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THE BIOLOGY OF SEXUAL IDENTITY

16;sexual orientation (to what gender one is attracted to)’ as a choice one makes. This is, however, is contradictory to her own case. She felt that she was a woman (gender wise), trapped in the body of a man (physically). She never said that she made a choice over what sex she was attracted to, or what gender she felt she was. She stated that she was just born a boy, with the gender of a woman. Through this example, one would have to assume that homosexuality is the product of biology, not psychology. Science has proven that, much like Bornstein, sex, gender and sexual orientation are separate and interchangeable, but genetically based. The East German scientist, Dr. Gunter Dorner, has devoted his life’s work to the theory that exposure to certain hormones before birth determines sexual inclination. He claims that potential future homosexual behavior can be detected through amniocentesis, the test of the uterine fluid which can reveal Down’s syndrome in the unborn child. Dorner further claims that, with prenatal injections, homosexuality can be prevented. The male hormone masculinises the mind, where in the absence of testosterone the brain develops along a naturally female pattern. (Dorner, 365) Dorner finds that the brain is not masculinises all in one go. Dorner suggests that in men and women it is the presence or absence of male hormones that build the structure of the brain bit by bit into a male or female pattern of sexual identity. It happens, he says, in three stages - the development of what he calls the sex centre, the mating centres, and the gender-role centres of the brain. First, with the ‘sex centre’, the hormones set to work on creating the typical male and female physical characteristics. The next, and to some degree overlapping stage, is the transformation of the ‘mating centre’. This Dorner identifies as the hypothalamus, which it is now known, is arranged differently in men...

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