Kevin Linder

I came across a NY Times Article about how gay and straight men react differently to human pheromones.

Seems like women and men produce different chemicals and these are interpreted by different parts of the brain. Instead of being related to the sex of the person it seems to be dependent of their sexual orientation. Of course it seems this is only with gay men and not gay women.

The estrogen-like compound, though it activated the usual smell-related regions in women, lit up the hypothalamus in men. This is a brain center that governs sexual behavior and, through its control of the pituitary gland lying just beneath it, the hormonal state of the body.

The male sweat chemical, on the other hand, did just the opposite; it activated mostly the hypothalamus in women and the smell-related regions in men. The two chemicals seemed to be leading a double life, playing the role of odor with one sex and of pheromone with another.

Dr. Savic has now repeated the experiment but with the addition of homosexual men as a third group. The gay men responded to the two chemicals in the same way as did women, she reports, as if the hypothalamus’s response is determined not by biological sex but by the owner’s sexual orientation.

Dr. Savic said she had also studied homosexual women, and had gathered “very interesting and somewhat complicated preliminary data.” Another researcher said that it did not matter that gay women were not included in Dr. Savic’s final report because they do not respond in the same way as gay men do.

While this is very interesting, I’m still confused why every one of my ex-girlfriends didn’t find my sweaty body sexy as hell.