Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality. - Review - book review

Journal of Sex Research, Feb, 2001 by William B. Stanley

An important example of how the course of research on sexuality has been shaped by cultural beliefs is illustrated by research on rodents from the 1930s to the present. Fausto-Sterling describes the development of Beach's research and how his complex theory of animal sexuality was eventually replaced by the far narrower ideas of Young and his colleagues. Beach, the leading scholar in this area from the 1930s through the 1950s, was critical of what he believed were the unscientific assumptions of the main social learning theories popular during the 1940s and 1950s. He argued that biology had a more significant influence on sexual behavior. However, Beach's theory was not reductionist. He believed that we had to study the complex interaction of the various physiological systems (e.g., hormones, brain, central nervous system) as they interacted to shape behavior. He also demonstrated the significant influence individual genetic differences within sex and species had on animal sexuality. In addition, Beach's research documented the important effects context and experience had on sexual behavior. Another important finding was that adult bisexuality and homosexuality were natural, not abnormal behaviors.

In 1959, Young and his colleagues presented what came to be the dominant scientific view of sexual development. The new theory--the organizational/activational (O/A) model of hormone activity--held that "pre- or perinatal hormones organized central nervous tissue so that at puberty hormones could activate specific behaviors" (p. 214, italics in the original). The O/A theory presented a direct challenge to the psychosexual neutrality theory proposed by the Hampsons and Money.

Neither the Hampsons nor Money ever claimed that biology played no role in sexual development; they did argue that early social learning had a more powerful influence on the development of our sexuality. Thus, the debate between Young and his colleagues on one side and Money and his colleagues on the other was around the relative importance of nature versus nurture. This dispute was not trivial, but we should note that both groups accepted that sexual dimorphism was natural and that the nature/nurture dichotomy was the way to approach the issue. Over time, the O/A theory came to dominate research on human sexuality, although Money's influence on the treatment of intersexuals continues into the present.

Fausto-Sterling claims that the rejection of Beach's ideas and the shift to the O/A theory has had a negative impact on sexuality research and our understanding of human sexuality. As individual genetic differences (lab rodents were bred to eliminate such differences) and the effects of experience were excluded from the focus of O/A research, biology came to be seen as the foundation for sexual development. For some researchers, biology was the overriding cause of human sexuality. However, even those who believed that an interaction between nature and nurture best explained sexual development assumed that biology provided the basic foundation to be shaped by subsequent experience.