Science and Sexuallity - Ronnie Drantz

[TLCTugger]

I attended a great lecture at the Humanist Society.

Science and Sexuallity
Dr. Veronica "Ronnie" Drantz, Neurologist

Dr. Drantz started by pointing out that few myths and creation stories "include" her, as a gay female. This has guided her research into the understanding of gender, evolution, and development from an evidence-based, superstition-shunning perspective.

She said: "So how many genders are there?" Many different guess were posited, taking into acount the permutations of genital appearance, chromosomal gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation.

Dr. Drantz demonstrated through analysis of fetal cadavers that mammals are of a single gender, with the male being an altered (by hormonal effects during development) version of the basic female state. Other genders sort of in-between male and female occur when certain hormones or proteins or their inhibitors act atypically.

She showed how heterosexuality, homosexuality, transgender conditions, and intersexuality all carry physiological markers which have been identified in the hypothalmus of cadavers.

She made a compelling case for atypical sexuality being a normal part of the gender spectrum, warranting greater efforts by society to embrace all people as they are. She refused to call any atypical gender identity or genital development a disorder, saying instead that all forms that people can take are simply predictable points on the spectrum of possibilities when DNA from two parents combine and the environment acts on the mother during gestation. She pointed out that certain maternal hormone states associated with environmental stressors for the gestating mother tended to create offspring toward the "masculinized" end of the spectrum. She called this an exquisite adaptation of nature, not in any way a defect.

In general her research points to nature taking precedence over nurture in the determination of sexual orientation and gender identity. The John/Joan case in the early '60s became the classic test of nature versus nurture. After Bruce Reimer's penis was destroyed by circumcision, he was raised as a girl (Brenda), while his twin brother was spared circumcision after Bruce's accident. Brenda rejected her feminization at puberty, taking the name David and eventually marrying a woman and adopting children. (Although Dr. Drantz didn't mention it, both David and his twin later commited suicide. David was 38.)

-Ron Low