Date: Sat, 30 Nov 1996 07:23:22 -0500 (est)
From: Sam Damon <damon@dorsai.org>
Subject: Re: Gays & Sports

> Dave (who throws like a straight woman)

[reference is listed below in case anyone wants to look the study up.  I can
send photocopies if I don't get too many requests.]

Actually, I oversimplified the results of Hall's study.  He and Kimura
previously found in 1992 that gay men's cognitive profiles "did not parallel
that of heterosexual women, nor was it a simple intermediate between male
and female extremes."  Instead, it was a composite of male-typical and
female-typical abilities.  Apparently, that applies to his findings on motor
ability too.  But in terms of throwing, gay men do indeed have more in
common with hetero women.  On tasks that need more precision (the Pegboard
test which we use quite often in our neuro-AIDS studies), gender played a
role whereas sexual orientation did not.  In that test, women did better,
regardless of sexual orientation.

Likewise, lesbians' motor abilities were a composite.  In summary, "gay
males threw less accurately and lesbians tended to throw more accurately
than their heterosexual counterparts." Here is a statistic summary of the
Throw Test for you math freaks out there: Using a 2x2 ANOVA (Sex x Sexual
Orientation), significant interaction was found: F(1,90)=16.22, P<= 0.001. 
A t-test showed that hetero men outperformed hetero women: t(46)=4.11,
p < 0.001.  "Heterosexual men significantly outperformed the homosexual men,
t(60)=4.16, p < 0.001."  "Lesbians did not differ significantly from
heterosexual men," and they appear to perform better than both hetero women
and gay men. (stats omitted for brevity)

The Throw Test consisted of an underhanded throw directed at the center of a
carpeted board (1.45m x 1.45m) 2.85m away.  The center was indicated by a
shaded square, and the board had a grid made of 6.5cm x 6.5cm squares.  The
error score (displacement from teh middle) was an average of 10 trials with
each hand.

Methodologically speaking, the study looks sound.  I can get into a
statistical discussion if anyone wants to ...   The authors even factored
out Hand Strength, Sports History and Finger Size, each of which can
influence the results.  In the Discussion section is speculation about the
etiology of such differences but I won't go into them here.

Hall JAY, Kimura D.  Sexual orientation and performance on sexually
dimorphic motor tasks.  Archives of Sexual Behavior 1995;24:395-407.