Julie Bindel on Queer by Choice

[blahflowers]

Attempts to identify a genetic basis for homosexuality refuse to accept that sexual desire is a social construct

Julie Bindel
Tuesday December 14, 2004
The Guardian

I remember the graffiti on a wall in Leeds. "My mother made me a lesbian"; and underneath: "If I gave her the wool would she make me one?"
Thirty years since homosexuality was removed from the list of recognised mental disorders, scientists persist in searching for a "cause", refusing to accept that sexuality and sexual desire are social constructs, not biological or genetically determined.

Last week saw the publication of the latest efforts to explain our odd attractions. Apparently, women who take slimming and thyroid pills during pregnancy are substantially more likely to have gay children, particularly lesbians. After studying 5,000 US and Canadian members of gay and lesbian organisations, and their mothers, they are claiming that amphetamine-based diet pills taken in the first three months of pregnancy appear to determine sexuality.

This is one of many such studies, spanning a hundred years. The history of these experiments is not a proud one. The Nazis specialised in them, with a view to eradicating homosexuality. Since then, there have been countless attempts to identify a "gay gene" or some simple, biological basis for being attracted to the same sex. One of the most controversial studies was conducted by gay neuroscientist Simon LeVay in 1991, who claimed that gay men's brains were "more like women's". Then there was the one that "discovered" that boys with older brothers are 33% more likely to be gay because of occupying a womb where a male foetus has already been.

Julie McNamara, mental health consultant to the disability rights commission, is dismayed that scientists are still concerning themselves with this issue. "We have uncontrolled famine in developing countries, serious illness for which there is no cure, and researchers are spending time and public money on this nonsense. I thought we had learned that pseudo-Darwinism is dangerous."

What exactly is the purpose of these costly experiments? So parents can decide whether to abort if discovering the foetus might turn out to be a hairy lesbian? Or is it because the majority of people cannot get to grips with the fact that we choose to be lesbian and gay. All the comments us lezzers have endured over the years, such as "you don't you know what you're missing", come from the mistaken belief that batting for the other side is a disadvantage. Actually, a lot of us know precisely what we are missing. If we wanted to be heterosexual we would be.

Recently, when out with a group of friends, a man started pestering us, asking why we were on our own. We pointed out that six women could not be on their own and told him to piss off. This engendered the usual shouts of "carpet munchers" and "ugly lezzers".

I told him if he was the alternative to lesbianism, all women would choose it. The barmaid asked me if it really was a choice. "I thought you couldn't help it," she whispered.

Looking through various science magazines I discovered a wide variety of "explanations" as to why I am a lesbian, and what I am supposed to be made up of. Lesbians are almost three times more likely than heterosexual women to suffer from a hormonal disorder that causes infertility and excessive hair growth. I just thank God I discovered electrolysis and never wanted children. Also, we have longer index fingers than the norm. My plastic surgeon was very good, though. Now my fingers look the same as yours, except I have extra ones. Apparently, I also have more testosterone than straight girls.

All these claims serve the notion that there is something wrong with those of us who shun heterosexuality. Many lesbians and gays want to believe we were "born that way" to provoke sympathy and understanding. In the mid-1980s, during the kerfuffle around Section 28, I dared to write in a gay publication that being lesbian or gay was a positive choice. I was inundated with letters telling me what trouble I had caused, because if heteros thought we were choosing to be deviant, that means we are responsible, not our genes. Some said: "I have known I was gay since I was three months old. How can it be a choice?" Obviously she was exaggerating. It is rare to remember anything before two years old, by which time we are significantly socialised. You just have to look at the cries for Barbie dolls and Action Men from toddlers to see how masculine and feminine traits are taught to children almost from the womb.

While understandable that, as a response to horrific homophobia that still prevails in most cultures and societies, some in the gay community wish to pass the buck for their choice of sexual identity to a rogue gene, it plays into the hands of reactionary geneticists whose agenda is terrifying. They are seeking to prove that those outside of the white, able-bodied heterosexual norm are inferior. We must not collude.

Being gay or lesbian is obviously not a choice like which sauce to have with your pasta, but more a mix of opportunity, luck, chance and, quite frankly, bravery. It is a positive choice, and we do not need anyone with a test tube telling us otherwise. Heterosexuals? Some of them are OK, but I wouldn't want my daughter marrying one.

Julie Bindel is the founder of Justice for Women.

Comments

[ill-prezidante.livejournal.com]

I said that back at the time of the gay mouse fiasco.

Well not that exactly, were that I could write so well. But I did say that it was ridiculous to attribute an abstract characteristic to a singular physical manifestation at the genetic level.

Shortly after that I failed biology. Irony, you have ruined my life forever.

[spyinthehaus.livejournal.com]

Tyical Bindel - writes off and insults anyone who might disagree with her on any point as insurance. A potentially worthwhile point smothered in self-congratulation and bile. She does seem to believe that the highest possible form of life is to be Julie Bindel...

And "all the comments _we_ lezzers have endured", for God's sake. Does Bindel get some sort of bye from the style guide and the sub-editors? Her writing style is atrocious.

[blahflowers.livejournal.com]

What about all the comments we transies have endured... from Julie Bindel?

[ludy]

i was actully thinkaing about bioglical detrminism earler today (i just got a boook about/for women with autistic spectrum disorders, who tend to get ignored by this wierd beief that autism is an exagerated male behavior). And i don't get it, specificlay the testosterone thing. I have PCOS and lots of my matenal relavtive have PCOS (the men tend to have male-pattern baldness and high blood pressure which is genticllay related) that means lots of us were exposed to higher then average testorone levels in the womb (because our mothers had PCOS). But we don't have higher numbers of queers or trans people or even of aggressivness (which has also been linked to testosternone). We do have higher than average levels of spottyness, mood swings, blood sugar problems, gyne problems, subfetility and depression (but i think that's a reaction to the other stuff - particulary the gyne probelsm and subferitily - not particularly innate). As for the finger thing i'm differnt on each hand (i must be bi!). So i think biology is a certain amount of destiny but definatly not all of it and i'm very suspious of tryng to identfy genes for behaviors because it seems like that's mostly about trying to get rid of them.

[lozette.livejournal.com]

Admittedly, I have no idea who she is but... hrm. I presume she's actually founder of Justice For Women Just As Long As They're Not Nasty Heterosexuals? :-)