This roundtable analyzes the first genome-wide association study (GWAS) that sought to identify the genetic variations that correlate with same-sex sexual behavior. Drawing on over 450,000 individuals’ genetic material from the UK Biobank and 23andMe, the 2019 study concluded that “many loci with individually small effects,” which are spread across the entire genome, contribute in statistically significant but highly unreliable ways to an individual's sexual behavior. The study was thus greeted by geneticists, science journalists, and even some LGBTQ+ advocates as heralding the demise of the mythical “gay gene.” However, the study itself did not drive a stake through the heart of the “born this way” idea. In fact, the researchers framed their efforts as having revealed the “genetic architecture”—which is to say the blueprint or design—of same-sex sexual behavior. Stephanie Clare, Patrick R. Grzanka, and Joanna Wuest argue that the 2019 GWAS marks a moment of both flux and continuity: a recognition of sexuality's complexity and contingency alongside a continued affective, ideological, and economic investment in biology's role in telling fundamental truths about behavior and identity. The study's recognition of the complexity of sexuality should not be mistaken as some wish fulfillment of queer theory; rather, the dream of bioessentialism, entangled with its continued production of inequality, is still alive in the postgenomic era.
Gay Genes in the Postgenomic Era: A Roundtable
Stephanie D. Clare is an associate professor of English at the University of Washington, Seattle. She is a feminist, queer, and trans theorist and the author of Earthly Encounters: Sensation, Feminist Theory, and the Anthropocene (2019). Her current book project, Non-Binary Wo/man: An Autotheory, is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press.
Patrick R. Grzanka is a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Tennessee, where he is also chair of the Interdisciplinary Program in Women, Gender, and Sexuality. His current book project, The “Born This Way” Wars: Sexuality, Science, and the Future of Equality (under advance contract with Cambridge University Press), explores the affective and political investments that shape the pursuit of sexuality's biogenetic origins. Terminally undisciplined, he holds a PhD in American studies and BA in journalism, both from the University of Maryland.
Joanna Wuest is an assistant professor of politics at Mount Holyoke College. She is currently writing a book for the University of Chicago Press titled “Born This Way: Science, Citizenship, and Inequality in the American LGBTQ+ Movement.” This research will also be featured in a volume accompanying a special exhibit, “Code of Life: Who We Are and Could Become,” at the German Hygiene Museum in Dresden (the exhibit runs February–September 2023). Her other academic work has appeared in Perspectives on Politics, Politics and Gender, Law and Social Inquiry, Polity, and nonsite.
Stephanie D. Clare, Patrick R. Grzanka, Joanna Wuest; Gay Genes in the Postgenomic Era: A Roundtable. GLQ 1 January 2023; 29 (1): 109–128. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-10144449
Download citation file:
Advertisement
