What does gay look like? Science keeps trying to figure that
out
The numbers: Each older brother will increase a man’s chances of
being gay by 33%, says Ray Blanchard of the University of Toronto,
an expert on the “big-brother effect.” That’s not as dramatic as it
might sound. A man’s chance of being gay is pretty low to begin
with—perhaps as low as 2% (lowered from 10% by researchers in the
early 1990s). So having one older brother ups the chance to only
about 2.6%.
The numbers: More lefties - or at least more
somewhat-ambidextrous folks - crop up in the gay population
than among straight people, several studies have shown. An analysis
of more than 23,000 men and women from North America and Europe in
2000 found that being non-right-handed seems to increase a man’s
chances of being gay by about 34%, and a woman’s by about 90%.
The numbers: A 2004 study of nearly 500
men - 272 on Delaware’s Rehoboth Beach, popular with gay men,
200 on a beach without that reputation - found that hair on
the heads of men on the gay beach was 3.5 times more likely to grow
in a counterclockwise direction. (Scalp hair typically resembles a
clockwise-rotating typhoon.)
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