Fausto-Sterling - Sexing the Body

The Rodent’s Tale 211
Beach delivered the prestigious Harvey Lecture in New York. Emphasizing
the similarity of males and females, he noted: ‘‘The physiological mechanisms
for feminine sexual behavior are found in all males and those for masculine
behavior exist in all females. ...Humanhomosexuality reflects the essentially
bisexual character of our mammalian inheritance.’’ 68 Human societies
may condemn the immorality of homosexual behavior, Beach wrote, but one
could not appeal to nature as a justification: our mammalian ancestry proved
homosexuality to be quite natural.
Beach’s animal research intertwined with the broader social discussions of
human sexuality. He did most of his work on animal bisexuality just before
and during World War II. Just after the war, he began to apply his ideas to
humans, at a moment, he wrote, when ‘‘public attitudes toward open discussion
and scientific exploration of problems relating to sex had become remarkably
lenient, if not enlightened.’’ 69 The importance of his work seemed greatly
strengthened by Kinsey’s findings of extensive bisexual behavior in men and
women. In 1946, Beach acknowledged access to Kinsey’s as yet unpublished
results, 70 but since Beach knew Kinsey and was one of his interviewers, 71 it is
likely that he had been thinking about the work on humans since the early
1940s. 72 In turn, Kinsey repeatedly cited Beach’s animal studies in order to
locate human behavior within the panoply of normal mammalian biology. 73
The war itself made homosexuality more visible. 74 At the same time, Beach
did experiments on rats that suggested a remarkable range of sexual behaviors,
and he interviewed humans about their sexual behaviors. At least through the
early 1950s Beach’s views remained compatible with elements of the national
discussion. 75
HETEROSEXUALITY
As the cold war ideology that praised heterosexuality and ranted about the
homosexual menace came to dominate the national scene during the 1950s,
more restrictive readings of animal sexuality gained visibility and strength.
By 1959, a new rodent emerged that was distinctly heterosexual and far more
bound by gender roles than were Beach’s rats. A new theory implied that individual
variation resulted from early hormone exposure; 76 it also made little
attempt to develop the kind of integrated account of behavior so evident in
Beach’s work. Instead, biologists divorced life experience from biological explanations
of behavior, leaving it as a kind of embarrassing little sister—always
mentioned, but never really included in the big kids’ game. And, finally,
as researchers applied Jost’s account of genital development to animal behavior,
femininity became an absence, masculinity a struggle.
One key figure through whom we can trace this progression is William C.