Books about LGBTQ politics are typically based on a larger narrative about the social movement. Recent works have focused on movement development in relation to global right-wing formations (Phillip Ayoub and Kristina Stoeckl’s 2024 book, The Global Fight Against LGBTI Rights) and rights theory (Courtenay Daum’s 2020 book, The Politics of Right Sex). Added to this list should be Joanna Wuest’s important new book, Born this Way: Science, Citizenship, and Inequality in the American LGBTQ+ Movement, in which she focuses on how various scientific findings produced ideas of sexuality and gender while shaping the modern LGBTQ movement in post-World War II America. In her narrative, “Born This Way” (BTW) essentialism has helped to secure victories for LGBTQ rights and liberties, even as it has also produced new political pitfalls.
For example, BTW essentialism grounds various legal and political developments that have been central to the modern LGBTQ movement, such as the decriminalization of sodomy, the inclusion of openly LGBTQ people in the military, and the legalization of same-sex marriage. But some movement victories contain significant limitations. While psychiatry and marriage have certainly become more inclusive and possibly less oppressive over time, they remain socially conservative institutions with limited access to non-privileged populations within the movement. Wuest’s critique of these mixed results parallels the critique of rights centrism abundant in both queer theory (e.g., the 2024 edited volume, Enticements, from Joseph Fischel and Brenda Cossman) and American Political Development (cf. Stephen Engel’s 2016 book, Fragmented Citizens).
The book is structured into two major parts, with four chapters in each. Part I tracks the “Origins” of scientific knowledge in this area. These chapters discuss breakthrough political groups such as Harry Hay’s Mattachine Society as well as Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon’s Daughters of Bilitis, both of which were grounded in other important political movements such as socialism and feminism. Insights about these early groups, as well those who followed later, such as the Gay and Lesbian Front (GLF), serve to document the intersectional origins of the movement for queer liberation. Earlier scientific studies conducted at the Kinsey Institute are also covered, which documented the relatively widespread existence of same-sex sexual behavior in mainstream populations—evidence that provided the foundation for continued study and activism.
In the early days of the modern LGBT movement, the links between science and movement development were modest, but later they would become consolidated through BTW essentialism. Just as radicals in GLF were fighting for the right to marry, liberals were taking on the characterization of homosexuals as mentally ill and psychopathic in the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), the bible of modern psychological classification. This shift was significant as the earlier psychopath classification had served, at least in part, as a basis for longstanding institutionalization and shock treatment, as well as for deportation from the country and exclusion from public service. Wuest shows that little, if anything, was inevitable about these shifts towards essentialized ideas of sexuality. Intragroup conflict and activists’ choices over which issues to pursue are also important pieces of this narrative, both of which are sometimes overlooked in movement histories.
Even as challenges to DSM classifications may have been undertaken by liberals who positioned themselves as respectable citizens, radicals were sitting-in for marriage in New York City and elsewhere. Recognizing that an author can only cover so much ground in one book, I still found myself wanting to hear Wuest’s take on the way that the categories of “liberal” and “radical” were not always discrete at this time, especially because her conclusions bend toward social democracy. Wuest convincingly demonstrates how science led to the development of the then-new BTW interest group model of LGBTQ politics and produced significant legal victories, thanks to key advocacy groups such as Lambda Legal and the ACLU. Given these developments, I could not help but wonder what the continuing collapse of the identifiers “right” and “left” in mainstream US politics in our own time may mean for the shape of LGBTQ politics going forward.
The second part of the book tracks the “Evolutions and Adaptions” of BTW essentialism as it becomes consolidated into mainstream law and politics through so-called “gay gene” studies as well as in debates about marriage and conversion therapy. Eventually, its reach extends to bisexual and transgender people in areas such as employment discrimination, prisoners’ rights, bathroom bills, and participation in sports, all in the context of increasing threats from the right. The staying power of the official discourse around BTW essentialism is somewhat surprising, however, given increasing mainstream reporting about sexual and gender flexibility, particularly amongst younger adults.
And yet, scientific findings of gender and sexual variability are breaking through into mainstream discourse. The upshot of this development for the shape of the LGBTQ+ movement is not yet clear, though it is interesting to note that a moral panic about gender fluidity and sexual flexibility seems to be fueling recent state bans on medications for transgender children and other oppressive legislation in the U.S. Recent oral arguments at the U.S. Supreme Court in Skrmetti v. U.S. suggest a strong conservative desire to stabilize the increasingly wobbly sex and gender binaries.
Wuest concludes the book by discussing the promise of social democracy as an alternative to this moral panic and the legitimation crises of our times. She argues that science that moved beyond BTW essentialism could help the state to undermine these transphobic stabilizing projects as well as address the rampant inequality and political instability that fuel these panics in the first place. What catchy slogans in pop culture might replace Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way,” I wonder? Wuest believes that our desires are primary. They exist, sometimes long before individuals, science, and political systems recognize them. This, of course, begs the most fundamental question opened by this book: what desires are not yet being recognized that we ought to be imagining and anticipating politically? Social democracy has certainly been transformative in some of its iterations, leading to greater recognition of a multiplicity of desires and subjectivities. But in other iterations, its past has been decidedly mixed, as has the use of science in service to the state. Recent judicial discussions make it abundantly clear that politics could head in either direction: a further consolidation of BTW essentialism in service to right-wing authoritarianism, or a left-wing transformation that heads in a more liberatory direction. The shape these developments will take in the future, like the BTW essentialism that Wuest so skillfully tracks here, will remain contingent, to be worked out in legal, political, and scientific discourse over the years to come.
