Review of Born This Way by Joanna Wuest

BORN THIS WAY
Science, Citizenship, and Inequality in the American LGBTQ+ Movement
by Joanna Wuest
Univ. of Chicago. 293 pages, $32.50

The Gay and Lesbian Review, July-August 2024

LGBT activism has a longstanding relationship with the illiberal notion of being “Born This Way” (as gay, lesbian, etc.)—illiberal, because it argues that the sexualities behind the queer alphabet soup are not a choice but a predetermined reality (biological or otherwise) to which one is awakened at some point and with which one must come to terms, hopefully to embrace and even celebrate.

            Joanna Wuest argues that beyond the catchy slogans one can trace an ideology that has subsumed LGBT activism, politics, law, science, and healthcare since the 1950s. Genetic or prenatal determinism has been the major arrow in the activist’s quiver, readily adjusted to counter the arguments of anti-gay conservatives. In Wuest’s critique, sexual determinism became a tenet of faith in the LGBT corridors of power early on, leading to gay normalization that neutralized activists’ erstwhile radical queer agenda. She convincingly shows that every stakeholder in the LGBT movement has channeled some version of “Born This Way.” Even the anti-establishment purists seeking to topple essentialist categories in favor of flexible identities are shown to be entangled with remnants of determinism.

            Despite its intriguing premise, the book is consistently undermined by the narrow lens through which the history of the LGBT movement is being viewed, namely the persistence of determinism in LGBT politics,  which she suggests is ideologically or ethically compromised. Her history of the science of sexuality fares no better, marred as it is by her lack of sophistication on the workings of science; and one is struck by her denial of the potential of science to tell us anything at all about the biology of sexual orientation and gender identity. And she fails to recognize that the “Born This Way” hypothesis has often been a political expedient rather than a core dogma.