Is intersex a third sex?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 เม.ย. 2024
- #transgender #intersex #detransition
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Is intersex a third sex?
This clip comes from a video i did back in July 2023 called "What is a woman? Do i agree with Matt Walsh?"
In this video i am discussing the complexity of human sex and gender. What is the difference between sex and gender? Are pronouns bound in biology or are they simply useful tools for human interactions? Is intersex a third sex and if not, are our categories of biological male and female too restrictive when people don't always fall neatly into a whole package? Not every male has XY chromosomes and not every female has XX chromosomes. Similarly, not every male has a penis. I am not referring to transgender individuals but rather to men who either lost their genitals throughout their life or were born with a genetic condition.
Intersex is an umbrella term for different conditions in which an individual is born with abnormalities relating to either chromosomes, gonads or genitals.
I am a MTFTM detransitioner who has been making videos on TH-cam for almost a year now. Last year i uploaded my first video titled "My detransition story: the dark truth behind gender dysphoria and transition regret". Since then i have continued making videos on the topic of detransition and transition as well as other subjects including philosophy, politics and various social issues. I have also appeared in the documentary "Lost Boys: Searching for manhood" alongside a fellow detransitioner, Ritchie Herron. I have also appeared on other TH-cam channels including Buck Angel's TH-cam channel.
You can find the whole video here: • What is a woman? Do i ...
Follow me on Twitter: / alexenomorpheus
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You can find the link to the full video in the description. I am uploading shorter clips from my the videos i did last year to introduce new audience to my older content.
As intersex my body mixes characteristics of male and female, it does not borrow from a third hypothetical option.
"Is intersex a third sex?" - NO, it isnt, period.
Exactly. I wish those of us who were born with DSDs were NOT being used as pawns in this discussion by people who appear to buy into the "gender woo" and attempting to sell it to everyone else.
@@Gingerblazethey already stoled intersex people whole identity, they also stoled the phrase "sex assigned at birth"
Or we should look at gender as a spectrum. They are not a boy or a girl, so they are still their own thing, and our idea of what we have designed our society around still is not an honest depiction of our sexes, nor the rules that govern them.
@@OK-pi6fq
NO!
And yes they are always predominately one of them.
They are *not* "their own thing" and will, more often than not go with one of them, they feel the most connected and working with, so cut the crap and get a life and that poison out of your head.
Yeah this is an interesting topic because I have turner's syndrome, deriving from abnormalities in a single or both female XX chromosomes. Even though I may not have the same hormone levels as a typical female and need help via HRT for it, and may not be able to get pregnant one day, I still view myself as female of course. Sometimes turner syndrome can be considered as intersex and sometimes it isn't, depending on what criteria you're using. When it comes to the "default" makeup of a biological female, there are so many different factors to consider - chromosomes, hormone levels, even response to those hormones, secondary sex characteristics... so when there is a deviation from that that's what i view intersex as. Some would assume that intersex people would want to use non-binary pronouns when they find out about their condition but that's not true, well some do of course but not all... I don't mind considering my condition as intersex but I am and always will identify as female because that's my experience. I feel like a lot of those with Androgen Insensitivity Disorder (phenotypical females that are born with XY chromosomes but have limited or no response to male hormones in their body) probably feel the same way.
Thanks, great video
Does anybody say intersex were a third sex? I only heard it`s a range between the sexes.
some ideologues try to frame it as one and then use it to claim the sprectrum and all the gendergarbage that they push upon us.
They are just a anomaly which also has a predominantely side to which they mostly tend to sooner or later, so most of them will literally become a boy or girl in the end and often this is also supported by surgery.
only difference is nowadays this is not always done shortly after birth, but left alone to be decided by them...which also made em a target for said people to be used as pawns n their games.
Everything is biology for an organism and human too. It this belief that mind is metaphysical which makes people think biology has no significant influence. Even words are product of our brains and thus our human biologies.
There are no colors either by the way. Just wavelengths of light that appear like colors. So if you wanna argue that there’s not more than two sexes that’s a warped idea of not looking at things like it’s a spectrum. Color is a spectrum when viewed from this direction, it looks like one thing when viewed from another direction it looks like another thing the way light allows it to bounce off and reflect makes it look like another thing. The point is tech, there’s no colors but if you ask everybody, they think there’s lots of colors so depends on how you perceive this. I say there are more than two sexes because I don’t see it as one or the other there is a spectrum and an in between and people who have both, so our science and our society disagree about things. But if you’re gonna be a only two sexes, then you can start not acknowledging color.
Actually, we decide that it’s based on a percentage. And redheads are the same percentage of anomaly. How many people here believe that our society has redheads? If you asked what color hair do humans come in they would include red hats. The irony is is that they suspect that there is more than that percentage in intersex, but that before we had the technology that we have now most people would never discover that they are intersex in fact to this day most people will never discover that they are intersex, however as we discover with more technology, we have discovered more and more intersex versions than we did before and we are discovering it’s more common than we thought it was before and they suspect it’s even more common than that. Again, there is no rule with anything by biological. Anyone who thinks that biology has a set rule doesn’t understand evolution or biology. We are not a cookie cutter one or the other. It is just mostly one or the other. A good example is there’s species that when the have altered. Under extreme stress, they themselves have actually changed. An example there is a frog the frog is not known to be an asexual species. It is a binaries species. This particular species of speaking of there was a disease that targeted the Y chromosome on the genetic line. There was a mass of males and the species was going extinct however, at some point biology does what it does and females started to convert into males. Now this was not a normal thing. This is not how the species which was a well developed well-known species for many 100 of years, this is not something that that species was capable of known of and under extreme because biology doesn’t care about your feelings. Evolution exist for a reason and anomaly is anomaly until it’s common and then it’s what it is. Like I said if you believe that we are species that has redheads, then you should consider what that means about our genders or our sexes
What point are you trying to make? You are comparing it to redheads and that people believe that society has redheads. I don't think much people will argue, that intersex people don't exist (if they do, they probably never heard of these variations and are just ignorant). If you want to say, that that means, that intersex is a third sex, that's just not true. Or are you going to say, that in our reproduction process a third sex is involved and necessary? Do intersex people produce a third, different gamete, that's involved in reproduction?
There are only two sexes in humans because there are only two possible sex cells, sperm and an egg. Intersex people are not a 3rd sex, they are a variation within the two sexes.There is two genders because there is two sexes, male and female. Gender identity is how we feel in relation to our sex, regarding whether we feel masculine or feminine. Gender expression is the external manifestation of our gender identity, or how we express our gender through our appearance, like clothing and hairstyle choices and mannerisms. Similar to sex, gender-both with regard to identity and expression- is biological. It is not a social construct, nor is it divorced from anatomy or sexual orientation. All of these things are linked. Whether a person gravitates toward traits that are considered masculine or feminine is driven by biology.
Biology, not society, dictates whether we are gender-typical or atypical, the extent to which we identify as the sex we were born as, and the partners we are sexually attracted to. When sperm fertilizes an egg at conception, the baby will be either female or male. This biology will influence hormonal exposure in the womb, as well as the child’s resulting gender identity. At about seven weeks, if the embryo is male, the testes will begin to secrete testosterone, masculinizing the brain. If the embryo is female, this process does not occur. This exposure to testosterone has a powerful effect on the ways in which male and female brains grow before the brain has finished developing in the utero. Testosterone exposure alters the programming of neural stem cells responsible for brain growth, leading to differences between the sexes.
Gay men have had a lower exposer than a typical male and lesbian women have had a higher exposure than a typical female. If testosterone levels during a critical prenatal period are high , the brain is organized in such a way that the person is predisposed to become typically masculine in a variety of gendered traits, including sexual attraction to females. If testosterone levels are low during that same time period, the brain is organized in such a way that the person is predisposed to become typically feminine in gendered traits, including sexual attraction to males. Bisexuality might result from intermediate levels of testosterone, although there is little direct evidence bearing on this. It could also be the case that their brains responded to these hormones in different ways.
Neuroscientific studies have shown that the brains of lesbians are partially masculinized and gay mens partially feminized. Patterns of brain organisation appear similar between gay men and heterosexual women and between lesbian women and heterosexual men. Gay men appear, on average, more “female typical” in brain pattern responses and lesbian women are more “male typical”. Differences in brain organisation mean differences in psychology and study after study show differences in cognition between heterosexual and gay people. Gay mens brains are also structured like those of heterosexual females and lesbians structured similar to heterosexual mens. Gay men and lesbians on average are also gender shifted in aspects of body function that can be recognised by gaydar, such as gait and voice quality. Gay differences are are reflected in our psychology and the ways we relate to others.
Gendered interests are predicted by testosterone exposure in utero. Higher levels are associated with male-typical interests and behaviours, regardless of whether the baby is male or female. These include a preference for mechanically interesting objects and systemizing occupations in adulthood. Lower levels are associated with a preference for people orientated activities and occupations. stemming from evolutionary roots. Women. who are tasked with the role of bearing children, evolved to be more sociable, empathic, and people focused, while men, as hunter-gatherers, were rewarded for strong visuopatial skills and ability to build and use tools. That's why science, technology, engerneering and mathematics fields tend to be dominated by men. Gay men and lesbians are gender shifted in a variety of male favoring-visuospatial traits such as mental rotation, targeting, and navigation, as well as female-favouring tasks such as verbal fluency and object location memory. Boys, are typically exposed to higher levels of testosterone in the womb, and tend to gravitate toward mechanical toys and ,mechanically interesting activities, like playing with wheeled toys, trucks and related occupations in adulthood. and being sexually attracted to women upon reaching puberty. A boy who is exposed to lower levels of is more likely to be female-typical when he is born, gravitating toward toys and activities that girls prefer, since girls are also generally exposed to lower levels of testosterone. He will also be sexually attracted to men in adulthood. Testosterone is needed to “masculinize” a prenatal brain; if that doesn’t happen, the child will grow up to desire men.
The same can be said for girls who experience high levels of testosterone exposure. As shown in girls with congenital adrenal hyperplasia, even if their parents give them more encouragement for playing with dolls, they will still prefer toys typical to boys because greater exposure to testosterone in utero is associated with male-typical interests. Rough-and-tumble play, which is behavior typically seen in little boys, is less common in gay men and more common in lesbian women, due to lesser and greater masculinization of the brain.. Childhood gender nonconformity refers to sex-atypical behaviours, interests, hobbies, activity levels, and play partner preferences before the age of 12. 75% of boys demonstrating CGN will grow up to be gay or bisexual due to the prenatal environment and the extent to which hormones masculinized the developing brain. Pre gay children are gender nonconformists in a variety of traits, including phyisical aggressivness, engagement in rough and tumble play and sports, interest and peers they prefer the company of. Gay men and lesbians can also have gender shifted occupational preferences and also in instrumentailty, empathy, expressivness, and aesthetic/technological interests.
Brains that are exposed to lower levels of testosterone, conversely, are more efficient at empathizing. Girls show a preference for socially engaging activities and occupations. This difference between children regarding preferences for people versus things is detectable within the first two days of life. Baby girls preferred looking at their caregivers’ faces and baby boys preferred looking at mechanical mobiles. The male superiority in mental rotation is evident by 3-5months of age. Difference in toy preference are evident at 3-8 months of age. Many of the sex differences exist widely across different countries and cultures, including illiterate populations, as well as among those who are well-educated, and across societies that enforce traditional gender roles as well as those that are more egalitarian. Infact, gender differences in personality seem to become to become more marked as societies cast off traditional expectations about the roles of men and women. Many gendered traits that are gendered in humans are also gendered in non humans primates and other mammals.
No matter how much freedom a child is given, most will, time and time again, pick out gender-typical toys to play with and exhibit personality traits typical of their sex. If you try to force kids to play with opposite-sex toys when they prefer toys typical to their sex, they will be bored, or alternatively, will get creative. Boys, upon being given dolls, will swing them around mercilessly by the hair as though they are a weapon. Girls will arrange toy trucks into a family and tuck them into bed. A girl or boy who is gender-atypical will turn away from these cues if they're truly not interested. For gender-nonconforming kids who are bombarded with societal messaging about masculinity or femininity through movies and online games, they will say, “I don’t want to watch this,” or “I don’t want to play this,” and “Where are the ones for boys?” or "where are the ones for girls?" Gender-nonconforming girls and boys don’t need the world to tell them to be nonconforming; they will already be that way, from the moment they are born. social influences cannot override the underlying preferences themselves.
No one is 100% male typical or 100% female typical, but homosexual people are generally more atypical than heterosexual people. Gay men are shifted in a female direction compared with straight men, and lesbians are shifted in a male direction compared with straight women. These are only shifts and not complete gender reversals, and they don't affect every gender trait. Gay men have at least some gender atypical traits(some more than others) but few have the entire package. Gay people remain gender typical in a variety of traits, especially those related to sexuality, such as their interest in casual sex. Similarly not all straight people are completely gender typical either. A study found that a minority of straight people share a predisposing factor with gay people of the same sex. It's lkely this predisposing factor is one that predicts gender nonconformity in childhood and/or in adulthood. It has been hypothesized that homosexuality results from inhereting a set of several feminizing genes. If this hypothesis is correct, the straight men who share a predisposing factor with gay men might be those who have inherited some of these feminizing genes, but not enough to make them gay.
And? You can't deny social influence as well.
If the government have both women and men serve in military - women also have to train to kill etc. So hormone level here proves that connection (for example) "women are supposed to be cooking at home" is an assertion. And society can change someone.
Also there are obviously people who don't like gender stereotype. It is not a fantasy. It is a real evaluation of those people who they are and what they put into words "woman" and "man".
I think Alexander pointed out main directions. Biology is important, but you can't fit everything in biology.
BTW, in theory - what if humans evolute into third gender? Just a question? How can you analyse this?
Sorry for bad english
Could you supply the research papers which demonstrate the validity of your theories? How do you explain all the extremely gender conforming gay men and straight tom boy women?
Or we should look at gender as a spectrum. They are not a boy or a girl, so they are still their own thing, and our idea of what we have designed our society around still is not an honest depiction of our sexes, nor the rules that govern them.
@@OK-pi6fq I'm talking more in general terms as a great deal of diversity is present in homosexual men and women as there is among heterosexual people. Personality is not really like a receipt where you put in the same ingredients and turn out the same way, people are individuals and no two are exactly the same. Not all straight women appear the same or ultra feminine and some are also good at maths and into sports or other male-typical interests. To some extent, homosexuality is part of a package of mental traits, many of which can be considered gender-variant or gender non conformist, whereas heterosexuality is part of a package of gender-typical or gender conformist. The association between sexual orientation and other gendered traits arises because all these traits differentiate under the influence of a common biological process-the sexual differentiation of the brain under the influence of sex hormones.
Boys are more active than girls, and they engage in more rough-and-tumble. Boys and girls have different toys preferences. Boys prefer toy vehicles, toy weapons, balls and construction toys; girls have a broader preferences, but tend to prefer dolls and household items such as toy kitchen implements. Girls are more interested in infants than are boys. Boys have better throwing accuracy but girls have better control of fine hand movements. Boys do better than girls at a range of visuospatial tasks, such as targeting(throwing accuracy) and mental rotation(deciding whether two objects seen from different viewpoints are identical or not) Girls have better verbal fluency than boys. Girls are more people oriented; boys are more thing oriented. Boys prefer the company of boys; girls prefer that of girls. Girls and boys voices are recognizably different, even though there is no difference in the pitch of their voices before puberty. All these statements are statements or averages of course, and don't necessarily apply to individual children.
In area of cognition, women perform better than men at some memory tasks, including episodic memory(memory of events) verbal memory and memory of the locations of objects. They are also better at tests of verbal fluency(quickly coming up with words that match a certain category) and some other verbal skills, face recognition, and behavioral tasks requiring fine hand movements. Men perform better than women at variety of visuospatial tasks such as mental rotation, targeting accuracy, and navigation(especially when navigating by distant landmarks or compass directions rather than by local cues) In areas of personality, men rank higher than women on measures of assertiveness, competivness, aggressiveness, and independence(these getting things done traits are sometimes referred to collectively as instrumentality).
Women rank higher than men on measures of expressivness, sociability, empathy, openness to feelings, altruism and neuroticism.(the last item includes the tendency to depression, anxiety, self-consciousness, and low self esteem) Men prefer thing-oriented activities and occupations(e.g carpenter) whereas women prefer people-oriented activities and occupations(e.g social worker) Women have better developed aesthetic interests and less developed technological interests than men. There is of course the basic difference in sexual orientation, with men more likely to experience attraction to women(gynephilia) and women more likely to experience attraction to men(andrphilia)
At least several research groups have conducted sizeable studies comparing performance at this task between gay and straight subjects. Six of these studies-one of them an internet-based test by several hundred thousand subjects from around the world reported that gay men perform less well than straight men. With regard to women, studies found a shift in the opposite direction-that is lesbians performed better at the task than did straight women. In another study gay men performed worse than straight men at targeting(throwing a ball to the centre on a target a few feet away) and lesbians performed better than straight women. They examined navigation strategies. They found that the strategy preferred by gay men(use of nearby-landmarks) resemled that preferred by straight women., and differed from that preferred by straight men( use of distant landmarks or compass bearings)
Two large studies found differences in the ability to judge the orientation of a line-a male favouring task, gay men performed worse than straight men on this task. and lesbians performed better than straight women. There is considerable evidence that gay peoples visuospatial abilities are shifted, on average in the direction of the other sex. Women tend to outperform men in verbal fluency and some related verbal skills. in a study measuring verbal fluency the gay men performed significantly better than the straight men and about as well as the straight women, whereas the lesbians scored significantly worse than the straight women and about as badly as the heterosexual men. This data suggest a complete gender inversion in verbal fluency among gay men and women, compared with their heterosexual peers.In another study on memory tasks gay men outperformed straight men and did as well as straight women.
When listening to sounds, straight men tend to have a bias for their right ear, which both gay men and straight women lack. They also tend to outperform gay men and straight women in tests of spatial awareness, where success depends on a part of the brain - the parietal cortex - which is usually larger in men than in women.
Also there was marked differences in the left and right amygdalas of straight men and women. In straight men the right amygdala was more richly connected with other brain regions than was the left amygdala, whereas in straight women the left amygdala was more richly connected. Whats more, the main functional connections formned by the amygdala were to different brain regions in the two sexes. In gay men and lesbians, these characteristics were almost entirely sex-atypical; the findings in gay men resembled those of straight women, and the findings in lesbians resembled those of straight men. The connections that link the amygdala to other parts of the brain these connections usually link to different areas in the brains of men and women, and sprout from different hemispheres -the right in men, and the left in women. That was the pattern they saw from the straight volunteers from their study, but the homosexuals showed the reverse pattern. the amygdalas of gay men had more in common with those of straight women - the two halves were well-connected, they had more neurons projecting from the left half (as opposed to the right in straight men) and these neurons connected to the same parts of the brain that those of straight women do. Other groups have certainly detected asymmetries before in children, and some have even done so in the brains of foetuses.
In straight men and lesbians, the amygdala fed its signals mainly into the sensorimotor cortex and the striatum, regions of the brain that trigger the “fight or flight” response. It’s a more action-related response than in women. In straight men and lesbians, the amygdala (which influences our emotional reactions to stress) connects to the sensorimotor cortex and the striatum, parts of the brain involved in the “fight or flight” response and governs fear and aggression... But in straight women and gay men, the amygdala’s connections feed into the anterior cingulate cortex and the subcallosum. These areas are for processing emotions and influence our moods and have been implicated in mood-related disorders such as anxiety and depression.
The volumetric patterns of brain activity in both lesbian women and gay men, or grey matter volumes in the perirhinal cortex in lesbian women. Some of these effects seem to be unique to sexual orientation, such as cortical thickness in the orbitofrontal and visual areas as well as the anatomy of the corpus callosum in gay men. Several small-scale neuroimaging studies have also suggested cross-sex shifts in homosexual men and women in brain responses to putative sex-specific pheromonal compounds.
MRI scans showed In straight men the right hemisphere was 2% larger than the left. In straight women, the two hemispheres were the same size. In gay men the two hemispheres were also the same size. In lesbians the right hemisphere was slightly larger than the left.
A region of the hypothamalamus called the medical preoptic area is involved in the regulation of male-typical behaviours, and within this area lies at least one cell group that is larger in males than females. In rats this cell group is called the sexually dimorphic nucleus of the preoptic area(SDN-POA) and in humans it is called the third interstitial nucleus of the anterior hypothalamus(INAH3) It is suspected that the rats SDN-POA and the human INAH3 are homologous structures, meaning that they have evolved from the same structure in the common ancestor of rats and humans. Studies have showed the INAH3 is significantly smaller in gay men than straight men. Infact there is no significant difference between its size in the gay men and in women. Activity pattern in this region of the hypothalamus have been reported to differ between gay and straight men.
Another structure in the hypothalamus have been reported to differ in size between gay and straight men. A cell group called the suprachiasmatic nucleus was larger in gay men than in straight men. The suprachiasmatic nucleus is concerned with the regulation of circadian rhythms,. The size of this commissure is known to be larger in women than in men
@@OK-pi6fq Large scale studies have documented very sizeble and statistically significant shifts in gender-typed behaviours of pre-gay children, both boys and girls, compared with pre-straight children of the same sex. Pre-gay children participated less in gender-typical activities and more in gender-atypical activities. Still, not all children-whether pre-gay or pre-straight- conformed to these patterns. The same studies have been carried out across different cultures and the findings were consistent. In all cultures, pre gay boys were less aggressive and less interested in sports than pre straight boys on average. They were more likely to have associated with girls and to have participated in typical girls activities.
Studies have recruited gender-conforming boys(more masculine) and more feminine boys and interviewed the, and their parents, repeatedly during the boys childhood and adolescence. The results were striking; of the control group of 35 gender-conforming boys on follow up through to young adulthood, all were heterosexual. of the 44 feminine boys only 11 were heterosexual and 33 were homosexual or bisexual. The feminine boys were more likely to become gay or bisexual adults. Several other prospective studies have reached similar conclusions.
In animals the only case known of spontaneous same sex preference has been studied in detail and it concerns a sheep population in the western part of the United States( this has no been found in wild sheep, only these domesticated rams). a significant fraction of rams in this population mate exclusively with other males when given a choice between a male or female partner. The SDN of the ovine POA (oSDN), a brain structure that is approximately three times larger in males than in females and contains about four times more neurons, was shown to be significantly smaller in male-oriented rams than in female-oriented rams. The oSDN also contained fewer neurons and expressed aromatase at reduced levels in male-oriented rams than in female-oriented rams. The features of this nucleus therefore correlate with sexual partner preference: subjects attracted to males (females and male-oriented rams) are similar and distinguished from subjects attracted to females female-oriented rams. The volume of the oSDN is already larger in males than in females around the end of embryonic life and differentiates under the influence of testosterone in males.
Embryonic treatment of females with testosterone between 30 and 90 d of gestation results in a masculinized oSDN in females. Furthermore, the size of this nucleus is no longer modified in adulthood by castration or treatment with testosterone. If the small size of oSDN in male-oriented rams is determined like in females by a relative lack of early exposure to testosterone, it likely represents (one of) the cause(s), and not a consequence, of their atypical sexual attraction. This nucleus is indeed located in the center of the POA, a region involved in the control of sexual behavior and male-typical partner preferences, and it would in this scenario differentiate before subjects had an opportunity to express their sexual partner preference.
In conclusion, these studies demonstrate that sexual orientation in animals is a sexually differentiated feature like other sexually differentiated behaviors or morphological characteristics. Male-typical sexual orientation is controlled at least in part by the POA (like sexual behavior), and it differentiates under the influence of pre-/perinatal sex steroids. In rats and sheep, the size of a potentially homologous nucleus located in the same part of the POA (SDN-POA in rat, oSDN in sheep) is irreversibly determined by embryonic sex steroids. Moreover, lesions of this nucleus in adult male rats or ferrets modifies sexual partner preference, an animal model of sexual orientation. If the same mechanisms control the development of INAH3 in humans, the smaller INAH3 of gay men most likely be a marker of deficient exposure to androgens during ontogeny and a cause of the modified sexual orientation.
. The differences between the sexes result from the early exposure of embryos to a different endocrine milieu: a high concentration of testosterone for male embryos in mammals and a much lower exposure to sex steroids in females. These differentiating (organizing) effects usually occur early in life, during the embryonic period or just after birth and are irreversible. These organizing actions of sex steroids on behavior are paralleled by irreversible changes in brain structure. Embryonic sex steroids differentiate the size of several brain structures, including the sexually dimorphic nucleus of the preoptic area (SDN-POA). This group of cells is five to six times larger in male than in females, and this difference results almost exclusively from the action of testosterone during late embryonic life and the first days of postnatal life.
Once acquired, the sex-typical size of the SDN-POA cannot be altered in adulthood by steroid hormones. The sexual preference of a male for a female is controlled, like the expression of male-typical sexual behavior, by the medial part of the POA. Experimental lesion of this brain region causes a reversal of the males' preference in rats and ferrets: after surgery, they prefer to spend time with other males rather than with sexually receptive females. Exposure to testosterone (or its metabolite estradiol) induces male-typical partner preference (preference for a female over a male sex partner), whereas in the absence of high concentrations of these steroids, a female pattern of mate preference will develop (preference for male partner). Sexual orientation is not affected by activational effects of steroids in adulthood. Gonadectomy does not influence orientation nor does adult treatment with androgens and estrogens. Furthermore, numerous studies have clearly established that plasma concentrations of sex steroids are perfectly “normal” (typical of the gonadal sex) in both gay men and lesbians.
On average, male embryos are exposed to higher concentrations of testosterone than female embryos, but these concentrations vary around a mean value for various reasons (environmental, genetic, etc.). Male subjects at the lower end of this sex-specific distribution could thus acquire a female-typical orientation (and be gay), whereas females at the high end of the concentration curve would acquire a male-typical sexual attraction and be lesbian. Even if they are not attracted by the same specific individuals, females and gay men share an attraction for men, whereas males and lesbians share an attraction for women. Genital structures and the brain (supporting behavior) presumably differentiate at different times during embryonic life, hence steroid action in the brain may be affected while remaining normal in the genital skin. To produce its effects, testosterone must often be metabolized in its target structures, bind to specific receptors, and then activate complex intracellular signaling cascades, eventually leading to changes in protein synthesis and/or neural activity. Any aspect of this complex suite of actions could be deficient in the brain but not in the periphery, leading also to a discrepancy between somatic sex differentiation and sexual orientation.
In studies on occupational preferences that noted that all the masculine occupations were thing-orientated, whereas at least three of the feminine occupations were people orientated. The study showed a major gender shift among gay men and women in the people-thing dimention, with gay mens interests shifted toward people like straight women and gay womens shifted towards things like heterosexual men.
At least two studies have reported that gay men score higher than straight men on tests of empathy-a female favoring trait. Gay men and bisexual men also score higher on tests of aesthetic interest, another female favouring trait. Several studies have reported that gay men are less physically aggressive than heterosexual men and one of these found lesbians are more physically aggressive than heterosexual women. Gay people also tend to be gender shifted in instrumentality and expressiveness(these are sets of male-favouring traits)
No one is 100% male-typical or 100% female-typical, but on average homosexual people are generally more atypical than heterosexual people. Gay men are shifted in a female direction compared with straight men, and lesbians are shifted in a male direction compared with straight women. These are only shifts and not complete gender reversals, and they don't affect every gender trait. Gay men have at least some gender atypical traits(some more than others) but few have the entire package. Gay people remain gender typical in a variety of traits, especially those related to sexuality, such as their interest in casual sex. Similarly not all straight people are completely gender typical either. A study found that a minority of straight people share a predisposing factor with gay people of the same sex. It's likely this predisposing factor is one that predicts gender nonconformity in childhood and/or in adulthood. It has been hypothesized that homosexuality results from inhereting a set of several feminizing genes. If this hypothesis is correct, the straight men who share a predisposing factor with gay men might be those who have inherited some of these feminizing genes, but not enough to make them gay.