Prenatal hormones and sexual orientation Only 23% of childhood gender problems will result in transsexuality in adulthood. Drawing on some transsexualism cases, Garcia-Falgueras and Swaab state that "[f]rom these examples it appears that the direct action of testosterone on the developing brain in boys and the lack of such action on the developing brain in girls are crucial factors in the development of male and female gender identity and sexual orientation ... ." Countless studies have been run on peripheral levels of sex steroids in male and female homosexuals, a considerable number of which claimed to find "less 'male hormone' and/or more 'female hormone' in
Fraternal birth order and male sexual orientation sexual orientation via the fraternal birth order effect (for example, homosexual men with no older brothers) owe their homosexuality to other causes such as certain polymorphic genes (colloquially called "gay genes") or prenatal hormone levels during fetal development. Both direct and indirect evidence have demonstrated that the mechanism by which the fraternal birth order effect operates is prenatal in timing and biological in nature, rather than postnatal in timing or psychosocial in nature. Indirect evidence was found first when it was discovered that the fraternal birth order effect interacts with birth weight. Then, Bogaert (2006) produced direct evidence that the