We have the technology; we can make them stronger, faster…homosexual. What on earth am I babbling about? Read this article and get back to me afterwards. Or if you want instant gratification (or at least instant information) here are a few quotes:

The line between male and female just got blurrier. New research with mice indicates that both sexes have male gender circuitry in their brains. What makes females act like females, according to the study, is the ability to turn off this circuitry. [...] The findings challenge widely held theories about the nature of sexual identity. Many researchers believe that hormones shape the brain’s gender circuitry during development. But the current study indicates that the female brain may be wired the same way as the male brain and that some mice disable this wiring to become female.

I find this amazingly interesting for several reasons. First of all, this goes against the intuitive feeling that the default gender is female. (Since XX chromosomes are female and XY are male. Somehow the homogametic structure of the female gender feels more “orderly” – more intuitive.) But this study shows that such assumptions are ridiculous and rooted in superstition rather than genetics; gender is a very complex thing, and inter-gender relations even more so. One can’t really talk about default genders in a species that requires both for procreation.

Secondly, I’ve just finished a Teaching Company audio book on Neurobiology, and one of the things the lecturer brought up was ridiculous initial attempts to explain homosexuality. He finished his lecture by commenting that it’s very likely that scientists will discover the real neurological reason for homosexuality within a few years. Guess he was right! (Or at least, they’re on their way to finding out – the study above is in no way a definite answer to anything.)

…But the TTC lecturer also mentioned something more interesting: the consequences of such a discovery. He started with analysis; once brain scanning methods are improved we might be able to know if a person is homosexual or heterosexual merely by analysing the brain. Do we want to know if a baby is hetero or homo? And what about people who are happily married, thinking that they’re hetero – what will they do once they discover that they’re really standing way back in the closet? “Ohhh, this explains why I have a hard time getting it up, honey! So… Eh… What now? And what about our fifteen kids?”

Of course, the next step is to modify this behaviour. Sure, we can make lesbians…but we can also “cure” homosexuals. That opens up a whole bag of nasty business. The lecturer went on to – as people always tend to do, to drive the point home – make a Nazi reference, which was completely unwarranted and irrelevant. But the main point is very solid: what will happen if people can choose to be hetero or homo?

“Don’t be ridiculous. People won’t be able to choose that! In the study they genetically modified mice to lose the TRPC2 gene – we can’t do that on a grown person. In best case, it could just be done on an embryo,” is a very good retort to that. But I can bet you [insert a huge amount of bandoolas here] that if this study proves to be correct and relevant for human sexuality, then there will eventually come ways to artificially create the effect of the TRPC2 gene…or block it.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 7th, 2007 at 2:25 pm and is filed under Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.