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Does Being a Jock Make a Man Gay?

Timothy Noah
Posted Thursday, March 1, 2001, at 2:24 PM ET

The theory that ring finger size is destiny has resurfaced. Faithful Chatterbox readers will recall that a year ago this column asked, "Does A Short Index Finger Make You Gay?" Chatterbox cited a study published in Nature (click here to read a press release on the findings) maintaining that lesbians tend to have ring fingers that are exceptionally long relative to their index fingers, apparently because their mothers had high levels of male hormones in the womb. A less intuitive finding was that gay men also tended to have long ring fingers, owing, again, to their mothers having high levels of male hormones in the womb, though this correlation was more tentative. Mark Breedlove, the Berkeley psychology professor who authored the study, used the occasion to suggest that gay men, far from being feminized men, were in fact hypermasculinized men. Chatterbox himself struck a rigorously neutral pose, then stated Chatterbox's Law of Biological Determinism: Conservatives believe that genes determine everything except homosexuality, while liberals believe that genes determine nothing except homosexuality.

The latest ring finger study comes from John Manning and Rogan Taylor of the University of Liverpool. It states that excellence in athletics correlates with a long ring finger. Interestingly, though, the press release makes no mention of Breedlove's belief that male hypermasculinity correlates with homosexuality. (Chatterbox was unable to access the paper itself, which was published in the January issue of Evolution and Human Behavior.) Neither do any of the news stories writing up the Liverpool study that have appeared in the British press. The reason, Chatterbox suspects, is that the Liverpool study actually names several prominent male soccer players who participated. Presumably they would not be amused by any speculation about their sexual orientation.

[Update, 2:20 p.m. PT: Having now seen the study itself, Chatterbox can report that it does briefly note that exposure to high levels of male hormones in the womb is associated with "male homosexuality." It cites not Breedlove but an earlier study by Manning. In addition, it says, high levels of male hormones in the womb correlate with autism, left-handedness, and "male membership of a symphony orchestra." The study concludes that heightened athletic ability is "useful in intrasexual competition. ... [I]t is to be expected that high status and wealth are attributes that are of interest to women in their choice of sexual partner." But how can it be useful in intrasexual competition if gifted athletes are disproportionately likely to engage in intersexual competition? Moreover, why aren't we seeing women throwing themselves at male oboists?]

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[Notes from the Fray Editor: Chatterbox recently suggested to the Fray Editor that a comment on her mysterious past might chime well with his then-current article ("Fugitive Financiers", crime and criminals etc). But this is an even better opportunity: her long-ago knowledge of the Liverpool FC soccer team (the best team in the world) is such that... no, it would be unfair to use this information in this context.

Others are less shy about their personal experiences: George Bailey's 74-year old wife likes the flautist at the Boston Symphony, while Jeff the Webmaster, here, finds "long-fingered male oboists particularly attractive". And we can only guess at Peter Webb's experience, and how he knows that it is not unusual for women to throw themselves at male oboists (though another poster says oboists are too busy fussing about reeds). Then David V, here, mutters about guitarists and violinists and says "You should have definitely checked this story with Earthling"--we assume because Robert Wright is an expert on behavior rather than because David V knows something we don't about his musical abilities.

We specially liked Jon's personal input below, and we have a Fray dream that someone will print it elsewhere, and run a contest to see if readers could reconstruct the article which led to such a memorably specific comment.]


Being the heterosexual identical twin of a gay identical twin who played oboe from seventh grade well into college, I can relate this anecdote. The girls always were attracted to my brother before they were attracted to me and he had more than his share of admirers. So at least in one instance, attractive, young women did throw themselves disproportionately at my gay, oboist twin brother.

--Jon

(To reply, click here.)


The ancient Greeks took it for granted that homosexuals were inherently more masculine than heterosexuals. Men who like women obviously have some affinity for the feminine, while men who like men are udilutedly masculine. Plato and Aristotle both say things like this explicitly, though such concerns are hardly central to their thinking. The most striking evidence that the Greek pattern of stereotyping differs from our own lies in the works of Aristophanes. His plays are full of jokes based on homosexuality and on transvestitism, but I am not aware of a single example of these two things intersecting at all. It simply didn't occur to him that a man dressing like a woman would have anything to do with his being attractive to other men. He probably would have found the idea genuinely perverted and shocking.

What is puzzling in all of this is that our more current stereotype running the opposite direction (the feminized gay man) should have had enough credence that the rather weak and preliminary scientific evidence cited to the contrary would create any sense of conventional wisdom toppling. Some stereotype that is no more than two or three generations old is treated as the wisdom of the ages. I have heard people express the ardent wish that we should discover alien intelligence in the galaxy, so as to gain an invaluably objective perspective on our undoubtedly limited conventional wisdom. I always advise these people to read some Plato, or a book of the Bible. Once you dig past the rather superficial layer of what self-appointed modern experts say about such books, they provide a perspective about as alien as any human could digest in a lifetime.

--Glen Tomkins

(To reply, click here.)


The very idea that sport could possibly promote male homosexuality is laughable. It would be hard to find a more homophobic environment than in American male sport! Player agent Leigh Steinberg sadly admitted what wee all know: a murderer or bank robber would be an easier sell to most NFL teams or advertisers than an out homosexual.
On the other hand, the one with the long fingers, women's sport is far more accepting of, and friendly to homosexuality in its ranks, both among players and their fans.

--Rich Mahady

(To reply, click here.)

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