Gay, Straight, and In-Between: The Sexology of Erotic Orientation [Paperback]

Looking for a book to suggest to a family that has been having trouble understanding, and continuing to love, a gay family member, I had a quick look-around for published materials. I was especially hopeful that there might be an appropriate title by Dr. Milton Diamond, but no such luck. I'll have to hope they'll view his website. That left me with two books that I would very strongly recommend: John Money's Gay, Straight, and In-Between, and Anne Fausto-Sterling's Sexing the Body. Money's book is a straightforward description of how a serious and responsible researcher has come to understand homosexuality over the course of decades of research, but Fausto-Sterling's is a more "nuanced" account of the formation of human sexualities that ruthlessly but with good humor attacks easy assumptions and over-generalizations.

Money objectively synthesizes the work done during his lifetime by numerous researchers in the field of human sexuality. He gives the reader a clear way to understand that the sexual identity of a person, what the person is and is motivated to do as a sexual being, begins with the individual's genetic constitution (which is in all cases almost entirely identical to other human beings), is influenced by the complex hormonal and nutritional environment in the womb during gestation, and then is further molded by nurture and learning -- with early events, generally speaking, being more influential than later events.

Criticisms of Money in the Colapinto book refer to events that occurred early in Money's career, and to an understanding that has been revised and reshaped over the years and the dozen or so books that Money has written to the point that it does Money an injustice to condemn his recent book on that account. More importantly, perhaps, it may turn readers away from a book that describes the "state of the art" at the time it was written. Anyone who wants to study this field must go over these same findings, must "re-search" them, to discover whether further refinements are needed. So, whether you end up agreeing with Money on individual points or not, his book gives in relatively short compass a survey of what is currently regarded as knowledge in this field.

John Money
Gay, Straight, and In-Between:
The Sexology of Sexual Orientation

(New York: Oxford UP, 1988) 267 pages

This book brings a truly scientific approach to an area of belief
frequently dominated by partisan and dogmatic theories
held by people who are certain of the 'truth' before the research begins.
Money concludes that the research is still incomplete,
so the question of the origins of homosexuality,
heterosexuality, & bisexuality remains open.
His research concentrates mostly on people
with sexual ambiguity and/or sexual problems.
But understanding these unusual sexual responses
might cast some light on the more common forms of adult sexuality.

This book also deals with the puzzling phenomenon of transsexuals
--people who believe they are the other sex.
Cross-dressing (as a costume for a sex-script
and for other reasons) is also discussed.
No hormonal differences have been discovered
to account for different sex-scripts or sexual fantasies.
More research is needed to uncover the possible relationships among
sex-hormones, male/female self-designation ("I am a boy/girl"),
gender-personality (one's pattern of 'masculinity' or 'femininity'),
& sex-scripts (one's imprinted sexual fantasies).

If you are interested, search the Internet for this bibliography:
"Best Books on Sexual Orientation".

This book is also listed on another Internet bibliography:
"SEXOLOGY---SEX-SCRIPTS---BEST BOOKS".

James Leonard Park, author of
Imprinted Sexual Fantasies:
A New Key for Sexology.

John William Money, PhD (1921-2006), New Zealand born psychologist and sexologist, in "Gay, Straight, and In-Between" (1988), investigates sexual orientation, explaining how some find themselves swimming outside of the mainstream.

In the first of this book's four chapters, "Prenatal Hormones and Brain Dimorphism" covers how before birth the neuroendocrine/central nervous systems, endocrine glands and some visceral tissues secrete into the bloodstream chemicals disbursing information to other bodily organs and cells, which, in turn, affect individuals portraying defective characteristics of both sexes after birth.

Second, in "Gender Coding," Money describes what it is collectively hormonal, genetic and social that impacts on one's mind, body and behaviour, causing them in childhood to be--through "identification," behaving like someone else, and "complementation," behaving unlike another person (both applied to G-I/R, gender-identity/role)--totally female, male or androgynous.

Chapter three, "Gender Crosscoding," delves the conflict between one's gender and behaviour, cross-purposed against external genitals, found in, for instance, homophilia, transvestism and transexualism.

Finally, chapter four, "Lovemaps and Paraphilia," the author expounds on mental templates of the brain, which, because of development, represent one's ideal sexual proclivities/partner(s). Some of which are thought of as egregious perversions. However, Money doesn't believe homosexuality, with its lovemap, is a paraphilia (declassified as one in 1973 from the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" of the American Psychiatric Association, and Sigmund Freud, in a 1935 letter to an American mother of a gay son, said homosexuality wasn't an illness, nor could it be changed). Irving Bieber, et al, in "Homosexuality" (1962) said, "Freud's formulation of the etiology of homosexuality postulated a continuum between constitutional and experiential elements." That is, a causation based on what one is physically born with versus what they experience. Money proclaims, "Biology and social input interact at a crucial phase of maturation. It is their interaction that determines the outcome." Further, he states homosexuality is, if anything, understood through the developmental determinism principle, outlining just when the brain becomes heterosexualized, or homosexualized, and to what length, magnitude and permanence.

Such development occurs in stages with several causes. In the prenatal stage, causatively, male sex hormones may masculinize and not defeminize the brain, but a hormonal lack may demasculinize and not feminize, same. During the prenatal/early-newborn phase, preponderant male sex hormones oblivious to female sex hormones, a propensity, but not a predestination, to homosexuality is ratified. From infancy to childhood, the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal system that deals with secretion of hormones is quiescent, where the causative agents enter the brain, to varying degrees, through the sense organs, i.e., social conditioning or learning based on experience and familiarity, called "apperceptive assimilation." Identification with an "exemplar" or model representing one's own sex, and complementation with same of the opposite sex, brings about heterosexuality. When there is discordance, instigated by amerced prepubertal, boy-girl sexual rehearsal play, homosexuality might ensue. The author says the "Exigency theory," that describes requirements intrinsic to one's human existence, by bonding(s), being sustained, typecast and destined by fate, through using/restraining/unfolding mechanisms, unites all sexological theories here.

At the conclusion of this work is a handy, forty-five page glossary, followed by an appendix, exploring treatments for sex offenders. "Gay, Straight, and In-Between" by John Money is well worth reading to discover what makes one tick sexually, where congested paths regale in the touch at each profound junture.