Research on human sexuality has traditionally taken place within a
positivistic framework, focussing on observable aspects of the body and on
biology. Arguably, sex researchers adopted narrow experimental methodologies
to achieve legitimacy in the scientific community.

So evolutionary theory and psychobiology have had an inordinate influence
on sex research and sexuality has been reduced to instincts, genetics or
fluctuations in hormone levels. In the laboratory, it has been reduced to the
swelling of the vagina or penis and to the time taken to orgasm or ejaculation
– variables that can be calculated and compared to provide an “objective”
analysis of sex. No risk of personal feelings or values being questioned here.
But what about pleasure? What about culture?

Sexual Nature and Sexual Culture is an attempt to develop a
transdisciplinary approach to sexuality, looking at the roles of both nature
and nurture, and bringing the notion of pleasure into sex research. There are
four sections: evolutionary origins, biology and behaviour, cultural
dimensions, and quantitative models and measurement. Individual contributions
range from analyses of the sexual behaviour of bonobo chimpanzees and fruit
flies, to that of castrated men in India.

But despite the mould-breaking aspirations of this book, evolutionary
theory and biology are pre-eminent and the only research tools discussed are
quantitative methodologies and mathematical models. Many of the contributors,
such as Kim Wallen reviewing the evolutionary basis of female desire, make the
point that we need to examine biology in its cultural context. It is hard to
resist the conclusion that the majority of authors are only paying lip service
to such principles.

For example, Donal Symons, in explaining men’s attraction to young
curvaceous women and the use of such women in Playboy centrefolds, turns to
parental investment theory, which suggests that men desire to impregnate as
many women as possible to serve the needs of their “selfish genes”. “Nubile”
women are attractive because of their obvious reproductive fitness. How
convenient. A biological justification for the objectification of women. The
cultural contributions are largely made from an anthropological
perspective.

What is absent is a clear feminist voice, or any systematic deconstruction
of the notion of “sex”, or of sex research itself. There is also little
analysis of power, of politics or of the role of sex in social regulation. The
conference on which the book is based include such contributions. But these
are tantalisingly relegated to an appendix that alludes to the high level of
dissent among the conference participants.

Researchers in these different disciplines talk different languages, and
reconciling them is perhaps impossible. This book does, however, go a long way
towards bridging the gap between nature and nurture. It does not quite provide
the interactionist perspective it promises, but it is certainly moving in the
right direction.

The unquestioned “truth” includes the following: homosexuality simply
results from “imbalanced hormonal influences”. Men are more likely than women
to achieve, and are driven to have sexual intercourse because of testosterone.
Women are at the mercy of premenstrual hormone changes and as a result liable
to be moody and exhibit “strange behaviour”, such as violence, being accident
prone or showing criminal tendencies. Deficiencies in hormones or minerals are
asserted to be the cause of hyperactivity, ME, dyslexia and mental illness;
while excesses of hormones through hormone replacement therapy or the
contraceptive pill are said to cause impotence and infertility, cancer,
fibroid growth, endometriosis, vascular disorders, depression and suicide. The
power of hormones would seem to be boundless, with our bodies vulnerable in
their wake.

There are some startling assertions in Grant’s book. Zinc deficiency is
posited as the root cause of promiscuity. The contraceptive pill is said to
have single-handedly precipitated the “sexual revolution”, which is blamed for
increases in cervical cancer, reductions in male sperm counts and infertility,
as well as what Grant deems to be an inappropriate focus on sex as pleasure. A
moral message by any standards.

The only point of agreement between Grant and Gail Vines would appear to be
that the mass prescription of hormones for a whole gamut of female complaints
is not only scientifically indefensible, but is also mass experimentation with
women’s bodies, which as Vines outlines, is a practice with a long historical
precedent. While the Victorians may have blamed female distress or
dissatisfaction on the wandering womb, today we attribute it to premenstrual
syndrome or the menopause. But there is as little evidence for the modern
obsession with the influence of hormones on behaviour as there was for the
19th-century belief that the womb travelled around the woman’s body. As Vines
eloquently argues, both sets of theories are based not on “scientific fact”,
but on beliefs about appropriate gendered behaviour. That scientists are still
happy to espouse such biased thinking merely exposes their own position within
what Vines calls the “ideology of modern scientific practice”.

In Raging Hormones the myths surrounding biological theories of behaviour
are exposed – in this instance with the arguments substantiated by references
to recent research. There is no evidence for simple cause and effect theories
linking hormones with sexual behaviour or desire, homosexuality, gender,
aggression, cognitive ability, PMS, or the menopause. To even conceive of such
categories as incontrovertible is erroneous: desire is not simply heterosexual
or homosexual, sex cannot be solely examined as a physical act entirely
outside the context of relationships, gender evolves as a complicated
collection of masculine and feminine characteristics which change and develop
throughout life. And, as Vines outlines, the very existence of PMS, the
menopausal syndrome or sex differences in cognitive ability have been refuted
by feminist researchers, who question the use to which scientific “facts”
about gender and sexuality are put.

Vines ends her convincing and thought-provoking book with a plea for the
development of a science that can acknowledge the impact of social and
cultural factors on the world in which we live. This means that scientists
must move away from narrow theoretical frameworks where the body is seen as
primarily a biological entity, to one where psychosocial and biological
influences are conceptualised in relational terms, with neither one given
privileged status above the other. This, as Vines asserts, is not antiscience
rhetoric, but will eventually lead to better science, where politics and
ideology are an accepted part of the agenda. It can’t happen too soon.