Thanks to Emi @ Intersex Initiative for commenting that the study results I posted the other day have since been discredited by the Intersex Initiative. And, while the article I cited showed a date of September 27, 2004 at the top, it appears they were reporting on an OLD study! Eek. I hate getting it so wrong... :-(

I will correct the old post. Meanwhile, here are snips from the article Emi is referring to:

Reuters Report About the UCLA "Brain Sex" Study Baseless

In the article titled "Sexual Identity Hard-Wired by Genetics," Reuters reported on October 20 that one's sexual or gender identity is "wired into the genes," citing the new research by UCLA geneticist Eric Vilain and colleagues. According to Vilain, the findings would suggest that "sexual identity is rooted in every person's biology before birth" and that this knowledge may be used to ensure that intersex babies are assigned the correct gender. "If physicians could predict the gender of newborns with ambiguous genitalia at birth, we would make less mistakes in gender assignment," Vilain said. However, none of this is actually established or discussed in the actual research paper this news report is based on.

The actual research published in Molecular Brain Research (Vol. 118, pgs. 82-90) is titled "Sexually dimorphic gene expression in mouse brain precedes gonadal differentiation," and this title summarizes the entire paper accurately: this study shows that female and male mice develop different brain structure even before their gonads are formed. The significance of this study is that sex differences in the brain have been traditionally said to be caused by the different levels of hormones produced by the gonads--testes for males, ovaries for females....

September 28, 2004 in Science, Sex and Sadomasochism, Sexual Health | Permalink

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