Simon LeVay (1943-)
Simon LeVay (born 28 August 1943 in Oxford, England) is an American neuroscientist known for his studies about brain structures and sexual orientation.
Simon LeVay - Wikipedia
1993-1994 The Sexual Brain by Simon LeVay (Paperback - Jul 25 1994)
The Sexual Brain
The Sexual Brain, published in 1993, was LeVay's first book. It discussed brain mechanisms involved in sexual behavior and feelings.
LeVay wrote in the introduction that his INAH3 study was his only publication on sex to that date, and that most of his previous research had been on the visual areas of the cerebral cortex. LeVay explained the circumstances that led to his taking an interest in sexuality: "As a teenager and young adult I accepted the Freudian line [on sexual orientation], according to which a young child's relations with his or her parents play a decisive role...it seemed to be borne out in my own family experience: I remembered my mother as having been very close and possessive, and my father as distant, even hostile...when I came to read Freud I was swept away by his eloquence and the sheer audacity of his theories."
LeVay added, however, "Later...I began to have serious doubts. First, as I got to know large numbers of gay men and lesbian women, it became harder and harder to see them, or myself, as the products of defective parenting; we just seemed too normal. Second, as I became trained in the methods of science I became more and more skeptical that there was anything scientific about Freud's ideas, even though he repeatedly asserted that they were so. And finally, discoveries were being made in the area of sexual biology that were pointing in all kinds of new and exciting directions; Freudianism, on the other hand, seemed to have become a fossilized immovable dogma."[6]
INAH3 research
In 1991, LeVay published "A difference in hypothalamic structure between heterosexual and homosexual men" in Science. This article reported a difference in average size between the third Interstitial Nucleus of the Anterior Hypothalamus (INAH3) in the brains of heterosexual men and homosexual men: INAH3 was more than twice as large in heterosexual men as in homosexual men. The INAH3 size of homosexual men was the same as that of women. LeVay wrote that "This finding indicates that INAH is dimorphic with sexual orientation, at least in men, and suggests that sexual orientation has a biological substrate." LeVay added, "The existence of 'exceptions' in the present sample (that is, presumed heterosexual men with small INAH 3 nuclei, and homosexual men with large ones, hints at the possibility that sexual orientation, although an important variable, may not be the sole determinant of INAH 3 size. It is also possible, however, that these exceptions are due to technical shortcomings or to misassignment of subjects to their subject groups."[1]
LeVay's finding was widely reported in the media.[2] LeVay cautioned against misinterpreting his findings in a 1994 interview: "It’s important to stress what I didn’t find. I did not prove that homosexuality is genetic, or find a genetic cause for being gay. I didn’t show that gay men are born that way, the most common mistake people make in interpreting my work. Nor did I locate a gay center in the brain. The INAH3 is less likely to be the sole gay nucleus of the brain than a part of a chain of nuclei engaged in men and women's sexual behavior."[3] Some critics of LeVay questioned the accuracy and appropriateness of his measurements, saying that the structures are difficult to see in tissue slices and that he measured in volume rather than cell count.[4] Nancy Ordover wrote in her 2003 book American Eugenics that LeVay has been criticized for "his small sample size and for compiling inadequate sexual histories."[5]
1996 Queer Science: The Use and Abuse of Research into Homosexuality by Simon Levay (Hardcover - Jun 1996)
Queer Science, published in 1996, was a survey of sexual orientation research. It discussed the work of pioneering sexologists such as Karl Heinrich Ulrichs and Magnus Hirschfeld, Sigmund Freud and his followers, behaviorism, and LeVay's own research on INAH3 and its possible implications.
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