Results tagged “Heterosexuality” from A Swede in SF

Today I attended the Chancellor's Award for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and/or Transgender Leadership. As always this is a very powerful and touching event.

Having served on the selection committee for the last two years, I am aware of the phenomenal work that is done within the community by LGBTIQ individuals and our allies. But listening to the speeches from the awardees I was crying because of the powerful stories they shared with us present. Thank you all, and congratulations!

And in all of this, I cannot help to wonder over the ostracism, homophobia, and ignorance they have met - and that we as LGBTIQ women and men continue to face. Living in San Francisco it is so easy to get lost in the protected world, the bubble we live in. The flag over the Castro often feels like a beacon of hope, but at the same time also like an opium...

And the stories shared today become even more thought-provoking as I am - at the same time - reading about queer theory and describe that theory for my qualifying exam. It feels so strange to write about concepts like the heterosexual matrix and performativity, and then see its presence in and around myself.

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"Gene in men decides if they are faithful" is the headline in the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have discovered that males with the gene variant "allel 334" are more likely to be infidel/have problems in their marriages. And, if the men had the variance on both chromosomes they were twice as likely to have a "crisis" in their marriages.

The comparison is between men and two species of voles, where the voles made them look for the vasopressin. Good that one can blame ones genes for more and more things! If one wants to feel like a vole, that is!

It is fascinating that a socially non-acceptable behavior is construed as a problem that one needs to find biological correlates to it. No one seems to think about what the construct is beneath this research: the nuclear family, and where other family constructs must be wrong. And what is the hip thing now? Yes, genetics.

Sigh, this is the second time this summer there have been some odd research on human sexuality from KI published in PNAS. The last time it was a brain structures that were similar between gay men and heterosexual women [PNAS][PubMed].

I am not against studies being done about biological correlates to sexual orientation or behavior, but I think it is time that both researchers and journalists start to think about what they are stating as facts. What are the certainties and uncertainties? The article by the Swedish psychologists Kurt Ernulf and Sune Innala still has its importance: "Rats are hardly sexually oriented! Generalizations on animal behavior is too far-fetched"
 

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