Masculine or Feminine Brain?

January 18, 2007

Dear Khushies,

Check out this test at BBC to find out if your brain is more womanly or manly!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sex/add_user.shtml?users=1

Stereotypes and Speculations

I think the test outcome is of added interest for gays and lesbians than for heterosexuals. While a heterosexual woman may be more likely to have an average feminine brain (by average I mean her score will match the average scores of other hetero women), I wonder if lesbians' scores will tend to be less feminine and more masculine. Similarly, maybe a gay man's brain might be less masculine and more feminine than a straight man's!

Also, a butch lesbian's brain might be more masculine than a femme's; similarly a gay guy top might have a more masculine brain than a gay bottom. Or maybe not! These are my naive conjectures, and such sweeping stereotypical speculations may not be necessarily true. If you take this test, then you will be able to shed light on these speculations.

The test takes about 20 minutes, and scores are calculated based on how good or bad you are at doing certain tasks that men tend to be better at (i.e. masculine tasks), versus feminine tasks.

My Scores

My own test results surprised me. As a gay man, I expected I would have a feminine brain, or at least a score of 0% i.e. lying exactly midway between masculine and feminine, like my heterosexual sister does. But I got a score of 50% masculine, which is exactly equal to the score of an average male, sexuality notwithstanding. So I was like, "Does that mean I'm oozing with masculinity and machismo?" Quite the contrary! I got an average male score not because I'm good at tasks that men are good at, but because I am utterly lousy at performing feminine tasks.

In one part of the test, we are shown 10 pairs of eyes with different expressions, and we have to figure out the emotion the eyes express. I thought I did well, but I got just 2 out of 10 correct, whereas men and women get 6.5 correct. (Result: you can make all kinds of faces at me, and that will give me now clue about how you're feeling.)

My empathy score was 4/20, which is way below the male average of 8 and the female average of 10.5. This was embarrassing, since I recently benefited from the outpouring of empathy and help from KhushDC after I went through a near-fatal accident and a month-long hospitalization. I was like, "I'm bad at giving to others what others gave me."

Manly Men

I also prefer men with masculine faces, unlike a couple of my gay guy friends who actually prefer men with feminine faces. Maybe tops have their kind of a preference, and bottoms, my kind! My hand fingers are hyper-masculine: the ratio of my index finger to my ring finger is 0.96, which is way below the male and female averages of 0.98 and 0.99. I remember reading a research paper in the journal Nature a few years ago which said gay men who have elder brothers tend to be exposed to higher levels of male hormones in the womb, thus leading to more dissimilar-length fingers, and possibly also to their homosexuality. I do fit that profile of being a second son.

In another part of the test, we had to memorize the locations of about 20 objects, and later identify the objects that had moved. This is a feminine task, and I identified just 4 moved objects correctly. My score was a low 14%, while males average 40% and females 46%. So the bottom line for me is: "I may not be man enough to be a man, but I utterly ain't no woman, which forces me to be a man."

I'm sorry about the 'longness' of this post. Besides inviting you to take the test, I also wanted to express my speculations about connections between sexual orientation and brain type. I also decided to elaborate on my own test scores - inglorious though they are - just so that you can compare your performance with mine if you do take the test. Pat yourself on the back if your masculine or feminine brain is the result of abilities of one rather than disabilities of the other!

Bye,
Ninad