I have been pointed (thank you Kendall!) at an interesting article about homosexuality and genetics from Clarkesworld magazine. It is written by Ekaterina Sedia who, in addition to being a wonderful fiction author, is also a biology professor at Rutgers. Such articles, however, tend to fill me with dread, and while this one is better than many I’ve seen, it still worried me.

The best bit of the article comes right near the end where Kathy says:

nature versus nurture argument misses the point that much of human development is guided by idiosyncratic processes, which are biological but not genetic

Far too much of this argument (as with so many arguments) revolves around either-or issues; and in this case those issues are simply inappropriate for complex biological systems. The question as to whether gender identity or sexual orientation is biologically determined is corrosive and unwinable. If you hold that gender or sexual orientation is merely a choice, why then it will be argued that it is a choice that must not be made because society deems it immoral to do so; and if you hold that it is a function of biology, why then it will be argued that it is something that can and should be cured. It is a crazy discussion. And yet queer communities tear themselves apart over these questions, calling each other heretics and traitors if they support one side or the other.

Sedia’s article is not immune from the problem. At one point she says:

We still get headlines about how brains of homosexual men are more similar to female brains – regardless of the fact that the male-female brain differences are small to nonexistent to begin with.

Is this true? I don’t know. I know I have seen reports of many studies that claim that male and female brains are different. Kathy says they are not. I don’t have the biological background to judge who is correct. What I do know, however, is that the claim that male and female brains are indistinguishable is a cornerstone of some feminist politics. It is part of a faith-based approach to science that holds that male and female brains must be the same, because otherwise there would be a scientific justification for discrimination. I also know that the claim that male and female brains are indistinguishable is regularly used as “evidence” that transsexuals must be either “crazy” or “liars” because having a gender identity that is different from your biological sex is “scientifically impossible”.

What we should be arguing here is not for or against biological causes, but simply that gender identity and sexual orientation are natural and various, just like handedness is natural and varied. These days no one tries to cure kids of being left-handed, and outside of a few specialist occupations where handedness (or footedness) is an issue, no one is discriminated against for being right- or left-handed. Parents are not browbeaten for failing in their duty if their kids grow up using the “wrong” hand to write with, because handedness is not seen as pathological. Gender identity and sexual orientation are not pathological either, and if we stopped thinking of them as such then we’d stop caring about whether they had biological or social “causes”.

(And as a footnote, you don’t need biological arguments to prove that the ideas of the likes of Ray Blanchard and J. Michael Bailey are bad science. Simple application of logic and the rules of scientific process are quite sufficient.)