The so-called ‘gay gene’ and its discontents

A few months ago, this article emerged. I grant you — it’s on the Popular Science website. There are bound to be a few semantic errors. But I have two pretty major objections to what this article puts forth.

1. From quote:

… the absence of [a particular gene] tricks female mouse brains into functioning like male brains.

From this, the article concludes that this particular gene triggers the sexual preference of the (female) mouse in question.

In actuality, we cannot conclude that a female mouse pursues other female mice with the removal of this gene. What we conclude, as lain out plainly by this sentence, is that the female mouse at most believes herself to be able to reproduce with other females — in other words, that the female’s brain functions like a male’s brain.

If this is the effect the gene has, then it is more likely a trigger for sexual identity rather than sexual preference.

However — what this research may point out is that female mice are genetically predisposed to be attracted to males, unless their brains operate in such a way that it mirrors the way the male mind operates. This may point to differing brain structures in female and male mice, and may contribute to research in sexual identity. (This has its discontents too, mind.)

But we must make the distinction between sexual identity and sexual preference. Either the comparison with male mice is being drawn incorrectly, and the female brain acts like a female brain that is attracted to other female mice — or the comparison with male mice is accurate, and the mouse is psychologically male with a (characteristically male) attraction to females. The former is an issue of sexual preference; the latter is an issue of transsexualism and/or sexual identity. Quite distinct.

2. What good does the discovery of a so-called ‘gay gene’ actually do us?

Suppose research advances. Suppose we find a ‘gay gene’, or another certain developmental process, that defines one individual as gayer than another on a biological basis. Then suppose it’s discovered that ‘Jenny’, a woman who identifies as lesbian, doesn’t possess the so-called “gay gene”. The prim biologist would be forced to say to Jenny: “You’re not biologically predisposed toward lesbianism, ergo your sexual identity is invalid.”

This, to me, is total and complete nonsense. You can’t argue identity with biology. It’s putting absurd parameters on something that is extremely fluid. It’s possible, for one thing, that Jenny identified as heterosexual for the first significant chunk of her life. What should we say about Jenny’s changing disposition? Is she faking lesbianism? The diligent theorist would ask why in fresh hell anyone would pretend to be queer. It doesn’t, after all, tend to make one terribly popular with society to identify as queer. But if Jenny doesn’t possess the ‘gay gene’ — in whatever form it may come — what else can we say?

The other major issue with this scenario is that it completely dichotomizes sexuality, as though individuals are either 100% straight or 100% gay without any middle ground. Either you have the ‘gay gene’ or you don’t — what does that say about sexuality? How might I, as pansexual, be defined once this ‘gay gene’ is discovered? Do I simply not exist? Am I faking aspects of my sexuality, too?

The main problem I’m concerned with starts out sounding like a bad joke: A gay man, Mitch, walks into a clinic. The doctor tells Mitch he doesn’t have the gay gene, terribly sorry, got to sleep only with women now, off you go.

There is no way in hell any self-confident person in this situation is going to think they identified themselves incorrectly. If Mitch is 46 and has been married to a man for the last 20 years of his life, he’s not going to suddenly go home and order a divorce because the doctor told him he doesn’t have the gay gene. He knows he’s gay because he loves his husband (or men in general), and sometimes that love manifests in a profoundly sexual way. And that’s all he needs to know: how he feels about his sexuality. What his biology dictates, or doesn’t, is entirely beside the point.

In the 2010 Pride edition of The Georgia Straight, there was an article that presented an argument that the brains of gay males are more similar to the brains of straight females than are the brains of straight males. Here is a lovely summary from Gabor Maté of why this sort of research doesn’t actually matter worth a damn:

“There is also a danger of ascribing too much determinism to biology … Even if biological differences—innate or environment-dependent—are confirmed, it would be a mistake to assume that the life experiences of gay people are determined purely by biology, apart from the emotional, social, political, and cultural context.”

In other words: there are several, socially-contingent factors that define sexuality and sexual preference — ones quite aside from biological factors. To dismiss those factors as non-factors is simply fallacious.

The same argument can be made regarding research into biological “causes” for transsexualism. Tell Brandon Simms about whether or not zie has a right to feel female. Zie doesn’t need a biological explanation for zir gender identity. It is simply not that straightforward — and besides that, it’s no one’s right but Brandon’s to discern how zie identifies … not even biology.

Pucker for the Camera: Sexuality Unduly Imposed on Children

I’ve always had a problem with parents — in my experience, mostly parents under the age of 20 — who have their kids pucker their lips for the camera.

I never knew why I didn’t like this, so I dismissed it at first. I wasn’t sure if I was adhering to sex-negative cultural standards or whether I had a legitimate issue with it. But this article makes a good point, and that’s that parents often impose standards for themselves onto their pre-pubescent children — and it’s this I have a problem with.

Hell, I struggle to understand it when adult women pucker for the camera. You don’t look like that ordinarily. If you do, you shouldn’t. You don’t need to do that to be attractive. I can understand it as an expression of sexuality, if you insist. However:

Do not then train your two-year-old daughter to believe that it is normal for her to do that.

This is also why pre-pubescent beauty pageants are ridiculous to me. Make-up, wardrobe, and the parading nature of such events are intended to accentuate the sexuality of the competitors. And for consenting, self-aware adults, that has the potential to be totally okay. But the crucial thing about children is that they do not have the self-awareness to understand the implications of things like parading around in a swimsuit and puckering their lips.

The toddler who puckers her lips for the camera believes she is behaving like mommy — but that is a way in which no two-year-old should behave like mommy. Mommy is a self-aware adult with the capacity to be sexual if she likes. The key here is that mommy has the intention of appearing sexy when she puckers her lips for the camera. Her daughter has only the intention of learning to be a normal member of society.

It is not normal for a toddler to be sexual. We should not impose standards unique to adulthood — e.g., sexuality — onto children who do not have the awareness to scrutinize the implications of their actions. It may be crucial that we become more critical of the social cues we pass down to our children in that way in order to foster healthy attitudes toward sex and sexuality.

Sex is Fun and Pleasure Is Good for You: A Defense of Polyamory

The most important thing to remember about human sexuality is that it is complex. It relates to every part of a human being. Sex can affect us physically, mentally, spiritually, and socially — sometimes all of these at once, sometimes just one in isolation.

Accounts of human sexuality by scientists often seem one-sided for this reason. Scientists concern themselves primarily with the physical aspects of sex and sexuality. Social scientists often strive to take a more comprehensive approach to understanding human sexuality — and it’s these accounts that seem more complete and satisfactory to me.

That having been said, even those who choose to approach human sexuality on a primarily biological basis should be brought to admit that sexuality has many layers. Jared Diamond, in his book Why Is Sex Fun?: The Evolution of Human Sexuality contrasts human sexuality against the sexualities of other species and comes up with this list of characteristics of human sexuality:

• Most men and women in most human societies end up in a long-term pair relationship. Other humans recognize this relationship as contractual, involving mutual obligations. That couple has sex repeatedly and mainly with each other — that is, they are largely, if not entirely, monogamous.
• These monogamous partnerships often result in the joint rearing of offspring — males as well as females commonly provide parental care in some way, even if only in monetary child support.
• Despite forming couples, humans live embedded in a society of other couples with whom they cooperate economically and share access to communal territory.
• Sexual partners usually have sex in private and are not usually indifferent to the presence of other humans.
• Human ovulation is concealed rather than advertised … and is generally difficult to detect.
• Female sexual receptivity extends beyond the time of fertility (i.e., sex is mostly for fun rather than for insemination).
• Menopause happens.

Some of these features — menopause, concealed ovulation, continuous female sexual receptivity — seem clearly to be encoded in human beings genetically. These are not things we can train out of ourselves or others: they simply are going to be the case.

However, it seems equally clear that some of these things are not based solely in genetics. Why do human beings have sex in private? Why do humans often form sexually-exclusive partnerships? long-term partnerships? These things seem to be based solely on social considerations, with no obvious biological basis. That there exists polyamory, exhibitionism, one-night-stands, etc. relatively frequently within society backs this up.

Find me a woman who doesn’t go through menopause before age 60, or whose sex drive is in effect only when she is ovulating. These things hardly ever happen because menopause and sexual receptivity are hard-wired into human beings.

Monogamy is not remotely the same way. Even the human beings who recognize monogamy as their preferred relationship structure find other people attractive, and sometimes act on that attraction. From the perspective of biology, polyamory is actually more justifiable than is monogamy — human beings, like most creatures, are hard-wired to keep their genes strong within the species. Given that human beings have to pass a nine-month gestation period (often longer thanks to lactation and the recommence of menstrual cycles post-partum), it would be more advantageous for the male to jump from partner to partner, impregnating as many females as possible to ensure his genes were passed on to the next generation.

Diamond mentions that committed, monogamous couples probably became a norm because dual-parenthood gives human offspring a better chance of survival than does single-motherhood. Birth and motherhood is an exhausting process biologically; a new mother breastfeeding her child often can’t do everything that humans beings are expected to do alone. She can’t hunt boar and provide breast milk; she doesn’t have the energy reserves. The male role here is crucial to the healthy development of offspring.

But that’s only a good justification for monogamy when offspring are involved. And even then — what about community upbringing? Provided the mother is not left entirely alone, she and her offspring can flourish. Sexually-exclusive monogamous couplehood is helpful for healthy human development in early life, but it is not the only option.

What about when offspring are not involved? For individuals who have no desire for children, regardless of gender, monogamy doesn’t make a lot of sense. There are some situations where monogamous coupledom may be advantageous — where one member of the couple is supporting the other in some way — but certainly it should not be as rampant as it is. Supposing Sam is 20 years old and has no desire for children for at least ten years (if at all) — why should Sam restrict zirself to one partner for the next ten years of zir life? If zie is attracted both to Jamie and Kennedy and they are both attracted to zir, what on earth is stopping zir from pursuing them both?

There is nothing biological at work here. If Sam decides to choose between them, it is for social reasons. It is because society tells zir that monogamy is the only acceptable option. But as we saw above, while monogamy is advantageous when it comes to the upbringing of children, there is no clear justification for monogamy outside of that context — nor, in fact, is there a clear justification for normative monogamy within it.

To finish off, I want to clarify one thought: I mentioned above that males of the species would find it more biologically advantageous to be polyamorous (in the sense that his jizz gets spread more widely). Yet the majority of male human beings pursue multiple partners generally for reasons of pleasure. This is an important point, because polyamory is equally justifiable for females as it is for males. The wonderful thing about human sexuality is that females are sexually receptive full-time, and also find intrinsic value and pleasure in sex, impregnation or no. Continuous sexual receptivity in females developed to increase the frequency of copulation — to increase the probability of reproduction — and that continuous sexual receptivity can (and should) be taken advantage of. So males and females are equally justified in pursuing polyamory — on grounds of reproduction as much as (or less than) on grounds of pleasure. Taken together or taken apart, polyamory makes sense on either justification, for any gender affiliation, for any couple distribution.

That’s not to say that monogamy is unjustified — but that’s a discussion for another time. 😉