http://www.torontosun.com/life/healthandfitness/2010/12/02/16404841.html
We have been reading over the past couple of weeks how the idea of biology has affected the way we observe sexuality over time. As we get more and more obsessed with using science to explain difference, the genes have become a principal. All from the sad person gene, the gay gene, and now the promiscuity gene, we want to explain why people are different.
Of course we are not interested in finding the genes that make us normal. We are not interested in which genes make us monogamous, or hard working, or heterosexual. Although I think genetics it is legitimate in its search for biological explanations to why we are who we are, general obsession with genes focuses on what, as a society we find transgressive. Putting it in a different way, the common interest on genes is not in personality traits but in psychopathology.
There is an interest in discovering the gay gene, or the promiscuous gene, because they are undesirable traits. And however we disagree on the way that eugenics has been used, as in Spurlin’s discussion of the holocaust and the current approach to AIDS. The obsession with genes is rooted, in my opinion, in the same logic. If there is one particular gene configuration that makes you promiscuous that means that we can make an attempt to avoid it. Maybe we can grow into a species without cancer, LGBT, or promiscuous people.
I think that although we can say that our society tolerates transgression in people, many people would not think twice if they could avoid having a sexually deviant child. Finding a genetic reason for difference opens the door for hope that one day we can add genes to the pool of traits we can choose to have in our kin.
Alejandra’s discussion of Genes and Eugenics, more specifically the framing of sexuality in biological/scientific terms, reminds me of the evolution of sex within science (and the evolution of science within sex) that we read about in Laqueur’s Making Sex. In sum, we learned that “scientific” views of sex are as much informed (if not more so) by societal values, norms, and opinions than by scientific “fact.” That is to say, society (including its scientists) sees what they want to see in scientific fact. As evidence by renaissance and enlightenment period diagrams of male and female genitalia, despite increasingly detailed knowledge in regards to human anatomy, the belief in the “one sex model,” caused scientists to interpret every discovery as proof of this “fact.” It was only after society accepted the concept of “opposite sexes” in the 19th century that scientific “fact” began to reflect the “two sex model” (and anatomists stopped drawing female genitalia as inverted male genitalia).
ReplyDeleteEach age (the 21st century included) believes it has obtained objective scientific fact and thus views the world through dispassionate scientific lenses. However, we enlightened students of HIST 458 know that what is considered “scientific fact” (whether used to persecute Jews, the disabled, gays, women, or racial/ethnic minorities) is inextricably linked to societal views. Society’s fixation with genes and sexuality (gay gene, promiscuous gene) represents another example of society seeing what it wants to see in scientific “fact.” The search for gay genes and promiscuous genes are nothing more than new manifestations of the homophobic and misogynistic motivations present in scientific talk of the “invert,” “the third sex,” and removal of ovaries to treat “hysteria” in women. Will future generations look back and laugh at our talk of gay genes just like we look back and laugh at the one-sex model?