It is possible that these patterns are further associated. In sum, there may be a relationship between female sexual orientation and masculinity-femininity, and between female sexual orientation and 2D:4D. For this reason, studies using 2D:4D as a measure as prenatal androgen exposure must be interpreted with caution. Thus, even though reasonable arguments can be made that 2D:4D reflects early androgen exposure related to sexual orientation, the exact strength of the relationships between these traits remains unclear. Once included in their main analysis, these estimated null findings reduced the link between women’s sexual orientation and their digit ratios from Hedge’s g’s =. (2010) estimated a given amount of unpublished data with null findings. That is, the meta-analysis by Grimbos et al. It should be noted that 2D:4D as a measure of prenatal androgen exposure remains a controversial topic because of ongoing debates about causation, validity due to small effects in the presence of noise in the data, and the possibility of publication bias in the literature. In contrast, homosexual men do not robustly differ in 2D:4D ratio compared to heterosexual men. This effect was confirmed in both their left and right hands in a meta-analysis, Hedge’s g’s =. Homosexual women have more male-typical 2D:4D than heterosexual women, on average. Moreover, women with CAH also have lower (more male-typical) 2D:4D than other women, possibly due to the increased androgens exposure. Men have lower 2D:4D than women, and this sex difference emerges in early gestation. The most prominent of these is the ratio of the length of the second to fourth finger digits (2D:4D). However, most research on the subject of prenatal androgen influences in humans is informed by postnatal measures, which are assumed to reflect early exposure. For example, females with Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH), which results in elevated androgen exposure in early gestation, are more likely than their unaffected siblings to engage in male-typical behavior during childhood, and report same-sex sexual attractions during adulthood. Thus, in the present study, we included evaluations of participants by observers, in addition to self-reports, to verify the link of female sexual orientation with masculinity-femininity with multiple measures.Īndrogen exposure during prenatal development is a potential explanation for the link between sexual orientation and masculinity-femininity within each sex, in addition to explaining overall differences in masculinity-femininity between males and females. These perceptions by others are particularly valuable, because self-reports of masculinity-femininity are possibly biased due to social desirability. In adulthood, homosexual women are also perceived as more masculine than heterosexual women. Furthermore, based on evaluations by others of their childhood photographs and videos, girls who identified as homosexual in adulthood were rated as more masculine and less feminine than girls who later identified as heterosexual. Longitudinal work also suggests that early childhood masculinity is robustly associated with homosexual attractions in females later in life. Research on masculinity and femininity shows a consistent pattern with respect to women’s sexual orientation: Homosexual women recall or report more masculine and less feminine behaviors and self-concepts in childhood and adulthood, and report more male-typical and less female-typical interests than heterosexual women in adulthood. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. by the American Institute of Bisexuality (RSC2519 ) and the University of Essex (DG00832 ). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.ĭata Availability: The data is being held in the UK Data Service, and is available here: The doi is set to go live in 24-48h at the time of writing, but can be found here when it is up: 10.5255/UKDA-SN-854580.įunding: This research was supported by grants awarded to G. Received: JanuAccepted: OctoPublished: March 28, 2022Ĭopyright: © 2022 Holmes et al. PLoS ONE 17(3):Įditor: Ludek Bartos, Institute of Animal Science, CZECH REPUBLIC Citation: Holmes L, Watts-Overall TM, Slettevold E, Gruia DC, Rieger G (2022) The relationship between finger length ratio, masculinity, and sexual orientation in women: A correlational study.
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