EAST SIDE STORY. JEWISH AND GAY LIFE IN COSTA RICA AND WASHINGTON D.C (1950-1980) A NOVEL OR A TRUE STORY? by JACOBO SCHIFTER - HTML preview

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68

CHAPTER 19. HOMOSEXUALITY IS

GENETIC

In my adult life, I tried to understand the etiology of homosexuality. Thanks to the influence of Dr.

Castro and those who would come after him, I accepted the Freudian view.

John Money, on the other hand, proposed a more complex thesis on the interaction between biology and culture to explain the phenomenon of sexual orientation. His proposal was that the process of gender formation and sexual orientation is established very early, at eighteen months of age, and that it involves hormonal factors (the biological) and the process of socialization (the cultural). Therefore, the family structure was inconsequential and a change in sexual orientation was impossible.

Another pioneer in the current wave of biological research was Günter Dörner, who told us that effe-minacy was due to the influence, during pregnancy, of hormonal disorders. Professor D.F. Swaab, a researcher at the University of Amsterdam, argued that a particular region of the hypothalamus, known as the suprachiasmatic region, was “sexually dysmorphic”. In other words, it varied in size between men and women and had more cells in women. He found the same in homosexual men.