Wednesday 5 April 2017

Hormone exposure before birth affects sexual orientation

Heya everybody,

I just came across a small new study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior. The study by Reinisch, Mortensen and Sanders, called Prenatal Exposure to Progesterone Affects Sexual Orientation in Humans examines data from older studies and comes to some interesting conclusions.

The study got actually some media coverage in several languages. Here is one link to the Medical Daily and another one to Warren Throckmorton’s blog, where the press release is quoted in full.

Even though the study is small, the authors believe they can draw sound conclusions. This is another piece of evidence for the influence of sex hormones in shaping the human brain and, as a result, human identity. Interestingly, while the study is about sexual orientation, the first sentence of the authors in the abstract of the study is Prenatal sex hormone levels affect physical and behavioral sexual differentiation in animals and humans.

On a side note: Some time ago I encountered a particularly vile commenter on Warren Throckmorton’s blog, saying that transgender people enable the rape of minors, which shocked me quite a bit at the time. The offensive comments have been deleted, I should have taken a screenshot to document the vitriol and hate some people hold for others. However, even this type of bizzare, vicious madness is no match for terrorists, who think that their opinion is so superior to the opinion of fellow human beings that they have the right to kill them. Oh, and they not only think that, they act on it, too.

Take care – Peace and Light ✨