By popular request (okay, by the request of two), a sex-research smackdown.
All right, this is my critique of the Cnn.com article I posted a link to yesterday. Bear in mind that, due to the brief, vague way in which the research is presented in said article, my ability to address the research itself is limited. The article itself is short (I've included the full text here), but I get pretty enthusiastic. If any of you do want to know more about me and how I see the world, this is probably going to tell you as much or more as anything else I've posted. Also, if any of you are pregnant or have any intention of having kids, there's a big chunk in the middle that I swear is extremely, vitally important. I've put a star at the start.
Study: Sexual identity hard-wired by genetics
LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- Sexual identity is wired into the genes, which discounts the concept that homosexuality and transgender sexuality are a choice, California researchers reported on Monday.
All right, let's start with the basics. "Sexuality" is itself a highly vague and confusing term; it can be multiply defined as "the condition of being characterized and distinguished by sex," "concern with or interest in sexual activity," or "sexual character or potency" (among other slightly different variations). So it's already unclear from the article's header whether the research in question focuses on "sexuality" in the sense of sex/gender or "sexuality" in the sense of the sexual activities, desires, and lifestyles. However, in popular culture, "sexuality" and "sexual identity" are most often used in the latter sense. "Homosexuality" offers no ostensible comment on one's own sex/gender (though I could go on for hours about the sociocultural relations between the two), and I've mostly seen "transgender sexuality" used to refer to the sexual lives of transgendered people (whereas "transgenderism" refers more directly to the gender identit(y/ies) of transgendered people). So I, at least, expected this to be an article about genetic bases of sexual orientation, etc.
Still with me? I promise my jargon won't get any thicker than this, and this is most of the definitions.
"Our findings may help answer an important question -- why do we feel male or female?" Dr. Eric Vilain, a genetics professor at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine, said in a statement. "Sexual identity is rooted in every person's biology before birth and springs from a variation in our individual genome."
Clearly, from this quote, the research focuses on sexuality in the sense of sex/gender. A bit surprising given, the inclusion of homosexuality and transgendered sexuality in the title, but it's possible that clearer ties will be made later on. The view of sex/gender he's presenting here is extremely essentialist- it presents sex/gender and all of its trappings as something essentially inborn, not learned or enculturated. The essentialist view is a long-standing and culturally dominant one, which I disagree with on most points (and I could again write a whole post defending my position, but I'll restrain myself).
His team has identified 54 genes in mice that may explain why male and female brains look and function differently.
Yep, the research is about sex/gender. And, let me note for the record, that these are mice. A lot of animal research is generalizable to humans, but still keep it in mind that we're talking about an entirely different species. This research will also not be addressing any changes occuring in an organism's lifetime (when it comes to genes, what you get is what you get).
Since the 1970s, scientists have believed that estrogen and testosterone were wholly responsible for sexually organizing the brain. Recent evidence, however, indicates that hormones cannot explain everything about the sexual differences between male and female brains.
This supports my previous point- they'll be making a case for sexual differentiation (to some extent) being predetermined by genetics, independent of changes occuring due to hormones (both in utero and during lifespan) and, of course, due to sociocultural situation. (It's not clear yet if they recognize the influence of culture at all.)
Published in the latest edition of the journal Molecular Brain Research, the UCLA discovery may also offer physicians an improved tool for gender assignment of babies born with ambiguous genitalia.
Mild cases of malformed genitalia occur in 1 percent of all births -- about 3 million cases. More severe cases -- where doctors can't inform parents whether they had a boy or girl -- occur in one in 3,000 births.
"If physicians could predict the gender of newborns with ambiguous genitalia at birth, we would make less mistakes in gender assignment," Vilain said.
***All right, I'm going to ditch any attempts at objectivity right here and now, because this is something that gets me mad like nothing else. Let's decode this language. "Babies born with ambiguous genitalia"- this category covers a huge range of different physical configurations, ranging from a child whose phallus is considered a little small for a penis and a little large for a clitoris to a child whose genital and excretory organs have developed in a way that poses an immediate threat to their health. Many of these infants could be (and are) categorized as "intersex," meaning that the combination of biological sex/gender indicators (chromosomes, hormones, internal sex organs, genitalia, etc.) do not all clearly point to one polar gender or the other. This category includes a wide variety of different physiological occurences, many of which are not identifiable at birth and may not be noted until much later (if ever). The vast majority of these are not threatening to one's life or health in any way.
That said, if an infant is born with ambiguous genitalia, there is usually a medical intervention within the first few months, weeks, or even days of life. And by "medical intervention," I mean surgical alteration and hormone treatment for the newborn infant, frequently (but not limited to) removal of some or all of an "abnormally" large clitoris (and so you know, we're talking a gray area of a couple centimeters here) or surgical relocation of the urethral opening to another location on the phallus or genital area. More extreme surgeries (such as the creation or expansion of a vagina) may be delayed until later in life. Whatever the procedure, it often requires multiple follow-up surgeries and hormone therapy, extending into childhood and often past it into adult life.
The most common reasons doctors give for why this is necessary?
1. "If they don't look like the other kids, they'll be teased in the locker room." Sure, this is a possibility. And no one wants to be teased. But you may also be teased for being fat, for being thin, for having breasts that are noticeably larger or smaller than someone else's, for being circumcised or not ... for basically anything, really. Most of us survive it. Also, the more extreme the surgery, the less likely that it will produce fully "normal-looking" genitals anyway. And, as I said, many of these children will undergo hormone therapy and cosmetic surgery for years to compensate for these early "malformations" and, because of this, will STILL grow up with the sense that they're not like other boys and girls. Additionally, any genital surgery runs a risk of reducing or preventing sexual pleasure and the ability to reach orgasm, particularly when surgery that delicate is performed on a smaller, less developed body. And I don't know about you, but I'd take locker-room teasing if it meant I could keep my ability to have a sexually fulfilling adult life.
2. "The way things are now, the child won't be able to have heterosexual intercourse as an adult." What. The. FUCK. No, I'm not exaggerating. These surgeries are being done on the basis of an infant's projected "normative" heterosexual orientation and on the location of penile-vaginal intercourse as the essential expression of that orientation. Does this strike anyone else as a litte FUCKED-UP
So- great, they're apparently doing this research so that we can do a better job of getting this infant bodies "right" ... because there's no way we could just leave these kids THE HELL ALONE. Please, if any of you reading this are intent on having kids, I urge you to make it abundantly clear to your OB-GYN that you want no surgical intervention on your child's genitals and no hormone therapy unless it is the only way to treat a condition that is immediately and severely threatening your child's health. Take time during pregnancy to contact intersex support groups and activist organizations for informations that your doctors won't have or won't give you (because they do quite sincerely believe this is the only way). And, should you have an intersexed child, let me tell you that the majority of surgical and hormonal interventions can wait until the onset of puberty, by which time your kid is old enough to say who and how he/she/ze is and wants to be. Please. Many intersexed individuals never recover mentally or physically from the damage done to them by medical intervention.
Um. Back to the article.
Using two genetic testing methods, the researchers compared the production of genes in male and female brains in embryonic mice -- long before the animals developed sex organs.
They found 54 genes produced in different amounts in male and female mouse brains, prior to hormonal influence. Eighteen of the genes were produced at higher levels in the male brains; 36 were produced at higher levels in the female brains.
All's well here, but let me note that all "higher levels" mean is that there's a statistically significant difference in the production levels. This may mean that you can distinguish one group from another, but that the majority of individuals could still belong to either group.
"We discovered that the male and female brains differed in many measurable ways, including anatomy and function." Vilain said.
For example, the two hemispheres of the brain appeared more symmetrical in females than in males. According to Vilain, the symmetry may improve communication between both sides of the brain, leading to enhanced verbal expressiveness in females.
"This anatomical difference may explain why women can sometimes articulate their feelings more easily than men," he said.
Well, sure it does! ... that is, it does if women are more articulate about everything else, too. [/snark] Otherwise, you need much stronger proof that this incredibly specific subset of verbal behavior isn't do to sociocultural conditioning.
The scientists plan to conduct further studies to determine the specific role for each of the 54 genes they identified.
"Our findings may explain why we feel male or female, regardless of our actual anatomy," said Vilain. "These discoveries lend credence to the idea that being transgender --- feeling that one has been born into the body of the wrong sex -- is a state of mind."
This? Big leap of association. And I say this with no desire to invalidate any kind of gender identity, but please: show me a transgendered mouse. And you'll notice that homosexuality never made it into the article at all, nor does it appear to have any role in the research, indicating that its presence in the header is sensationalism of the worse kind. They're using public fascination with homosexuality to hook people into reading this article, at the expense of further muddling the connections between sexual orientation and sex/gender identity and subtly implying that homosexuals are sex/gender-variant (and again, there's some reason to believe that this is how culture really views homosexuals, but that's for another article). I haven't had a chance to read the published research yet, and this article (like most pop-media presentations of sex research) doesn't give the reader sufficiently concrete or detailed information to permit any kind of critique of the logic, the methods, the conclusions, the constructs ... I could go on. Most news coverage of sexuality or sex/gender research (whatever the quality or goals of the research itself) does little more than further sensationalize, essentialize, and reinforce the discrete categories of our sexuality and sex/gender systems, without ever increasing the public's conceptual understanding or critical ability.
And that's it. It certainly isn't the most careful or the tightest analysis I've ever given, but maybe it'll give you an idea. If anyone's interested in reading more of my thoughts, I've got a host of papers and research (as well as less formal rambles and rants) I'll be happy to provide. If anybody made it all the way through, I'm grateful and gratified.
Now back to the critique of sex research I'm supposed to be doing (aka my thesis).
Study: Sexual identity hard-wired by genetics
LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- Sexual identity is wired into the genes, which discounts the concept that homosexuality and transgender sexuality are a choice, California researchers reported on Monday.
All right, let's start with the basics. "Sexuality" is itself a highly vague and confusing term; it can be multiply defined as "the condition of being characterized and distinguished by sex," "concern with or interest in sexual activity," or "sexual character or potency" (among other slightly different variations). So it's already unclear from the article's header whether the research in question focuses on "sexuality" in the sense of sex/gender or "sexuality" in the sense of the sexual activities, desires, and lifestyles. However, in popular culture, "sexuality" and "sexual identity" are most often used in the latter sense. "Homosexuality" offers no ostensible comment on one's own sex/gender (though I could go on for hours about the sociocultural relations between the two), and I've mostly seen "transgender sexuality" used to refer to the sexual lives of transgendered people (whereas "transgenderism" refers more directly to the gender identit(y/ies) of transgendered people). So I, at least, expected this to be an article about genetic bases of sexual orientation, etc.
Still with me? I promise my jargon won't get any thicker than this, and this is most of the definitions.
"Our findings may help answer an important question -- why do we feel male or female?" Dr. Eric Vilain, a genetics professor at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine, said in a statement. "Sexual identity is rooted in every person's biology before birth and springs from a variation in our individual genome."
Clearly, from this quote, the research focuses on sexuality in the sense of sex/gender. A bit surprising given, the inclusion of homosexuality and transgendered sexuality in the title, but it's possible that clearer ties will be made later on. The view of sex/gender he's presenting here is extremely essentialist- it presents sex/gender and all of its trappings as something essentially inborn, not learned or enculturated. The essentialist view is a long-standing and culturally dominant one, which I disagree with on most points (and I could again write a whole post defending my position, but I'll restrain myself).
His team has identified 54 genes in mice that may explain why male and female brains look and function differently.
Yep, the research is about sex/gender. And, let me note for the record, that these are mice. A lot of animal research is generalizable to humans, but still keep it in mind that we're talking about an entirely different species. This research will also not be addressing any changes occuring in an organism's lifetime (when it comes to genes, what you get is what you get).
Since the 1970s, scientists have believed that estrogen and testosterone were wholly responsible for sexually organizing the brain. Recent evidence, however, indicates that hormones cannot explain everything about the sexual differences between male and female brains.
This supports my previous point- they'll be making a case for sexual differentiation (to some extent) being predetermined by genetics, independent of changes occuring due to hormones (both in utero and during lifespan) and, of course, due to sociocultural situation. (It's not clear yet if they recognize the influence of culture at all.)
Published in the latest edition of the journal Molecular Brain Research, the UCLA discovery may also offer physicians an improved tool for gender assignment of babies born with ambiguous genitalia.
Mild cases of malformed genitalia occur in 1 percent of all births -- about 3 million cases. More severe cases -- where doctors can't inform parents whether they had a boy or girl -- occur in one in 3,000 births.
"If physicians could predict the gender of newborns with ambiguous genitalia at birth, we would make less mistakes in gender assignment," Vilain said.
***All right, I'm going to ditch any attempts at objectivity right here and now, because this is something that gets me mad like nothing else. Let's decode this language. "Babies born with ambiguous genitalia"- this category covers a huge range of different physical configurations, ranging from a child whose phallus is considered a little small for a penis and a little large for a clitoris to a child whose genital and excretory organs have developed in a way that poses an immediate threat to their health. Many of these infants could be (and are) categorized as "intersex," meaning that the combination of biological sex/gender indicators (chromosomes, hormones, internal sex organs, genitalia, etc.) do not all clearly point to one polar gender or the other. This category includes a wide variety of different physiological occurences, many of which are not identifiable at birth and may not be noted until much later (if ever). The vast majority of these are not threatening to one's life or health in any way.
That said, if an infant is born with ambiguous genitalia, there is usually a medical intervention within the first few months, weeks, or even days of life. And by "medical intervention," I mean surgical alteration and hormone treatment for the newborn infant, frequently (but not limited to) removal of some or all of an "abnormally" large clitoris (and so you know, we're talking a gray area of a couple centimeters here) or surgical relocation of the urethral opening to another location on the phallus or genital area. More extreme surgeries (such as the creation or expansion of a vagina) may be delayed until later in life. Whatever the procedure, it often requires multiple follow-up surgeries and hormone therapy, extending into childhood and often past it into adult life.
The most common reasons doctors give for why this is necessary?
1. "If they don't look like the other kids, they'll be teased in the locker room." Sure, this is a possibility. And no one wants to be teased. But you may also be teased for being fat, for being thin, for having breasts that are noticeably larger or smaller than someone else's, for being circumcised or not ... for basically anything, really. Most of us survive it. Also, the more extreme the surgery, the less likely that it will produce fully "normal-looking" genitals anyway. And, as I said, many of these children will undergo hormone therapy and cosmetic surgery for years to compensate for these early "malformations" and, because of this, will STILL grow up with the sense that they're not like other boys and girls. Additionally, any genital surgery runs a risk of reducing or preventing sexual pleasure and the ability to reach orgasm, particularly when surgery that delicate is performed on a smaller, less developed body. And I don't know about you, but I'd take locker-room teasing if it meant I could keep my ability to have a sexually fulfilling adult life.
2. "The way things are now, the child won't be able to have heterosexual intercourse as an adult." What. The. FUCK. No, I'm not exaggerating. These surgeries are being done on the basis of an infant's projected "normative" heterosexual orientation and on the location of penile-vaginal intercourse as the essential expression of that orientation. Does this strike anyone else as a litte FUCKED-UP
So- great, they're apparently doing this research so that we can do a better job of getting this infant bodies "right" ... because there's no way we could just leave these kids THE HELL ALONE. Please, if any of you reading this are intent on having kids, I urge you to make it abundantly clear to your OB-GYN that you want no surgical intervention on your child's genitals and no hormone therapy unless it is the only way to treat a condition that is immediately and severely threatening your child's health. Take time during pregnancy to contact intersex support groups and activist organizations for informations that your doctors won't have or won't give you (because they do quite sincerely believe this is the only way). And, should you have an intersexed child, let me tell you that the majority of surgical and hormonal interventions can wait until the onset of puberty, by which time your kid is old enough to say who and how he/she/ze is and wants to be. Please. Many intersexed individuals never recover mentally or physically from the damage done to them by medical intervention.
Um. Back to the article.
Using two genetic testing methods, the researchers compared the production of genes in male and female brains in embryonic mice -- long before the animals developed sex organs.
They found 54 genes produced in different amounts in male and female mouse brains, prior to hormonal influence. Eighteen of the genes were produced at higher levels in the male brains; 36 were produced at higher levels in the female brains.
All's well here, but let me note that all "higher levels" mean is that there's a statistically significant difference in the production levels. This may mean that you can distinguish one group from another, but that the majority of individuals could still belong to either group.
"We discovered that the male and female brains differed in many measurable ways, including anatomy and function." Vilain said.
For example, the two hemispheres of the brain appeared more symmetrical in females than in males. According to Vilain, the symmetry may improve communication between both sides of the brain, leading to enhanced verbal expressiveness in females.
"This anatomical difference may explain why women can sometimes articulate their feelings more easily than men," he said.
Well, sure it does! ... that is, it does if women are more articulate about everything else, too. [/snark] Otherwise, you need much stronger proof that this incredibly specific subset of verbal behavior isn't do to sociocultural conditioning.
The scientists plan to conduct further studies to determine the specific role for each of the 54 genes they identified.
"Our findings may explain why we feel male or female, regardless of our actual anatomy," said Vilain. "These discoveries lend credence to the idea that being transgender --- feeling that one has been born into the body of the wrong sex -- is a state of mind."
This? Big leap of association. And I say this with no desire to invalidate any kind of gender identity, but please: show me a transgendered mouse. And you'll notice that homosexuality never made it into the article at all, nor does it appear to have any role in the research, indicating that its presence in the header is sensationalism of the worse kind. They're using public fascination with homosexuality to hook people into reading this article, at the expense of further muddling the connections between sexual orientation and sex/gender identity and subtly implying that homosexuals are sex/gender-variant (and again, there's some reason to believe that this is how culture really views homosexuals, but that's for another article). I haven't had a chance to read the published research yet, and this article (like most pop-media presentations of sex research) doesn't give the reader sufficiently concrete or detailed information to permit any kind of critique of the logic, the methods, the conclusions, the constructs ... I could go on. Most news coverage of sexuality or sex/gender research (whatever the quality or goals of the research itself) does little more than further sensationalize, essentialize, and reinforce the discrete categories of our sexuality and sex/gender systems, without ever increasing the public's conceptual understanding or critical ability.
And that's it. It certainly isn't the most careful or the tightest analysis I've ever given, but maybe it'll give you an idea. If anyone's interested in reading more of my thoughts, I've got a host of papers and research (as well as less formal rambles and rants) I'll be happy to provide. If anybody made it all the way through, I'm grateful and gratified.
Now back to the critique of sex research I'm supposed to be doing (aka my thesis).