The Trouble with Nature

Sex in Science and Popular Culture

Bibliographic Data

ID8093316
AuthorsRoger N Lancaster
Year2003
Pages455
Publication date2003-05-01
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueTrouble with Nature (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherUniversity of California Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1525/9780520936799
OpenAlexW576754142
Open LibraryOL29608256M
ISBN9780520936799
LanguageEN
Citations received59

Roger N. Lancaster provides the definitive rebuttal of evolutionary just-so stories about men, women, and the nature of desire in this spirited exposé of the heterosexual fables that pervade popular culture, from prime-time sitcoms to scientific theories about the so-called gay gene. Lancaster links the recent resurgence of biological explanations for gender norms, sexual desires, and human nature in general with the current pitched battles over sexual politics. Ideas about a "hardwired" and immutable human nature are circulating at a pivotal moment in human history, he argues, one in which dramatic changes in gender roles and an unprecedented normalization of lesbian and gay relationships are challenging received notions and commonly held convictions on every front. The Trouble with Nature takes on major media sources—the New York Times, Newsweek —and widely ballyhooed scientific studies and ideas to show how journalists, scientists, and others invoke the rhetoric of science to support political positions in the absence of any real evidence. Lancaster also provides a novel and dramatic analysis of the social, historical, and political backdrop for changing discourses on "nature," including an incisive critique of the failures of queer theory to understand the social conflicts of the moment. By showing how reductivist explanations for sexual orientation lean on essentialist ideas about gender, Lancaster invites us to think more deeply and creatively about human acts and social relations

Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · Geographies of human-animal interactions · LGBTQ anthropology · LGBTQ biology · Physiological aspects · Physiological aspects of Sexual orientation · Pseudoscience · Science news · Sex in popular culture · Sexual orientation · History