Sexig forskning attraherar

(Re)produktion av heterosexuella normer

Abstract

Sex and assumed sex-specific characteristics have often been explained by a biologically deterministic approach, both in biological research reports and in daily talk. However, findings in biology show a significantly more dynamic explanation model where genes and external factors interact and influence the individual. Nevertheless, these research findings do not seem to make an impact neither in media nor in public awareness. The article explores the norms and values in biology that are expressed in research publications and how this is connected to a taken-for-granted heterosexual norm in society. The overall goal is to make visible how a sex-making rhetoric in biology may have implications for research production, which in turn reproduces a binary approach to sex/gender. I also discuss factors that affect how this binary reproduction feeds itself by, for example, the peer-review system.