Born This Way?

Contra Lady Gaga, I neither know nor care whether I was born this way.

12 Comments for “Born This Way?”

  1. posted by Throbert McGee on

    Pretty good column. I think that the “native language” analogy can be an effective way of illustrating to people how a learned/acquired trait (i.e., one that’s clearly not hardwired by genetics) can nonetheless become essentially immutable. After a certain age, most people can’t learn a second language with the same degree of total proficiency and confidence that they have in their native tongue — and barring cases of severe brain damage, you can’t unlearn your native language, either.

    Of course, immigrants who move to a new language environment may eventually start to become fuzzy on some of the subtler grammatical aspects of their first language, and their speech may become marked by minor errors that they never would have made before they left the Mother Country. But that doesn’t mean they lose their overall native-level fluency. (I know a few older Russian-Americans who emigrated to the States as adults, and after a couple decades of living here, their spoken Russian has acquired numerous “americanisms” — minor changes in pronunciation, and distinctly non-Russian turns of phrase — that relatives back in Russia rib them about. Yet Russian is still very much their native language and will always come more comfortably to them than English.)

    And by analogy, life experiences may sometimes nudge a “Kinsey 0” or “Kinsey 6” in a more bisexual direction — but that doesn’t mean they lose their old attractions, contrary to what ex-gay groups have misleadingly advertised.

  2. posted by Houndentenor on

    I agree that it doesn’t matter. If I chose to be gay, do I deserve fewer rights? Is it the government’s job to regulate my sex life? Is it the government’s job to choose my life partner? Why do people who claim to want limited government want that same government in charge of the most intimate and private parts of our lives.

    Actually I don’t think that’s what they want at all. Too many conservative politicians have been revealed to be gay or to be having extramarital affairs lately. Isn’t it clear by now that they just want us to stay in the closet and be hypocrites like they are?

  3. posted by JohnA on

    Eh.

    While I agree with Corvino* in that whatever the ultimate answer to the nature v. nurture question is, it’s irrelevant as far as morality and ethics, I’m not sure it’s not worthwhile anyway to say “I was born this way and there’s nothing wrong with me”.

    I mean, in an ideal world, yeah, whether we’re born this way or we choose to be this way wouldn’t make a difference. But we’re not in that ideal world, we’re in one where you have a significant group of people shouting that we “choose” this “destructive lifestyle”, particularly shouting that at children… so I think it’s worthwhile to try and re-affirm to those teens/kids/whatever that no, you didn’t choose to be miserable and mistreated, you’re not at fault, and you’re certainly not a mistake.

    And even if that ends up being a gross simplification of the facts… well, nuance is for when you have time to study a subject more.

    That said, I still don’t like the song. Just not my thing.

    *the science is still inconclusive, even if it’s getting closer every day**
    **though if I recall correctly, while it’s probably biologically driven it’s not necessarily genetically driven. Rats are a great example of this, actually. By controlling the amount and timing of certain hormones during pregnancy you can make the babies come out gay. This can be as simple as putting the pregnant mother under significant stress on a few specific days. Not saying people are rats, but it certainly seems plausible (and there is some support) that a similar mechanism might be at work in humans***. So biological, probably. Genetic? Not necessarily.
    ***Clinical tests would be completely unethical, but we can look at historical periods of stress and there is some amount of correlation between high periods of stress and more gay children being born. Conclusive? Not if you understand what “correlation” means. But it’s certainly support.

  4. posted by Throbert McGee on

    Rats are a great example of this, actually. By controlling the amount and timing of certain hormones during pregnancy you can make the babies come out gay.

    Are you sure of this? I definitely remembering learning in college biology that it’s possible to make lab rodents “gay”* by artificially manipulating their hormone levels, but in the experiments I recall reading about, producing this effect involved messing with their hormones in utero and/or removing the ovaries or testes from newborn animals, AND putting them on synthetic hormones (by injection) when they were adults. (The point is that you had to manipulate hormone levels during a crucial time window either in utero or when they were newborn, and later manipulate the hormones again when they’re adults. So if a baby male rat is allowed to develop normally with intact testes, castrating him as an adult and giving him estrogen shots will not “turn him gay”.)

    Anyway, I’m not saying you’re wrong; it’s quite possible you’re correctly recalling some animal hormone studies that I’m not familiar worth. So I’m just curious to know if you remember any more details.

    *P.S. In the case of rodents, “turning them gay” basically means that “gay” females will repeatedly attempt to mount other animals (both females AND males) but will not let themselves be mounted; while “gay” males will assume the swayback, raised-rump “mount me” position and submit to being mounted (by males OR by “lesbianized” females) but will generally make no attempts to mount other animals.

    However, I’m not aware of any evidence that you can hormonally induce a male rat or hamster to preferentially and consistently court/mount other males while ignoring females. So if anything, it might be slightly more descriptive to say that the animals are “turned transsexual” than that they are “turned gay” — they show some sexual/courtship behaviors characteristic of the opposite sex, but they don’t start directing their courtship exclusively towards animals of their own sex.

    • posted by JohnA on

      Sorry, it was one part of a larger course looking at biology and sexuality in general, so I don’t remember any finer details.

      But if I recall correctly then no, there were no after-birth manipulations, only hormonal stuff to the mother during the pregnancy.

      • posted by Throbert McGee on

        Okay — in a way it doesn’t particularly matter, since either way it’s been well established that hormone levels affect brain sexualization and the development of “gender typical” courtship behavior in rodents. So this is all just geeky detail.

        One thing I forgot to add — you can also induce “asexuality” in rodents, so that they show neither male nor female courtship behavior (they will neither try to mount nor let themselves be mounted).

        Or, as I said in my first post, you can induce chromosomally normal (XY) males to “turn gay” and behave like females, and XX females can be made to behave like males.

        And finally, via testosterone injections you can induce a castrated male to show the normal courtship activity of an intact male (even though he’s shooting blanks), and similarly by giving estrogen supplements to spayed females.

        And in all of these cases, timing is everything. So, for example, spaying a newborn female within hours of birth can have more dramatic effects than if you allow her to keep her ovaries for the first month or so, and then spay her when she’s four weeks old — in the latter case, she may fail to exhibit the “transmale” or “butch lesbian” behaviors, no matter how much testosterone you inject into her when she’s fully grown.

        • posted by Throbert McGee on

          Figs, I forgot to turn off the bold after “timing is everything.” Sorry about that.

  5. posted by BobN on

    I neither know nor care whether I was born this way

    So Corvino apparently doesn’t mind being “unnatural”. Odd stance for a philosopher to take.

  6. posted by Throbert McGee on

    So Corvino apparently doesn’t mind being “unnatural”. Odd stance for a philosopher to take.

    Did you even read the essay, BobN?

    First, Corvino didn’t even concede the point that a learned trait is ipso facto an “unnatural” one.

    But secondly, even if he had conceded that a non-inborn, socialized trait is by definition “unnatural,” there’s nothing odd at all about a philosopher defending “unnaturalness”, or arguing that one should avoid automatically disparaging the “unnatural”, and also avoid automatically privileging the “natural.”

    In other words, “Unnaturalness is a morally neutral designation and thus it’s entirely okay to be unnatural” is a perfectly reasonable position for a philosopher to take and defend.

    • posted by BobN on

      As a philosopher and teacher of philosophy, Corvino cannot help but be aware of 1500 years of Catholic moral teaching and philosophy that underpins much of modern Western thought. I suspect you, too, are well aware of it. It’s not whether he concedes it or not, it’s that he completely ignores the importance of the question.

      He, and you, are of course right that is doesn’t really matter in a vacuum but in Western society, the accusation of “unnaturalness” has mattered more than anything else in how we have been treated for centuries.

  7. posted by Amicus on

    I don’t disagree the epistemology and its implications (“treated with respect”), but I’ve come to think that Lady GaGa is on the mark, as a pedagogical device, if nothing else.

    Used as a metaphor the phrase delineates the people we are talking about are those who are interested in living their lives as gay, potentially pairing off or raising kids of their own, etc., not just, say, the “down low” and not just “gay for the day”, etc.

    Put another way, if the cultural and normative understanding that accompanies “gay” into the mainstream, especially on the heels of marriage, is “born that way”, that seems more on the mark than “gay” means “anything goes, sexually, at any time, for anyone”.

  8. posted by Amicus on

    Let me also pose this question, on my mind since I’m following Rob Tisinai’s “symposium” on GGA (although I have yet to get any drinks out of it, sadly, as in days of old – heh heh):

    It might be okay for JC (cute how that works out, eh?) to posit that it doesn’t matter, but the same cannot be said by an adherent of natural law theory, right?

    For instance, one of the questions I’m working with right now is, “Does biology – sheer biological, ostensible fact – change the moral character of a sexual relationship?”

    I think the summary answer from natural law theorists is “yes”. The detailed reasons behind why are fairly complex, but involve an observation that we seem to value states (of being), not just experiences (enjoyment), and that we “need” such a framework (or that it is the only framework) to well-order what experiences we deem “genuine”, “real”, “fulfilling”, or (perhaps) “moral” goods.

    So, with that, I ask JC, were he not gay, would he write, “I neither know, nor care, whether I was “born this way.”? And, if so, then perhaps it would be more expository to not write just from the gay perspective, no?

Comments are closed.