Olson’s theory is that both lesbians and heterosexual men are dominated by the same hemisphere of the brain—the left, which is the hemisphere which deals with sequential, thought-oriented processes. Gay men and heterosexual women, on the other hand, are also dominated by the same hemisphere, but for them it is the right hemisphere of the brain. The right side is responsible for feelings and cultural awareness (Olson). This new discovery by Olson shows that who a person is attracted to is not a choice, but something that is in their genetic makeup. Olson also believes that it is not as simple as a “gay gene,” and that those who are researching that are perhaps looking in the wrong place (Olson). Although there are always exceptions to everything, straight men are left-brain dominate and straight women are right-brain dominate, while gay men and women are found to be dominated by the opposite …show more content…
In his piece, psychologists J. Michael Bailey and Kenneth J. Zucker published a paper on childhood markers of homosexuality in 1995. Their findings were that children, by the age of 2, know the difference in genders and often start to associate accordingly. Most girls play with dolls, wear dresses, and enjoy playing with other girls. Meanwhile, most boys like to play with trucks, do not care what they wear as long as it has a superhero on it, and enjoy playing with other boys. What Bailey and Zucker found when they did a study looking at the childhoods of adult homosexual men and women was that they tended to have inverted sex-typed childhood behaviors (Scientific American). ‘Sex-typed,’ by definition, is “characterized as appropriate for or of one sex rather than the other” (Dictionary.com), so having an inverted sex-type would simply mean that if a boy—using the example from above of a typical girls behavior—liked to play with dolls, wear dresses, and play with other girls, they would have an inverted sex-type. There are exceptions to every rule. Not every tomboy is a lesbian, but the data showed that the odds of these women having a homosexual orientation is 23 times higher than those who do not have an inverted sex-type (Scientific