>The study may be bullshit. But there was no way to determine that
>from the article I posted.
Precisely, and that's why I bothered to look up the original article by Lee Ellis and Jill Hellberg. A lot gets lost in translation from science to journalism, as journalists, especially when they are reporting on sexuality, tend to exaggerate researchers' provisional and usually skimpy findings beyond recognition.
>If we can take this study and ally it with others and create the
>truth that queerness is natural and with that truth create justice
>for queers -- good for us.
Let's assume, for the sake of discussion, that Ellis and Hellberg's research findings got replicated several times and turned out to be 100% reliable. What would *that* prove? That small proportions of homosexuals, bisexuals, and heterosexuals are what they are sexually in part because their mothers took synthetic thyroid medications, amphetamine-based diet pills, and anti-nausea and -vomiting medications. The main inference that people can make based on Ellis and Hellberg's research is that sexual orientations of the small minorities of homosexuals, bisexuals, and heterosexuals *could have been different had their mothers not taken such medications*. This is the way Ellis and Hellberg put it with regard to heterosexuality of male offsprings and anti-nausea and vomiting medications (in a heterosexist fashion): "One class of such drugs was anti-nausea and vomiting medications, substances reportedly consumed by 7.0% of the mothers of male heterosexuals, but only 4.2% of the mothers of homosexuals (p=0.038). This very surprising finding suggests that such medications could have a "protective effect" with respect to male offsprings' typical sexual orientation" ("Fetal Exposure to Prescription Drugs and Adult Sexual Orientation," Personality and Individual Differences 38.1 January 2005).
It wouldn't help create justice for queers if it were proven that mothers who wouldn't want gay children should take anti-nausea and -vomiting medications, that mothers who wanted gay children (especially lesbian daughters) should take diet pills and thyroid medications (especially during the first trimester), and that mothers who wouldn't want to influence their children's sexual orientation at all should not take any medication associated with an increased incidence of any sexual orientation during pregnancy.
> > Maybe I'll give birth to a lezbean if I keep sniffing stripping solvent?
>
>No, but you'll probably keep believing in the dilletante notion that
>truth can be found in a university statistics class or an academic
>text.
But you appear to believe that an article published in Personality and Individual Differences, a peer-reviewed academic journal, can help "create the truth that queerness is natural and with that truth create justice for queers," which it doesn't. :-0
In any case, the Ellis and Hellberg article in question, as well as most articles in most scholarly journals in the humanities and social sciences, can be read by anyone who can read English, including you. You need not have taken any university statistics class (which I haven't, as it wasn't required for an English major at Tokyo Gaigo Daigaku) to notice the "exceedingly small" sample sizes in the Ellis and Hellberg article.
>The left needs to create strategic/useful truths with which it can do battle.
The most important strategic/useful truths are that, historically, homophobia has not been universal and that heterosexism -- the idea that human beings should be categorized into homosexuals, bisexuals, and heterosexuals and that heterosexuals are the normal majority -- is a relatively recent historical phenomenon, beginning to arise first among the middle class in Britain and Europe in the late nineteenth century and getting exported worldwide as capitalism has conquered the world. To this day, heterosexism has yet to become hegemonic for all classes in all nations. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * "Proud of Britain": <http://www.proudofbritain.net/ > and <http://www.proud-of-britain.org.uk/>