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Rugby player suffers stroke, wakes up gay

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Yesterday, Bruce e-mailed me an article about a straight rugby player who, after “breaking his neck and suffering the stroke”, woke to find that he preferred men to his fiancée.  After attempting a back flip, the then-straight man “fell down a grass bank” where he sustained the injuries:

He was taken to hospital where his fiancée and family spent days waiting anxiously at his bedside before he delivered the shocking news.

Mr Birch recalled: ‘I was gay when I woke up and I still am. It sounds strange but when I came round I immediately felt different.

‘I wasn’t interested in women any more. I was definitely gay. I had never been attracted to a man before – I’d never even had any gay friends.

It’s doubtful we could learn much about the nature of our homosexual feelings by studying images of his brain unless scans had been taken before he sustained the injury (then we could see what parts had changed).

And this is not the only case where strokes have changed individuals’ personalities — or given them (gave them access to?) skills which they previously lacked — or of which they had previously been unaware.  Wonder if there are other stories of strokes changing an individual’s sexual orientation — and what scientists learned from that.

Time to e-mail my favorite neurosurgeon (my older brother).

Comments

  1. I saw this too. Pretty crazy. But, you know, there are also conditions like Foreign Accent Syndrome, where people experience a stroke or something else to a similar affect, and then, suddenly, without previous exposure, speak in a brogue that was previously completely foreign to them. Please share your brother’s assessment. The brain is pretty amazing … and mysterious.

  3. There was the totally-unmusical guy who was struck by lightning and was, thereafter, able to play the piano as well as Liberace.

    He did not, however, turn into Liberace in any other way (though his wife got sick of him playing the piano all day, and left him)…

  6. Couldn’t it be that he is not telling the truth. That he was always gay, but thought it would be easier to come out if he made up this story. That way, he doesn’t have to explain why he wasted the fiancees time.

  7. The reason why I think that being gay is part genetic, but not totally genetic is because about 50% of identical twins of gay persons are gay, as opposed to 100% or 4%. I heard the way this explained was that in order to be gay one had to have the gay gene(s) and then a “switch” is turned on usually as a child. If true’ I imagine that having a stroke as an adult could act as a “switch.” In any case, I feel soory for he and his fiancee since now there wedding plans have been disrupted by this.

  8. Meh… Color me skeptical. Plus, the mail isn’t exactly know to be the most accurate news source out there. I’ve heard a number of these types of stories, where a brain injury has “caused” the emergence of a new talent, say, being able to speak German where you had not before, but don’t know of any that are independently verified. I mean really, if there were cases like this that were, you know, actually true, the person that this happened to would be the subject of numerous studies, as this would reveal incredible insights to the brain. Plus, to speak German you have to learn a different syntax and structure, and no brain injury can teach you that.

    Yes, it is possible that brain injury can change your personality…. Hello Phineas Gage! But those changes were due to damage of brain function, and didn’t add any new talents or desirable trait to his person.

    I’m filing this one in the same cabinet as the Balloon Boy fiasco..

  10. #2
    SO, in other words, it’s not necessarily genetic.

    Now how would that rule out a genetic component?

    #6
    Couldn’t it be that he is not telling the truth. That he was always gay, but thought it would be easier to come out if he made up this story. That way, he doesn’t have to explain why he wasted the fiancees time.

    Most probably the right answer. His face on the before and after accident pictures register a positive on my gaydar.

  11. I suppose it’s possible, stranger things have happened to folks who suffer a brain injury including a stroke, but I am skeptical. Perhaps if there are other examples of this, including those who were gay and then becoming straight after some kind of head trauma, I’d be more believing.

    As for this somehow indicating that homosexuality doesn’t have a genetic component, I fail to see how. It’s just as possible that he had a genetic predisposition for homosexuality that was “switched on” when the stroke occurred.

    Finally, looking at the before and after pics he was better looking before the stroke even with some extra pounds on his face. Eh, maybe it’s the hair and his skipping into every stereotype. I don’t mind those who truly are more effeminate and stereotypical but I’ve come across enough posers who think they HAVE to be that way just because they are gay. I truly find that to be annoying beyond belief.

  12. Here is one thing that I find counter-intuitive. He says in the story that he didn’t start working out till he turned gay… Yet he was a Rugby player before that. So, as a Rugby player, he didn’t work out, yet as a gay, then he suddenly did? And since when has working out become exclusively gay anyway???? I’m gay and was a diver / swimmer in high school and college and never really liked working out… Maybe I need to be brain damaged or something!!!!

  13. I don’t mind those who truly are more effeminate and stereotypical but I’ve come across enough posers who think they HAVE to be that way just because they are gay. I truly find that to be annoying beyond belief.

    + 1

    Something just doesn’t add up in the before / after picture. Why use a before pic that is so blurry? Looking at the face structure, I don’t think it’s even the same guy. I think someone is pulling a fast one.

  14. Because I’m an insensitive bastard, this reminds me of the old “In Living Color” skit with “Men on Film” – two flamboyantly gay men who reviewed films. Well, during one skit a weight dropped on one of the character’s head, knocking him unconscious. When he woke up, he was straight.

    Still, the brain’s a mysterious thing.

  15. Who knows how the brain works, but it has to be an underlying proclivity that was raised upon injury. He might have doubts about his fiance. He wanted an out. This worked. Then again, he might later decide he was straight. No one knows. Sometime I wake up wanting a new life, but I know better than that.

  16. Maybe I’m a jerk, but I don’t buy this story. I believe the general notion of physical trauma or chemical imbalances being able to change the way a person’s brain works and as a result causing them to make drastic changes to their lifestyle, but this story strikes me as nonsensical.

    I’m no expert on the subject, but I think it’s more likely that the guy was gay to start with and he was in deep denial. He built up a whole life around trying to not be gay and then suddenly he found a way to escape from the lie he built for himself. He used the accident as an excuse to reinvent himself the way he wanted to be from the start.

    Also, people are strange.

  17. “No, he must have been gay before! I refuse to believe that he changed?” Why does the idea that sexuality can change make you feel so insecure? It’s interesting that so many people are threatened by the idea that sexuality is variable rather than a fixed property.

    Doesn’t bother me at all, frankly.

  18. Oh no, I believe that sexuality is a very fluid thing and that it can change numerous times throughout a person’s life. It’s this particular story I find suspect. I’m more focused at the way the article depicts him as having radically reinvented himself. It mentioned that he no longer enjoyed the same activities or kept the same friends. To me that indicates that he might not have been content with his life before his accident.

    I mean looking at the guy, sexuality was the least of the things that changed about him. To me the article reads more like: ‘Guy has accident, dumps partner for younger person, abandons old interests and friends and gets new job.’

  26. I saw this story early yesterday morning, or the night before, and could’ve sworn it was in the Mail, but whether it was an earlier version of the story or a different paper, the original story said that while he was engaged to be married before the accident, he and his fiance had been “taking a break” and weren’t actually seeing each other– which was a big red flag to me. So who knows whether he was even really straight to begin with. Maybe they were talking a break because he was closeted, confused, in denial, and didn’t really want to marry a woman.

    Or maybe a stroke changed his sexuality. I could believe that too, it just sounded fishy. Maybe they took that paragraph out.

  27. Bah, Humbug!

    Stroke or no stroke, this is a lot of fantasy journalism. What you have to believe is that a guy woke up as a stroke victim and then immediately felt sweet release at being gay and his doctors were willing accomplices in getting the word out so he could restart the dating game, but with same sex partners.

    Well, in the old days, if this story were true, they would have given him shock treatment until the old libido ran on regular or he went pure vegetable.

    Do you suppose in the annuls of medical literature on people who have had strokes that there is anything about men who woke up women or gays who woke up straight or religious people who woke up Satan worshippers or a human who woke up to live with gorillas? There must be some parallel experience out there. Strokes are not uncommon.

  32. He woke up gay? I’d be curious about the actual time span from the point he came ’round and the time he told everybody. I don’t know much about CVAs beyond recognition and emergency treatment. It seems to me that there would have to be significant damage for the brain to rewire itself, as it were. I don’t get the sense that he suffered much damage from the accident. Of course the article doesn’t say.

    But what do I know.