There are two ways to challenge politically correct orthodoxies. One is to toss off outrageous remarks designed to épater les bourgeois. This requires little and accomplishes less. The other is to take the commanding orthodoxy, put it under a microscope, and dismantle it piece by piece. This is what Lawrence Mayer, an epidemiologist trained in psychiatry, and psychiatrist Paul McHugh have just done to the regime of gender and sexuality politics.
In a lengthy report for the journal the New Atlantis, Mayer and McHugh survey a broad expanse of the scientific literature on gender and sexuality and demonstrate that much of what has been foisted on the culture in recent years in the name of science has little solid basis in scientific research. Their conclusions: (1) “The understanding of sexual orientation as an innate, biologically fixed property of human beings—the idea that people are ‘born that way’—is not supported by scientific evidence.” And (2) “The hypothesis that gender identity is an innate, fixed property of human beings that is independent of biological sex—that a person might be ‘a man trapped in a woman’s body’ or ‘a woman trapped in a man’s body’—is not supported by scientific evidence.”
It may sound modest, but this is earth-rumbling stuff.
The Mayer-McHugh report is important for a number of reasons, beginning with what it is not. It is not a political document. “This report is about science and medicine,” Mayer writes in the preface. “Nothing more and nothing less.” If anything, the authors’ primary concern is to serve the non-cisgendered and non-heteronormative: “I strongly support equality and oppose discrimination for the LGBT community,” Mayer writes before dedicating his work on the report “to the LGBT community, which bears a disproportionate rate of mental health problems compared with the population as a whole.”
It is also not a prescription. Mayer and McHugh are primarily concerned with establishing the boundaries of scientific knowledge—with making clear what we know and what we do not yet know. And to the extent that they offer suggestions, these are almost exclusively about where more research is needed and how such work might be more effectively focused.
The dominant mode in the report is humility rather than authority—of winching in extrapolations and interpretations and reminding readers that science doesn’t always say what you want it to.
For instance: In 2014, Mark Joseph Stern wrote in Slate that “homosexuality, at least in men, is clearly, undoubtedly, inarguably an inborn trait.” But this isn’t true. For one thing, it can be hard even to define “homosexuality” in a scientifically rigorous manner. And once you work your way out of that cul-de-sac, the scientific evidence—as distinct from the political projections—is incredibly tangled. In 1991 neuroscientist Simon LeVay demonstrated some brain differences between homosexual men and heterosexual men. But even he cautioned, “It’s important to stress what I didn’t find. I did not prove that homosexuality is genetic, or find a genetic cause for being gay. I didn’t show that gay men are ‘born that way,’ the most common mistake people make in interpreting my work.”
Here is how Mayer and McHugh stress humility: There is enough research (especially from twin studies) to suggest that “genetic or innate factors may influence the emergence of same-sex attractions.” But inferring more than that is a mistake. There is evidence that environmental factors (such as prenatal hormone exposure) and experiential factors (such as being the victim of sexual abuse) also play some role.
And beyond that? No one knows. And anyone who insists that they do know is likely to be selling you a political agenda.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the imposition of the transgender project during the last five years. Mayer and McHugh demonstrate that research suggests there are genuine cases of gender dysphoria—that is, where a person experiences serious distress as a result of a feeling of incongruity between their biological sex and their gender identity. But research on whether hormone therapy or gender-reassignment surgery ameliorates this dysphoria is inconclusive. Some studies suggest these therapies are not helpful to the individuals; others suggest they can be helpful in some, if not all, cases. Very few of the studies have been performed with enough rigor to give a great deal of confidence in the results.
Mayer and McHugh aren’t looking to “deny” transgenderism—they’re pointing out that we do not actually understand the scientific roots of the condition. Just about the only thing the research is robust about is that this group is tremendously at-risk: Nearly all studies show them with higher-than-average rates of depression, drug use, and suicide. One 2011 study found that postoperative transgendered individuals were 19.1 times more likely to kill themselves than people from the control group. How much of this is due to the condition or to suboptimal treatment regimes, or to the burdens of societal discrimination? Again: No one knows.
Making these kinds of statements—that we do not fully understand homosexuality or transgenderism—has become a courageous act. Mayer and McHugh have already been attacked, both by LGBT activists and academics who should know better.
Warren Throckmorton, a psychology professor at Grove City College, rushed to publish a critique of Mayer and McHugh before he’d even read the full report. Why the rush? Throckmorton was outraged that “As far as I can tell, it is being touted most by conservative leaning and anti-gay organizations.”
What’s interesting is that if you read deeply enough into Throckmorton’s hasty critique, it turns out that his substantive differences with Mayer and McHugh are reasonably small. His real concern is that some conservative, somewhere, might use the report as a tool to question the political orthodoxies of the day.
An even more dramatic attack came from Dean Hamer, a man who is at once an academic and an activist, who wrote a screed against the report in the Advocate. After comparing the New Atlantis to the National Enquirer, Hamer gratuitously insults the Catholic church (because Galileo) before ending by saying that the very idea of scientists like Mayer and McHugh deviating from politically correct orthodoxy on sexual orientation and gender identity “disgusts me.”
Such reactions are, finally, the other great lesson from Mayer and McHugh’s paper. We have reached the point where science—like dissent and free speech—has become useful to the left only insofar as it furthers their political goals.
