Pettit Michael
Department of Psychology, York University.
Hist Psychol. 2012 Aug;15(3):217-27. doi: 10.1037/a0027269.
The laboratory rat is an important, if neglected, actor in the history of sexuality. From the 1920s and 1940s, a series of reports emerged from American psychology laboratories detailing instances of spontaneous "reversals" in sexual behavior within their rat colonies. Frank Beach, then at the American Museum of Natural History, developed a model for the "nature" of sexuality that stressed that all organisms had the neurological capacity to perform behavior of either sex. Beach enrolled his emerging specialty, behavioral endocrinology, in support of Alfred Kinsey's controversial findings. Both scientists highlighted the multitude of potential sexual outlets pursued by organisms and the prevalence of nonprocreative sexual behaviors. This article draws on elements of queer theory to elucidate how the landscape of the comparative psychologist's rat colony with its organisms, apparatus, practices, and rituals served an integral function in the redefinition of sex in the 20th century. Queer theory calls into question easy proclamations about what counts as natural or normal by drawing attention to the presumed binaries that frequently govern the classification of sex. The maintenance of the colony required the careful management of sex with its obstruction devices, hypersexualized indicator animals, segregation cages, and castrated rats injected with hormones. Moreover, Beach's own writings indicate how his own domestic life became entangled with the sex lives of the rats. An irony animates this Rockefeller-funded sexology: Research funded to elucidate the mechanisms underlying heterosexuality came to question its innateness and universality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).
在性取向的历史中,实验鼠即便受到忽视,也是一个重要角色。从20世纪20年代到40年代,美国心理学实验室陆续发表了一系列报告,详细描述了其鼠群中性行为出现自发“反转”的案例。当时在美国自然历史博物馆工作的弗兰克·比奇,提出了一种关于性取向“本质”的模型,强调所有生物都具备进行两种性别行为的神经能力。比奇将他新兴的专业领域——行为内分泌学——用于支持阿尔弗雷德·金赛那些颇具争议的研究发现。两位科学家都强调了生物所追求的众多潜在性途径以及非生殖性行为的普遍性。本文借鉴酷儿理论的元素,阐明了比较心理学家的鼠群环境,连同其中的生物、仪器、操作和仪式,在20世纪性别的重新定义中所发挥的不可或缺的作用。酷儿理论通过关注那些常常主导性别分类的假定二元对立,对关于什么算作自然或正常的简单论断提出质疑。维持鼠群需要对性进行精心管理,包括使用阻碍装置、性反应过度的指示动物、隔离笼以及注射激素的阉割大鼠。此外,比奇自己的著作表明了他自己的家庭生活是如何与老鼠的性生活交织在一起的。这种由洛克菲勒基金会资助的性学研究存在一种讽刺意味:旨在阐明异性恋潜在机制的研究,却开始质疑其先天性和普遍性。(《心理学文摘数据库记录》(c) 2012美国心理学会,保留所有权利)