Queer Science: The Use and Abuse of Research into Homosexuality - Hardcover

Levay, Simon

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0262121999 ISBN 13: 9780262121996

Publisher: Mit Pr, 1996

Synopsis

Argues scientific research shows homosexuality is not merely a set of behaviors anyone might show, but that homosexuals are a distinct group of people, and discusses the social implications

About this title

About the Author

Simon LeVay is particularly well known for his 1991 report in Science, which described a difference in brain structure between gay and heterosexual men. The report stirred up a considerable debate about the biological basis of sexual orientation, both in the scientific community and among the general public. In 1992, LeVay left his faculty position at the Salk Institute to co-found the Institute of Gay and Lesbian Education, an adult education school located in West Hollywood. His previous books are The Sexual Brain and City of Friends: A Portrait of the Gay and Lesbian Community in America (with Elisabeth Nonas).

Reviews

LeVay (City of Friends), best known for his 1991 study on differences in the brains of straight and gay men, here chronicles the history of the myriad attempts to explain possible biological origins of homosexuality. Most interesting is his survey of research in Berlin at the turn of the century. Before the word "homosexual" was used, the German jurist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825-1895) was the first person to declare gays, or "urnings" (followers or descendants of Uranus), a distinct class of people from heterosexuals, or "dionings" (from Diana). Ulrichs thought that gay minds developed in one male or female direction, while their bodies developed in an opposite-sex direction. Magnus Hirschfield expanded these theories into his notions of "a third sex," until Kinsey proposed the concept of a universal continuum of sexual desire. In separate chapters, LeVay chronicles theories and experiments regarding prenatal hormone levels (androgens and estrogens), genes and brain structure, as well as attempts to "cure" people of homosexuality, ranging from the merely psychoanalytical to the grotesquely surgical, such as testes transplantation. LeVay deftly translates biological arcana for the layperson but also has a full grasp on historical information?both nonmedical (the activist practice of "outing" closeted homosexuals was initiated by the anarchist Adolf Brand in fin de siecle Berlin) and medical (in WW II, the U.S. Army tried treating a unit of 300 gay men with testosterone injections, unexpectedly causing "the worst homosexual problem" because they increased rather than modified the intensity of the men's sex drives).
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

LeVay presents the many likely causes of homosexuality that research is pursuing and explains who should be interested in that pursuit. He speaks as an insider, for his pioneering 1991 article on possible brain structure differences in homosexual and heterosexual men made quite a splash, and the next year he helped establish the Institute of Gay and Lesbian Education. LeVay explores anatomical, endocrinological, psychological, social, cultural, religious, and legal aspects of homosexuality, beginning with the work of two Germans, nineteenth-century jurist Karl Ulrichs and Weimar-era physician and gay rights activist Magnus Hirschfeld. He demonstrates how research reports have been properly and improperly used to promote either scientific growth or biased attitudes. LeVay's research interests lead into occasional patches of difficult reading, but readers who stick with the well-thought-out and documented text will learn much about science and humanity. Evenhandedness is the pervasive atmosphere of this book, which should be useful in both academic and public settings, although the latter must not miss Burr's Separate Creation. William Beatty

Since the mid-1800s, the thrust of much research on homosexuality has been twofold: to understand what "causes" it, then to "cure" it. LeVay (The Sexual Brain, MIT, 1993), who in 1991 published a landmark article on structural differences between the brains of gay and straight men, argues that any one-dimensional research focus is misguided. He surveys the history of research into homosexuality from its beginnings in the cognitive sciences to today's genetic and biological work. LeVay claims that to study homosexuality is, by extension, to study all human sexuality, for you cannot ask what "makes" somebody gay without asking what "makes" somebody straight. He also shows how scientific research into homosexuality colors how the public perceives gays and lesbians, for better or worse. A thoughtful and objective synthesis that deserves broad readership.?Gregg Sapp, Univ. of Miami Lib.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Mit Pr
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0262121999
• ISBN 13: 9780262121996
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 364