Gay men read maps like women

Commentary — Gay men employ the same strategies for navigating as women, a new study suggests. But this study's assumptions are challengeable to say the least.

Quoting the New Scientist story:

Gay men employ the same strategies for navigating as women — using landmarks to find their way around — a new study suggests.
But they also use the strategies typically used by straight men, such as using compass directions and distances. In contrast, gay women read maps just like straight women, reveals the study of 80 heterosexual and homosexual men and women.

The story is based on a study led by Qazi Rahman and published in Behavioral Neuroscience. For the record, Qazi Rahman also led a study published in the October 2003 issue of Behavioral Neuroscience that explored contributing biological factors for homosexuality.

I mention the previous research here as well because I think both deserve the same commentary. Indeed, both share the assumption you can find an automatic physiological response that is not developed as a result of learning or social interaction.

This assumption is extremely challengeable. We'll have plenty of opportunities to discuss this again in future posts and columns, so I'll remain very to-the-point here:

• No research I know of proves that the mind has no influence at all on body cells and groups thereof
• Some observations, such as fakirs and yoga practitioners, tend to suggest the mind can have a major influence on the body
• Other observations, done by anthropologists, tend to suggest that even obviously inborn things such as the feeling of pain are in fact cultural in nature, i.e. your notion of pain differs from a culture to another

We can summarize these observations by: The mind can have an active and a passive influence on the body. And this influence is far greater than what most academics are willing to admit. Now, let's take a closer look at the researches' observations:

The pre-pulse inhibition response rate measures in the October 2003 paper may just as well be a behavior gained from opposite-sex mimicry. And what proportion of the behavior is inborn in the first place? What if the behavior came from same-sex mimicry — and opposite-sex differentiation — in the first place?

Likewise, sexual speech patterns and sexual navigation patterns look very much like stereotype labels to me. Both can come from same-sex mimicry along with opposite-sex differentiation just as well. Which, after generations and generations of same-sex mimicry, become so blatant in our societies that even respected researchers think they are innate.