Real men don't eat tofu

by Feòrag

New Zealand: Go easy on that chocolate soya milk - according to Ian Wishart, editor of Investigatge magazine, it can turn you into a screaming nancy boy!

We don't really know why homosexuality exists, he pondered, although the mere fact that it does would offer some pretty strong proof that Darwin's Theory of Evolution is seriously flawed... there is also some fascinating scientific research that indicates the massive increase in the use of soy milk over the past four decades has contributed to increased levels of homosexuality among men...

Unfortunately, neither a leading Australasian health foods company nor Chris Banks of GayNZ.com have any knowledge of this stunning research:

A search by GayNZ.com for information on the internet, usually a teeming repository for bizarre claims, yielded few hits. Although there are various organisations concerned about the alleged side-effects of soy consumption, gayness doesn't appear to be amongst them. The few obscure sources returned in our search that did seemed to put connections between soy products and homosexuality in the area of urban legend.

I was shopping with my four year old son and picked up a carton of soy milk, says Mandy, a contributor to the online Compleat Mother Forum. A lady shopping near me saw that and pulled me over to tell me that I was endangering my son's health by feeding him soy milk... and I would be hindering his 'male' growth by feeding him soy milk before puberty! I have never heard of such a thing. I don't think she meant to upset me, but the way she talked it was pretty scary.

I don't know if she meant I would be creating a homosexual person. I have no 'fear' of that. I will love my son no matter what his sexual orientation will be. I also don't see how feeding him soy will make him gay.

Investigate pointed them at Soy Online Service which has a slightly consporatorial tone about it.

The soy industry is one of the world's most wealthy and powerful and one that will steamroll anybody that dares suggest there may be problems with the darling soy, runs the website's intro. When we first questioned the safety of soy a representative of [company name omitted] told us that they had teams of lawyers to crush dissenters, could buy scientists to give evidence, owned television channels and newspapers, could divert medical schools and could even influence governments.

Banks continued to follow all the links he had been given and still turned up nothing of any significance.

Back to Wishart's reply to GayNZ.com: A cursory five minute flick through Google turned up about 6,000 items of interest, a couple of which I've copied below. There are a number of chemicals regarded as 'gender benders' by the scientific community... if you search through some of the links you'll discover 'lesbian seagulls' and 'gay fish' following environmental pollution.

This is fascinating, if not old, information: homosexuality has been well-documented throughout the animal kingdom. The only problem is, none of the links provided by Wishart indicated any links between increased levels of homosexuality among men and massive increases in the amount of soy milk consumption, and this was the claim Wishart made.

He did not investigate whether the tofu-mad Japanese have a higher rate of homosexuality than anywhere else. I suspect they don't. Dead Birds, Darth Vader, and "Homo" Soy - An Investigation!—GayNZ.com, 11th December 2003 (thanks John).