Queer science: the use and abuse of research into homosexuality

606 Pages·1996·1.6 MB·English

by  Simon LeVay

Queer Science
The Use and Abuse of Research into Homosexuality
Simon LeVay
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
Queer Science : The Use and Abuse of
title:
Research Into Homosexuality
author: LeVay, Simon.
publisher: MIT Press
isbn10 | asin: 0262121999
print isbn13: 9780262121996
ebook isbn13: 9780585003368
language: English
Homosexuality--Research--Social aspects,
subject Sexual orientation--Research--Social
aspects.
publication date: 1996
lcc: HQ76.25.L497 1996eb
ddc: 306.76/0723
Homosexuality--Research--Social aspects,
subject: Sexual orientation--Research--Social
aspects.
Page iv
© 1996 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any
form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying,
recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in
writing from the publisher.
This book was set in Bembo by The MIT Press.
Printed and bound in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
LeVay, Simon.
Queer science: the use and abuse of research into homosexuality /
Simon LeVay.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-262-12199-9 (hardcover: alk. paper)
1. HomosexualityResearchSocial aspects. 2. Sexual
orientationResearchSocial aspects. I. Title.
HQ76.25L497 1996
306.76'0723dc20
9612906
CIP
Page v
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selvesgoes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying What I do is me: for that I came.
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Page vii
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1 Hirschfeld and the Third Sex 11
2 The Nature and Prevalence of Homosexuality 41
3 The Talking Cure 67
4 Learning and Unlearning Homosexuality 87
5 Hormones 109
6 The Brain 129
7 Mental Traits 149
8 Stress 163
9 Genes 171
10 Against Nature? 195
11 Sickness or Health? 211
12 Science and the Law 231
13 Science FictionScience Future? 255
14 Conclusions 273
Notes 297
Index 349

Page ix
Acknowledgments
In 1991, while on the faculty of the Salk Institute in San Diego, I
published a report in the journal Science on differences in brain
structure between heterosexual and homosexual men. Although I had
conducted that piece of research fairly "innocently"that is, without a
great deal of knowledge of or interest in its potential social
implicationsthese implications were brought home to me by the
ensuing media attention and by many strongly expressed individual
responses, some full of praise and others critical in the extreme. In
addition, I had the opportunity a few months later to act as presenter
on a documentary film, Born That Way?, produced by the British
director Jeremy Taylor for Windfall Films of London. This gave me
the chance to focus on some of the social issues raised by research in
the field of sexual orientation, and I have to thank Jeremy for helping
germinate the thought processes that led to this book.
Over the last four years I have had the opportunity to meet with an
extraordinarily diverse collection of people and to hear their views on
this field of research and what it does or does not mean for society.
Far too numerous to mention individually, these people have
Page x
included sexologists, neurobiologists, psychologists, historians,
lawyers, doctors, ministers, queer theorists, pro-and antigay activists,
and many regular citizens both gay and nongay. I owe them
collectively an enormous debt.
I do need to thank specifically a number of individuals who took the
time to read a part or the whole of the first draft of this book, and
whose comments helped improve the book enormously. They include
Michael Bailey, David Bianco, Vern Bullough, Ralf Dose, George
Ebers, Dean Hamer, Richard Isay, Laurie Saunders, Ritch Savin-
Williams, and Kenneth Zucker, as well as Fiona Stevens (who was
until recently my editor at The MIT Press), and several readers whose
comments were provided to me anonymously. Because many of these
individuals read only a portion of the book, and because I did not
always incorporate their suggestions, it should not be assumed that
any particular statement or opinion reflects their views.
Page 1
Introduction
What causes a person to be gay, straight, or bisexual? And who cares?
These are the twin themes of this book.
The first question is one that has intrigued people since antiquity. In
Plato's Symposium, the playwright Aristophanes offered a whimsical
answer: all human beings, he said, are descendants of original
"double" creatures who were cut in two by an angry god. Sexual
desire, he said, is the desire to be reunited with one's other ancestral
half. Some of the original beings were hermaphrodite (half female,
half male): their descendants are heterosexual, because their missing
halves are of the opposite sex to their own. Others of the original
creatures were all male or all female: their descendants are
homosexual, because their missing halves have the same sex as
themselves. Today Aristophanes (as Plato represented him) would be
considered an "essentialist": his account implies that a person's sexual
orientation is an objective, inborn characteristic.
1
A few hundred years later Saint Paul made a radically different claim:
he asserted (in Romans 1:2627) that homosexual behavior is
undertaken in conscious opposition to one's true nature, which is
heterosexual.
Page 2
Although the passage has been subject to a variety of interpretations,
it is probable that Paul was denying the existence of any intrinsic
differences between people who experienced same-sex attraction and
those who did not.
2
The second questionwho cares?is essentially modern. The idea that
research on sexual orientation might significantly affect people's lives,
by influencing medicine, law, or religious teachings, or by changing
social attitudes toward homosexuality, arose first in the nineteenth
century. Since then, this field of research has been closely linked with
the struggle by gays and lesbians for social acceptance and legal
rights, as well as with the countervailing effort to continue their
exclusion and oppression.
Of course, this linkage is not entirely justified either in a moral or a
legal sense. Gay rights should not depend entirely on finding out what
makes people gayin particular, on proving that gays and lesbians are
"born that way." Nor should the idea that homosexuality is a "chosen
lifestyle" be a justification for discrimination and prejudice. There are
other grounds for believing that gays and lesbians should be respected
and protected from oppression: their right to privacy and freedom of
action and expression; the "victimless" nature of homosexual
relations; and the many valuable contributions that gays and lesbians
make to society.
Nevertheless, the linkage exists. Attitudes toward gays and lesbians
are inextricably tied up with beliefs about what causes them to be
homosexual. Let us look at a recent survey. A New York Times/CBS
News poll taken in early 19923 found that the U.S. population is about
equally split into those who believe homosexuality is "something