A reader emailed me about Grosjean et al (2007), an article released Sunday in Nature Neuroscience about the mating choices of fruit flies. They found that homosexual activity could be "turned on and off" in experimentally mutated drosophila melanogaster males. The mutation is in a gene that the team has named GB, or "genderblind." The GB gene ( Read more... )

Johnson et al (2007), in three experiments, examine the relationships between body shape, gait, sexuality, and perceived sexuality. They conclude that when the gender of body type (hourglass vs. tubular) and gait (hip-sway vs. shoulder-swagger) conflict, a person is more likely to be perceived as homosexual, and one of their experiments suggests ( Read more... )

minerva42 points out a story in the June 25th issue of New York Magazine by David France (2007) on possibly perceptible correlates to "gayness." France discussed physical/visible differences between gay and straight people with Richard Lippa, who is currently researching hair whorl direction as a possible correlate, according to the article. Lippa ( Read more... )

Gay men and women have many challenges in the workplace. Some are similar; some are different. Chung and Harmon (1994) suggest that gay men are more likely to be interested in traditionally feminine careers than straight men, although they found that masculinity/femininity was not a predictor (as determined by BSRI). Adams et al (2005) did not ( Read more... )

Judy Skatssoon (6/4/2007), writing for news.com.au, says that the University of Warwick has "dealt heterosexual women a final indignity." Skatssoon is referring to research by Michael Tlauka that found differences in mental rotation ability, with straight men scoring the highest while straight women scored the lowest. However, although the news ( Read more... )

Gregory Herek (2002) surveyed attitudes toward bisexuality in 1997 and 1999 and found an interesting sex difference: men felt differently about gay and bisexual women than about gay and bisexual men, but women felt differently about bisexual men and women than gay men and women. On one measure, Herek reports "feelings toward bisexuals were colder ( Read more... )

In a Cal State Fullerton press release (3/29/07), some highlights from a BBC online survey conducted by Richard Lippa are discussed. More complete findings (Blanchard and Lippa, 2007) were published in the April issue of Archives of Sexual Behavior. The survey, which was taken over 200,000 times, found a relationship between hand preference and ( Read more... )

Gender roles in heterosexual dating have been extensively studied. For example, Karl Grammer (1990) suggests that males use body language to signal dominance, whereas women's body language indicates both submission and "bodily self-presentation." Grammer (2000) points out ten years later that women seem to be in control of opposite-sex ( Read more... )

Jiang et al (2006) tested the effect of "invisible" erotic pictures on the attention of gay/bisexual and heterosexual males and females. After comparing attraction/repulsion to male or female erotic stumuli, Jiang et al found that while gay men responded like heterosexual women to the suppressed images, gay/bisexual women responded in between this ( Read more... )

As early as John Corso (1959), it has been documented that women tend to have more sensitive hearing than men, and have less variability in hearing sensitivity than men do. McFadden (1998) notes that not only are women more sensitive to noise, but that they also have stronger evoked otoacoustic emissions (EOAEs) (sounds produced by the inner ear, ( Read more... )