Published as Hegarty, P. (1997). Materializing the hypothalamus: A performative account of the
‘gay brain.’ Feminism & Psychology, 7, 355-372.
Abstract
Simon LeVay's research on neuroscience and sexuality has been reiterated in popular media,
scientific communities and legal debates. A close reading of this work, drawing on performativity
theory (Butler, 1990, 1993 ), reveals that this popular success is the result of citing and reiterating a
number of heterosexist, sexist and culturally imperialist norms. LeVay's work excludes women and
ethnic minorities and denies the political, cultural and historical nature of sexuality. Performativity
theory suggests the limits of empiricism for feminists, and the importance of postmodern readings of
the subject of psychology and neuroscience.
In late August and early September of 1991 one could easily have thought that a major breakthrough
had been made in the field of sexology. On 30 August of that year, the journal Science published a
report by Salk Institute neuroscientist Simon LeVay titled 'A Difference in Hypothalamic Structure
Between Heterosexual and Homosexual Men'. While the hypothalamus is rarely front-page news, this
'dis- covery' was a media event. LeVay's study was reported almost immediately in several national
newspapers (for example, Angiers, 1991a, 1991b; Maugh and Zamichow, 1991; Suplee, 1991;
Winslow, 1991; Zamichow, 1991) and popular magazines (for example, Begley and Gelman, 1991;
Crabb, 1991; Gorman,1991). The discovery, and LeVay himself, have enjoyed quite a celebrity
status. The discovery was subsequently re-reported in both mainstream (for example, Grady, 1992;
Kohn, 1992; Nimmons, 1994) and gay-oriented (for example, Dolce, 1993) publications in the early
1990s. LeVay also published three commercially successful books for the popular audience; two on
the biology of sex difference and sexuality (1993, 1996), and one on lesbian and gay history (LeVay
and Nonas, 1995) and has appeared on a number of popular American talk shows.
LeVay's work is only a part of a longer ongoing attempt to inscribe sexual desire within the discipline
of biology by employing the concept of 'sexual orientation' (see Foucault, 1976n8; Irvine, 1990;
Suppe, 1994; Weeks, 1985). Not surprisingly, LeVay's research has been taken up within scientific
com- munities. In addition to the original article in Science the prestigious journals Nature and
Scientific American have seen fit to publish commentaries on LeVay's claims (LeVay and Hamer,
1994; Maddox, 1991). LeVay's finding has been cited to support accounts of the genetic basis of
homosexuality (Hamer, 1994) and of sex differences in cognitive style (Kimura, 1992).
Of particular relevance to feminist psychologists is the influence of the bio- logical approach to
sexuality on developmental psychology. In a recent special issue of Developmental Psychology
devoted to sexual orientation and human development, several biologically-oriented articles used
LeVay's finding to support their claims, although some regarded it more tentatively than others
(Patterson, 1995). A recent universalistic attempt to account for the development of human sexuality
also takes LeVay's result as unproblematic (Bern, 1996). Feminist psychologists have continually
pointed to the political and epistemo- logical problems of individualism and universalism in
developmental psychology (for example, Burman, 1994; Walkerdine, 1984). These critiques apply
also to the use of biological data to support universalistic accounts of the development of human
sexuality.
Finally this work has had an impact in US law. The possibility that the difference in brain structure
observed by LeVay constitutes a neurological determinant of sexual orientation, a claim which LeVay
has alternately endorsed and refuted, was strongly endorsed by gay spokespersons in this first burst of
media attention. It was argued that if homosexuality is immutable then gay and lesbian citizens
constitute a suspect class under the Equal Protection Clause of US law. This legal status would render
anti-gay discrimination illegal.
This initial public enthusiasm for the effects of biological research on civil rights may have been more
the product of optimism than sound legal analysis, however. Halley (1994) has analyzed pro-gay legal
arguments based on immutability and suggests that such claims -relating immutability to equal protection -may have been overblown. For the Equal Protection Clause to operate the relevance of the
trait (for example, sexual orientation) to the purpose in hand must be demonstrated. Immutability is
not a sufficient criterion to secure this protection.
Also, sexual minorities do not constitute an insular or distinct group. Rather, members of such
minorities are often diffused throughout the population and anonymous. Gay men and lesbians, for
example, are not identified as such at birth but rather are typically born into heterosexual contexts and
differentiate their sexual identities in complex and different ways over the life span. In addition, many
members of sexual minorities do not or cannot make their sexual identity known in contexts in which
the Equal Protection Clause might operate (for example, the workplace) for a variety of practical and
personal reasons. Consequently their status as immutable members of a discrete vulnerable group is
legally questionable, regardless of the biological findings on the immutability of sexual orientation. In
these regards, sexual minorities are very unlike the racial minorities whom the Equal Protection
Clause does protect.
Finally, Halley has analyzed legal cases where the work of LeVay and other biologists have been
cited by pro-gay plaintiffs as evidence of immutability. In such cases the immutability argument
is usually rendered irrelevant or has complex and problematic consequences. In addition to failing
when'given its day in court, the argument from immutability acts to divide the sexual minorities it
attempts to protect. It typically negates or overlooks the existence of bisexual and queer identities, and
often conflicts directly with pro-gay constructivist legal strategies. Halley suggests that immutability
is neither necessarily pro-gay nor anti-gay, and that a pro-gay legal strategy needs to be based on
common ground between essentialist and contructivist positions.
In short, LeVay's research has received notable attention in scientific, legal and public discourses.
In this article, I critically account for this attention using performativity theory (Butler, 1990,
1993) claiming that it is by the implicit reference to, and restatement of, powerful sexist,
heterosexist and imperialist norms that LeVay's work 'materializes' the gay brain. Performativity
theory involves a critique of the account of the body in psychoanalytic discourse (Butler, 1990: 3578, 1993), but has potential as a framework for reading other accounts of the body which pertain to
psychology. Queer theory in general, including Butler's work, is opposed to essentialisms, arguing
that a gay politics based on the primacy of an essential or unitary sexual identity will end up best
representing the subject position 'twentieth-century, Western, white, gay male' to the exclusion of
other gay subject positions (Duggan, 1995). Just as feminist psychologists argue that differences
between the sexes are socially constructed in the dissemination and exchange of scientific
information (for example, Hare- Mustin and Marecek, 1990; Mednick, 1989; Unger, 1983),
performativity theory helps us see the constructed nature of accounts of the gay male body in neuroscience.
THE EMPIRICAL MATERIALITY OF THE GAY BRAIN
LeVay's work involves the posthumous dissection and comparison of the INAH nuclei in the
hypothalami of 41 subjects; 19 homosexual men, 16 presumed heterosexual men, and 6 presumed
heterosexual women. There are four INAH nuclei in the anterior hypothalamus; INAH 1, 2, 3
and 4. LeVay replicates previous findings that both INAH 2 and INAH 3 are sexually dimorphic,
but he fails to replicate the finding that INAH 1 is sexually dimorphic. Finally, the INAH 3 of the
homosexual men were smaller than those of the heterosexual men, and comparable in size to the
INAH 3 of the women in LeVay's sample.
It could be argued that LeVay's work is popularly received because it is 'objective' or 'scientific'. By
working within the recognizable paradigms of neuroscience, LeVay's research certainly brings
with it a promise of certain answers to difficult questions about sexuality. However, scientific
epistemological standards are characterized by debate as much as by consensus, and these standards
are frequently in tension with each other and are not always resolved in rational ways (Knorr-Cetina
and Mulkay, 1983; Woolgar, 1988). Biological studies of sexuality are no exception and LeVay's
work has been extensively critiqued on empirical grounds (see Byne, 1994; Fausto-Sterling, 1992;
Halley, 1994; Suppe,1994; and the essays in DeCecco and Parker, 1995). Although the title of
LeVay's (1991) report boldly announces the discovery of 'A Difference in Hypothalamic Structure
Between Heterosexual and Homosexual Men', this claim relies on highly problematic instantiations of
each of the three central constructs; 'sexual orientation', 'hypothalamic structure' and 'difference'.
All of the 'homosexual' men, six of the 'heterosexual' men and one of the 'heterosexual' women
studied had died of AIDS-related causes affording the categorization by sexual orientation of these
subjects from the US Center for Disease Control (hereafter CDC) records. These records rely on
doctors' reports such that this operational definition of 'sexual orientation' depends directly on whether
a subject's closet had included the relationship with his or her doctor rather than on their sexual
desires and practices. LeVay presumes that the other subjects are heterosexual 'based on the numerical
preponderance of heterosexual men in the population' (LeVay, 1991: 1036). LeVay's justification of
this assumption is problematic; he unhappily cites Kinsey et al. (1948) who reported that many
American males have sex with men while identifying as heterosexual. The classification of the
'homosexual' subjects is also problematized by the existence of one bisexual-identified man in the
sample who was included in this group. Discrete categorization of these subjects into 'homosexual'
and 'heterosexual' groups does not follow from their sexual practices, desires and experiences but
rather is required by LeVay's analysis of variance paradigm. LeVay does acknowledge the possibility
of misassignment, but in a highly circular way and only so far as it supports his claim to have found a
natural difference in hypothalamic structure (see Fausto-Sterling, 1992: 252).
Just as LeVay's instantiation of the concept 'sexual orientation' is ambiguous, so too is his
materialization of 'hypothalamic structure'. Although the 'size' of the INAH 3 nuclei has afforded a lot
of humor in the media (for example, Dolce, 1993) LeVay's research uses only one of several possible
instantiations of the concept of nucleus 'size' which might just as validly be considered a measure of
cell density or distribution (see Suppe, 1994; Barinaga, 1991). LeVay's instantiation of 'size' is all the
more problematic because the 'difference' he claims to have discovered is based on a particular
interpretation of the concept of statistically significant difference.
LeVay examined four separate nuclei (INAH 1 through 4) and found a statistically significant
difference by sexual orientation in only one case; INAH 3. LeVay correctly performed two analyses
on his measurements of INAH 3 size. In the first instance he compared the INAH 3 sizes of all of the
homosexual men with all of the heterosexual men and this difference was statistically significant (p =
.0014). The second analysis compared the INAH 3 size of the 19 homosexual men, all of whom had
died of AIDS-related causes, with the INAH 3 size of the six heterosexual men who had died of
AIDS-related causes. Under this second analysis the statistical significance of the result dropped
considerably (p = .028).
LeVay had gathered measurements from four nuclei - all of which are possible neurological
correlates of sexual orientation - when these analyses were performed. However this fact is not
reflected in his statistical assumptions. Rather he analyzed differences in INAH 3 size as if this were
the only possible locus of a 'difference'. It would have been more prudent to set a significance level in
advance, such that the probability of concluding that a 'difference' exists by chance alone, in any of
the four nuclei examined would be no greater than the specified significance level. The Kimball
inequality is a statistical procedure that allows this. It determines the significance level for each
individual test of a null hypothesis such that the 'group error rate', or possibility of falsely rejecting
any of the null hypotheses among a set of related tests, is equal to the specified significance level (see
Ott, 1988). Applying the Kimball inequality to LeVay's work, such that the group error rate is 0.05
would entail setting a significance level of .013 for each of the four individual tests. LeVay's
'difference' by sexual orientation in INAH 3 size, among persons who died from AIDS-related
causes, is clearly statistically insignificant under this more stringent analysis (p = .028 > .013).
LeVay's work is not above critique on an empirical basis. The central concepts of this research (sexual
orientation, hypothalamic structure and difference) can be instantiated in multiple ways, leading to
different conclusions regarding the supposed neurological substrate of sexual orientation. Therefore,
the response to LeVay's work cannot be attributed to any necessarily rational recognition by scientists
and the public of irrefutable scientific work. Rather, the publication of this research by Science,
without more stringent methodological requirements, suggests that some desire to materialize a
difference between homosexual and heterosexual men is relevant not just to the popular reactions to
this report but may also be constitutive of the report itself.
While empirical critique is important, the popular success of this work
suggests urgent political and psychological questions for feminism about the ways that heterosexism
and sexism work through scientific accounts and become reified as scientific objectivity. By this
logic, a feminist psychological analysis does not stop with casting an empirical judgment on a single
study as 'good' or 'bad' science but also examines the ways in which that which is taken as 'good
science' abjects women and sexual minorities. Such an analysis might appear, at first sight, counter to
a psychological approach. Psychology has historically relied on endorsing rather than problematizing
empirical inquiry and quantitative methods. However, psychology is increasingly being performed in
ways that go beyond a positivist empiricist framework. In addition to the feminist contribu- tions
already mentioned discourse analysis (for example, Burman and Parker, 1993; Potter and Wetherell,
1987; Wetherell and Potter, 1992), rhetorical psychology (for example, Billig, 1987, 1991), and
social constructionism (for example, Gergen, 1982, 1985; Henriques et al., 1984; Kitzinger, 1987;
Sampson, 1983) are productive non-positivist directions within psychology.
A PERFORMATIVE THEORY OF THE HYPOTHALAMUS
Butler (1993) has argued that feminist and queer scholarship interrogate the ways in which the body is
'materialized' in discourse. She asks us to consider how accounts of the body come to 'matter', both in
the sense of having import and of appearing as material. These two meanings of 'matter' are related,
for the physical body is typically considered to be more important than any of its socially constructed
meanings. Her project then goes beyond feminist accounts that attempt a distinction between an
underlying, physical, solid, constant 'sex' and a constructed, fluid, variable 'gender'. Instead the
drawing of such a line between sex and gender is understood as a discursive event; a speech act which
determines what is taken as 'material' and what is taken as 'constructed'. The material body cannot be
a pre-existent object that is later 'socially constructed'. Rather, 'the body' is also a social construction,
an effect of discourse.
To 'concede' the undeniability of 'sex' or its 'materiality' is always to concede some version of
'sex,' some form of 'materiality.' Is the discourse through which that concession occurs - and,
yes, that concession invariably does occur not itself formative of the very phenomenon that it
concedes (Butler, 1993:10)?
The body is materialized through performativity, according to Butler. Austin (1962) defines a
performative speech act as one that has the power to call into being or to enact that which it names. In
Austin's account this performative power comes from the author's will. Butler contests this.
Borrowing from Derrida (1988), she claims that performative speech acts have the power to call into
being because they are recognizable as citations of norms. Performativity is then always derivative, a
result of abiding by, and appealing to discursive laws, laws which are themselves reproduced in these
citational practices.
For example, Austin's paradigmatic case of a performative speech act is the wedding ceremony. Here
the minister calls into being the relation of marriage as he names it with the speech act 'I pronounce
you man and wife'. However, wedding as a speech act can only be performed by citing the
normativizing force ofheterosexualization. The power of 'I pronounce you man and wife' comes not
from the will of the minister, but rather from the recognition by the community of the marriage of two
opposite sexed persons. This reiteration is also an exten- sion of that norm, marking the new couple as
definitively heterosexual.
Austin's account relies on an author's will to explain performativity, but for Butler the author of a
performative speech act is also an effect of discourse. Attributing performativity to a pre-discursive
author often occurs; obscuring the derivative nature of performativity, such that performativity works
through a process of 'dissimulated citationality' or unconscious recognition. Weddings do not proceed
as a result of calling attention to the norm that only heterosexual unions can be authorized. This
recognition is necessary, but this necessity is not acknowledged. It is covered under the illusion of
authorship; the insistence that there is a pre-discursive subject, such as an authorized minister, who is
doing the pronouncing.
Although Butler's analysis of the performativity of 'sex' has been most relevant to psychology as
it comments on psychoanalysis, I would like to extend the approach to other discourses through which
the body is materialized including neuroscience. Neuroscience calls into being the body -and the
psychology - that it names. In LeVay's writing, it is the body and the sexual desires of the male
homosexual that are being performed. As I have shown above, the performativity of LeVay's results
are not due to abiding by empirical norms, although LeVay's status as a scientist has often been
successfully cited to create such an illusion. The materialization that is performed in LeVay's
writings (specifically LeVay, 1991, 1993) draws on and reiterates a set of norms pertain- ing to 'sex'
and its performance within scientific discourse. LeVay's work assumes and reinforces the norm that
there are two types of person, homosexuals and heterosexuals, and that they can be considered
biologically distinct. This norm is selectively applied to those who are considered male, such that
women are absent in this account of the body. The male homosexual is materialized as a kind of
woman, which then demands being constituted as a lack or failure. Finally, LeVay's work reiterates
the claim that AIDS is a disease exclusive to gay men. In achieving this equation, the male
homosexual is constituted by a reduc- tion to an unconsciously promiscuous sexual nature.
The Ontological Necessity of the Homosexual as 'Species'
The form of the body approaches that which corresponds to the abnormal sexual instinct.
However, actual transitions to hermaphrodites never occur, but, on the contrary, completely
differentiated genitals; so that, just as in all pathological perversions of the sexual life, the
cause must be sought in the brain (Krafft-Ebbing, 1887/1931: 336-7).
Are there differences in the anatomical or chemical structure of the brain between
homosexual and heterosexual individuals? . . . the answer to this question must in principle
be yes (LeVay, 1993: 120).
Although it seeks to materialize a new and universal substrate of the brain, LeVay's work is highly
derivative of a particularly western understanding of sexuality. LeVay's research cannot perform this
universality without a discourse in which homosexuality is already presumed to be encapsulated in the
human body. During the 19th century, the rise of the modern nation state brought increasing control
of populations (Foucault, 1976n8). The 'sexuality' of individuals also became an increasing area of
anxiety. Among the new bourgeois class the health of the individual body in general, and the
goodness of a person's 'sexuality' in particular, became discursive means by which this class
articulated its worthiness relative to both the aristocracy and the working class. New dis- courses of
sexuality in medicine, pediatrics, education and, of course, psycho- analysis, ironically all testified
that sexuality was the most private aspect of an individual, the very core of being. Although we are
used to thinking of this period as one of sexual repression, where sexualities are covered by taboos
and moral imperatives, Foucault argues it was a period in which the discourse of sexuality was highly
productive. The means by which this new deployment of sexuality came about is a redeployment of
the old Christian confessional mode of power. Instead of willingly confessing their souls to priests,
modern subjects increasingly confessed their sexuality to doctors, psychoanalysts, educators and other
experts who were deployed toward finding out the truth about sex. This new deployment of sexuality
was not simply imposed by one powerful class upon another. Rather it was an activity that both
analyst and analysand were compelled to obey, and took pleasure in enacting.
One component of this deployment was the invention of 'perversions', as in Krafft-Ebbing's highly
successful work (1887/1931), to account for deviations from the newly solidified norms of sexuality.
The medical theory of perversion required that the body contain the secret of its sexual impurities.
Legal discourse had prohibited same-sex acts prior to this historical period as 'sodomy', but the
modern 'homosexual' was additionally materialized within medical discourse. The materiality of the
homosexual was more of an ontological necessity than a hypothesis in this system. This deployment
was encouraged by individual subjects, homosexuals received a less punitive treatment from
medicine than sodomites might before the law. The shift toward a medical understanding of sexuality
both legitimized and required the search for the secret of homo- sexuality in physical abnormality:
Homosexuality appeared as one of the forms of sexuality when it was transposed from the
practice of sodomy onto a kind of interior androgyny, a hermaphrodism of the soul. The
sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual was now a species (Foucault,
1976, 78: 43).
Sexuality is similarly deployed in LeVay's work. Like Krafft-Ebbing's, it obeys the requirement of
assuming that the homosexual is a biological entity, at least in principle, even as it disguises this
presumption as a scientific hypothesis. LeVay's paradigm also requires a discursive production of
individuals as unambiguously 'homosexual' and 'heterosexual', in interrogating the hypo- thalamus for
the truth of the difference between them. These categories of sexual orientation in LeVay's study are
citations of CDC records, dependent in
turn upon individual subjects' willingness to confess their sexuality to their doctors. LeVay's use of
these categorizations to investigate the brains of gay men illustrates a typically Foucaultian
connection between efforts to manage the health of populations, imperatives to self-report sexual
desires as sexual identities, and biological discourses laying claim to the material basis of sexual
identifications.
The imperative to confess as homosexual or heterosexual has not completely foreclosed all other
discursive possibilities. Sexuality continues to be productive of new configurations of sex and truth.
The bisexual-identified man in LeVay's sample is evidence of this. Anthropologists have noted that
North American Anglo culture is characterized by the belief that 'one drop of homosexuality makes a
man "totally homosexual"' (Blumstein and Schwartz, quoted in Alonso and Koreck, 1993). How is a
citation of one's sex as 'bisexual' dealt with within this discourse of power that acts to purify the
population by ridding it of homo- sexuality? 'Bisexuality', which represents a range of sexual practices
that problematize the homosexual/heterosexual dichotomy, is necessarily considered perverse. Such
individuals must be included in the 'homosexual' group, as in LeVay's study. The only alternatives are
to admit that a sexuality based on the homosexual/heterosexual dichotomy is not exhaustive, revealing
the discursive limits of 'sexual orientation', or to fail to defend the 'heterosexual' category against the
taint of even one drop of homosexuality.
In contrast to this Anglo classification, other sex/gender systems present
deeper problems for the universality of 'sexual orientation'. Whitehead (1993) notes that among many
Native American groups, dress and occupation are more likely to mark gender status than erotic
orientation. Several systems operate among Chicano men in the USA. These include the distinction
between homo- sexual and heterosexual based on the sex of the desired sexual partner, and
distinctions between activos and pasivos, or machistas and cochons, based on the enacted role in anal
intercourse (Almaguar, 1993). Sexual science that demands the ontological status of the 'homosexual'
and 'heterosexual' distinction above others is difficult to apply beyond the Anglo context. The
problems generated by the CDC's use of this dichotomy of 'sexual orientation' for AIDS education
among 'Hispanic' groups is one manifestation of this difficulty (see Alonso and Koreck, 1993).
LeVay's work is similarly problematic, revealing that a cultural imperialism of 'sexual orientation' is
necessary to universally materialize the body that his work names. It is hard to imagine how a study
reporting a neurological difference between machistas and cochons, for example, would hit the
popular press in the USA, or sell a popular science book, in quite the same way. Unless, of course,
such a study was translated as a claim about the biology of 'homosexuality'.
LeVay discusses the possibility of cultural difference effecting sexuality only to the extent of
considering sexual repression and not the ways that culture affords the production and recognizing of
different sexual subjectivities that do not fall into the logic of 'sexual orientation'. The Anglo category
of the homosexual is once again materialized as universal and ontologically privileged in this account,
cultural differences are not real but 'apparent'.
Less certain is whether there are differences in the incidence of homosexuality in different
countries or cultures or in the same culture at different times. Such differences may exist, but
what varies most is probably people's attitudes towards homosexuality. These different
attitudes can greatly influence the apparent prevalence of homosexuality at different times
and places (LeVay, 1993: 108).
The Lack of Women in Sexology Research
There is no question that there is a tradition of ignoring women in biomedical research. That's
a major issue. I'm very embarrassed that my study has perpetuated that tradition by the fact
that I did not study the issue of sexual orientation in women. I very much wanted to. I couldn't
because I couldn't get hold of brains of women whose sexual orientation was known. It is
never written, or very rarely written, in their medical records or charts (LeVay, quoted in
Dolce, 1993: 42-3).
Feminist scholars have called attention to the construction of biological sex difference within a
framework where that which is sexed male is materialized as present and that which is sexed female is
materialized as absent, or as lack (for example, Fausto-Sterling, 1989; Laqueur, 1990; Martin, 1991).
This construction of difference is also common in psychoanalytic discourse as in the Lacanian
conception of woman as 'Other' to masculinity or as 'lacking' or 'being the Phallus' (Butler, 1990: 4357). Women are lacking in LeVay's work in multiple ways. Fewer of the subjects are women, and
when the female body is discursively introduced it is assumed to be a lack of both brain cells and
sexual desire.
LeVay's hypothesis regarding neuroscience and sexuality promises a symmetrical material basis for
both male and female sexuality. LeVay regrets that inconveniences beyond his control limited his
study to gay men.
I hypothesized that INAH 2 or INAH 3 is large in individuals sexually oriented toward
women (heterosexual men and homosexual women) and small in indi- viduals sexually
oriented toward men (heterosexual women and homosexual men). Because tissue from
homosexual women could not be obtained, however, only part of the hypothesis relating to
sexual orientation in men could be tested (LeVay, 1991: 1035).
This paradigm relies opportunistically on the tragedy of the AIDS epidemic, and LeVay states that
'this group [lesbians] have not been effected by the epidemic to any great extent' (LeVay, 1991: 1036).
However, it is not the 'AIDS epidemic' but CDC records that are cited in LeVay's research. These
records, necessary for LeVay's claims about the materiality of male homosexuality, have also erased
lesbians. Many lesbians would contest LeVay's claim that they have not been affected by HIV;
Leonard argues that '[t]he idea that we are not at risk for HIV infection is not based on medical fact
but on a number of deep-rooted misconceptions about the way dykes live and how we have sex'
(1990: 113). She suggests that the CDC has assumed the immateriality of lesbianism to the AIDS
epidemic, and cites one CDC official who claimed that there is no need to study lesbians in regard to
mv transmission because 'lesbians don't have much sex'. Often the CDC cannot interpret the 'sexual
orientation' of a woman with HIV from the information she gives to her doctor, with the result that
many women are not included in the statistics at all. In addition, lesbians are not considered a 'high-
risk' group for HIV transmission. When lesbians report symptoms to their medical practitioners, these
practitioners are less likely to consider HIV infection as a possible cause of illness. Treichler (1988)
notes that when women have been included in 'high risk' categorizations of the CDC it is typically in
the incompre- hensibly titled 'Other' category or as sexual partners of men in high risk groups.
Ironically, the materialization of 'sexual orientation' by the CDC that afforded LeVay's study of gay
men and his promise of a study of lesbians, forecloses the possibility of fulfilling that second promise.
The dependence of the materiality of female sexuality on the 'success' of materializing male sexuality,
is not confined to the CDC or the discourses of the AIDS epidemic. Rather, assumptions of a bodily
materiality of 'lesbianism' tend to follow, as in LeVay's work, from the multiply heterosexualizing
assumption that if gay men are sex-inverted males then lesbians must be sex-inverted females. Such
an assumption can only be made by erasing many women's own accounts of their sexuality. Based on
such accounts, Golden (1994) concludes that bio- logical models of sexuality can only proceed by
overlooking the ways in which the women's movement has transformed women's understandings of
their sexuality. For many women, the term 'lesbian' is not a citation of sexual desire but of a
sociopolitical commitment or an articulation of the relationship between sex and politics (see
Kitzinger, 1987). Sexology involves a continually deferred promise to adequately study female
sexuality, while employing paradigms derived from the ways that men talk about sex. The
suggestion that LeVay's paradigm addresses a hypothesis symmetrical about axes of sex and sexual
orientation reiterates this promise.
Women are additionally negated in LeVay's research in the demand that gay men should differ in their
neurology from straight men by appearing as 'women'. Butler (1990) notes that within
psychoanalysis, gender identity and. sexual orientation are often discursively accomplished together
such that the subject and object of desire must be written as a heterosexual pair. For a man to desire
another man it is necessary to somehow discourse him as female under this 'heterosexual matrix'
(Butler, 1990: 53-65). It is imperative to locate within him the hermaphrodism of the soul to which
Foucault refers.
This heterosexualizing injunction appears to operate also in neuroscience, where gay men are
similarly understood as gender inverts. It is an impossible and unconvincing piece of scientific labor
to examine all of the male brain for dimorphisms by sexual orientation, but the demand for gay men to
appear as 'women' makes the search for the truth of sexual orientation materially possible. It is
'reasonable' to begin this effort by looking at the nuclei that are already written as dimorphic for sex.
This assumption of identity between male homosexuality and femaleness at once materializes a
scientific paradigm, and reiterates that homosexuality is an atypical form of maleness: 'groups of
neurons (INAH 2 and INAH 3) were reported to be significantly larger in men than women. Thus,
these two nuclei could be involved in the generation of male-typical sexual behavior' (LeVay, 1991:
1035). This heterosexualizing assumption also lends a performative power to LeVay's results within
neuroscience. LeVay's research is accorded a fundamental importance over other research on
homosexuality and brain structure, both because it materializes the hypothalamus, a brain area which
is understood as controlling sex, and because it differentiates gay men from straight men by making
the former appear like women (see Barinaga, 1991). Within neuroscience, the bodies of gay men are
materialized through a biological sex drive that is already written as 'female'. Gay men and straight
women become materialized as equivalent deviations from the heterosexual male body, purified of
any trace of femininity or homosexual desire and lesbianism exists only as a theoretical possibility.
Materialized as 'female', male homosexuality is then written as a lack, or a failing. Comparative
evidence of lesions that 'impair heterosexual behavior' are cited as comparative evidence that the
INAH nuclei are likely loci for the secret of homosexuality (LeVay, 1991: 1034). A tentative
analogy between the difference LeVay materializes and the difference between castrated and normal
rats is also presented (LeVay, 1991: 1036). Perhaps the most absurd materialization of gay men and
women as equivalent and lacking appears in LeVay's first popular book The Sexual Brain. The
principle research finding is summarized as follows.
This finding suggests that gay and straight men may differ in the central neuronal
mechanisms that regulate sexual behavior. Although the data described only the size of the
nuclei, not the numbers of neurons within each nucleus, it is very likely that there are fewer
neurons in INAH 3 of gay men (and women) than in straight men. To put an absurdly facile
spin on it, gay men simply don't have the brain cells to be attracted to women (LeVay, 1993:
121).
This facile summary deploys both a lack of brain cells and consequent attraction to women and works
to perform male heterosexual wholeness. Not only does this quote render sexual attraction to men
immaterial, it is a clearly absurd summary of LeVay's own work. In addition to the admission that no
claims can be made about brain cells at all, the group lacking such vital cells include a man who
claimed that he was attracted to both men and women. LeVay's comment is not just a 'facile spin', a
characterization that denies its importance as a rhetorical device, even as it materializes female and
gay bodies as 'lacking'. Rather this summary employs the heterosexist and sexist norms whose citation
produces the popular appeal of LeVay's results.
AIDS and the Body of the Male Homosexual
Whatever else it may be. AIDS is a story, or multiple stories, written to a surprising extent
from a text that does not exist: the body of the male homosexual. It is a text that people so
want - need -to read that they have gone so far as to write it themselves (Treichler, 1991: 42).
HIV infection is now so widespread in the gay community that it is unrealistic to imagine a
group to be highly atypical simply because they have died of AIDS (LeVay, 1993: 121-2).
Cultural critics and activists have noted how AIDS and male homosexuality came to symbolize each
other in popular and scientific discourse in the United States in the 1980s (Treichler, 1988; Crimp,
1991). Early on the condition now known as AIDS was materialized by scientists as definitively gay
with the name GRID (Gay Related lmmuno Deficiency). This label had the effects of limiting
research into AIDS among persons who were not considered to be gay men, and of further
stigmatizing and exoticizing gay male identity (Shilts, 1987). The body of 'the promiscuous male
homosexual' (Treichler, 1991) was often constructed as essentially different by scientists in the 1980s,
reassuring heterosexual Americans that they were not at risk for HIV transmission and that AIDS
would remain a problem of gay men. In popular discourses HIV transmission by heterosexual sex was
frequently declared impossible. For example, heterosexual American women were assured in the
pages of Cosmopolitan that they were safe from transmission of HIV because of the 'ordinariness' of
heterosexual sex (see Treichler, 1992). My own research on teenagers and their AIDS educators
suggests that many teenagers continue to understand AIDS as a disease that is exclusive to gay men
(Hegarty, 1996).
AIDS is introduced in the discussion of LeVay's results, in both The Sexual Brain and the Science
article to materialize hypothalamic size as an effect of sexual orientation rather than an effect of
AIDS-related causes. This introduction reveals how locating and detecting the distinctly 'gay
brain' matters more than understanding the effects of AIDS on the central nervous system. Despite
its claims to the contrary, LeVay's report goes beyond establishing the co- occurrence of male
homosexuality and small INAH 3 size (LeVay, 1991: 1036). A difference which might be attributable
to the historically recent effects of the AIDS epidemic on gay men in the United States is insufficient
to materialize INAH 3 into the pages of Science. An essential trans-historical material cause of male
homosexuality is demanded of this research.
AIDS is also introduced to make claims about the representativeness of LeVay's homosexual
subjects. LeVay cites only one behavioral study to characterize gay men's sexual practices. This study
(Bell and Weinberg, 1978) found that many men had over 500 partners in their lifetimes. In the
absence of any behavioral data on the actual gay men in LeVay's study, these subjects are considered
to have been promiscuous on the basis of having contracted HIV. Representativeness is achieved by
the inferences that LeVay's homosexual subjects had multiple partners, and that all gay men have
hundreds of partners. The equation of male homosexuality with promiscuity which materialized AIDS
as an essentially gay disease in the 1980s has been reiterated in the neuroscience of the 1990s,
materializing a pre-discursive locus of an essentially promiscuous homosexual nature.
Materializing gay psychology as a consequence of an essentially promiscuous nature erases the
multiple active reactions of gay men to the AIDS epidemic. LeVay's gay American subjects are not
unrepresentative for having died of AIDS-related causes, but this representativeness does not follow
directly from promiscuous practices. Rather, it results from living under sex-negative dis- cursive
regimes that require panic in regard to gay sex and promiscuity (Rubin,
1993) and legislate against community efforts to educate about when and why promiscuity puts a
person at risk for HIV transmission (see Crimp, 1991). A materiality to the gay brain that is performed
through the idea of the essentially promiscuous homosexual, paradoxically casts active attempts by
individual gay men to resist HIV transmission whether through celibacy, (Siegel and Raveis, 1993),
monogamy (Berger, 1990) or negotiated safety (Kippax et al., 1992) as contrary to gay nature.
LeVay's work discourses such individual and collective practices as immaterial - a gay community
not characterized by AIDS is 'unimaginable'.
CONCLUSION
LeVay's work insists that it is telling us a new story informed by new data on the anatomy of the
hypothalamus. It is a story that has been reiterated in popular, scientific and legal arenas. However it
would be incorrect to attribute this success to a recognition by scientists and the public of good,
objective or value-neutral scientific work on sexuality. Rather, LeVay's work succeeds by dubiously
assuming that there are two types of individuals; homosexuals and heterosexuals. This work also
presumes to generalize results about male sexuality to women, even when this contradicts women's
own accounts. It relies extensively on a state-sponsored exercise in population control that does not
adequately address women or ethnic minorities. It posits the dubious hypothesis that a gay man is a
kind of woman, and erases all political, historical and cultural aspects of sexuality, including radical
lesbianism, AIDS activism and their intersection.
The above analysis of the gay brain is hoped to introduce critical skepticism regarding the claims that
neuroscience reveals the underlying materiality of human psychology. Rather, neuroscience is
implicated in larger complex and often contradictory discourses which are reiterated in the selective
importance accorded to particular scientific results. LeVay's research is illustrative of the multiple
ways in which cultural imperialism, sexism and heterosexism work to materialize the body. It is
insufficient to dismiss this work as 'immaterial' because it does not match up to empirical standards.
The 'material reality' that such science constructs will continue to have a constraining effect on the
spaces in which feminist work in psychology is carried out. At this point when feminist psychologists
are debating the political and epistemological utility of empirical research on sex differences (for
example, Eagly, 1995; Harding, 1986; Kitzinger, 1994; Marecek, 1989), performative analyses of
biological research suggest both the limits of a unitary empirical epistemology for feminist
psychology and the importance of postmodem readings of psychology's subject.
NOTE
The author would like to thank Laura Carstensen, Joan Fujimura, Bill Maurer, Patricia Mullally, Sue
Wilkinson and anonymous reviewers for Feminism & Psychology for comments on earlier drafts of
this paper. These ideas were also informed by the conversations of the Stanford Psychology and
Gender Discussion Group. Any errors remain the author's responsibility.
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