Gay men read maps like women

Monday, February 28th, 2005

Despite the headline, Gay men read maps like women, it appears that gay men use both masculine and feminine strategies for navigating:

Gay men employ the same strategies for navigating as women — using landmarks to find their way around — a new study suggests.

But they also use the strategies typically used by straight men, such as using compass directions and distances. In contrast, gay women read maps just like straight women, reveals the study of 80 heterosexual and homosexual men and women.

‘Gay men adopt male and female strategies. Therefore their brains are a sexual mosaic,’ explains Qazi Rahman, a psychobiologist who led the study at the University of East London, UK. ‘It’s not simply that lesbians have men’s brains and gay men have women’s brains.’

The stereotype that women are relatively poor map readers is borne out by a reasonable bulk of scientific literature, notes Rahman. ‘Men, particularly, excel at spatial navigation.’ The new study might help researchers understand how cognitive differences and sexual orientation develop in the womb, he says.

(Hat tip to GeekPress.)

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