Dr. Marc Breedlove

Only language I speak.

Well, I don't remember learning English, and I certainly didn't choose to learn English, but I'm sure that it's English because of social influences, right?

So that was where I...

stood on the question of sexual orientation until 1998, 1999, when this fellow at University of Texas, Dennis McFadden, came out with a paper where it really made me think that prenatal testosterone might have an effect after all, despite my expectations.

And this was looking at otoacoustic emissions.

Do you want to talk about those?

Yeah, I mean right now in this studio, if I shut up for a moment, your ears will continue to make little popping sounds that you're not aware of because having grown up with it, the brain stopped you from perceiving those long ago.

Well, but if Dennis puts you in a soundproof room and puts a very sensitive microphone in your ear, he'll hear these pops.

And I won't get into the acoustics of why that's a good thing, right?

It helps you to focus on the sounds you want to hear.

But what Dennis knew is there's a sex difference in how many of these otoacoustic emissions are being made.

Girls make more, and it's present at birth.

So Dennis comes out with a strange study.

I mean, who would do such a thing?

Where he proposes, well, since the sex difference is present at birth, it might reflect prenatal testosterone.

And so he measured the otoacoustic emissions in straight men and gay men and straight women and lesbians.

And he reports that compared to straight women, the lesbians have fewer of these otoacoustic emissions than straight women.

It's like,

Well, what?

How would that happen?