Book Spring 2007:Book Winter 2007.Qxd.Qxd
Anne Fausto-Sterling Frameworks of desire Genes versus choice. A quick and dirty tain unalienable Rights . ” Moreover, search of newspaper stories covering sci- rather than framing research projects in enti½c research on homosexuality shows terms of the whole of human desire, we that the popular press has settled on this neglect to examine one form, heterosex- analytic framework to explain homosex- uality, in favor of uncovering the causes uality: either genes cause homosexuality, of the ‘deviant’ other, homosexuality. or homosexuals choose their lifestyle.1 Intellectually, this is just the tip of the The mischief that follows such a for- iceberg. When we invoke formulae such mulation is broad-based and more than as oppositional rather than developmen- a little pernicious. Religious fundamen- tal, innate versus learned, genetic versus talists and gay activists alike use the chosen, early-onset versus adolescent genes-choice opposition to argue their experience, a gay gene versus a straight case either for or against full citizenship gene, hardwired versus flexible, nature for homosexuals. Biological research versus nurture, normal versus deviant, now arbitrates civil legal proceedings, the subtleties of human behavior disap- and the idea that moral status depends pear. on the state of our genes overrides the Linear though it is, even Kinsey’s scale historical and well-argued view that we has six gradations of sexual expression; are “endowed by [our] Creator with cer- and Kinsey understood the importance of the life cycle as a proper framework for analyzing human desire. Academics Anne Fausto-Sterling is professor of biology and –be they biologists, social scientists,2 or gender studies in the Department of Molecular cultural theorists–have become locked and Cell Biology and Biochemistry at Brown Uni- into an oppositional framework.
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