How to recycle bad science: turn those lesbian fingers into adulterous ones
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Tomorrow we enter a new era with the i-Pad. Everything will be new and different.
Not. Actually, everything old is new again. The Official Preppy Handbook is being re-released for docksider-wearing, pink and green Polo sporting wannabes everywhere. And with the Tiger Woods adultery-o-rama, we get the bad science of “finger length” once again dredged up by psychiatrists as the explanation for sexual desires.
In case you don’t remember the first “finger length” science, it was all about lesbianism. Lesbians, we were told, were people whose ring finger was longer than their index finger. These lesbian fingers were more like “men’s hands” and therefore indicated that lesbians underwent a “androgen wash” in utero which resulted in a masculinized brain and masculine behaviors, like auto repair and dating other women.
Ten years ago I wrote a piece in Salon criticizing this science. Forgive my solipcistic self-referentiality, but the exact same argument I used then to debunk the correlation between fingers and desire can be applied now to adulterous fingers.
This sort of study uses the existence of a statistical correlation to argue causation. Certain sorts of hands may be more likely to appear on the bodies of women who identify as lesbians (or men who cheat), but isn’t that a correlation as opposed to a cause? People with green eyes might be more likely to be accountants, but it is highly unlikely that there is a causal relationship between the two.”
Furthermore, as I pointed out then, there is no actual EVIDENCE of the androgen wash in the womb- it’s a hypothesis. The only way to test such a hypothesis would be to stick amniotic needles into pregnant women’s bellies at various times and then see finger length of the children after birth. Until we end all IRB (research ethics oversight boards) interference with data collection, I am fairly certain we will never have actual evidence for this supposed wash of testosterone that turns some brains manly- let alone evidence that manly brains lead to adultery or lesbianism or even skill in sports or financial success!
Okay, in fairness to the scientists doing this research, their claims are often much smaller and much less inflamatory than journalists and bloggers make them out to be. But the basic impulse to remove CULTURE and EXPERIENCE and even INDIVIDUAL AGENCY from our behaviors, to make everything a result of brain chemistry, is deeply entrenched in American life.
Tiger Woods cheated because he underwent an androgen wash in the womb and it hyper-masculinized his brain and therefore he could not help but tap every woman in a fifty mile radius. Lesbians are really “men” who want to also tap every woman in sight because of their mannish fingers. Wall Street types ruined the entire economy with their greed because they were chemically driven to act aggressively and put all of our futures at risk because of their mannish fingers.
No one is responsible for their behavior, least of all those of us with a ring finger longer than an index finger. There is no relationship between systems of power, like consumer capitalism and commercialized sex mixed with a bit of patriarchy and good ol’ white fetishization of Black male bodies to explain Tiger Woods or our obsession with him. There is no relationship between the state stepping back from any regulation of the market that led to the current financial crisis. And whom we desire is completely based on the length of our fingers and some innate need for the “opposite” (i.e. people with mannish fingers- whether lesbians or straight guys- always want someone with a vagina; whereas people with girlie fingers always want someone with a penis; and furthermore, two people with mannish hands, regardless of body parts, can never fall in love)
Nope. All our behaviors are just hard-wired into our finger length. And so we are free to act as we please since we just can’t help ourselves. It makes me want to break out the preppie clothes, mix a martini, toast the idea that “greed is good,” “adultery is unavoidable,” and “homos are born that way.”
Apple is wrong. There is nothing new in our society but the toys.
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I wonder if years from now, we will see this brain science as the new phrenology
Gods, I hope so.
In response to another comment. See in context »Now wait a minute. Yes, the man in the CNN interview is a moron for stating something so hyperbolically. Of course it’s only correlation. But I’ve seen many studies (the actual papers, not media-driven press releases) on the correlation between in utero sex-hormone exposure and sexual orientation, and the science itself is pretty sound. We can and do manipulate fetal sex-hormone exposure in small mammals and even primates, and we DO see the mentioned changes in sexual behavior. We can’t do these studies in humans, so we have to use markers for sex-hormone exposure, and finger length happens to be one of them. Women with CAH, exposed to too much testosterone, do show the trend in both orientation and finger length. You’re right, and nothing should be said about your feelings simply by looking at your fingers, but REAL scientists wouldn’t say anything that foolish in the first place. If you look at studies on otoacoustic emissions too, you’ll see that there’s a correlation between orientation and fetal hormone exposure, with manipulation showing the expected results. Scientists are simply trying to find out why we are attracted to the people we’re attracted to, and as the technology advances (I’m a huge fan of fMRI, can’t lie to that machine), the more we’ll learn.
I also read your previous post on finger length and while I agree with the general idea, I disagree when you said “…the study wants me to assume that gender…resides in the brain, even though there is no evidence of such a claim.” Where else would it reside? Our attractions are driven by how our brains are wired. fMRI studies show that gay male brains are more like straight female brains, and I’m OK with that, because I do have attractions that women normally have (I only say this from a purely evolutionary standpoint- if someone took that stance moralistically with me, my fist would have a problem with their face). I’ve seen studies showing that gays respond to putative pheromones in the anterior hypothalamus similarly to how the straight opposite sex does, and NOT like the straight same sex. There’s no higher order cortical thinking involved there. So I do think that orientation is hardwired, and there are many solid hypotheses as to why we are wired the way we are, though none is 100% accurate and I don’t expect that there ever will be one, and I also think that there may be cases where being attracted to the same sex is purely environmental, and there shouldn’t be a problem with that either.
Sorry to sound so contrary, however being someone in the sciences I just had to disagree with both kfox’s and your comments about the basic science. The science is just fine, it’s people who misuse the data who should be taken for quacks.
In response to another comment. See in context »Furthermore, as I pointed out then, there is no actual EVIDENCE of the androgen wash in the womb- it’s a hypothesis. The only way to test such a hypothesis would be to stick amniotic needles into pregnant women’s bellies at various times and then see finger length of the children after birth.
This study has been done and it confirmed the finger ratio / prenatal exposure hypothesis. The link has also been confirmed in a study of children with congenital adrenal hyperplasia.
I had no idea I was supposed to be a lesbian….