Blinded by Science 5: Homosexuality and Pseudoscience
From Line in the Sand
What does the shape of your skull, your ethnicity, your body shape, the length of your arm compared to your torso and your the length of your ring and index fingers have in common? The answer is that they have all been used, or are used, to tell what mental health issues you are likely to have, your character, your tendency to commit certain crimes and even, with the length of your middle finger, your sexuality. Before we look at the issue of homosexuality we need to recognise how these other issues have been used – the history of what many people would condemn as pseudo-science and even racism.
The first one to mention is the issue of the skull. The most famous form of diagnosis using the skull is phrenology. This was based on the idea that the brain is the organ of the mind, that certain areas of the brain have certain functions, and that we could work out a person's personality by measuring the skull (measuring the bumps) over the corresponding brain area. A large bump showed that that area of the brain was dominant compared to a part with a small bump. Phrenology had 27 area which could be measured, these were:
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