and women, and controls sexual behavior in adult life. The last stage is when the hormones get to work on the ‘gender-role centres’ in the brain of the unborn child, laying down the network in the brain which determine our general behavior like the level of aggression or lack of it, our sociability or individualism, our adventurousness or timidity - characteristics which get fully expressed under the hormonal influence of puberty. Dorner believes that each or these centres can be independently upset at each stage of development. Dorner has proven his theory with the development of the primary sexual characteristics, by taking genetically female foetuses and exposed them to an abnormal level of male hormone will result in the developed male-like organs. The development of the mating centre, the hypothalamus, Dorner argues, can be upset; in a male, the lower the concentration of androgens, or male hormones, the greater the likelihood that the eventual child will have homosexual tendencies. In girls, a higher level of androgens molds the hypothalamus in a manner which will produce same-sex attraction. Finally the gender-role centres, the wiring up of the brain, and the way the functions are distributed, may follow a male pattern in the female, or a female pattern in the male, depending on the abnormal presence of male or female hormones. The beauty of this theory is that it explains how, for instance, obviously physical males, with obviously male identities and mannerisms, may be attracted to same-sex partners; in that case, only the second stage, the development of the hypothalamus, and the mating centre, has been upset. Similarly, it explains how some boys, effeminate in looks and behavior, may still be robustly heterosexual in their sexual preferences; their sex centres and gender-role centres have been hormonally unbalanced at a key stage of development, but during the development of the mating centre, nothing unusual oc...
