Heterosexual Subjects Research Articles

Incidence of hepatitis C virus (HCV) in a multicenter cohort of HIV-positive patients in Spain 2004-2011: increasing rates of HCV diagnosis but not of HCV seroconversions.

ObjectivesWe aim to describe rates and risk factors of Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) diagnoses, follow-up HCV testing and HCV seroconversion from 2004–2011 in a cohort of HIV-positive persons in Spain.MethodsCoRIS is a multicentre, open and prospective cohort recruiting adult HIV-positive patients naïve to antiretroviral therapy. We analysed patients with at least one negative and one follow-up HCV serology. Incidence Rates (IR) were calculated and multivariate Poisson regression was used to estimate adjusted Rates Ratios (aIRR).ResultsOf 2112 subjects, 53 HCV diagnoses were observed, IR = 0.93/100py (95%CI: 0.7–1.2). IR increased from 0.88 in 2004–05 to 1.36 in 2010–11 (aIRR = 1.55; 95%CI: 0.37–6.55). In men who have sex with men (MSM) from 0.76 to 1.10 (aIRR = 1.45; 95%CI: 0.31–6.82); in heterosexual (HTX) subjects from 1.19 to 1.28 (aIRR = 1.08; 95%CI: 0.11–10.24). HCV seroconversion rates decreased from 1.77 to 0.65 (aIRR = 0.37; 95%CI: 0.12–1.11); in MSM from 1.06 to 0.49 (aIRR = 0.46; 95%CI: 0.09–2.31); in HTX from 2.55 to 0.59 (aIRR = 0.23; 95%CI: 0.06–0.98). HCV infection risk was higher for injecting drug users (IDU) compared to HTX (aIRR = 9.63;95%CI: 2.9–32.2); among MSM, for subjects aged 40–50 compared to 30 or less (IRR = 3.21; 95%CI: 1.7–6.2); and among HTX, for female sex (aIRR = 2.35; 95%CI: 1.03–5.34) and <200 CD4-count (aIRR = 2.39; 95%CI: 0.83–6.89).ConclusionWe report increases in HCV diagnoses rates which seem secondary to intensification of HCV follow-up testing but not to rises in HCV infection rates. HCV IR is higher in IDU. In MSM, HCV IR increases with age. Among HTX, HCV IR is higher in women and in subjects with impaired immunological situation.

Health literacy, source of information and impact on adherence to therapy in people living with HIV.

IntroductionAdequate information and health literacy (HL) has a high impact on patients understanding on the causes and consequences of many chronic diseases, including HIV, and is a crucial prerequisite to ensure adherence to therapy regimens. Several Austrian patient organizations developed an online survey together with MSD (the so-called “PAB-test”) aimed to evaluate how people living with HIV perceive the level of care in Austria.Materials and MethodsAn online survey has been developed to assess HL in people living with HIV and to evaluate the impact of HL on therapy adherence. HL was assessed with seven items regarding the self-rated comprehension of HIV related information, which showed a high reliability (Cronbach's alpha=0.876). A low health literacy was defined by reaching a score below the median of 20 points in the related indicator.ResultsA total of 303 subjects completed the questionnaire. Women slightly had more often a low HL than men (57.1% vs 44.7%, p=0.335). Heterosexual subjects had more often a low HL compared to homosexual ones (58.3% vs 38.1%, p=0.007). Health literacy slightly increased with age (not significant). An increasing education level correlated with higher HL, (66.7%, 46.2%, and 38.9% of persons showed low HL with primary, secondary and tertiary education, respectively, p=0.037). The number of missed appointments with the HIV physician was significantly higher in the low HL population (30.0% vs 14.4%, p=0.002), which also showed to be more prone to interrupt the therapy without consulting a physician (22.4% vs 9.8%, p=0.006). The low HL population, however, did not report of having forgotten the medication intake more often than the one with high HL (33.1% vs 39.1%, p=0.305). The most important source of information is the treating physician, followed by NGOs/patient organizations and the internet (Figure 1). ConclusionsThere are significant differences in HL between different sub-groups in the HIV community. Low HL is significantly associated with a higher frequency of missed doctor appointments and interruptions of treatment, but does not impact adherence to therapy (self-reported). The identified information providers (medical doctors, NGOs/patient organizations) should be encouraged to contribute towards increased HL in HIV patients.

Predictors of return rate for an HIV-positive result in a French Voluntary Counseling and Testing centre

Bichat Hospital's free and anonymous Voluntary Counseling and Testing centre in Paris is widely visited, with a high rate of HIV-positive diagnosis. This study proposed, in this centre, to describe the HIV newly-diagnosed patients over an 8-year period and to determinate risk factors for failure to return for a positive result. Higher risk for failure to return was found among the heterosexual subjects regardless of their socio-economic background.

Straight subjectivities in homonormative spaces: moving towards a new, ‘dynamic’ heteronormativity?

Although scholars have explored geographies of heterosexuality for a relatively long time, experiences of heterosexual subjects have been under-researched. Contributing to the discussions around how homo/straight spaces are negotiated, this study analyses how heterosexuals experience and define both homonormative and heteronormative spaces in Seattle. Through a series of interviews and focus groups with self-identified heterosexuals, I explore how these subjects interact with spaces that they recognize as being either straight or gay, and how they negotiate their own identities in relation to those spaces. I also describe how, while refusing to reject heterosexuality, the vast majority of participants expressed discomfort at being defined as someone with a fixed, stable sexual identity, and how they assumed gayness to be non-transgressive and fixed. The results show a paradoxical, complex picture, in which gayness is described as stable and normative, and heterosexuality is depicted as fluid and dynamic. The study illustrates an instance in which homo/straight binaries still shape people’s imagination, while also offering an example of the messy interaction between homonormativity and heteronormativity. What is also suggested is that, experiencing homonormative spaces and performing ‘dynamic’ identities, the respondents renegotiate what being heterosexual means for them reinforcing, however, heterosexual dominance through the definition of a new ‘dynamic’ heteronormativity.

Oxytocin's impact on social face processing is stronger in homosexual than heterosexual men

Oxytocin is an evolutionarily highly preserved neuropeptide that contributes to the regulation of social interactions including the processing of facial stimuli. We hypothesized that its improving effect on social approach behavior depends on perceived sexual features and, consequently, on sexual orientation. In 19 homosexual and 18 heterosexual healthy young men, we investigated the acute effect of intranasal oxytocin (24IU) and placebo, respectively, on the processing of social stimuli as assessed by ratings of trustworthiness, attractiveness and approachability for male and female faces. Faces were each presented with a neutral, a happy, and an angry expression, respectively. In heterosexual subjects, the effect of oxytocin administration was restricted to a decrease in ratings of trustworthiness for angry female faces (p<0.02). In contrast, in homosexual men oxytocin administration robustly increased ratings of attractiveness and approachability for male faces regardless of the facial expression (all p ≤ 0.05), as well as ratings of approachability for happy female faces (p<0.01). Results indicate that homosexual in comparison to heterosexual men display higher sensitivity to oxytocin's enhancing impact on social approach tendencies, suggesting that differences in sexual orientation imply differential oxytocinergic signaling.

Performing Disidentifications: Girls “In Trouble” Experiment with Digital Narratives to Remake Self-Representations

This article uses queer performance theorist José Muñoz’s metaphor of disidentification to interpret digital narratives produced by adolescent girls in the juvenile arbitration program. Muñoz views public artistic performances of marginalized subjects as a liminal strategy. While they cannot embody the normative (“good” middle class, White, heterosexual subject) image, their rebellious (“bad” subject) enactments can lead to further stigmatization. A third, liminal strategy of disidentification allows them to use dominant representations and narratives by shifting, altering, and subverting their logic and ultimately remaking their stigmatized social positions. For the girls in juvenile arbitration who carry an institutional label of law offenders and who are required to conceal their faces to avoid public recognition, working with a digital camera opened up an ambiguous, liminal space of visibility. Through their video and animation performances of disidentification in which they acted as disguised actors and doll animators to produce autobiographic fictions, the girls were able to enter public discourses that stigmatize and label them, and remake and reframe their own representations and subject positions.

For White Girls Only?: Postfeminism and the Politics of Inclusion

Since its inception in the early 1980s, "postfeminism" has become a common appellation for the attitudes and behaviors of young women in the contemporary United States. The article assesses how postfeminism is connected to the discursive deployment of sexuality in the late modern era by examining the socio-historical context out of which postfeminism emerges, reviewing various definitions of postfeminism, and offering a conceptualization of postfeminism as a neoliberal discursive formation. After briefly analyzing the existing scholarship on postfeminism, particularly the ways in which this body of literature privileges a white middle-class, heterosexual subject, the article proposes an intersectional approach to postfeminism in order to more fully understand how postfeminist discourses reproduce inequalities of race, gender, and sexuality, and offers some preliminary thoughts about pop star Nicki Minaj's potential to symbolically rupture postfeminism's discursive boundaries.

Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy is Associated with Decreased Incidence of Sexually Transmitted Diseases in a Taiwanese HIV-Positive Population

There are reports of increased sexual risk behaviors in the HIV-positive population since the introduction of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART). Little is known about the effects of the case management (CM) program and HAART on sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in Taiwan. HIV-positive subjects, who visited the outpatient clinics of Taoyuan General Hospital between 2007 and 2010, were enrolled. A total of 574 subjects and 14,462 person-months were reviewed. Incident STDs occurred in 104 (18.1%) subjects, and the incidence rate was 8.6 (95% confidence interval [CI], 7.1-10.5) per 100 person-years (PY). For men who have sex with men (MSM), heterosexual men and women, and injection drug users (IDU), 19.4 per 100 PY(95% CI, 15.7-24.0), 3.5 per 100 PY (95% CI, 1.4-7.3), and 1.1 per 100 PY (95% CI, 0.4-2.4) of STDs were noted, respectively; (MSM versus IDU and MSM versus heterosexual subjects, p<0.000001; heterosexual subjects versus IDU, p=0.061). Syphilis (59.6%) was the most common STD. Regular CM and no HAART (hazard ratio, 2.58; 95% CI, 1.14-5.84; p=0.02) was significantly associated with STDs in MSM. Though this retrospective study might underestimate the incidence of STDs and not draw the conclusion of causality, we concluded that the CM program and HAART are associated with lower acquisition of STDs in the Taiwanese HIV-positive population.

The “Sassy Woman” and the “Performing Man”: Heterosexual casual sex advice and the (re)constitution of gendered subjectivities

Media forums that provide “sex advice” are a rich source of (sexual) information for heterosexual individuals and have been critically examined for the ways in which they construct heterosexuality (and sexual subjectivities). The representations of (heterosexual) casual sex are also prevalent across the mass media. This paper uses a Foucauldian/poststructuralist mode of discourse analysis to explore how casual sex “advice” in three self-help books (two aimed at women, one aimed at men), and online advice articles, constituted casual sex and masculine and feminine heterosexual subjectivities. Four main (profoundly gendered) subject positions were identified in the texts: the “strategic man”; the “performing man”; the “sassy woman”; and the “vulnerable woman.” It is argued that although some alternative ways of constituting heterosexual identities were provided (particularly for women), gender difference was not only implicated in such advice but also, at times, crudely exaggerated. The implications of these representations are discussed in relation to contemporary heterosexualities, heterosexual sexual identities, and heterosexual power relations.

Claiming Queer Territory in the Study of Subcultures and Popular Music

AbstractFor both the heterosexual and queer subject, subcultural participation and stylistic modes of cultural production and consumption, including popular music, are critical mechanisms aiding in the construction and expression of identity. Yet, in spite of abundant empirical examples of queer music cultures, subcultural studies scholars have paid minimal attention to queer sexualities and their concomitant stylistic modalities. In this article, I claim the importance of queer subterranean music cultures by synthesising significant literatures from various fields of inquiry including cultural sociology, popular musicology and queer studies. To begin, I will briefly clarify to whom and about what queer (theory) speaks. I then go on to offer an overview of subcultural and popular music research paying particular attention to the subaltern queer subject and surveying queer criticism within each field. Accordingly, I discuss various sites of popular music production and subcultural style such as punk and hip‐hop, to show how non‐heterosexual subjects carve space for resistant queer sexualities and merge queer sensibilities with pre‐existing cultural forms. This article consolidates interdisciplinary approaches that will benefit scholars invested in the study of queer subcultures and popular music.

Self-Reported Sexual Desire in Homosexual Men and Women Predicts Preferences for Sexually Dimorphic Facial Cues

Recent studies investigating the relationship between self-reported sexual desire and attraction to same- and opposite-sex individuals have found that homosexual men's sexual desire is positively correlated with their self-reported attraction to own-sex individuals only, while homosexual women's sexual desire is positively correlated with their self-reported attraction to both men and women. These data have been interpreted as evidence that sexual desire strengthens men's pre-existing (i.e., dominant) sexual behaviors and strengthens women's sexual behaviors in general. Here we show that homosexual men's (n=106) scores on the Sexual Desire Inventory-2 (SDI-2) were positively correlated with their preferences for exaggerated sex-typical shape cues in own-sex, but not opposite-sex, faces. Contrary to the hypothesis that sexual desire strengthens women's preferences for sexual dimorphism generally, homosexual women's (n=83) SDI-2 scores were positively correlated with their preferences for exaggerated sex-typical shape cues in opposite-sex faces only. Together with previous research in heterosexual subjects, our findings support the proposal that sexual desire increases the incidence of existing sexual behaviors in homosexual and heterosexual men, and increases the incidence of sexual responses more generally in heterosexual women, although not necessarily in homosexual women.

Sensitivity to oxytocin's effects on social face processing is enhanced in homosexual compared to heterosexual men

Conclusive evidence from human and animal studies indicates that the neuropeptide oxytocin is strongly involved in the regulation of social cognition and social behavior, including attachment, interpersonal trust and emotional processing of social cues. However, it is unclear whether the sexual component of social perception and interaction modulates the social impact of oxytocin in humans. We hypothesized that sexual orientation (homo- vs. heterosexuality) is a critical determinant of oxytocin's effect on the appraisal of facial stimuli in male subjects. In a double-blind, randomized study in 19 homosexual and 18 heterosexual healthy young men, we investigated the acute effect of intranasal oxytocin (24 IU) and placebo, respectively, on ratings of trustworthiness, attractiveness and approachability for male and female faces. Sexual orientation was assessed by means of the Klein Sexual Orientation Grid. Faces were presented once with a neutral expression, once with a happy and once with an angry expression, respectively. Across conditions, ratings strongly depended on the sex of the presented face (male/female) and the sexual orientation of the participant. In heterosexual subjects, no oxytocin effects emerged with the exception of a decrease in rated trustworthiness of angry female faces. In contrast, in homosexual participants oxytocin increased rated attractiveness and approachability of male faces regardless of the facial expression and raised approachability ratings of happy female faces. Results indicate that homosexual in comparison to heterosexual men display increased sensitivity to the enhancing impact of oxytocin on self-rated approach tendencies towards facial stimuli. This effect primarily pertains to same-sex faces and does not appear to depend on the affective tone of the perceived face.

Association Analysis Between the Tag SNP for Sonic Hedgehog rs9333613 Polymorphism and Male Sexual Orientation

Male sexual orientation has been proposed to have genetic components, but previously suggested candidate genes have all received negative results. The human sonic hedgehog (SHH) gene is located in the 7q36 region, which was linked to male sexual orientation in a previous genome-wide association study. SHH is known to play an important role in embryo patterning, and there is evidence connecting it to sexual orientation. In this study, we performed an association analysis of the SHH tag single nucleotide polymorphism rs9333613 in 361 subjects and 319 Chinese male controls. We find a significant difference in genotype and allele distribution between identified homosexuals and heterosexual control subjects, suggesting that the SHH gene could potentially be associated with male sexual orientation.

Desires under reform: Contemporary reconfigurations of family, marriage, love and gendering in a transnational south Indian matrilineal Muslim community

I trace here some connections between contemporary reconfigurations of gendering, family and marriage in a matrilineal Muslim south Indian community (Kerala Koyas). I argue that shifts from joint matrifocal households to small neo-patriarchal households are underscored by market reforms, migration processes, Islamic reformism and by modernist processes which work towards purging queer forms of affect and gender in favour of impeccably gendered heterosexual subjectivities. I also note considerable ambivalence and tension within these moves, and argue against any teleological mappings of such moves that would – first – take for granted and – then – celebrate a shift from Indian ‘arranged marriage’ towards a ‘pure relationship’, founded on romantic and passionate love. In thus article, I present recent academic discussions of Western marriage, Indian middle-class and Indian subaltern marriages, and conclude that many commonly drawn oppositions (‘love’ versus ‘arranged’, ‘companionate’ versus ‘ economic-pragmatic’, ‘till death do us part’ versus ‘easy divorce’) are representational fictions requiring sharp critique. I also address the question of moral panic around female-centred households and proffer feminist and queer critiques. Finally, I build upon work by Saba Mahmood and others who are urging Western academics to examine their own production as liberal subjects.

From Homoerotics of Exile to Homopolitics of Diaspora

In this essay, I argue that during the post-September 11th “war on terror,” the Iranian homosexual became transferred from the position of the abject to the representable subject in transnational political realms. This shift involves Iranian opposition groups, transnational media, the “gay international” (in the words of Joseph A. Massad), and some Iranian diasporic queers who willingly insert themselves into national imaginations of the opposition in diasporic reterritorializations. This hypervisibility is enabled by massive mobilizations of universalized sexual identities on the Internet, discourses of protectorship, valorizations of mobility in cyberspace and diasporic imaginations, and the political and economic opportunities for neoliberal entrepreneurship and expertise during the war on terror. In this process, the normative Iranian homosexual is produced as a victim of backward homophobic Iranian-ness, awaiting representation and liberation by new media technologies, while the Iranian citizen is disciplined through cybergovernmentality as a heterosexual subject who is expected to reject tradition, tolerate or defend homosexuals, and avoid perversion.

&lt;i&gt;The Gendering of Men, 1600–1750, vol. 1, The English Phallus&lt;/i&gt;, and: &lt;i&gt;The Gendering of Men, 1600–1750, vol. 2, Queer Articulations&lt;/i&gt; (review)

Reviewed by: The Gendering of Men, 1600–1750, vol. 1, The English Phallus, and: The Gendering of Men, 1600–1750, vol. 2, Queer Articulations Cameron McFarlane The Gendering of Men, 1600–1750, vol. 1, The English Phallus. By Thomas A. King. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004. Pp. 328. $65.00 (cloth); $24.95 (paper). The Gendering of Men, 1600–1750, vol. 2, Queer Articulations. By Thomas A. King. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2008. Pp. 536. $65.00 (cloth). Thomas A. King’s two-volume The Gendering of Men, 1600–1750 offers a wonderfully rich, wide-ranging, and densely argued reconsideration of the emergence of gender and sexuality in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England. Indeed, so wide-ranging and densely argued are King’s volumes (which, together, comprise over eight hundred pages of text and detailed notes) that this short review will necessarily do an injustice to them; however, both volumes are highly recommended to anyone interested in seventeenth-and eighteenth-century English culture and in the historical formation of gender and sexuality as putatively “natural” categories. King’s study begins with a seemingly straightforward observation: traditional patriarchal society never required an investment of power and entitlement in all men because they were men; indeed, as King reminds us via Randolph Trumbach, in traditional patriarchal society, not just women and children but most men were the property of other men. While that may seem a straightforward observation, no one, I think, has so thoroughly considered its implications. In a culture so fully structured by relationships of super- and subordination, one’s sense of place, of status, of self derived from one’s proximity to—that is, one’s subjection to and dependence upon—a [End Page 563] body of power, most notably, the monarch’s, a body of power that, in turn, conferred power. The achievement of (relative) power and status was thus a practice publicly enacted between bodies, not a quality privately originating in bodies. “Male entitlement,” King writes, “was therefore tenuous, limited to certain spaces and times, a privilege to be exercised and not a bond defining men as psychologically and ideologically equivalent. Men’s sense of selfhood, it follows, was not yet properly a gendered subjectivity, if by gender we mean the subjective experience and social enactment of oneself as a member of a natural group of sex” (1:5, emphasis in original). What King traces brilliantly are the ways in which the emergence of men as a “natural group of sex” was integral to the emergence of a privatized and universalized public sphere resistant to an older order of absolutist subjection; that is, the emergence of gender and sexual subjectivities was inseparable from the political transformations of the long eighteenth century. While King builds on the work of previous scholars in the field, what sets his study apart, what makes it so surprisingly innovative, is his (re)introduction of the term “pederasty” to the discussion of the formation of modern genders and sexualities. As a form of same-sex behavior that is by definition dependent on asymmetrical relations of power, “pederasty,” for King, names “the erotic enactment of early modern subjection and thus its difference from a modern economy of heterosexual, homosexual, and bisexual subjectivities” (1:25). Pederasty, that is, was a form of same-sex behavior that functioned, not inevitably in opposition to order, but to reproduce and, thus, confirm a social and political order of super- and subordination; King is exceptionally persuasive, it seems to me, in demonstrating that we have misread what is actually evidence of pederasty in the historical record—accounts of James I’s favorites, libertine poetics, for example—as evidence of private, subjective desire between men. In reading scenes of pederasty as scenes of desire “between men,” we replicate the mystification performed by the emergence of gender (that is, the occlusion of relationships of subjection)—even when the emergence of gender is our object of study. In King’s account, the surprisingly prominent rejection of sodomy we find in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries should in fact be understood as a rejection of pederasty, which, in turn, should be understood as a rejection of absolutist subjection. What...

The first clinical classification of vaginal introital defects

ObjectivesTo develop a new clinical classification of vaginal introital defects. A literature search failed to show any previous classification or medical nomenclature related to vaginal introital defects. Study designA prospective comparison cohort clinical trial was conducted at the Institute of Gynecology, Inc., St. Petersburg, FL, USA. Group I (study group) included 128 women who presented with an acquired sensation of a wide vagina. Group II (control) consists of 31 healthy subjects. Main outcome measures were to document the presence or absence of vaginal introital site-specific defects, their location within the introitus and their potential contribution to decreased female sexual function. At the initial visit, sexual function was evaluated in heterosexual subjects in both groups with the Pelvic Organ Prolapse/Urinary Incontinence/Sexual Function Short Form Questionnaire (PISQ-12) and answers were assessed on a 5-point Likert scale. The data were reported as mean results. Both groups were evaluated for well-being, depression, somatization, anxiety and hostility with the Symptom Questionnaire (SQ). Chi-square and Fisher exact test were utilized to compare demographics. Statistical significance was considered for P<0.05. The paired “t test” with 0.05 two-sided significance was used. ResultsLocations of vaginal introital defects were multiple in 78 subjects; lateral in 29 and anterior in 18, and an isolated posterior vaginal introital defect was found in 3 subjects. A posterior introital defect associated with an anal sphincter defect was found in one subject. In Group I the mean PISQ-12 at baseline was 29.6 (SD±6.3) and in Group II the mean PISQ-12 was 41.8 (SD±5.6). The sexual function score determined by PISQ-12 was statistically different in subjects with vaginal introital defects compared to controls (P<0.001). ConclusionsA new vaginal introital defect clinical classification based upon location of anatomical defects within the vaginal introitus encompasses: Category I (anterior), Category II (lateral), Category III (posterior) and Category IV (multiple locations).Evidence-based medicine: Level II-1.

Positive erotic picture stimuli for emotion research in heterosexual females

In most experimental studies, emotional pictures are widely used as stimulus material. However, there is still a lack of standardization of picture stimuli displaying erotic relationships, despite the association between a number of psychological problems and severe impairments and problems in intimate relationships. The aim of the study was to test a set of erotic stimuli, with the potential to be used in experimental studies, with heterosexual female subjects. Twenty International Affective Picture System (IAPS) pictures and an additional 100 pictures showing romantic but not explicitly sexual scenes and/or attractive single males were selected. All pictures were rated with respect to valence, arousal, and dominance by 41 heterosexual women and compared to pictures with negative, positive, and neutral emotional valence. Erotic IAPS pictures and our additional erotic pictures did not differ in any of the evaluation dimensions. Analyses of variance (ANOVAs) for valence, arousal, and dominance comparing different picture valence categories showed strong effects for category. However, valence was not significantly different between erotic and positive pictures, while arousal and control were not significantly different between positive and neutral pictures. The pictures of our new set are as positive for heterosexual women as highly positive IAPS pictures, but higher in arousal and dominance. The picture set can be used in experimental psychiatric studies requiring high numbers of stimuli per category. Limitations are the restriction of stimuli application to heterosexual females only and to self-report data.

P03-374 - The neurobiology of sexual orientation

IntroductionHomosexuality is a constantly debated issue as to whether it is determined at birth or a choice (nature vs. nurture). The works of the Kinsey Reports and Dr. Evelyn Hooker published in the 1950s resulted in the removal of homosexuality from the DSM4 in 1973. Since then, it has been mentioned as an illness only in the context of being a putative exacerbating factor in anxiety states. Recent studies reveal a clear cut neurobiology to sexual orientation.MethodsNeurobiologist Simon LeVay conducted a study of brain tissue samples from 41 human autopsies performed at several hospitals in New York and California. He found a significant size difference of the interstitial nuclei of the anterior hypothalamus between homosexual and heterosexual men.ResultsIn addition, Dr. Ivanka Savic-Berglund and Dr. Per Lindström of the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, performed fMRI and PET measurements of cerebral blood flow. Using volumetric studies, they found significant cerebral size differences between homosexual and heterosexual subjects; the brains of homosexual men resembled heterosexual women and homosexual women resembled heterosexual men. Pheromonal studies also have added to the scientific knowledge of sexuality. Sex-atypical connections were found among homosexual participants. Amygdala connectivity differences were found to be statistically significant and provided evidence towards sexual dimorphism between heterosexual and homosexual subjects. Extensive controls were performed during testing to exclude analytical variability.ConclusionsA totally evidence-based medicine presentation will provide current data regarding homosexuality showing differences, or similarities, between the brains of homosexuals and heterosexuals.

HETEROSEXUAL PROFILING

This article unravels some of the complexities involved for heterosexual women aged 30 years and older using online dating to seek out intimate and sexual relationships with men. Drawing on interviews with online dating users in Canada and from media analysis of women's ‘women-seeking-men’ profiles posted on popular online dating sites, we analyse these data in terms of the discursive and material practices required to ‘become’ and perform heterosexuality within the public spaces of cyberdating. Our broad aim is to show some of the ways in which online dating as a technology and sociality affects, through everyday practices, the production of heterosexual subjectivity as an ongoing process through the life course. More specifically, we argue that ‘heterosexual profiling’, a term that refers to the exigency of online dating to make obvious an otherwise unmarked identity emptied of sexual agency and desire, presents particular challenges for women in what is seen as a dating market for the young. Therefore, online dating and the myriad routine everyday activities required to be successful in finding a suitable man entailed a simultaneous negotiation of sexuality and negotiation of ageing for this group of women, who found both pleasure and restriction in their forays online.