Jun 27, 2007 21:31
There was this article on cnn.com today about a grad student somewhere who fixed little red dots to people's bodies and videotaped them walking. Said grad student then analyzed the walks to see if there was any correlation between the persons sexual orientation and the manner in which they walked. This is funny, because I think there is tacit assumption within the study - which is pretty much, "Hey, let's be honest, it sorta seems like gay guys walk different. Like, you know, swishier or something." Of course, the study makes it sound like they chose walking sort of arbitrarily, as if it were just any random trait that may or may not have a link to homosexuality. Of course, the problem is that I don't think the manner in which one walks is really a trait, and it is beginning to seem like homosexuality is not a trait in the strictest sense of the word, either.
I should say that I do think that evidence points to the fact that the broad strokes of one's sexuality are "inborn." What that means, is another thing altogether. Is there a gay gene? (they haven't found one yet) And if there is, how the hell has it survived the rigors of the selective process? (assuming
I think this study was flawed in it's central premise, though it was noble in attitude. Of course, the guy wanted to give us just a little more evidence to point to the fact that gays cannot change their sexual orientation and thus should not be discriminated against. However, walking was the wrong thing to go with. Is there a correlation between the way one walks and their sexual orientation? Yeah, probably. But I think the way one walks is in many ways a personally constructed social mechanism, that is, a partially unconscious embodiment of how we desire to project ourselves. Granted, we don't really think about it all the time, and there are certainly characteristics of our walks that are above our ability to change them, but on the whole, I don't think it is as permanent as say, homosexuality.
So where does this leave homosexuality on the nature vs nurture scale? I come down pretty hard on nature, as I do on a lot of things, but we also have to be a little more open mined about what that vote for nature might mean. It doesn't necessarily mean genetic determinism, as we don't even really understand gene expression, much less gene expression for behavior. I would be willing to bet that there is some sort of epigenetic factor when it comes to something like homosexuality - a biological, but not necessarily genetic, determinant.