Am I gay? Look no further...

[BluegrassCat]

Nice find, Amy. His explanation for the attraction seems a little ad hoc but I think the real significance of the research is how extremely common the attraction is.

[RallyCola]

i am not going to speak directly to what ogi preaches but as I know the man himself...and he is full of shit most of the time, you have to realize a few things....

1...i am cited in his book...though we argued over him citing me. he willfully twists one of the theories i have supported...but I applauded him for that because it forced me to examine and reword it...so cheers to him for making me re-examine my own theories.

2...ogi is an interesting guy but universally panned for his BOOK and the manner in which he conducted his "research"
a) his PhD is NOT in psychology but basically he was a computational neuroscience. He modeled what he claimed is a data-mining engine that correlated with the ability of the human brain to discern visual patterns. (Think Russel Crowe in A Beautiful Mind when looking at newspapers). The guy is not a behavioral neuroscientist. that is not to say that he can't change career perspectives, but he was trained as a modeler...if i want someone to write me something in matlab or neuron, i'll call him. if i want someone that understands the motivation of sexual behavior, i will call at Dr. Phil before I call him.
b) how he arrived at the conclusions he reached is quite suspect and the reason he printed a BOOK. Ogas has not been able to get his theories published in good peer reviewed journals because he applied a model he wrote to web queries. it is a very flawed approach because he is not able to distinguish between practice and fantasy with his web based search approach. he latched on ideas on motivation and decision making that he is ill equipped to discuss. He chose to produce a popular book rather than a research article because most in the field do not agree with him or his findings.

3...ogi himself has dated tgirls and enjoys tgirl porn so his conclusions are quite suspect because he will taint them with his own bias (which is exactly what i do too). in fact that is how we met. at SFN in san diego in 2007, i visited an escort that I found on craigslist. she told me that she was getting alot of calls with the conference in town. so i put up an ad on CL saying that i was a neuroscientist into tgirls and just looking to see if anyone else at the conference was too...i met quite a few people that way.

[BellaBellucci]

'Am I gay,' they ask.

I dunno. Are you?

~BB~

[BluegrassCat]

3...ogi himself has dated tgirls and enjoys tgirl porn

HA! In the video tgirl fans are very clearly "they" not "we". No wonder he reassures us that we're straight.

[iago_delgado]

Interesting that this seems to be some sort of university course, so it means folks are studying it seriously. However, it is unfortunate that it is perhaps 20 years behind the times on how the brains of men (straight or otherwise) really work.

Ditto women (straight or otherwise).

Then the really interesting question - why do some people (transsexuals), get body rigged out in one way and brain rigged out the other way?

[RallyCola]

HA! In the video tgirl fans are very clearly "they" not "we". No wonder he reassures us that we're straight.

the thing about that is that everyone in behavioral neuroscience likes to essentially call each other out for biases based on personal behavior. if you are a guy and talking about the so-called neurobiology of racism...your colleagues are just going to pounce on anything you say outside of your papers or lectures, that can be construed as racist so that they can say you are full of it.

if ogi came out and said "i like tranny cock" he would lose credibility in the debate because his colleagues would accuse him of skewing his results towards his bias. this isn't the case usually in cellular neuroscience or physiology, but in behavioral neuroscience...the data really can be forced to fit the hypothesis quite easily depending on how you frame it.

[RallyCola]

Interesting that this seems to be some sort of university course, so it means folks are studying it seriously. However, it is unfortunate that it is perhaps 20 years behind the times on how the brains of men (straight or otherwise) really work.

Ditto women (straight or otherwise).

Then the really interesting question - why do some people (transsexuals), get body rigged out in one way and brain rigged out the other way?

i'll give you the short short SHORT answer.

genetic sex is determined solely by chance of which of a dude's swimmers penetrate the egg. That said, one X chromosome is inactivated during prenatal development to allow male development. We all start out essentially female and then turn into males. So...the combination of genetic predetermination, x chromosome inactivation, hormonal combination (and some more "ations" i don't want to get into) determine the genetic sex of an individual.

Gender identity is determined by a combination of these factors and social learning. It is generally accepted, by most that do not consider transgenderism a social disorder, that the neuroendocrine chemistry of transgendered individuals is altered quite possibly as early as 7-8 weeks, where testosterone is first produced (some believe even earlier). So the combination of this "non-traditional" neurochemistry with social cues which teach us gender idenity, we have tgirls.

[Tobe]

i'll give you the short short SHORT answer.

genetic sex is determined solely by chance of which of a dude's swimmers penetrate the egg. That said, one X chromosome is inactivated during prenatal development to allow male development. We all start out essentially female and then turn into males. So...the combination of genetic predetermination, x chromosome inactivation, hormonal combination (and some more "ations" i don't want to get into) determine the genetic sex of an individual.

Gender identity is determined by a combination of these factors and social learning. It is generally accepted, by most that do not consider transgenderism a social disorder, that the neuroendocrine chemistry of transgendered individuals is altered quite possibly as early as 7-8 weeks, where testosterone is first produced (some believe even earlier). So the combination of this "non-traditional" neurochemistry with social cues which teach us gender idenity, we have tgirls.

The gist of what you wrote is correct. However, it is not X-inactivation that causes one to have a male phenotype. The default plan, in the absence of a Y chromosome is female. Genes on the Y chromosome cause "maleness." Inactivation of the sole X chromosome in the male would lead to death as the Y chromosome does not have enough genetic information on its own.

X inactivation is most often seen in women. Essentially, any cell that has more than one X chromosome has the excess ones inactivated (Barr bodies).

Examples:
46,XX (classic female genotype) has one active X and one Barr body.
47,XXX will look female and will have 2 Barr bodies
45,X will look female and has 0 Barr bodies (this strangely does cause certain issues and leads to Turner syndrome)

46,XY (classic male genotype) has one active X and one active Y
45,Y Cannot survive and gets spontaneously aborted
47,XXY will look male and will have 1 Barr body (Klinefelter syndrome)
48,XXXY will look male and will have 2 Barr bodies
47,XYY will look male and has 0 Barr bodies

[AmyDaly]

Interesting stuff Rally...glad I posted this here.

[scroller]

I would like to hear deeper theories or proposed mechanisms behind this all. I can see men being attracted to breasts, butts, and feet (as indicators of youth, health, and fertility). However, what would be the evolutionary advantage of a focus by men on others' penises? Is it an aspect of curiosity and/or competition? Is it a projection of self-love and attraction to self?

Conjecture: Maybe self-reinforcing arousal? Dick starts to get hard from possible partner nearby and brain reads that as reason to get further aroused? (Under the "or gate" understanding, should take just one thing to start it off.)