The Sunday New York Times had a great idea in the opinion section of the August 4, 2024 issue: have some of their columnists debunk a bit of conventional wisdom in their circles. Here's how it was described.
Our world is more connected than ever. But it's never been easier to find yourself shepherded into a comfortable herd made up of close friends or political allies, your social set or professional peers. And those herds are the perfect environment for groupthink to thrive, to allow dubious beliefs or weak arguments to masquerade as unquestionable truisms.
We asked nine of our Opinion columnists to debunk an idea -- big or small -- that has become conventional wisdom in their circles. We wanted to read about the arguments that start debates at dinner parties or make their friends roll their eyes. These are Times Opinion's unpopular opinions.
David Brooks wrote "Many People Fear A.I. They Shouldn't." Zeynep Tufekci wrote "Politicians Say We're More Divided than Ever. It Could Be Worse." Bret Stephens wrote "Conservatives Think The Market Always Gets It Right. It Doesn't." Tressie McMillan Cottom wrote "Don't Hate on the D.M.V. It's Actually Great." Michelle Goldberg wrote "Mothers Are Told Natural Childbirth Is Best. It Isn't." Pamela Paul wrote "The Saying Goes: Dogs are Man's Best Friend. But Cats Are Better." Lydia Polgreen wrote "We're Taught to Hate Hypocrisy. We Shouldn't." David French wrote "Some Think What You Preach Matters More Than What You Do. It Doesn't."
And Charles M. Blow wrote "People Say Queer People Are Born That Way. It's More Complicated." That's a gift link from my online subscription; my wife subscribes to the Sunday paper edition, which is how I learned about the debunking columns. I've copied in Blow's piece below for easier reading within this post.
Blow makes a lot of sense, though he takes on a subject that in liberal circles is controversial: that sexual orientation isn't purely genetic but arises from a bunch of factors, including genetics. But this seems to be true. Here's a couple of excepts from a 2008 story in Science, "Gay Is Not All in the Genes."
Why are some people gay? Most researchers who study sexual orientation think that both genetic and environmental factors play a role, but the relative contributions of each remain unclear. A new study of Swedish twins reinforces earlier findings that environmental influences--including the environment in the womb--may play a greater role than genes.
...The results, published online this month in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, confirm earlier findings that identical twins are more concordant for same-sex behaviors than fraternal twins are but only modestly so: In men, genetic effects appeared to explain 34% to 39% of the differences between the two twin groups, whereas in women, genetics accounted for only about 18% to 19% of the difference--a finding consistent with other research showing that sexual orientation in women is not as rigidly determined as it is in men.
If I was asked to debunk a bit of conventional wisdom in my circle, a top choice of mine would be "Most people believe we have free will. But we don't." This is one of my favorite subjects on my Church of the Churchless blog. I've written many posts about free will, or rather the lack thereof.
So I resonated with Blow's statements, though I don't totally agree with them:
“Born this way” may, unfortunately, have been an oversimplification. It’s probably closer to the truth to say that people are “formed this way.”
...Now the argument has to be more sophisticated: We may choose how we identify and how we express — or suppress — our attractions, but our attractions themselves are not a choice.
We must insist that people’s right to exist, and our responsibility to affirm and protect them, doesn’t hinge on the mechanisms by which they came to exist. The “end” exists, regardless of the “means.”
The way I see it, everything that we do, and all that we are, is determined by causes and conditions extending all the way back to the big bang.
This scientific understanding, which Robert Sapolsky ably argued for in his recent book, Determined, makes it impossible to blame people for being whoever they are now, for they had no choice in the matter -- notwithstanding Blow's attempt to make our attractions not a choice, but how we express or suppress our attractions a choice.
Regardless, I like what Blow said in his column.
It won't please those who believe in the "born that way" hypothesis, nor will it please those who believe in the "sexuality is a choice" hypothesis. The truth doesn't always lie in the middle, but in this case I think it does. My only quibble with his column is that I don't believe we ever make choices of our own unfettered free will, no matter what those choices are.
When Lady Gaga released “Born This Way,” the 2011 song on an album of the same name, it was an instant hit and an instant L.G.B.T.Q. anthem. The song debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Top 100, and Elton John called it “the new gay anthem.”
It was the dictum of a generation, three words operating with bumper sticker efficiency, conveying that queerness was natural and immutable, and that it was not a result of abuse, grooming or impairment. Queer people were not broken, and therefore in no need of fixing. Queerness was neither a choice nor a curse. It was not a “lifestyle” but a state of being.
The idea that sexuality was innate, captured in the phrase, was a rhetorical work horse that began to lead the conversation around L.G.B.T.Q. issues. Although the idea of homosexual bio-essentialism has a history that long predates this modern iteration, “born this way” this time was a phrase that matched the moment and captured the zeitgeist. As with most things in politics, it was about timing.
Later that year, during remarks delivered at the Human Rights Campaign annual dinner, President Barack Obama joked to the gay rights group that “I also took a trip out to California last week, where I held some productive, bilateral talks with your leader: Lady Gaga.”
Obama was referring to meeting Gaga at a fundraiser at which she raised the issue of bullying after one of her fans, 14-year-old Jamey Rodemeyer, endured homophobic bullying before dying by suicide.
Before the fundraiser, Obama had repealed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in the military, allowing queer service members to serve openly, and soon after the fundraiser, Obama would become the first president to declare his support for same-sex marriage.
In the years after the song was released, the percentage of Americans saying in polling that “being gay or lesbian is something a person is born with” began to consistently outweigh those who responded that being queer was “due to factors such as upbringing and environment.”
“Born this way,” as a slogan, was a tremendous cultural and political success. The problem is that it isn’t supported by science. The emerging scientific consensus is that sexual orientation isn’t purely genetic. A person’s genetic makeup and exposure to prenatal hormones may provide a propensity to queerness, but they aren’t determinative. Other factors most likely also play a role.
“Born this way” may, unfortunately, have been an oversimplification. It’s probably closer to the truth to say that people are “formed this way.” As the complity of human sexuality has become clearer, scientists and writers have attempted to add necessary nuance to the subject. But the slogan remains entrenched in the culture.
Just last year, Rolling Stone crowned “Born This Way” the most inspirational L.G.B.T.Q. song of all time, calling it a “battle cry” that “is as relevant as ever.”
But the time may have come to retire the phrase. It is not only unsupportable by science but also does not capture the full reality of queer experience and is unjust to some members of the queer community itself.
As Lisa Diamond, a professor of developmental psychology, health psychology and gender studies at the University of Utah, explained in her 2018 TED talk, the argument is “unjust because it implies that L.G.B.T. individuals who fit a certain cultural stereotype, the ones who have been exclusively gay for as long as they can possibly remember, are somehow more deserving of acceptance and equality than someone who came out at age 60 or whose attractions have been more fluid or who is bisexual rather than exclusively gay.”
I fully understand how frightening relinquishing this phrase may be.
“Born this way,” as both a scientific concept and a political ideology, was easy to understand, accept and digest. A more nuanced explanation of attraction, one with a bit of mystery, opens the door to ambiguity and uncertainty that the opponents of gay rights will no doubt seek to exploit.
Relinquishing such a powerful tool might feel like giving up too much. But incoming Stony Brook University professor Joanna Wuest, author of “Born This Way: Science, Citizenship, and Inequality in the American LGBTQ+ Movement,” believes that retiring the idea may potentially not be much of a loss at all, because the science is so strong that things like conversion therapy “are extremely detrimental to mental health and even the lives of queer people.”
As she explained to me, “we don’t need a strong biological theory of identity to understand that when you punch someone, they say it hurts.”
Now the argument has to be more sophisticated: We may choose how we identify and how we express — or suppress — our attractions, but our attractions themselves are not a choice.
We must insist that people’s right to exist, and our responsibility to affirm and protect them, doesn’t hinge on the mechanisms by which they came to exist. The “end” exists, regardless of the “means.”
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