So one of my friends linked to this New Scientist article about a ‘monogamy gene’ that has been found in humans.

I actually hate it when scientists find genes for behavioural variations that are considered ‘abnormal’ by most of society. They are mercifully failing to find a ‘Gay Gene’, though there is some talk of an ‘Tranny gene’, and now they claim to have found the ‘monogamy gene’. I always feel vaguely nervous that they will start to test people for those genes and start trying to eliminate ‘undesireable’ diversity from society.

This article frames things in an extremely heterocentric, monogamy-centric way. The team plans on investigating how a nasal spray of the chemical ‘vassopressin’ affects jealousy and altruism. I’m really interested in how this study will be carried out, because its really not clear from the article how this discovery is related to complex relationship models like polyfidelity/polyamory and so on. They probably don’t know, because the study seems to make the assumption that everyone is either relationship challenged (single, or in a monogamous relationship that is in crisis) or monogamous.

Its also quite a narrow study in that the only kind of person that it appears were studied were heterosexual men. Which is fine for starters, but what about women, and queers, and poly people? So many questions, so few answers!