Human Nature: We X Because Of Our Innate Yness. posted by Richard Seymour

We X because of XX and XY, then. Or, in biblical terms, we XY Adam, XX Eve, and YYY Delilah. (Oh leave it out, I've had a hard day).

Some quick words. Comments boxes below are whirling with double-helix strands of argument about human nature, biology and reductionism. There is a strange fetish of The Gene going on in some quarters: 'genophilia' (n), a form of paraphilia in which the subject is aroused by what is presumed to be the outward sign of genetic activity. No one has ever seen a gene, but the little bastards apparently have miraculous, talismanic powers to determine the structure of human life itself - DNA is the master-code whose structure will reveal, if not the Mind of God, at least the Secret of Life.

Take mental illness. We are often invited in this new fondness for eugenic science to suppose that the actual and alleged disorders catalogued in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual are genetically based (I'll come back to this). What is called a mental illness or disorder is, of course, often not physiologically based - it is often, as per Lewontin, Rose & Kamin, directly related to social circumstances. The medicalisation of behaviour characterised as abnormal is being compounded by an extremely crude reductionism. Even in instances where there is a detectible physiological explanation, it needn't be the only explanation or even the main one. Psychiatric students, for instance, will often read that some genetic malfunction is behind schizophrenia and (therefore) other DSM-IV category illnesses such as depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder etc. There has been repeated controversy about this, since many scientists have purportedly discovered a 'schizophrenia gene' only to abandon that claim. Adoption and twin studies are generally cited as the proof of this, but these studies have been exposed to rigorous, peer-reviewed scrutiny. To find causes, one could look at the alienation in modern life, atomisation, the divorcing of individuals from their means of survival, the separation of conception and action, not to mention the specific life process and family history of the individuals so diagnosed. The antipsychiatrists may even have a point in questioning the whole category. Psychological medicine, like any science, is a social institution loaded with value-judgments which become embedded in the dominant paradigm and often remain there largely as a result of institutional inertia. The discipline itself was invented only after the madhouses had been invented and filled - it was, in many ways, a post hoc legitimisation of modes of exclusion.

Then there are the diseases which would appear to be less social, the ones that are caused by bacteria, viruses and fungi. Everyone knows that one cannot contract tuberculosis without the tubercle bacillus, but we also know that it has been especially prevalent in industrialised urban centres, particularly in the miserable sweatshops and factories. Taking the approach of the genetic reductionists, we could say it is all because of capitalism. In fact, most of the killer infectious (particularly respiratory) diseases have been dramatically reduced without any obvious scientific breakthrough (barring smallpox), and certainly without genetic mutation. Even before the measles vaccine was introduced widely into advanced capitalist societies, it had ceased to be fatal for most people. Every child got it, but unlike in the 19th Century, few died. One could try, I suppose, to invoke selective pressures, but only in one instance - where huge swatches of the population of Europe were wiped out by the Black Death - did an already existent genetic variation become ubiquitous in such a short space of time.

At any rate, those who bang on Human Bloody Nature are usually speaking of aspects of behaviour - social behaviour, that which is most apt to alter through experimental cooperation between human beings. War, however historically specific, is nevertheless essentially an expression of our inherent propensity toward violence, for which a gene will one day be located. On gender identity, one is supposed to infer that genetic differences cause hormonal differences which in turn cause behavioural differences. From gene to genotype to phenotype in one direct, linear leap. This is the reductionist view, but it isn't even the beginning of a good explanation because: a) living systems (particularly the human kind) are radically indeterminate, shaping themselves and their futures, b) gender identities have undergone such vast social changes as to put into question the whole idea of a significant genetic input in gender difference, c) it follows that an historicised, materialist study of gender relations and identity construction would yield rich and promising insights into the formation of gender identity.

For instance, why should it be that the DSM IV includes Gender Identity Disorder (or 'gender dysphoria')? That is, if someone manifests the attributes socially assigned to 'another' gender, and appear to prefer not to exhibit those assigned to 'their' gender, they are currently classified as experiencing a disorder. One is pathologised for one's propensities - desire itself is disorder. We are hardly in new territory in this sense: it has obviously been presumed unnatural in various ways to be homosexual or to prefer any kind of sex that is not within marriage, and that does not sustain a patriarchally headed nuclear family unit. The American Psychiatric Association finally ceased to categorise homosexuality as a disorder in any sense only in 1987. Is this kind of disciplinary procedure itself all-in-the-genes, or is gendered behaviour a consequence of a history of socialisation in which, wherever the household has become the repository of private property in the means of production and reproduction, conjugal relations have tended to be patriarchal, with patrilineal inheritance and male primogeniture the chief forms of property and title transmission? In this sense, the ideal gender behaviour for females in the feudal era was that exemplified by Desdemona: "A maiden, never bold:/ Of spirit so still, and quiet, that her motion/ Blush'd at herself". Anyone who adhered strictly to that gender role today would be likely to have low self-esteem, suffer neurosis and find themselves less able to cope with life, which is not least of the reasons to be glad that the women's and gay liberation movements have done so much to disrupt these horrible old binaries (not only male/female and gay/straight, but also nature/nurture).

The genetic reductionists love their little automaton picture of the world, and the political consequences of this reductionism are usually deeply reactionary, allowing little scope for human agency and self-transformation: one does what one does because one is what one is, and that's it. To try to collectively alter our gender relations, warlike tendencies, racial divisions, social inequities and so on were as naive and quixotic as to try and collectively grow gills or float toward Mars in a cloud of thought. Or as Niall Ferguson has it, one may as well cast moral judgment on the rain as upon empire. Human nature is human nature. In fact, one might add, to try and overcome our drive to sexually reproduce and perpetuate ourselves in ever increasing numbers is surely to court disaster: all human activity, from art to sport to scientific endeavour, has been an attempt to impress the opposite sex and make babies. Civilization will surely collapse if we try to overcome our Human Bloody Nature, what with the frotting and sodomy and body-piercing. No one will ever invent unstinkable pants or rearrange the solar system if we pursue this Hellenic idealism. We had better continue to do as our Gene Overlords order us to do.