February 9, 2007

It's all in the head

I've never seen persuasive evidence that homosexual men have less muscularity or athletic ability than straight men.

If ballet was considered a sport, it would be one of the most physically demanding. If the three greatest male ballet dancers of all time were Nijinsky, Nureyev (died of AIDS, and Baryshnikov, well, you have one flagrant heterosexual and two who were either homosexual or bisexual.

Similarly, I've always wondered how the wonderful Broadway tap-dancer and choreographer Tommy Tune, winner of nine Tonys, who is 6'-6" and gay, would have done as a small forward in basketball back in the early 1960s. I suspect that if he cared about sports, he would have been a star. Instead, he cared about dancing.

So, while sex hormones (and/or sex hormone receptors) likely play a role in influencing whether a man is homosexual or heterosexual, it must be a tightly-focused effect, probably prenatal or in early childhood. It's probably not a case of how much testosterone you have in your bloodstream as an adult. For example, blogger Andrew Sullivan has been taking prescription testosterone boosters since the 1990s, and while they've made him more muscular, they certainly haven't made him straight!


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, anonymous, such explanatory power you religionists have! Our Holy God arbitrarily reprobates people to show his power and "glory" - quick, get on the hate bandwagon!

Who needs the Qu'ran when you have homegrown mouth-breathers like this?

Anonymous said...

Nijinsky wasn't a bandit, Steve. Read The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky.