The Science of Sex

An old friend of mine, Rich, is gay but he was married to a woman for ten years. His was not the typical scenario, in which a closeted gay man discovers a decade too late that he prefers men. No, this was one of those marriages of convenience. Rich had had boyfriends since he was a teenager. He met Laura when we are all in college, and they became best friends. She was straight, she knew he was gay, and they made a handsome, platonic couple. They had an “open” marriage that allowed them to be physically involved with other people. (Talk about threatening the sanctity of heterosexual marriage!)

I caught up with Rich recently, because I wanted to know what he thought about a new study that shows that fruit flies have a single gene that determines whether they are homosexual or heterosexual. (Do you find it as weird as I do to think about fruit flies hooking up?) Scientists found that by tweaking this gene, they could make male flies totally get into whatever the fruit-fly equivalent of Judy Garland and leather chaps is. Also, they could make the females wear little mullets and drive motorcycles.

“They’ve done studies like that many times,” Rich told me. “Why do you think they call us ‘fruits’?” He laughed and pointed out that this latest one is interesting only because it seems like the most thorough, irrefutable one to date.
Rich said it is certainly satisfying for the gay community to be able to say that homosexuality is not a “lifestyle decision,” nor is it a perversion of the natural order of things, a deviation from doing things “the way God intended.” He and his gay friends have been hearing that kind of nonsense for so long, from so many horribly backward people, that they find it comforting to have a little backup from science.
I couldn’t help pointing out, however, that a little science never did anything to derail the fervent beliefs of the most willfully ignorant people—the sort who argue that being female or African-American is genetically determined and “normal,” but that it doesn’t mean God wants women or blacks to run for president. Still, confirming the existence of a “gay gene” may put to rest the most virulent forms of homophobia—the sort where people consider it a “disease” that can be “cured” through prayer and psychotherapy.

Of course, anytime you mix science and sex, trouble comes up. Another very interesting recent study, about women and orgasm, may have some troubling implications. It showed there may be a “genetic influence” on whether a woman can achieve orgasm. “Now you’re out of my depth!” said Rich when I brought up this one. But I thought his perspective might be interesting. How would he feel if he were one of these “genetically influenced” women? Rich said, “On the one hand, it may be reassuring to know that this problem could be based in genetics. I suppose that could take the heat off, and relieve some of the guilt or shame that comes with not being able to get off.” The authors of this study were very quick to say that the genetic influence on orgasm is just that—an influence that can be, uh, manipulated, given enough time and patience and practice.

I asked my precious wife what she thought. She is not what I’d call a person who loudly announces the arrival of her orgasms, but generally she does not have any problem getting there. She had an interesting take. “Consider what the biological imperative might be for a sort of gray-area orgasm in women,” she said. (So smart and sexy!) “If women had the same super-obvious, concrete orgasms that men have, would humans have survived the caveman period?” I guess she meant that men have orgasms that are consistent with the Darwinian drive to “spread the seed” around as much as possible—to maximize the possibility for the greatest number of conceptions in the tribe, assuming that polyamory is our natural state.

If females did the same thing, hanging out at the cave-bar looking to hook up with as many cave-partners as possible, there’d be no cave-women at home to take care of the little cave-children. Still, I’m skeptical about this sort of natural-selection determinism. I think it might be more personal than that. What if desire itself has evolved in self-preserving ways? If a woman’s orgasms are much more variable in quality and degree, it may serve as a form of insurance—her man, to stoke his ego, will keep coming back and trying for a higher score. Call it the pinball theory. I like it, and I’m sticking to it.