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Science and Homosexualities is the first anthology by historians of science to examine European and American scientific research on sexual orientation since the coining of the word "homosexual" almost 150 years ago. This collection is particularly timely given the enormous scientific and popular interest in biological studies of homosexuality, and the importance given such studies in current legal, legislative and cultural debates concerning gay civil rights. However, scientific and popular literature discussing the biology of sexual orientation have been short-sighted in representing it as objective, new scientific work. This volume demonstrates that the quest for the biological "cause" of homosexuality and other sexualities is as old as the term itself. These essays explore the active role experimental subjects played in shaping scientific theories of homosexuality and cultural perceptions of sexuality and sexual identity. Finally this anthology studies the way in which this doctor-patient interaction shaped not only scientific theories of homosexuality, but also cultural perceptions and self-identities as well.
Contributors include: Garland E. Allen, Erin G. Carlston, Julian Carter, Alice D. Dreger, Anne Fausto-Sterling, Margaret Gibson, Stephanie Kenen, Hubert Kennedy, Harry Oosterhuis, James Steakley, Richard Pillard, Jennifer Terry
List of contents
Homosexual Bio-Histories: Genetic Nostalgias and the Quest for Paternity; First Theorist of Homosexuality; Alice D. Dreger Hermaphrodites in Love: The Truth of the Gonads; Richard von Krafft-Ebing's Step-Children Of Nature: Psychiatry and the Making of Homosexual Identity; Inversion's Histories I History's Inversions: Novelizing Fin-de-Siecle Homosexuality; Clitoral Corruption: Body Metaphors and American Doctors' Constructions of Female Homosexuality, 1870-1900; Perscientiam adjustitiam: Magnus Hirschfeld and the Sexual Politics of Innate Homosexuality; Whiteness, Authorship: Evolutionary; Sexology and the Primitive Pervert; ''A Finer Differentiation: Female Homosexuality and the American Medical Community, 1926-1940; Who Counts When You're Counting Homosexuals? Hormones and Homosexuality in Mid-Twentieth Century America; How to Build a Man; The Search for a Genetic Influence on Sexual Orientation; The Double-Edged Sword of Genetic Determinism: Social and Political Agendas in Genetic Studies of Homosexuality, 1940-1994; The Seductive Power of Science in the Making of Deviant Subjectivity
About the author
Vernon A. Rosario II, M.D. teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.
Summary
Shows that the quest for the biological 'cause' of homosexuality and other sexualities is as old as the term itself and explores the active role experimental subjects played in shaping cultural perceptions of sexuality.
