He tries not to get the three confused.
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He tries not to get the three confused. |
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BLINKING LESBIANS - ORIGINS OF SEXUALITY |
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A few weeks ago, it was reported that a team of researchers of the University of East London had discovered that, when startled, lesbians blink like men. Meanwhile, Eric Vilain of the University of California has identified 54 genes in mice which may explain why male and female brains look and function differently. Earlier this year, a recent study from Canada indicated that men with older brothers are more likely to be homosexual than first-born sons (it has to with the mother’s body reacting to the presence of testosterone in the foetus). A few years ago, Simon LeVay of the Salk Institute claimed that there was a connection between male homosexuality and the size of men’s hypothalami. And there have been various other theories that see homosexuality (and therefore by default heterosexuality) as having a physical, rather than sociological cause. These are pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that is finally coming together. The picture that is likely to emerge is two dimensional. On one axis there is sexual identity – what makes us believe we are men or women – and on the other there is sexual orientation – whether we are attracted to men or women. While most of us are likely to cluster at one end or the other of each axis, there will be some spread along the middle – some people who feel neither strongly men nor women and some who are equally attracted (or unattracted) to both sexes. And the evidence increasingly confirms that both identity and orientation are determined by biochemical activity in the brain before birth. Yet while the concept of sexual identity is clear, there is a major gap in our understanding of sexual orientation. How does sexual orientation - the attraction towards one, rather than the other sex - operate? If we do not know how the mechanism operates, how can we state with any certainty what the cause is? Yet almost all the research that purports to identify a cause or of connection with sexual orientation fails both to confirms the mechanism through which orientation operates and the means by which the proposed cause establishes that mechanism. And that is putting the cart before the horse. Let us try to re-establish research priorities. We can start with the definition of sexual orientation, which should be uncontroversial: sexual orientation describes our sexual attraction – whether we are sexually aroused by men or women or both.* However, that definition may be accurate, but it is superficial; what is lacking is a description as to how that arousal functions. Put bluntly, what causes the penises of heterosexual men and the clitorises of homosexual women to fill with blood at the idea or actuality of sexual contact with a woman? And what leads homosexual men and heterosexual women to be sexually aroused by men? That question itself is interesting enough, but it goes hand in hand with a second, which is equally interesting: what is the common factor that identifies a potential sexual object as male or female and which therefore stimulates or suppresses arousal? In other words, how do our minds and bodies know which sex we are dealing with and whether we should respond to it? This query is not as simple as it first appears. If, we claim that there is such a thing as male heterosexuality, then we are implying that there is a common factor in all women that all heterosexual men are aroused by. What is that common factor? Alternately, if assume that there is no common factor and men are attracted by different things, then we are forced to conclude that there is not one heterosexuality but many heterosexualities - and similarly many homosexualities. The different studies quoted above suggests that most researchers believe that if there is a single trigger, then there must be a single mechanism. And indeed while it may appear initially that sexual attraction is so diverse that it cannot be attributed to a single factor, on closer examination there appears to be a significant difference between the superficial attraction that determines the kind of individual we are attracted to and basic sexual orientation, which determines whether our basic attraction is to men or women. There is not space in this column to examine in detail the different theories of how sexual orientation might operate. But to summarise the most likely explanation... Sexual arousal must be triggered by one of the senses. It is unlikely to be taste or touch and, given that men and women who have been deaf and / or blind from birth are still either heterosexual or homosexual, it is unlikely that it is sight or sound. It is most likely, therefore, that the origins of our sexual response lies in smell. Among most mammals smell plays a major role in determining sexual identity, and therefore orientation, and there is plenty of evidence to show that adult humans display a sexual response to smells even when they are unaware of it. This link between sexual arousal and smell appears tenuous to many of us, who claim to have a poor sense of smell and who tend to describe sexual attraction in terms of a visual or emotional response; nonetheless, it is still highly likely that our basic sexual response is initially determined by smell. The likely pattern of development is that as part of the process of foetal development, our rapidly developing brains are pre-wired to associate sexual arousal with the smell of one or other sex. As babies we subconsciously recognise male and female smell and in the first months or perhaps years of our lives, our brains are, unknown to ourselves, connecting the smell of one sex with what will become sexual response to that sex. As we grow older, our dependence on and use of smell weakens. Both consciously and subconsciously, we increasingly associate our attraction to a specific sex with a range of factors, including sight and personality / experience. In other words our attraction to men or women is determined pre-birth, while our attraction to tall dark men with a hint of cruelty in their eyes or to curvaceous blonde women with full red lips is a function of the development of our personalities over the years. And smell never totally disappears from our sexual make up. Even when we are unaware of it or think we have no sense of smell, we often find the faint odour of others attractive or repulsive. This theory – that sexual orientation operates initially through a sense of smell – remains to be proven, but as long as it is an area in which no research is undertaken, it will have to stand. Nor can it be considered complete unless it takes into account other aspects of sexual development, in particular that of identity. In the meantime, drawing attention to the fact that little is known about the possible mechanisms of sexual orientation may refocus the attention of researchers who claim to have identified its cause. After all, to say that you can point to the origins of a phenomenon without being able to state clearly what that phenomenon is, is not particularly good science… * Theoretically it can also apply to whether we are attracted to African elephants or grand pianos or the colour blue, but cases of individuals having a primary sexual response to anything other than another human being are extremely rare. However, in a later column I will tie fetish (where the primary sexual interest is in a thing or a material or an action rather than an individual) in with sexual orientation, showing that it complements, rather than distracts from, the main argument here. |
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2003 columns... 2002 columns... 2001 columns... |
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