1990s

In the 1990s, genetics acquired a role as a driving ideology through which to understand human difference, one that seeks to portray socially-mediated differences as biologically determined. For example, in 1990, the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institute of Health allocated three billion dollars in funding to the Human Genome Project, intended to identify all genes in human DNA. The project, completed in 2003, was lauded by President Clinton for helping humanity  “understand the language in which God created life.” Genetics, thus, gained significant currency within scientific circles as a tool through which to articulate human difference and situate these differences in the body. One of the most prominent instances of this is Dean H. Hamer’s “gay gene” study. In 1993, Hamer published a study in which he claimed that genetic markers, located on the X chromosome, can be indicative of homosexuality in male individuals. Hamer’s study, despite having gained significant media coverage shortly after its publication, has been heavily criticized both by members of the scientific community as well as queer activists. Hamer’s findings would come into intense scrutiny by the scientific community after it was found that he excluded a pair of twins whose genetic information would have weakened the statistical significance of his findings. A 2019 study published in the journal Science debunked Hamer’s findings, concluding that there is no single “gay gene” that can be said to determine one’s sexuality. Queer activists have also noted that the notion of one’s sexuality having a biological origin often implied that queer sexualities could have a biological “cure.” 

The 1990s also saw the continued use of statistics as a means to differentiate the United States population along lines of competency and ability. For example, Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray published The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life in 1993. In this piece, Herrnstein and Murray argued that a “knowledge class” would accrue wealth in the “post-industrial era” and attempted to explain socioeconomic inequality. The two authors suggested that the state should stop “subsidizing” the reproduction of low-income individuals by limiting the amount of social welfare it provided. Herrnstein and Murray’s calls for the curbing of low-income individuals’ reproductive rights were not an isolated incident and marked a direct continuity with Reagan-era fears surrounding “welfare queens.” A 1990 editorial published by the Philadelphia Inquirer proposed offering cash incentives in exchange for using long-term contraceptives. The article, which received significant criticism from the newspapers’ own staff, proposed this as a solution to “the impoverishment of black America and its effect on the nation’s future.” Similarly, Project Prevention, founded in 1997 in Anaheim, California, sought to provide cash to people struggling with addiction if they agreed to long-term sterilization. Due in part to these efforts to violate people’s reproductive autonomy, a group of Black women coined and formulated the reproductive justice organizing framework in 1994 given the reproductive rights framework’s lack of intersectionality.