Born This Way, or BPA? Research Suggests Exposure to Plastic Compound Makes Men More Feminine

That explains it.

New research suggests that exposure to the plastic compound BPA could not only be bad for the sex lives of men, it might cause them to “become demasculinized and behave more like females.”

Not our words people, but rather those of the University of Missouri, which this week trumpeted the research of associate biomedical sciences prof Cheryl Rosenfeld, who …

… experimented with deer mice.

Exposure to the controversial form of plastic, subject to “concern” at the U.S. FDA, but not yet banned, appears to lead not only to the feminization of the male critters, but to females' repulsion.

So Dominique Strauss-Kahn was exposed to BPA as a child?

Anyway, here's what the esteemed professor, Cheryl Rosenfeld, has to say about her research on BPA and men, which will be published soon in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences:

The BPA-exposed deer mice in our study look normal; there is nothing obviously wrong with them. Yet, they are clearly different. Females do not want to mate with BPA-exposed male deer mice, and BPA-exposed males perform worse on spatial navigation tasks that assess their ability to find female partners in the wild.

We would insert Andy Dick joke here, but the truth is that, in the human world, straight women love them a feminized man. Just not him. So go get yourselves some BPA, guys. (Just kidding).

Here's what Rosenfeld concludes:

These findings presumably have broad implications to other species, including humans, where there are also innate differences between males and females in cognitive and behavioral patterns. In the wide scheme of things, these behavioral deficits could, in the long term, undermine the ability of a species such as the deer mouse to reproduce in the wild. Whether there are comparable health threats to humans remains unclear, but there clearly must be a concern.

Indeed.

[@dennisjromero/djromero@laweekly.com]

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