Queer Science by Simon LeVay, MIT Press, 拢16.95/
$25, ISBN 0 262 12199 9
A Separate Creation by Chandler Burr, Bantam in
Britain/Hyperion
in the US, 拢16.99/$24.95
SIMON LEVAY is convinced that he was born gay, and wants science to
prove it.
He made his name studying the brain mechanisms that underlie visual perception,
but switched fields suddenly after his partner died of AIDS. LeVay became
convinced that the world at large would think better of gay people if it could
be established that homosexuality is a 鈥渢hird sex鈥� or 鈥渢hird gender鈥�,
hard-wired
into the individual鈥檚 body and mind.
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In the late 1980s, LeVay began to study autopsied brains, searching for
something different about the brains of gay men who had died of AIDS. 鈥淚
felt if
I didn鈥檛 find anything, I would give up a scientific career altogether,鈥�
he told
Newsweek. In 1991, he concluded that a tiny cluster of cells about a
cubic millimetre in volume in the brain鈥檚 hypothalamus influences, if it does
not control, human sexual orientation. His results have yet to be replicated,
and many neuroscientists remain sceptical.
In Queer Science LeVay continues his mission to spread the
word that
gays are born, not made. He recounts the work of researchers intent on finding
gay genes, gay hormonal environments in the womb, and gay ways of thinking. He
wants homosexuality to be 鈥減art of a package of sex-transposed traits鈥�, as
typified by the 鈥渕asculinised鈥� lesbian and the 鈥渇eminised鈥� gay man.
But most readers will find LeVay鈥檚 social arguments more fascinating
than his
science. If we think of people in same-sex relationships as a 鈥渄istinct
category鈥�, almost a different species, LeVay urges, all will be well. Such
distancing will expunge any 鈥渋nstinctive aversion鈥� straight people might
experience when contemplating what gays do in bed. After all, LeVay says,
鈥減eople see animals do all kinds of potentially disgusting or immoral things鈥�
but don鈥檛 hate them. 鈥淚 believe that science helps improve relationships
between
straight and gay people when it strengthens gay people鈥檚 status as an objective
category of human beings.鈥�
Alas, there are problems with this view. Few heterosexuals view gays as if
they were from another planet, not least because the existence of homosexuality
is central to the definition and identity of its opposite: straights need gays
to reaffirm the continually blurred boundaries between masculinity and
femininity. Why else does the mainstream take such pleasure in the
gender-bending of Julian Clary or k. d. lang?
But the central problem with LeVay鈥檚 approach is that he stereotypes gay men
as foppish, effeminate creatures good at empathy and bad at maths, and lesbians
as unmaternal career women with a love of competitive sports. He reluctantly
acknowledges that these images are travesties, but dismisses diversity as
something to be dealt with later, after we have cracked the 鈥渆ssential
difference鈥�. Yet by regarding masculinity and femininity as biologically given
ways of behaving鈥攚hich in the homosexuals鈥� case somehow become deranged
from the appropriate genitalia鈥攈e has prejudged what he is trying to
understand.
In any case, this book risks being overshadowed by Chandler Burr鈥檚 racy
paean
to the putative gay gene, A Separate Creation: How Biology Makes Us
Gay
. A gay writer from Washington DC, Burr has produced a masterpiece of American
journalese.
The scientists he interviews are mostly brash, egotistical, can-do people.
This is the US at its most confident. Meet, for instance, the zoologist who
studies hormones in hyenas: 鈥淲ith his somewhat wild, thinning black hair
ringing
his head like fire and his laid-back academic demeanor, Frank resembles a
young,
very cool, very California Einstein. The license plates of his silver Porsche
944 read `Crocuta鈥�, the Latin name for hyena.鈥�
If you can stomach this sort of thing, Burr is worth a read. There is little
analysis and lots of hype, but he has talked to many researchers, all doggedly
searching for a biological basis for homosexuality. The take-home message? If
this is what America believes, we鈥檒l have to get used to it.