“With each study, confidence in the gay community about a genetic link to our sexuality has become stronger. It has become generally assumed that a gay gene must exist. But take look at the actual science, and the history of sexuality, and you will find serious problems with the theory.”
A changing sexual revolution demands changing tactics. Remember all that talk for the last decade that sexual orientation is like skin color — genetic and immutable? Well, the science not only looks iffy, it was never solid.
From the Guardian: With each study, confidence in the gay community about a genetic link to our sexuality has become stronger. It has become generally assumed that a gay gene must exist. But take look at the actual science, and the history of sexuality, and you will find serious problems with the theory.
For example:
All of the recent studies searching for a gay gene have significant issues. For example, as Samantha Allen notes, biologist Anne Fausto-Sterling “tore LeVay’s original study to shreds, noting that there is substantial overlap between the cell cluster size ranges of gay men and straight men in his sample.” There has been significant criticism in scientific fields over Sanders’ study as well, with many scientists arguing the results were not “statistically significant” (while that may sound like a mild criticism that’s a big deal in the science community). While news headlines promote each study as a “confirmation of the gay gene”, the reality is very different.
It turns out that culture matters, a lot.
These issues highlight a fundamental problem that goes well beyond the peculiarities of these particular studies. Scientists are asking whether homosexuality is natural when we can’t even agree exactly what homosexuality is. Homosexuality, as with all sexualities, is a social construction. What does that mean? In his book The History of Sexuality Michel Foucault charted a major shift in our construction of sexual desires over the past few centuries. There are two important changes. First, we have developed the idea that our sexual desires reveal a fundamental truth about who we are, and second we have created a conviction that we have an obligation to seek out that truth and express it. As Jesi Egan argues, “within this framework, sex isn’t just something you do. Instead, the kind of sex you have (or want to have) becomes a symptom of something else: your sexuality.” (Emphasis added).
From the very beginning, the sexual revolution has been about sexual liberty, not identity, with the language of identity adopted as a political tactic — not a reflection of scientific truth.
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