rrizzo@bbncca.ARPA (Ron Rizzo) (11/19/85)
RECENT ARTICLES The December 1985 issue of SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN has an article by Jeffrey Laurence on "The Immune System in AIDS", pages 84-93, the magazine's first real coverage of the subject of AIDS. Up to now, it's neglected AIDS, or carried short infrequent news items about it. The article's bibliography cites papers dating from May-December 1984. The current ADVOCATE (#433, 11/12/85) has a "travel piece" by Michael Chaffee on Soviet Gays, in the USSR and US. (It contained an item I found interesting: the Soviet movie director Paradjanov (sp?) was imprisoned because he is gay. Years ago on PBS I'd seen his most famous film, "Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors," a dreamlike tale about the Gusuls (sp?), a Lapp-like hill tribe dwelling in the eastern Carpathian mountains near Poland, the most beautiful Russian film I've ever seen, but I knew nothing about the director.) SEX & SCIENCE The current GCN (11/23/85) has a good centerfold article by Scott Tucker, "Sex & Science: Who Decides What's Good For Us?" which critically reviews research on possible biological bases of sexual orientation and the often homophobic presuppositions of researchers. Much of such "science" begins with an assumption that homosexuality must be the result of a deviation in a biological process (prenatal stress, hormone balance, etc.). So what else is new? What's new is that biotechnologies capable of altering the gender and sexual orientation of fetuses are now foreseeable in the not-too-distant-future. The social implications of this were briefly but sharply debated in net.motss months ago. To me it's the most intriguing issue yet raised in this newsgroup, because it's so thorny. Recently AIDS hysteria has revived not only old prejudices but their accompanying superstitions about homosexuality. Even some scientists have succumbed. Given the current vogue in social biology and evolutionary styles of explanation, I'm appending the following annotated bibliography of biology essays that aim to demonstrate the naturalness of homosexuality. Like Marxism and psychoanalysis, darwinism has often been used merely to justify the status quo and is so broad an idea that it can be used to support almost any hypothesis and prove incapable of refutation. Never- theless, a number of scientists have made cogent use of it to examine possible biological roles of "nonreproductive sexuality." (Andre Gide's turn-of-the-century apologia for homosexuality, CORYDON, is scientifically outdated, but it's devoted almost entirely to biological considerations, and is well-written and thought-provoking.) Below is a footnote (#9, page 9) from John Boswell's CHRISTIANITY, SOCIAL TOLERANCE & HOMOSEXUALITY (1980, U. Chicago Press, $9.95 pb): [ Quoted without permission. ] In the late nineteenth century, when the issue of homosexuality first began to exercise the minds of scientists, most authorities assumed that homosexual inclinations were congenital, and differed only on whether they were a defect (Kraft-Ebbing) or a part of the normal range of human variation (Hirschfeld). The triumph of psychoanalytical approaches to human sexual phenomena resulted in general abandonment of this approach in favor of psychological explanations, but in 1959 G. E. Hutchinson published a paper specualting on the possible genetic significance of "nonreproductive" sexuality (which he labeled "para- philia"), including homosexuality ("A Speculative Consideration of Certain Possible Forms of Sexual Selection in Man," AMERICAN NATURALIST 93 [1959]: 81-91). In the 1970s a great deal of speculation has followed on the evolutionary significance of homosexuality, much of it agreeing on the essential likelihood of genetic viability for homo- sexual feelings through one selection mechanism or another. A theory based on parent-offspring conflict as a mechanism for producing homo- sexuality was published in 1974 by R. L. Trivers ("Parent-Offspring Conflict," AMERICAN ZOOLOGIST 14 [1974]: 249-64). In 1975 E. O. Wilson (SOCIOBIOLOGY: THE NEW SYNTHESIS [Cambridge, Mass., 1975]) suggested that homosexuality might involve a form of genetic altruism, through which gay people benefit those closely related to them and offset their lowered reproductivity (see pp. 22, 229-31, 281, 311, 343-44, and esp. 555). This argument was expanded and simplified in "Human Decency Is Animal," New York Times Magazine (October 12, 1975), pp. 38ff. and in ON HUMAN NATURE (Cambridge, Mass., 1978), pp. 142-47. The most detailed and comprehensive study of this subject to date, examining nearly all modern theories for the etiology of homosexual- ity, is that of James D. Weinrich, "Human Reproductive Strategy: The Importance of Income Unpredictability and the Evolution of Non- Reproduction," pt. 2 "Homosexuality and Non-Reproduction: Some Evolutionary Models" (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1976). An extraordinarily lucid and readable summary of previous biological approaches, with provocative original speculations, appeared in John Kirsch and James Rodman, "The Natural History of Homosexuality," Yale Scientific Magazine 51, no. 3 (1977): 7-13. Cheers, Ron Rizzo "Humans are anmimals, but we are not rats." -- Scott Tucker
sdyer@bbncc5.UUCP (Steve Dyer) (11/19/85)
DISCOVER, December 1985, is devoted to AIDS, and greets the reader with the following cover phrase, a snippet of yellow journalism and homophobia disguised as heartwarming news for the concerned straits: "Contrary to what you you've heard, AIDS isn't a threat to the vast majority of heterosexuals or a peril to humanity. It is -- and is likely to remain -- largely the fatal price one can pay for anal intercourse." Inside is a rather confused mishmash of more of the same, along with some pretty good science writing on what is known about AIDS replication and transmission which reads like it came out of a different article without an axe to grind. There is a subtle homophobia here, no less repugnant than the editorial page ravings of Cal Thomas and the Boston Globe's David Wilson. It is a reformation of Pat Buchanan's pet phrase, "[gays] have transgressed against nature, and now they're reaping the fatal price", clothed in a mantle of bioscience rather than religion. But it was bad religion, and so far, it remains bad science. The claim is that the vagina is a good shield against AIDS virus infection or dissemination due to its intact epithelial structure, as opposed to the anus and the penile urethra which are far more vascular and open to viral infection. These are interesting hypotheses, certainly worthy of continued exploration, but they remain hypotheses, and no public health official has ever made as strong a statement as DISCOVER, trying to pass this off as established fact. It is interesting that this article comes out at the same time that news reports have uncovered the extent of AIDS in sexually active heterosexuals in Africa. This article discounts whatever earlier had been reported as being wholly reducible to the practice of scarification, a cosmetic procedure using unsanitized needles. Why promiscuous heterosexual activity seems to be correlated with the incidence of the disease in Africa certainly is unexplored by this article. The fact is that AIDS need not be the fatal consequence of anal intercourse and should not be identified as one and the same. It was safe for millions of years, and though it may cause some Falwellians and science-backed homophobes indigestion, one can presume that it (not to mention sex in general) will once again be considered safe at some time in the future. It's curious that "normal" sexual intercourse was never singled out as the culprit when syphilis was considered a death sentence. Rather, the focus was on the spirochete. Yet here we have a curious fascination with and condemnation of a sexual practice favored by a minority of society. Right now all sexual practices which are open to the interchange of blood and/or semen between non-monogamous individuals should be considered potentially dangerous. At this point, it is foolhardy for promiscuous heterosexuals or gay people to take the DISCOVER report on face value to avoid taking reasonable safe-sex precautions in all forms of sexual expression. I am trying to make a very subtle point here, and I want to make sure I am not being misinterpreted. My thesis is that there is a large political component in the DISCOVER article which is intimately tied up with the traditional revulsion of Western society towards homosexual activity in general and anal intercourse in particular. Whatever data might have been or might yet be collected regarding the role of anal sex in the etiology of AIDS is being obscured by the force of this societal proscription, leading to overeager conclusions as yet unsupported by firm data, and to a focus on the act of anal sex itself, as it becomes transformed into an icon for the dreaded syndrome. To anyone interested in seeing rationality drive a solution to the AIDS problem, this is very frightening. With that said, I must also admit that any AIDS research which focuses on the role of particular sexual practices is necessarily BOUND to be controversial since it encroaches on the larger societal ambivalence towards them. But for me, this argues for even more careful reporting and an attention to conclusions unfettered by non-scientific mores and morals. The DISCOVER report, shamefully, fell far short of this goal. -- /Steve Dyer {harvard,seismo}!bbnccv!bbncc5!sdyer sdyer@bbncc5.ARPA
rrizzo@bbncca.ARPA (Ron Rizzo) (11/20/85)
Re the derogated practice of anal intercourse: I remember hearing a physician claim that the rectum is so hostile an environment for microbes that the only STD pathogens which can survive in it are gonococci. Of course, hepatitis can also be transmitted via anal intercourse through microsopic cuts in the penis or rectal wall. (And amoebas and other pathogens lurk in excrement, but are trans- mitted only through ingestion. Yet the urethra, vagina, and anus are fairly close to each other, and some of the same dangers lurk there.) Condoms should reduce the risk of transmission by blood. If the above claim is true, then only gonorrhea can actually reside in the rectum, while hepatitis and AIDS depend on immediate injection into the blood stream. Thus, a case can be made for the rectum being "naturally" a healthier sexual receptacle than the vagina, or the mouth for that matter. Some rectal and colonic cancers may originate sexually, but whether viruses cause them is not (I think) either known or clear. On the other hand, the variety of cancers (of the cervix, vagina, etc.) and other serious or chronic diseases or damage resulting from missionary-position heterosexual intercourse are legion and rela- tively well-known (but suffered by women, not men). I've always marvelled at the fact that these facts are never adduced to con- clude that heterosexuality, or a sexist use of it, is "contra naturam," unnatural and punished by an avenging Nature. If the fixation on anal intercourse as culprit is a coded belief that AIDS is intrinsically a "homosexual disease," then it should be noted that the preferred homosexual practice of a prototypical period such as classical Athens was intercrural (between the thighs) intercourse, while throughout for example Persian history, anal intercourse was highly rated and frequently practiced among both straights and gays. Finally, even NBC's post-Early Frost news program, "AIDS Fears, AIDS Facts" solicited a disclaimer from one of the interviewees that AIDS will remain primarily a disease of "high-risk groups" for the foreseeable future, even though the upshot of the rest of the program was to warn everyone that it now threatens all. Dream on! Cheers, Ron Rizzo