Differences in finger length ratios between butch and femine
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This journal article examines differences in finger length ratios between self-identified "butch" and "femme" lesbians. Prior research has found that auditory evoked potentials and otoacoustic emissions, markers of prenatal androgen exposure, are more masculine in lesbians compared to heterosexual women. This study explores whether the ratio of the length of the index finger to the ring finger (2D:4D), another purported marker of prenatal androgen exposure, differs between "butch" and "femme" lesbians.
Differences in finger length ratios between butch and femine
- 1. • Differences in Finger Length Ratios between Self-Identified "Butch" and "Femme" Lesbians • Journal article by S. Marc Breedlove, Windy M. Brown, Bradley M. Cooke, Christopher J. Finn; Archives of Sexual Behavior, Vol. 31, 2002 Differences in finger length ratios between self-identified "butch" and "femme" lesbians. by Windy M. Brown , Christopher J. Finn , Bradley M. Cooke , S. Marc Breedlove ********** Windy M. Brown (1) Christopher J. Finn (1) Bradley M. Cooke (1) S. Marc Breedlove (2,3) In nonhuman mammals, sexual differentiation of behavior seems largely driven by exposure to steroid hormones during the perinatal period (Breedlove, Cooke, & Jordan, 1998). The Y chromosome in males causes the undifferentiated gonads to develop as testes, and the testes to secrete androgen, which masculinizes the structure of the brain, permanently molding the animal's behavior to a male-like form (Phoenix, Goy, Gerall, & Young, 1959). Whether early androgen exposure also directly alters the structure of the developing human brain, and thereby adult behavior, remains undetermined. In the study of sexual orientation, there is little direct evidence that individual differences in early androgen exposure affect the sexual preferences of men. In women, however, there have been several reports of a difference between heterosexual and homosexual women in purported markers of prenatal or neonatal androgen exposure. McFadden and Champlin (2000) found that auditory evoked potentials (AEP) are more masculine in lesbians than in heterosexual women. Because the sex difference in AEP is present in newborn humans, and because other somatic sex differences in newborns appear to be due to the masculinizing influence of androgen in males, presumably AEP are influenced by, and can therefore serve as markers for, fetal androgen exposure. Thus the AEP results suggest that homosexual women were exposed to more fetal androgen than were heterosexual women. McFadden and Champlin also found that the AEP of homosexual men suggested that they, if anything, had experienced significantly higher levels of perinatal androgen than did heterosexual men. McFadden and Pasanen (1998) also found that otoacoustic emissions, which are also sexually dimorphic at birth (and therefore may also serve as markers for fetal androgen), are significantly more male-like in homosexual women than in heterosexual women. This result is a further indication that lesbians may have been exposed to higher fetal androgen levels than heterosexual women (for an overview, see McFadden, 2002). Another purported somatic marker of fetal androgen is the ratio of the length of the index finger (2D) to the ring finger (4D). This ratio, 2D:4D, is smaller in men than in women (Ecker, 1875), a sex difference that is stable from 2 years of age to adulthood (Manning, Scott, Wilson, & Lewis-Jones, 1998). As most somatic differences between young boys and girls have been attributed to differences in exposure to androgen before and just after birth (George & Wilson, 1994), the sex difference in 2D:4D was