Straight science on being gay

Sometime in 1973, a psychiatrist named Dr. Robert Spitzer fought to strike off “homosexuality” as a mental disease in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the list used by mental health practitioners around the world to identify mental disorders.

Then, in 2001, turning 180 degrees, this same doctor came out with a study detailing that homosexuality could actually be “cured” by some kind of “reparative therapy.” Yes, “reparative,” as in “repair” as he was obviously working on the premise that something was broken. Then last May 2012, turning another 180 degrees which brings him to one full glorious intellectual circle, he made a public apology saying that his study was actually not valid because he really did not have a way of verifying whether his subjects were actually “cured.” He said that having claimed that homosexuals could be cured of being homosexual, is the one and only regret of his professional life.

If my uncle, Wyngard Tracy who was gay, were still alive today, he would have most likely called me after reading that previous paragraph alone, to say, “Ay ganon? (Huh, that’s it?)” Anyone who knew Wyngard knows he was never at a loss for words in describing situations and people but when given a heavy load of information that carries serious consequences (like when he was told he had serious health problems), he usually just manages to come up with those two words as if they were the only ones that were able to scurry out of the crowd of data in his head. But after that, we would have scheduled dinner where he would make me tell him in animated detail, the rest of the evolving story of what science has been finding out so far about the nature of being gay.

First, I would have told him that it is now becoming even clearer from evidence that homosexuality is not a disease, but a condition much like being human is a condition. Simon LeVay, the neuroscientist who also happens to be gay, wrote a book entitled “Gay, Straight and the Reason Why, The Science of Sexual Orientation” (Oxford University Press, 2010) and it was my excellent guide to this terrain. As a condition, homosexuality has biological basis whether in terms of brain anatomy, genes or hormones, the last of which we are awash with as foetuses in the womb. Studies on identical twins (identical twins have similar genes) who have been separated from birth have yielded findings saying that despite the different environments they have been raised in, the twins exhibited the same sexual orientation. Studies measuring testosterone levels of female foetuses found that girls who had more exposure to testosterone exhibited traits that did not conform to the main roster of femaleness in kids such as a liking for dolls. These did not automatically mean that these girls all turned out to be lesbians but this shows that these traits were affected by hormones and not by people whom we usually blame for influencing children to become gay adults. Genes and hormones do not leave you as you become an adult so LeVay says there is no reason to believe that you only think it is the environment that determines gayness after birth. LeVay’s book is so rich in scientific insights that I cannot share all of them with you in one column so expect more on the science of gayness in the next columns.

Next, I would have told Wyngard that I have added a new name to my list of favorite science writers and this is Jesse Bering and he also happens to be gay. He writes for Slate.com among other publications and he writes with a flavor and blend of science, wit, snark and emotion that has kept me at a slow pace reading his pieces, afraid I will miss the nuances. He just wrote a piece in the Scientific American Mind July to August 2012 issue entitled “Is Your Child Gay?” where he summarized all the landmark studies looking for signs in children that can predict if they will become gay adults. The bottom line is, if you are looking for certainty — the kind that characterizes the certainty of a piece of stone falling back toward the ground after you throw it in the air — then you cannot predict it. But human beings are messy creatures, complicated by a brain, hormones, genes and let us not forget, other human beings. At best, science can give you a range of likelihood. For this, this is how science describes what it has discovered so far: the more your child does not conform to the gender that his genitals point to, the more likely he or she is going to be gay. This is found to be truer for boys than for girls.

Third, I would have told Wyngard that he has always been right that gayness is not a specific gender with one set of traits. It has many facets and nuances. It has personalities just like being male or being female does not have only one template against which we check our “gender fit.” I have always thought that gender was more of a continuum rather than distinctly defined territories made up of dolls and plates for girls and cars and balls for boys. Now it is even clearer that is an ecology, a micro-scape of hormones and genes working with cues from the webbed dynamics of family, friends, or school. I also saw the term “continuum” in LeVay’s book as he described personalities of gays and I was assured that it was not just my bias. Gayness is not just about men choosing to love men or women choosing to love women.

Lastly, I would have told Wyngard that I miss him terribly and that I always still imagine having my very unique conversations with him.

Biodiversity is a concept that we are so eager to promote because we recognize that it faithfully reflects nature’s realities. But we cannot seem to readily think “diversity” when it comes to gender. Somehow, we become frugal and intellectually budgeted when we classify human genders that nature gives rise to. Most of us are limited to thinking only in binary gender denominations — male or female. If you want to look for gender, look at the person, inner and outer spaces, and put genitals in the bottom of your clues. The person will tell you rich, scrumptious tales. Genitals are boring.

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