Reviewed by Liz Ross, 2001.

Is there anything for queers in the gay genes/gay brains claims? Many have claimed gay genes as a weapon for our side in the fight for liberation. Others have countered - just ask any woman or Koori/Murri whether they think the genetics of skin colour or knowing women have two X chromosomes has given them any weapons to fight their oppression!

Whether homosexuality is said to be caused by genes, hormones, brain wiring or family psychology, it’s a debate that just won’t go away. Ever since capitalist society started naming groups - whether it be on the basis of sex, race or sexuality - it’s defined them as different to the ‘norm’ and tried to determine what makes them so. And capitalism has looked to science to provide the answers.

Apart from denouncing science, as we’ve seen many gays have been prepared to accept various biological explanations. After all we feel being gay is natural, even that we were born gay, so why shouldn’t there be some biological cause?

So let’s take a look at some of the latest research. Australian research scientist Lesley Rogers, in her book "Sexing the Brain" questions the results of the gay brain studies, explaining that there were only 35 individuals examined. 19 were gay. The comparison or ‘control’ group of 16 were supposed to be heterosexual, but they were never asked! In the gene studies there were a range of problems in the statistical analysis used. The researchers assumed an unusually low 2% of the population as gay. If you redo the statistics using the more commonly accepted 10% rate then some of the claimed findings no longer hold.

But more importantly not one of the gene or brain studies have been backed up by any other laboratory trying to repeat the studies - an absolute requirement in science if you are to ‘prove’ your point. And unlike the gay gene story hitting the front pages of the popular press, the failure to repeat the studies has hardly raised a mention.

Scientists like Lesley argue that humans - and all other organisms - are a very complex mix of genes, developmental processes, environmental and social factors. In people these processes interact in a multi-layered way, resulting in what we now describe as ‘human’. A gene ‘for’ something as complex as sexuality is simply a nonsense in trying to understand how we become what we are.

And the latest results from the Human Genome Project back this up. Rather than finding the hundreds of thousands of genes needed for a simplistic ‘genes r us’ theory, they found only 30,000 - about the same as an evening primrose! It beggars belief that there are enough genes to spell out something as complex as sexual behaviour when there quite clearly aren’t even enough to individually direct our basic biological functions.

Rather than damn all science and the reductionist methods used - after all it’s the basic method for studies into AIDS, the Human Genome Project and so much else that is truly valuable - Lesley explains its limits. "The methods of science tend to intercept living processes and freeze them at a moment of time… We are inclined to focus on an isolated segment of a process of life that has both a history and a future and we attempt to construct a complete picture of the development from snapshots taken at various times…". Given how difficult it is to trace this ‘history’ and ‘future’ Lesley adds, "This is probably why so many researchers simply look at the difference and then speculate on its causes, rather than investigate them. And it is here that they fall back on ideology."

And it’s the most conservative ideology that is their refuge. Lesley argues that "These voices are the echoes of a society at pains to understand itself and to do so in the most rigid and unflinching terms. They are an effort to recruit science into the social debate and use it to uphold the status quo." (Just look at Howard and Herron’s use of statistics with the Stolen Generations to see this very process in action.) More importantly, "The message is that it is no use fighting to change the organisation of our society because we are biologically determined to be the way we are."

We - with the help of scientists such as Lesley Rogers, Stephen Gould, Steven Rose to name just a few - do want to recruit science into the social debate, but in a way that can provide ammunition for a radical restructuring of society. "Sexing the Brain" gives us just such a revolutionary science. Not only does it show the profound flaws in the current research, but looks at the ways in which science - and society - can move forward.

Lesley’s conclusions should be flashed around every campus: "Our biology does not bind us to remain the same, as implied by simplistic genetic and hormonal interpretations of our behaviour. We have the ability to change and the future of sex differences lies with us."

Lesley Rogers. Sexing the Brain, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London, 1999.