Gay men 'as bad as women with maps'

[PorkyFatBoy]

From today's Times Newspaper

WOMEN, by common consent, cannot read maps. And nor, according to experiments, can gay men.

Presented with a map and asked to memorise a route, gay men used many of the strategies women do when navigating. Rather than orientating themselves by the points of the compass, as straight men tend to do, the gay men navigated by means of landmarks — “go past the church and then turn right” — the approach often used by women.

But gay men are not exclusively female in their map-reading techniques, say Qazi Rahman and colleagues from the University of East London in the journal Behavioural Neuroscience. They use other navigational strategies, suggesting that their brains adopt male and female traits. Dr Rahman investigated the map-reading ability of 20 straight men, 20 gay men, 20 straight women and 20 lesbians. He found that gay men used significantly more landmarks than straight men. In this, they were like women. It was unlikely that the differences were due to gay men being more verbose, as the study controlled for verbal ability. Lesbians were just like straight women. Dr Rahman believes that the hippocampus region of the brain might be involved. One study in 2000 showed differences in the activity of this region in men and women during navigation.

[Mrs H.]

I think Dr Quazi Gayman ought to have something better to do with his time (anyway - the navigating by turning left at the chuch sounds like a better use of attack points - what do straight men do - say I'll run north by north west for 500 metres then take a bearing due east)

[brooner]

so thats why eddie can't orienteer...

[Stodgetta]

Bad day at the office G?

[b.toff]

oooohhh! fluffy bunnies! where the fluffing hell am i?

[Asian]

Yes it's true, Eddie takes it up the botty whilst drinking Bicardi Breezer hence he can't orienteer!!!

[Guest88]

I read a "pop" psychology book (not a factual science book) which proposed that this was the case, as well as a lot of other propositions about how fully gay men have a lot of brain similarities to women....

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/0767907639/104-2957721-1410329?_encoding=UTF8&n=283155&s=books

It proposes that gay men on average like dressing up, wearing make-up, talking a lot more on average than straight men.

So this book went on, it is due to the amount of testosterone received by the embryo in the womb - men are supposed to receive a lot more than women, but some get hardly any, and are likely to become gay.

The book also spends a long time arguing the proposition that not many women have a high level of spatial skills compared to men, which it cites as the reason for a low percentage of women study such subjects as physics, mathematics, engineering and architecture. Of course spatial skills are also useful in map-reading or orienteering.

So if there is a big contingent of elite-level gay orienteers, this would throw some doubt on these "theories".......

[Mrs H.]

How very masculine of you - i presume you are not talking about gay female elite orienteers - which might rather prove the theory! ha ha

[Copepod]

There might be another reason for females not following careers in engineering, physics etc. After a year of A level physics in a class with only 3 girls among about 25, with a male teacher who kept telling us that girls shouldn't do physics and that children shouldn't do science if their parents weren't scientists (mine were a lawyer working in the water industry and a nurse / health visitor / further education teacher, so had some science content in their jobs), I gave up A Maths, but continued in a different class with physics and chemistry, plus did the only A/O science available - psychology. Perhaps he was wrong, as I later gained a BSc Marine Biology (class 2.1) and MSc Environmental Technology from Imperial College, a well-respected science institute.

[Jene]

i agree with that....theres 2 gals inc. me in my physics a-level class of about 25 ish i think....with a male teacher...tho maths is split half n half n our engineering is split 3 girls 12 lads so not as bad as physics...does this make me masculine!?! hmmmmm lol

[*Carol*]

whereas im at an all girls 6th form, and theres about 25 of us (out of 128) taking physics with even more doing chemisty/biology, and over 50 taking maths... i'd hate to think we were all masculine!

[Guest88]

Well, it's difficult of course to comment in individual cases...especially when not all of the facts are known.

And I don't think there's any doubt that some women are put off maths / physics / engineering / architecture (where the differences are greatest), by being in a minority and the expectations of others....

The book proposes that the sheer lack of numbers in general of women doing these subjects / vocations can not be explained by this alone, and is more to do with the fact that most women are just not as interested in those areas (and that this is related to their different brains). Others disagree.

I should add by the way (to appease mrs h), that the book also spends a great deal of time discussing the areas in which (it proposes that) women in general have stronger skills: communication, relationship building, stronger sense skills (apart from long distance vision) (and others) - and the "evolutionary" reasons for this, it's an interesting read.....

[J.Tullster]

i go to a specialist science status school where they really plug science to both sexes, few girls chose physics. think it just reflects societies interests.

What G was trying to say was girls don't understand complex things like science, and therefor pick cooking and flower arranging instead

[Mrs H.]

Give the boy a slap I'm sure g has a better idea of which side his bread is buttered

[bendover]

treading on thin ice there G....

would you like me to lend you a shovel so that you can dig yourself a bigger hole?