An effect hitherto unsuspected?

Chemosensory Communication of Gender through Two Human Steroids in a Sexually Dimorphic Manner

Abstract Excerpt: “…human visual gender perception draws on subconscious chemosensory biological cues, an effect that has been hitherto unsuspected.”

Reported as: Humans have a nose for gender

Excerpt: “The results provide the first direct evidence that the two human steroids communicate opposite gender information that is differentially effective to the two sex groups based on their sexual orientation,” the researchers write. “Moreover, they demonstrate that human visual gender perception draws on subconscious chemosensory biological cues, an effect that has been hitherto unsuspected.”

My comment: It is disappointing to see Wen Zhou deny knowledge of my published works that detailed why this effect has been suspected as indicated by Simon LeVay in his book Gay, Straight, and the Reason Why: The Science of Sexual Orientation. In his comments on my award-winning review:  The Mind’s Eyes: Human pheromones, neuroscience, and male sexual preferences, LeVay wrote (see page 210): ”

“James Kohl, an independent researcher who also markets “human pheromones” to the general public, believes that pheromones may have a primary influence in setting up a person’s basic sexual orientation. Other, more consciously perceived aspects of attractiveness, such as facial appearance, are attached to a person’s basic orientation through a process of association during early postnatal life, according to Kohl. 35″

This model is attractive in that it solves the “binding problem” of sexual attraction. By that I mean the problem of why all the different features of men or women (visual appearance and feel of face, body, and genitals; voice quality, smell; personality and behavior, etc.) attract people as a more or less coherent package representing one sex, rather than as an arbitrary collage of male and female characteristics. If all these characteristics come to be attractive because they were experienced in association with a male- or female-specific pheromone, then they will naturally go together even in the absence of complex genetically coded instructions.”

For anyone to say that the role of human pheromones in visual perception is an effect hitherto unsuspected is to deny my series of published works with or without co-authors, and presentations to different scientific forums, like those where I met Wen Zhou on several occasions.