ABSTRACT
In our last section, two papers reveal what can happen when science and medicine attempt to “correct” behaviors which are socially stigmatized. Scientific and medical researchers have often intervened in attempts to control or eradicate such behaviors by manipulating the physical processes that are assumed to be the underlying causes of that behavior. Our first paper discusses how biomedical researchers conflate bisexuality with either homosexuality or heterosexuality. People who lay claim to a bisexual identity are stigmatized as fencesitters, immature, indecisive, or closet homosexuals and heterosexuals. The second paper discusses the stigma of left-handedness and traces the origins and demise of society's taboo against it, and the subsequent abandonment of “treatments” originally prescribed by the sciences. Our final paper discusses the use of a drug, depo-provera, to subdue certain sexual behaviors. It paints the spectacle of medicine compromising the Hippocratic oath in a desperate attempt to suppress sexual behavior, the antecedents [Haworth co-indexing entry note]: “Introduction.” Co-published simultaneously in Journal of Homosexuality (The Haworth Press, Inc.) Vol. 28, No. 3/4, 1995, pp. 355–356; and: Sex, Cells, and Same-Sex Desire: The Biology of Sexual Preference (ed: John P. De Cecco, and David Allen Parker) The Haworth Press, Inc., 1995, pp. 355–356. Multiple copies of this article/chapter may be purchased from The Haworth Document Delivery Center [1-800-3-HAWORTH; 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. (EST)]. of which have yet to be proven to be biological. Both these papers speak to the motivation behind attempts to find biological markers of sexual preference and the potential dangers of pursuing such research.
