By Simon LeVay
What makes humans homosexual, lesbian, bisexual, or heterosexual? And who cares? those are the dual issues of Queer technological know-how, a systematic and social research of analysis within the box of sexual orientation. Written by way of one of many prime scientists interested by this learn, it appears at how medical discoveries approximately homosexuality impact society's perspective towards gays and lesbians, starting with the theories of the German sexologist and gay-rights pioneer Magnus Hirschfeld and culminating with the most recent discoveries in mind technology, genetics, and endocrinology, and cognitive psychology. learn into homosexuality exemplifies either the promise and the chance of technological know-how utilized to human nature. LeVay argues that the query of causation shouldn't be the an important factor within the gay-rights debate, yet that technology does have a big contribution to make. it may aid to illustrate that the normal and nonetheless established view of homosexuality - as an insignificant set of behaviors that any one may possibly convey - is insufficient, and that gays and lesbians are in a true experience a different team of individuals in the higher society with a privileged perception into their very own natures.
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Extra info for Queer science: the use and abuse of research into homosexuality
Sample text
2. Sexual orientationResearchSocial aspects. I. Title. 76'0723dc20 9612906 CIP Page v As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame; As tumbled over rim in roundy wells Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name; Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; Selvesgoes itself; myself it speaks and spells, Crying What I do is me: for that I came. Gerard Manley Hopkins Page vii Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1 Hirschfeld and the Third Sex 11 2 The Nature and Prevalence of Homosexuality 41 3 The Talking Cure 67 4 Learning and Unlearning Homosexuality 87 5 Hormones 109 6 The Brain 129 7 Mental Traits 149 8 Stress 163 9 Genes 171 10 Against Nature?
In empty cafes he gave the last of his money for black coffee and kirsch. After he had made his way home through the cold winter's night, and had staggered up the four flights of stairs to his room, he had been seized by a wild frenzy. He reduced everything within reach to splinters, and he smashed the burning lamp, in the expectation that he would open his arteries and bleed to death. One of the landlord's family called a doctor, who merely looked through the doorway and speedily wrote out an order committing the student to the psychiatric section of the Charité Hospital.
Chapter 2 asks whether sexual orientation is in fact a meaningful basis for categorizing human beings, and if so, what fraction of the population is homosexual, bisexual, or heterosexual. Chapters 3 and 4 survey two non-biological approaches to the subject: psychoanalysis and learning theory. Chapter 5 deals with attempts to understand sexual orientation in terms of hormonal mechanisms, and chapter 6 looks at possible brain mechanisms that may be involved. As will become clear, the hormonal and brain theories are closely interrelated.
