One day in 1957, Frank Kameny, an astronomer in the US army, was dismissed from service for being gay. Kameny went on to appeal against his unfair dismissal; although unsuccessful, the case went down in history for being the first known civil rights case tried in a US court on grounds of sexual orientation.
November 18, 2020, marked the 60th anniversary of this case, and the day was celebrated as the LGBTQ+ STEM day. Various individuals and organisations working for equality of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer and other people from diverse sexual orientations and gender (LGBTQ+) individuals working in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) disciplines took to social media to highlight issues faced by queer-trans people in STEM. I was a part of an event hosted by @GlobalSciShow, an organization that aims to share science from all across the globe, on Twitter.
I chose to scratch the surface of the long history of genetic research on sexuality. Here are the tweets that followed (funny GIFs as a bonus!)
Hi! My name is Sayantan (@queersprings), and I am the current coordinator of @labhopping. I am #queer_trans and participating in the #GlobalScienceShow (@globalscishow) on the occasion of #LGBTQSTEMday. I would be tweeting about the history of genetic research on sexuality. pic.twitter.com/8zVnOaSbky
— TheLifeofScience.com (@labhopping) November 13, 2020
Before beginning, I asked people whether they believed that sexual orientation is genetically determined. While most people mentioned that they do not, about 39% also opted for “Maybe”. That reaffirmed to me the importance of having more conversations regarding the history of genetic research on sexuality specifically and the history of scientific pursuits towards understanding human sexuality generally.
Remember to follow the whole show, and check out @JuliaVSeidel, who is up next.
Do not forget to follow this #thread, @queersprings and @labhopping. Before we begin, let’s do a quick poll. Do you think #sexual_orientation is #genetically_determined?
— TheLifeofScience.com (@labhopping) November 13, 2020
I chose to speak about three classical studies to spark off the conversation, followed by a discussion on what motivates such research and where we stand now with respect to such lines of research.
1991: Bailey & Pillard compared the prevalence of homosexuality b/w monozygotic twins, dizygotic twins and non-twin siblings. Their data claimed that 52% of monozygotic twins show concordance for homosexuality, as compared with 22% and 11% respectively for the other categories.
— TheLifeofScience.com (@labhopping) November 13, 2020
In simpler terms, they claimed that there is a correlation between the amount of shared genetic material and the probability of two siblings being homosexual. Can you think of what might be the #drawbacks of the study?
— TheLifeofScience.com (@labhopping) November 13, 2020
Interestingly, this study did not find any correlation between childhood gender non-conformance and adult sexuality. 😀
— TheLifeofScience.com (@labhopping) November 13, 2020
Interestingly, they also claimed to have found more number of gay relatives (uncles, brothers, etc.) on the maternal side of gay men as compared with the paternal side. Xq28 was soon dubbed as the “gay gene”, and caused A LOT of controversy that we will soon take up.
— TheLifeofScience.com (@labhopping) November 13, 2020
Hamer’s study did not really stand the test of time. In 1999, Bailey (yes, the same person) and colleagues could not find a preponderance of gay men in the maternal side of gay men.
— TheLifeofScience.com (@labhopping) November 13, 2020
In the same year, Rice and colleagues failed to find the similarities in Xq28 (called Xq28 linkage) in homosexual men as postulated by Hamer et al.
Why do you think this might have happened? pic.twitter.com/L8fXuBMQT7— TheLifeofScience.com (@labhopping) November 13, 2020
Having discussed two landmark studies on humans, I turned to an old friend, the humble fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. Dubbed as one of the best models for genetics, it is no wonder that fruit flies have also been used to study sexuality.
In 1963, K Gill found a fruitfly mutant that showed “altered courtship” behaviour. He named the mutant (and therefore the gene) a particular f-word that was a commonly used slang against homosexual men in America.
— TheLifeofScience.com (@labhopping) November 13, 2020
It was only much later that the name was perceived abusive and changed to “fruitless”, since the mutant males were sterile. Do you think this change in language helped?
— TheLifeofScience.com (@labhopping) November 13, 2020
Certain forms of the fruitless gene (notably Fru[M]) have been shown to increase the probability of “male-to-male” courtship among fruitflies. In fact, a study in 2005 by Demir et al. showed that overexpressing Fru[M] in female fruitflies change their sexual behaviour…
— TheLifeofScience.com (@labhopping) November 13, 2020
…Not only do these female flies start courting other female flies (in contrast to the normal scenario where female flies do not show any observable courtship behavior), but they could court male flies ONLY if the male flies secreted female pheromones.
— TheLifeofScience.com (@labhopping) November 13, 2020
TRIVIA: @NobelPrize laureate Jeffrey Hall was one of the key researchers working on fruitless.
Point to note is that NO homolog of fruitless has ever been found in mammals. Still, fruitless generated a lot of popularity and motivated scientists further into genetics of sexuality.— TheLifeofScience.com (@labhopping) November 13, 2020
After this walk through scientific history, I moved on to talk about where we stand now.
In 2019, a large-scale study (with a whopping >400000 participants) was conducted that revealed two key insights:
1) There seem to be five “spots” in the human genome that can be correlated to homosexuality.
2) NONE of these spots can be used to predict someone’s sexuality.— TheLifeofScience.com (@labhopping) November 13, 2020
That means, there is NO GAY GENE, and human sexuality is much more complicated than current genetics can handle. In fact, a lot of these “spots” in the human genome seem to also be linked with olfaction! pic.twitter.com/KJhBiEwHSb
— TheLifeofScience.com (@labhopping) November 13, 2020
And before closing the session, I brought up some lines of critique that are important to explore when discussing such research.
Before we close (and I promise we will), let us quickly discuss what are the problems with such lines of research. I am sure that you have already identified the first: MOST of the early studies worked only with men. What else can you think of?
— TheLifeofScience.com (@labhopping) November 13, 2020
Here go my two cents:
a) Genetics is very complex. Often, more than one genes act towards one character, and the effect of these genes can be regulated by other genes in the person’s genome.
b) Environment affects gene expression…— TheLifeofScience.com (@labhopping) November 13, 2020
…and various environmental factors interact with each other, making the process even more complex.
c) Gene expression is not a continuous process. A lot of genes are turned on and off by a variety of stimuli ALL the time in our body.— TheLifeofScience.com (@labhopping) November 13, 2020
d) Genetic research that tries to find out the genetic reason for any xyz trait of a marginalized group (eg. queer-trans people) are often inspired by a eugenics-like strategy. In the name of “understanding”, such lines of research promote a pathological outlook of a person…
— TheLifeofScience.com (@labhopping) November 13, 2020
…where one needs to be “diagnosed” for “wrong” genes. This makes queer-trans people “subjects” of medicine, patients, who need to be “treated” to be incorporated into the “mainstream” society. No wonder curative therapies against queer-trans people are so rampantly in use.
— TheLifeofScience.com (@labhopping) November 13, 2020
I closed with a reminder that I give myself daily.
We only scratched the surface; there is an entire iceberg of danger waiting to be uncovered. Remember, criticize and agitate: Science that is done without sensibilities is selfish at its best and destructive at its worst.
— TheLifeofScience.com (@labhopping) November 13, 2020
The thread was well-taken. As much as I would have liked to write more, summarising decades of research (a lot of which triggers trauma) in a series of 280 characters is not easy. What I did re-realise at the end of this exercise was how closely science intertwines with society, how easily it adopts social biases and how eerily it contributes to them. I love science as much as I am scared of it, and these are only a few reasons. 🙂
P.S: If you would like to know more about some fantastic transgender people in Indian STEM, or about the kind of problems faced by transgender people in STEM in India, do check out the following pieces from TheLifeofScience.com:
