[For my WS 306 Class ,(Contemporary Health Issues for Women) we have to write 3 blogs relating to health and women. I saw the Jezebel article about Dick Swaab's research, and I knew that I had to write about it. I do not believe there is anything wrong with queerness but I do believe that policing pregnant women is wrong especially in order to "prevent" homosexuality in children.]
Wait, what?
That’s a thing that people talk about in the academic world?
The claim by Dick Swaab, a neurobiologist at Amsterdam University, is that “Pre-birth exposure to both nicotine and amphetamines increases the chance of lesbian daughters” (Carter). High stress levels can also apparently increase the rate of homosexuality in a boy or girl because the stress hormone cortisol “affects the production of fetal sex hormones” (Carter).
What?
It’s hard to believe that people would test such a homophobic claim at this point in time with all the progress that has hapenned for human rights, and that people would believe it. Or publish it. I was blown away by the title of Jezebel’s coverage of the research: “Pregnant Women Who Smoke and Drink Turn Kids Gay, Says Science Troll.” I had to read what Doug Barry was talking about. I could not believe that that would be a scientific study with any merit or financial backing. I was wrong.
The article begins by explaining that smoking, doing drugs, or drinking during pregnancy will influence the IQ of the baby. Damage during pregnancy inhibits proper brain development. It is unquestionable that smoking during pregnancy is dangerous for the fetus as well as for the mother. Tobacco can even cause spontaneous abortion (Bess) among other problems. This has been proved many times, therefore I believe there was little need for another study to look at the damages smoking can have on babies.
However, Swaab's thesis is that the mother's lifestyle affects the child's life, including their sexuality. How on earth does smoking affect a child’s sexuality? Swaab explains that the toxins from smoking, drugs, and drinking enter the fetus and change the child “for ever” (Leake). Obviously that is a pretty harsh statement, and the article does not go into the specific science he hopefully looked at. Swaab says that “Pre-birth exposure to both nicotine and amphetamines increases the chance of lesbian daughters” (Leake). Another cause of homosexuality according to Swaab is a boy having many older brothers. Swaab does not use this as an example, but Leake and Lazarus do cite Thomas Hitzlsperger, the football player who came out recently because he has five older brothers (Leake).
The ideas of the study sound crazy to me, but Swaag’s main point is that “the development of the brain during pregnancy and early childhood is directly linked to the kind of people we become in adulthood” (Leake). I can agree with that to an extent: if a pregnant woman drinks alcohol, there is a large chance that the baby will have fetal alcohol syndrome which will affect personality and interactions. Drugs will also affect the baby’s brain development. Therefore, drinking, drugs, and smoking can have negative impacts on babies as well as pregnant women. Swaab does make a tiny bit of sense, but as I said previously, many studies have already been done on the effects of those substances.
I would like to see the real scientific evidence for this study, if there is any. Correlation is not causation: smoking does not logically cause queerness. What was Swaab’s sample? How did he determine who was actually queer and who was in the closet? How did he get ethics approval? This research is clearly homophobic because it presents homosexuality as a damaged fetus, and therefore a damaged person. Who sat down and said, smoking = lesbianism? Is queerness some sort of punishment for improper mothering? Evidently the scientists on this project think so.
Swaab’s claim puts the sexuality of the child in the mother’s hands. If she is too stressed during pregnancy, if she takes drugs for depression, a girl fetus will become a lesbian. I guess I can see one positive to this side, but only in that Swaab’s ideas could mean sexuality is genetic and not a choice, not something someone can “take back” or be “converted” from. However, it worries me that this article could be used to shame or police potential mothers into acting a certain way during pregnancy because they might be afraid of queerness in a child. Women should practice safer pregnancies for their own sake and for the child’s sake, not because they believe they might affect sexuality in any way. Yes, it is dangerous for pregnant women to do certain things, but blaming those dangers on homosexuality is unfounded.
This study perpetuates an old, conservative ideology that there is something wrong with people who do not fit into a heteronormative image. I can’t say for a fact if something “causes” differences in sexuality. I do not believe that it is environmental; otherwise all children of non-heteronormative families would be “deviant.” That argument would imply that it is “catching;” another harmful idea to go along with Swaab's. I believe there is nothing wrong with being queer and that this study is extremely homophobic.
The issue gets more complicated: a more recent article about Dr. Swaab's research admits that he produced that information in the 1980s, and has since explained that he thinks that his view that sexuality is "decided in the womb demolishes the argument, often made by ultra-conservative groups, that gay people can be 'cured'" (Spencer). He attempts to shift the focus of the media off homosexuality in his book, to many other topics, just as ridiculous, for which he has been critiqued or exalted. One gay rights campaigner, Peter Tatchell, agrees that "If being gay is mostly or wholly determined by biological factors prior to birth, it is immoral to condemn or discriminate against lesbians and gay men" (Spencer). However, I still believe that Swaab is speaking to an ideology that queerness is damage caused by a mother, and that is harmful and homophobic.
Even after reflecting on this topic for a while, I cannot believe that someone in this century would consider that something like smoking would change someone’s sexuality. Maybe better ethics screening should happen, and more critical thinking is needed: most of the blog posts about this study just said that it was dumb, not why it was dumb. It may be cynical of me, but I believe that more homophobia will come out of this than critical thinking that queerness is not the child's "fault."
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