Is Sexual Orientation Research Biased?
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In Backdrop: The Politics and Personalities Behind Sexual Orientation Research, Gayle Pitman, a Professor of Psychology and Women’s Studies at Sacramento City College, avoids reviewing this literature in favor of exploring how these researchers’ personal backgrounds have influenced their work. Since the volume is targeted at undergraduate students and a general audience, she still has to review the major research, and she does this clearly and fairly. Her own bias is toward a psychological and cultural approach that encompasses the diversity and plasticity of sexuality rather than a simple pair of binary categories—homo- versus heterosexual, masculine versus feminine—of the kind adopted by some researchers for the sake of expediency. She argues especially for better research on bisexuality and sexual fluidity, and praises the work of psychologist Lisa Diamond, author of Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women’s Love and Desire (2008; reviewed in these pages, Sept.-Oct. 2008). Pitman’s volume is therefore a welcome counterpoint to the biological determinism of Simon LeVay in Gay, Straight, and the Reason Why: The Science of Sexual Orientation (2011).

Pitman covers quite a bit of territory beyond sexual orientation, venturing into the research and politics of intersex and transgender as well. Her aim in providing the personal backdrop to the research is somewhat unsteady and her focus not so clear. She definitely does not want to discredit these scientists as unobjective because of their own sexual orientation. Yet she argues that all research exploits “the illusion of pure scientific objectivity.” Her conclusion veers off into a rumination on the role of fear in shaping this topic—fear of homophobic religious groups and policy makers, fear of researchers who avoid sexual fluidity or non-biological paradigms so as not to undermine various GLBT political gains. But she’s really criticizing the fear of the GLBT community (without being specific) for condemning the research since, she finally concludes, gay scientists are really motivated by altruism and social justice, which are a legitimate subjectivity in science unlike the fear-based animus of the haters.

Her well-intentioned if convoluted conclusion aside, my real disappointment is the absence of primary sources. Pitman relies entirely on published accounts by the major players in the field as well as Angela Pattatucci (currently director of the Center for Evaluation and Sociomedical Research at the University of Puerto Rico), who first garnered national attention as a co-author on Dean Hamer’s publications on the genetics of sexual orientation. What’s finally missing from this book is some fresh material. Aside from the icons of sex research, Alfred Kinsey and Evelyn Hooker, all of the researchers Pitman discusses are alive and not reclusive. LeVay continues to publish on this topic, and Dean Hamer and his husband Joe Wilson have been producing documentary films for the past six years, many dealing with queer topics. Pitman could easily have gotten the complex personal, political, and intellectual background on sexual orientation researchers by talking to them directly.

I CHATTED with Francisco Sanchez about his perspective on these topics. “Cisco,” as everyone calls him, is a muscular guy with an impish smile who looks way too young to be an assistant research scientist in Dr. Eric Vilain’s lab in the Department of Human Genetics and Center for Gender-Based Biology at UCLA. This lab has published a flurry of articles in the past decade breaking new ground on the genetics of sex determination and brain sexual dimorphism. The latter work explores the earliest sexed difference in gene expression in the brain (before the influence of sex hormones) and how these genetic factors affect brain regions that might account for an array of neuropsychological traits including gender differences in cognition, sexual orientation, and gender identity and behavior.*

Cisco grew up in a traditional Mexican-American family in Laredo, Texas—an almost exclusively Latino border city. He did not figure out that he was gay as a teenager. It took getting away to college at Texas A & M University to begin to struggle with his same-sex attractions and disentangle that from issues of ethnicity. It was a time of confusion when he lacked gay role models. His image of a gay person growing up in Laredo was the effeminate hairdresser. It was not until graduate school in counseling psychology, far from home at the University of Iowa, that he came out as gay. As he noted, his challenges were similar to those of many GLBT people who juggle multiple ethnic and religious affiliations.

Throughout his clinical counseling rotations, gay clients were often funneled his way. His own personal struggles sensitized him to coming out issues, and he has remained dedicated to GLBT mental health by speaking to community organizations on homophobia, class and ethnic issues, and coming out in Latino families. Even as he was completing his PhD, he shifted his interest from counseling to research with the goal of developing new knowledge to help inform clinicians treating gay clients. LeVay’s and Hamer’s work from the 90’s had convinced him that there was a biological component to the development of sexual orientation. But he was frustrated with the dearth of basic research to support this hypothesis. It was a serendipitous encounter with a researcher in this field (when they were both staffing booths at a Gay Pride festival) that led him to the Vilain lab, allowing him to make the leap to basic science. Cisco is in charge of recruiting human subjects for research protocols, administering questionnaires and psychological testing, statistical analysis, and doing small group discussions.

What is his operating hypothesis about the basis of sexual orientation? Cisco believes that there’s an “interaction between our biological predispositions and the environment. When we are born we are given whatever blueprint that predisposes us to certain interests, or personality, or complex behavioral traits. The environment interacts with that biology and genetics.” But by environment he means primarily prenatal biological factors like gene interactions and hormonal effects. Parenting and role models can influence behavior by suppressing or inhibiting sexual attraction, but innate feelings of attraction to males or females are fixed. Does he believe this is the same in men and women? “Women are a much more complex being than men,” he avers. Abundant research on sexual arousal finds that men are much more dichotomous than women, and women show much more erotic fluidity. (An example of this is actress Cynthia Nixon’s recent comments about her own evolving sexuality—shifting from a fifteen-year relationship with a man to a subsequent partnership with a woman.)

I continue to object that culture must have a larger role in sexuality. He is willing to acknowledge that culture definitely complicates sexual self-identity because of sub-cultural stereotypes. For example, a Latino man may not self-identity as gay because he doesn’t relate to the Latino stereotypes of a gay man (the effeminate hairdresser), or he might experience conflict between identifying with the gay community versus the Latino community.

I grant him that sexual identity may form later on, but if erotic attraction is so deeply ingrained, then why doesn’t it show at the first blush of puberty, rather than waiting, as it often does, to early adulthood or later? Would Cisco have figured out that he was gay had he stayed in Laredo? He can’t answer for sure, conceding only that “That would have made me a very different person.” I pose a challenge that I once suggested to Dean Hamer: perhaps the genetic linkage some studies have found is not to the phenotype (manifested trait) of being gay but of an associated trait like extroversion, thrill seeking, risk taking among the self-selected research participants. Cisco has to admit that the convenience samples of most study groups tend to be skewed toward out, white, middle-class subjects—the kind of people you could recruit at a gay pride festival or a university campus. Someone on the “down low” is probably not going to consent to a study on the origins of homosexuality. Ethnic minorities tend to be minimally represented. Cisco allows that “It’s a very complex picture and we can explain only a certain proportion of the variance we are seeing in our samples.”

Cisco is of course aware that he’s working on politically charged topics. While the public’s attention can be helpful, he regrets that sometimes even weak studies attract inordinate media attention. He personally tries to stay beneath the radar and lets the principal investigator address the media. However, being an out researcher certainly gives anti-gay policy critics (like the Family Research Council) the opportunity to discount sex research as biased. He notes that many researchers choose their topics for personal reasons, such as studying the genetics of a familial disease like Huntington’s Disease. The broader problem, as I heard repeatedly at the International Academy of Sex Research conference held at UCLA this past summer, is getting government funding for any research on sexuality and thus being able to advance in the highly competitive area of academic science.

Cisco is uncomfortable with the idea that he’s carrying out what Pitman calls “activist research.” Still, he hopes that scientific research will shift political and policy debates in favor of equal rights for GLBT people. “Studies show that people are more accepting of GLBT rights if they believe there is a biological basis for sexual orientation.” He also notes that the American gay community latches on to genetic arguments so as “to feel that [gay orientation]is normal and out of their control rather than a choice.” There is a bias towards wanting to believe that sexual orientation is biologically determined, especially genetically, and not environmentally controlled, because of institutionalized bigotry and the weight courts give to biological evidence. He notes there certainly are groups of GLBT people that are leery of biological research, fearing its use against the community in something like gay “cleansing.” However, he’s quick to point out that the issue of biological causation should not be the basis for people’s civil and human rights. GLBT people should not be discriminated against regardless of whether their sexuality or gender identity is chosen or biologically determined.

Cisco’s views about the connections between his personal background and his place in sexual science research are pretty consistent with those of the many other researchers who are colleagues or friends. While they argue tenaciously that sexual orientation is biologically grounded, they acknowledge that such a complex and variable human trait (like many others) is multifactorial in its origins. As in so many areas of scientific research (including the physical sciences), personal history and sometimes chance experiences (like a teacher or mentor) subtly guide an individual up taxing streams of professional training to some compact pond of inquiry. Time, funding, and methodological demands—particularly with human subjects—necessarily narrow the scope of the questions one can study and, inevitably, the answers that can be generated. I have to agree with Pitman’s conclusion that scientific research in general is not “objective,” if only in the sense that it’s not conducted by mindless robots that lack emotions and personal histories. In human sexuality, research scientists like Cisco bring their subjectivity into the lab and have to acknowledge that the politics of their work is every bit as complex as the sexuality they study.

*    For a detailed survey of this area, see their review: “The genetics of sex differences in brain and behavior,” in Frontiers in Neuroendocrinology, 32 (2011): 227–246.