last December and described in unflattering terms a study conducted with his graduate student Meredith Chivers, he was unusually frustrated, he says. Conservative radio and television shows picked up the story, but because the study was under review, he couldn't explain why it wasn't the boondoggle it had been made out to be.

The purpose of the study, says Bailey, was to explore a basic question about the relationship between sexual arousal and sexual orientation that has its roots in studies conducted in the 1960s. That research, says Bailey, showed that heterosexual and gay men could be distinguished on the basis of their erectile response to pictures of nude men and women. The effect is so robust, he notes, that it can be used forensically to detect men's sexual orientation, and it probably plays a significant role in shaping men's self-identification as gay or heterosexual.

But similar research on women has not been conducted until very recently. Now, however, new evidence has emerged to suggest that "category specificity," as Bailey calls it--the tendency for gay men to become aroused only to same-sex images and heterosexual men to become aroused only to opposite-sex images--is not true of women. If so, it means there are fundamental sex differences in the relationship between arousal and orientation.

In their study, Chivers and Bailey showed erotic films to heterosexual, bisexual and lesbian women while measuring their genital and subjective arousal. They found that women, unlike men, showed the same genital responses to different kinds of erotic stimuli regardless of their sexual orientation, says Bailey. Whether the films depicted two males, two females, or a male and a female engaging in sexual activity, the different groups of women in the study responded similarly.

The main message is that there is a very fundamental sex difference between sexual arousal patterns in men and women," says Bailey. The difference has implications for understanding both the phenomenology of sexual orientation--what it's like to be straight, gay or lesbian--and the process by which people learn about their orientation, says Bailey.

Note from Reclaiming Natural Manhood site:

What a pack of lies. This research would have you believe that men are hardly ever what is termed in Western parlance as 'bisexual', or that most have no sexual desire for men at all, since it would be assumed here that most men are 'heterosexuals'. 

It is exactly what the conspiracy of Forces of Heterosexualization is all about. This is a typical example of how these forces are bent upon driving out man to man intimacy from men's spaces and to give scientific credence to the isolation of man to man intimacy from erstwhile men's spaces. And mind you, Bailey is the typical representative of abuse of science by the Forces of Heterosexualisation.

- The transgendered 'heterosexuals' are not real transgenders. Its just an extension of their heterosexuality (message: heterosexuality cannot be queer). The real transgenders are the 'homosexuals'.

- There are no bisexuals in this world. Those that say they are, are lying. There are only either gays or heterosexuals (wrongly labelled by gays as 'straights').

In this researched he is doing two things:

- Reinforcing the point of view of the Forces of Heterosexualization that there is no real 'bisexuality' in this world and that most men have no sexuality for men.

- Giving space to women to like women by saying all women, irrespective of sexual orientation have similar arousal patterns. 

- Also, guys who get aroused by men are different.

It is needless to say that his sampling can do just the trick. Most Western men, especially when they are in such researches, would automatically be put off socially by images of what they term 'homosexuality'. To be frank, I myself find the 'gay' images rather a turn off, and have seldom been aroused by them.

And considering that Bailey is a dishonest scientist with ulterior motives, it is easy to see how he would manipulate his research and subjects to suit what he wants to say.

Its so ironical that Bailey can get away with saying all this rubbish, because anyone who knows the nature of men, in any society that allows men's sexuality to be relatively free, where men's spaces are strong... that it is really men who have universally a strong sexuality for men -- even when they act bisexually -- both because of social requirements of reproduction and (some) real sexual desire --, it is also true that women too are almost universally sexually aligned towards other women, but this trait is much less strong in women than in men.

A discussion of the Research: Men just tuned to lust: Study

Their are two things about this research that should be noted about the conspiracy being hatched by the powerful forces of Heterosexualisation:

- One, about how the results are being misinterpreted to suit the interests of the forces of heterosexualisation, interspersed widely with stereotypes about the heterosexual society's version of what a man should be.

- Two, about how the two most important institutions of the society are in total control of the forces of heterosexualisation and are together being abused to spread mispropaganda about men. The institution of Science which initiated the research and the Media, which is giving so much prominence to the news, in all probability adding its own Masala to it, in order to further its own agenda of the society's and particularly men's heterosexualisation.

1. How the results are being misinterpreted to spread mispropaganda:

(a) The Study says, as per the report, that men's testosterone levels go up when they see a woman, regardless of whether they are sexually attracted to them or not. The researchers promptly interpret this, and the media is too happy to publicise it, that this means that men are geared to respond with 'attraction' when they confront a person of the opposite sex, irrespective of whether or not they want to have sex with the opposite woman.

A more likely conclusion of this phenomena could be:
- That the increase in testosterone at the time of seeing the woman doesn't have anything to do with sexual attraction (esp. becasue it also happens with females they are not sexually attracted to).
- That it may be because of other reasons -- e.g. men may actually show a natural resistance upon seeing a woman -- like seeing an opposition. Afterall, it may be this factor which makes mammalian males in the wild not mix with females at all, except for very short spells of sex during the mating season.
- Another reason could be that the men realise that women hold power over them in a heterosexual society. That they must show sexual interest in them, otherwise they would lose their status as a man (which is now called 'straighthood'). This may make them react with aggression -- to force them to generate a sexual interest.
- Even when the sexual interest for women is present, in varying degrees, men know that it is this sexual interest in the heterosexual society that is their key to the men's space -- which is now completely heterosexualised. They see women as symbols of power which they must compete to show as much sexual interest in as possible. And this feeling of competition to gain social power may trigger the onset of testosterone.

- The researchers cleary say that with increase in testosterone levels the males display more dominant behaviour. We know that genuinely heterosexual males do not become dominant towards their women, but rather, they become submissive before them. This testosterone then, definitely does not indicate a sexual interest, but could indicate an inner resistance, as, as mentioned earlier, women hold power over men in heterosexual societies and men are only too aware of it. They see the woman next to them as challenge. They must gear themselves up, rather steel themselves up to show a sexual interest in her, especially if she is attractive, because your identity as a man (a striaght man) is at stake.


(b) Another statement says: "They talk more with their hands, there is more eye contact, their posture is more upright, and they are more likely to tell stories designed to impress the woman. We know that women can be attracted by these kinds of things. All this, we believe, may be fuelled by the rise in testosterone that we have found,"

Men may do all these things, but since they also do it with women they are not interested in, it is more likely that men are reacting like that because of heavy social conditioning and pressures that they face in heterosexual, westernised spaces.

Interspersing what they believe with what they found is not in the proper spirit of science at all.

(c) Another problematic statement: "Aggressive males showed greater rise in testosterone levels, an idea supported by research that men who exhibit more dominant-like behaviour tend to make more frequent successful contact with females."

It is clear that this statement is meant to further upholster the Western 'heterosexual' identity as masculine (it surely needs frequent assurances, because it's a lie!).

However, it is such a vague statement that a proper analysis is not possible. They're just saying that masculine men have more sexual interest in women or something like that, and they are supporting this with the wrong deduction they have already made about the surge in testosterone levels. One lie goes on top of another to build the greater lie about heterosexuality. So that men can be perpetually forced into heterosexualisation. By associating masculinity and social power with heterosexuality. That's been the basis of the conspiracy against men all these centuries.

It is true that more aggressive men seek out women more -- but it is equally true that they do it only for the social power that sex with women hold. It is also true that these aggressive men lack the basic qualities of a heterosexual male -- they don't fall in love with women, they don't become emotionally involved with them or dependant on them. They just have sex with them and that is it. If they had a choice they would rarely ever seek out women.


(2) The second aspect is the collaboration of the twin most powerful modern institutes of Science and Media to spread this lie, in order to strengthen the heterosexualisation of the society as a whole, of men's spaces and of men in particular.

And just what happened to a solid ground breaking research that came about 20 years ago -- Bruce Bagemihl's painstaking compilation of evidences from the wild life that said, there's hardly any heterosexuality amongst mammalian males, and that it is sexual bonds between males which rules amongst mammals. The media of course ignored it, becasue it was a major blow to the very hollow ideals on which the entire heterosexual society is based. But what is ironical is that even the institution of science forgot all about it, and is back on its men are heterosexual and Queers are like women propaganda.

Men just tuned to lust: Study

The following research is a perfect example of how the forces of heterosexualisation through their control of the modern society's most important social institutions -- Science and Media.

There is probably nothing wrong in the findings of the following research, only their interpretation has been twisted to fit into the heterosexual ideology. We will discuss this in the next post.

Meanwhile read the research:


20 Jul 2008, 2359 hrs IST,PTI

TOI

LONDON: Men are tuned to lust, irrespective of whether they found the women next to them attractive or not, a study has suggested.
Men have for long been seen as judging women on looks alone, but a study has now shown that the increase in male sex hormone level was not influenced by the perceived attractiveness of the women.

Human testosterone triggers an automatic reaction which has evolved in man when faced with a woman, to look for mating opportunities, and it does not matter if the woman is not attractive, the research reveals.

The research, published in the journal Hormones and Behaviour , suggested that the levels of their testosterone surged to the same extent whether they were talking to an attractive woman or someone they may not fancy at all.

The research involving 63 male students aged 21 to 25 found that their testosterone levels increased by an average of around 8% after just 5 minutes exposure to a stranger from the opposite sex and in some cases to women they not find particularly attractive.

"We found a testosterone increase after only five minutes of exposure to a woman. Our results suggest that the increase in testosterone levels that we found, may be an automatic male response that activates receptors in organs and the nervous system to prepare the human body for mate attraction," said Leander van der Meij, who led the study at the University of Groningen in Holland.

He said with the increase in testosterone levels males tend to display more dominant behaviour.

"They talk more with their hands, there is more eye contact, their posture is more upright, and they are more likely to tell stories designed to impress the woman. We know that women can be attracted by these kinds of things. All this, we believe, may be fuelled by the rise in testosterone that we have found," said der Meij.

Aggressive males showed greater rise in testosterone levels, an idea supported by research that men who exhibit more dominant-like behaviour tend to make more frequent successful contact with females.

Marriage makes both sexes happy

19:00 02 October 2002
Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.
Peter Hadfield, Sydney

Contrary to popular belief, marriage gives men and women an equal mental health boost, a study in Australia shows.
In 1972, sociologist Jessie Bernard looked at symptoms of anxiety, depression, neurosis and passivity in married and unmarried people. She found that men were better off married than single, and concluded that they got those benefits at the expense of women. That became a central tenet of the women's liberation movement in the 1970s, and is still often cited.
But psychologist David de Vaus from La Trobe University in Melbourne points out that Bernard's research only looked at a narrow definition of stress. "It is well known that women are much more likely to score highly on those disorders," he says. Most research has ignored the fact that mental disorder can manifest itself in men in the form of drug and alcohol abuse, de Vaus claims.
De Vaus looked at data from 10,641 adults taken from the 1996 national survey of mental health in Australia, which includes drug abuse among its indicators of stress.
In the winter issue of Family Matters, the journal of the Australian Institute of Family Studies, de Vaus writes that the percentage of married men and women suffering stress was the same, at just 13 per cent.
Work and kids
He also found that 25 per cent of both women and men were miserable when single. Married women with children and a job had the fewest mental health problems of the female sample, suggesting that kids are not as stress-inducing as some parents like to claim.
The findings add hard data to ideas already taking hold in the US. In 2001, Linda Waite's book The Case for Marriage: Why married people are happier, healthier and better off financially cited other studies that overturn Bernard's theories.
Psychologists are now debating whether Bernard's conclusions have always been flawed, or whether women have become genuinely happier inside marriage over the past 30 years.

New research dispels myths surrounding single-sex schooling

19/09/06

A study of people now in their 40s has revealed that those who went to single-sex schools were more likely to study subjects not traditionally associated with their gender than those who went to co-educational schools. Girls from single-sex schools also went on to earn more than those from co-educational schools.

The research, by the Institute of Education’s Centre for Longitudinal Studies, has followed almost 13,000 individuals born in 1958 throughout their lives and so can tell us about longer-term consequences of types of schools.

The researchers found that at age 16, girls in girls’ schools were more likely to gain maths and science A-levels, and boys in boys’ schools more liable to gain A-levels in English and modern languages than their peers in co-educational schools. Girls and boys in single-sex schools also had more confidence in their ability to do well in these subjects.

The pattern carried through to university, with women from girls’ schools more likely than co-educated women to gain qualifications in subjects typically dominated by men and to go on to earn higher salaries in their jobs.

Researcher Dr Alice Sullivan explains: “Single-sex schools seemed more likely to encourage students to pursue academic paths according to their talents rather than their gender, whereas more gender-stereotyped choices were made in co-educational schools. This suggests that co-educational schools need to examine the ways in which they have, probably unwittingly, enforced powerful gender stereotypes on both girls and boys.”

Researcher Professor Diana Leonard says: “Although having been to a single-sex school is not significantly linked to a gender atypical occupation, girls from single-sex schools do get higher wages in later life. This could be because they are carrying out more technical or scientific roles even within female-dominated jobs, for example, becoming science teachers rather than French teachers, or because they have learned to be more self-confident in negotiating their wages and salaries.”

But single-sex education brought almost no advantage in terms of exam results. Girls from girls’ schools did only slightly better in exams than their co-educational peers. Boys did no better at all (allowing for differences in ability and family background). While girls at girls’ schools were slightly more likely than girls in mixed schools to gain five or more O-levels at grades A – C, this advantage did not carry through to further and higher education. There was no impact of single-sex schooling on maths test scores at age 16, nor did single-sex schooling make it more likely for pupils to gain any A-levels at all, to get a university degree by age 33, or to enter high-status occupations.

Dr Sullivan says: “Our research emphatically does not support the suggestion that achievement is higher in single-sex schools.”

Other findings showed that boys in boys’ schools were more likely to dislike school than boys in co-ed schools, but both sexes were less likely to truant in single-sex schools.

Single-sex schooling appeared to have no impact on the likelihood of marriage or childbearing, or on the quality of partnerships formed. Neither did it appear to affect the division of labour in the home, nor attitudes to women’s work outside the home. However, men who had attended single-sex schools were more likely to be divorced by age 42.

This research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.

Ends

For more information or to arrange an interview with one of the researchers, please contact:
Alice Sullivan, research officer, 020 7612 6661, 07813 323 629 a.sullivan@ioe.ac.uk
Jessica Henniker Major, marketing and communications manager, 020 7612 6861, 07787 553 353, j.henniker-major@ioe.ac.uk or
Helen Green, ioe press officer, 020 7612 6459, 07734 540 870, h.green@ioe.ac.uk

Notes for editors

The data used in this study come from the National Child Development Study (NCDS), which has been tracking the lives of everyone born in England, Scotland and Wales in one week in 1958. The research team noted who was attending single-sex schools at age 16 in 1974 and followed their experiences in university, employment, marriage and family life later on. Further information on this project.

The Centre for Longitudinal Studies (CLS) is an ESRC resource centre based at the Institute of Education in London. In addition to NCDS, CLS manages two other birth cohort studies – the 1970 British Cohort Study and the Millennium Cohort study. Further information on the work of the centre is available at www.cls.ioe.ac.uk.

The researchers on this project are Heather Joshi, director of CLS and professor of economic and developmental demography; Diana Leonard, professor of sociology of education and gender; and Alice Sullivan, CLS research and teaching fellow.

The Institute of Education is a college of the University of London, specialising in teaching, research and consultancy in education and related areas of social science and professional practice.

(Source: Centre for Longitudinal Studies)