The Life of the Gay Gene: From Hypothetical Genetic Marker to Social Reality

Abstract

The gay gene was first identified in 1993 as a correlation between the genetic marker Xq28 and gay male sexuality. The results of this original study were never replicated, and the biological reality of such an entity remains hypothetical. However, despite such tenuous provenance, the gay gene has persisted as a reference in science news, popular science writings, and in press releases and editorials about biomedical research. An examination of the life of the gay gene in U.K. news media demonstrates that the gay gene has become an assumed back-story to genetic sexuality research over time, and that the critique of its very existence has been diminished. Latterly, the gay gene has entered into the online biomedical databases of the 21st century with the same pattern of persistence and diminishing critique. This article draws on an analysis of the U.K. press and online databases to represent the process through which the address of the gay gene has shifted and become an index of biomedicalization. The consequent unmooring of the gay gene from accountability and accuracy demonstrates that the organization of biomedical databases could benefit from greater cross-disciplinary attention.

A Tale of Two Molecular Californias

“…In a growing personal genomics industry, the research company 23andMe has played a significant role in delineating a white gay molecular identity. That identity is said to empower but is decontextualized from historical practices of stigmatization that made—and continue to make—some people different or “deviant” from societal norms (O’Riordan, 2012). This history of identification created sexual and racial minorities in the first place and preconditions desires to find identity in molecules.…”

“…While molecular research on sexual orientation long predates both consumer genomics and criminological genetic databases, the search for a molecular gay identity has revitalized longstanding debates about a ‘gay gene’. According to Kate O’Riordan (2012, p. 362), the gay gene ‘exists as an idea, a repetition, a discursive pattern, an emotional effect, a label, and a hypothesis’. For some people, it represents the positive re-positioning of responsibility for their identity onto molecular causes.…”

“…On its website, 23andMe links to O’Riordan’s (2012) above-cited article, ‘The Life of the Gay Gene: From Hypothetical Genetic Marker to Social Reality.’ In it, O’Riordan analyses the gay gene within a history of pathologized homosexuality, as medicalized deviance from a heterosexual norm. She argues that the gay gene became entrenched in public consciousness precisely when a range of clinical databases continued to define homosexuality as a biomedical condition and potential molecular variant, despite scientific evidence to the contrary.…”

“…Likewise, the elective process of consumer DNA testing cannot exist without similar histories of physical identification. Consumer-driven research to find a gay gene is premised on the historical identification of homosexuality as deviant from an invisible societal norm (O’Riordan, 2012). Only from this historical context does the contemporary desire to remove agency from one’s gay identity—that is, to recreate it as a molecular one rather than a lifestyle choice—make sense.…”

Temporality and Belonging as Transdisciplinary Objects: Strategic Encounters between Queer Theory and Population Genetic Technologies

“…Although queer and feminist scholars have explored assumptions of innate gender and sexual characteristics in behavioral genetics and evolutionary psychology (e.g., Lancaster, 2003;Oikkonen, 2013;O'Riordan, 2012;Roof, 2007), there has been much less interest in population genetics, which has been seen as primarily engaged with racialized differences. 8 Yet population genetic knowledge is organized by sexuality, as reproduction is the mechanism through which genetic markers are passed on through generations.…”