Biology and the Construction of Identity: Science, Citizenship, and Inequality in the LGBTQ+ Movement

FAIN: FT-278744-21

Joanna Wuest
Princeton University (Princeton, NJ 08540-5228)

Writing of a book on the influence of scientific concepts of queer identity on policy debates.

In examining the tenacity of biological visions of identity, my book manuscript “Born This Way: Science, Citizenship, and Inequality in the American LGBTQ+ Movement” reveals that we cannot conceive of political campaigns, litigation, and public discussion of LGBTQ+ rights as existing distinct from the realms of genetics and neurological research, biomedicine, and psychology. It demonstrates how this narrative of identity has been produced and reproduced by scientists, nonprofit leaders, litigators, and activists who have worked together to construct and to deploy biological conceptions of identity since the mid-twentieth century. Thus, the book illuminates the role that biologically inflected visions of human nature have played in the formation of political identities and attendant demands for full and equal citizenship. In other words, it posits that scientific institutions and authority should be properly understood as foundational to the character of American LGBTQ+ advocacy politics.