Rating: 
Summary: When It Comes to Sex ,...
Review: ...it all comes down to emotions, recalling that the original meaning of that word was a movement of people, a civil disturbance. From the intersexual to the homosexual, Fausto-Sterling reviews the history and politics that informed the science and medical practice of 20th Century sex. I happily add this volume on the gender politics of popular science to a different but equally interesting work by Simon LeVay, Queer Science. However unlike LeVay, Fausto-Sterling recognizes a relationship between sexualized science and the rise of American monopoly capitalism (and its demands for social stability) though her observations in this arena are frustratingly preliminary. Readers of this book might also enjoy Jennifer Terry's An American Obsession which delves more deeply into cultural history.
Rating:
Summary: Fresh Air In A Sexist World
Review: Everyone should read this book,it opens up a pandora's box to what really goes on behind the closed doors of gender 'research' and genderism in our and other societies.
Rating:
Summary: Leading Feminist Embryologist Takes on Her Own Science
Review: Fausto-Sterling will take her place in feminist history as the leading embryologist, and perhaps even, the leading scientist, doing gender studies in the latter 20th and earlier 21st centuries. Who would have thought she could excell beyond her ground-breaking text, "Myths of Gender"? This time she takes on her own scientific field, exposing how blindered, sexist, heterosexist, and flat out stuck and harm-inducing it has become. Given that she presents her arguments in the body of the text in a very reader-friendly language and style, and has nearly a separate text of endnotes of hard-core feminist critical analyses ta boot, we've got in this great work of hers a text reminiscent of Virginia Woolf's "Three Guinneas." Anne Fausto-Sterling's special interest this go around is science's primary complicity in the (hetero) sexing of psycho-medically dominated and controlled bodies. She provides one of the best feminist analyses of Gender Systematicity as the key politically shaped, shaping, and biased torture device for transsexual and intersex people today. This is a very important text for sexology, feminist, gender, queer, US, cultural, and transgender studies, history of science, and anthropology of medicine and science. It's a brave read, if not deadly on point. Probably best for graduate scholars, but should be required for any professional in sexology, gender specialist, or medical personnel before they lay one hand or idea of treatment on transsexual or intersex people!
Rating:
Summary: EDUCATION IS PARAMOUNT!
Review: Humans, God's remarkable creation. It seems as though man's curiosity can't help but destroy the creation. This book is very educational and full of information to all sexes. For centuries, intersex children were outcasts, and poked fun of with evil jeers. This book tells and shows you about the intersex gender, and its existence. The book is rated E: for everyone.
Rating:
Summary: opens up the closed doors behind gender "research"
Review: I highly recommend this book.It will liberate you from the
now recent obesession with gender "differences" and you will
see the world around you in a new light.
The book is pleasant and does not talk down to the reader
as many of the "gender difference" books do.It isn't
preachy or arrogant,instead it makes the reader think about
how the world around them has been so manipulated to keep
status quo thinking going.
This is not a gender differences book,it's a book which
let's us know we are all complex and not actually
limited by gender specific behavior,as the "researchers"
call "appropriate" behavior or apptitudes which people have
been labeled.
Rating:
Summary: opens up the closed doors behind gender "research"
Review: I highly recommend this book.It will liberate you from the
now recent obesession with gender "differences" and you will
see the world around you in a new light.
The book is pleasant and does not talk down to the reader
as many of the "gender difference" books do.It isn't
preachy or arrogant,instead it makes the reader think about
how the world around them has been so manipulated to keep
status quo thinking going.
This is not a gender differences book,it's a book which
let's us know we are all complex and not actually
limited by gender specific behavior,as the "researchers"
call "appropriate" behavior or apptitudes which people have
been labeled.
Rating: 
Summary: Very Good
Review: I must admit that I was expecting more of a "Myths of Gender 2". Still, this book provides an excellent introduction to an often neglected but important issue. Fausto-Sterling is always a pleasure to read.
Rating:
Summary: Very Good
Review: I must admit that I was expecting more of a "Myths of Gender 2". Still, this book provides an excellent introduction to an often neglected but important issue. Fausto-Sterling is always a pleasure to read.
Rating:
Summary: Ambivalence
Review: This book delves into some of the biological and cultural issues regarding gender identity. In the introduction, Fausto-Sterling tells us that as a biologist, she accepts that there are biological influences on behavior, but at the same time, she is a feminist who is determined that gender identity is also culturally influenced. This book is framed as a kind of reconciliation between the extremes of the two camps. The early part of the book examines hermaphrodites or intersexuals through history. Fausto-Sterling points out that before medical intervention was standard, hermaphrodites were a recognized gender category, who even had their own rules of conduct and inheritance under Jewish law. She then turns her attention to the modern treatment of intersexuals, describing how thanks to charlatans like John Money, many have been surgically adjusted to fit one sex, while finding that their natural gender goes the other way, and they are consequently trapped in bodies that go against nature. She reviews many studies of the medical intervention of intersexuals and infant gender re-assignment, finding dismally few success stories. The second half of the book takes up a variety of topics. Chapter 5, for instance, discusses and dismisses reported differences between the corpus callosum in men and women. In this chapter, Fausto-Sterling goes to great length to explain how the statistics for the corpus callosum studies may be flawed, but it seems she misses a larger point- -are there any behavioral traits that are associated with the corpus callosum anyway? Even if women turned out to have a corpus callosum that was five times as big, on average, than that of men, so what? We don't know enough yet about the function of the corpus callosum to hazard a guess as to what such results might point to, so finding or not finding a difference in size isn't that consequential. Later chapters in the book cover the history of sex hormone studies, hormones and the development of the brain. The book closes with an analysis of the author's own development of a gender identity, and an analogy of gender identity as a set of Russian dolls, where each influence on gender identity, from genetic to hormonal to cultural, fits within the larger context. And then comes 120 pages of endnotes, followed by 70 pages of bibliography, and the index. In previous work, Fausto-Sterling had proposed that there are not 2 but many human genders, including separate categories for each preference of sexual activity. In this book she doesn't exactly argue explicitly for many genders, but she almost seems to assume the idea. She also points out that people's sexual activities may change over time, and thus it may be hard to categorize a person as being throughout life a member of one gender or another. I'm not sure I agree with her on this point. I think it might be more accurate to recognize that are only 2 biological genders, each associated with specific physical and behavioral traits, but that not everyone actually fits neatly into these categories. Indeed, if we have a very tightly defined notion of male and female together with all associated traits, perhaps no one actually matches one gender exactly. But that's not to say that we need to multiply the gender categories- -we just need to recognize and respect each person for who he, she, or even it, is.
Rating:
Summary: Ambivalence
Review: This book delves into some of the biological and cultural issues regarding gender identity. In the introduction, Fausto-Sterling tells us that as a biologist, she accepts that there are biological influences on behavior, but at the same time, she is a feminist who is determined that gender identity is also culturally influenced. This book is framed as a kind of reconciliation between the extremes of the two camps. The early part of the book examines hermaphrodites or intersexuals through history. Fausto-Sterling points out that before medical intervention was standard, hermaphrodites were a recognized gender category, who even had their own rules of conduct and inheritance under Jewish law. She then turns her attention to the modern treatment of intersexuals, describing how thanks to charlatans like John Money, many have been surgically adjusted to fit one sex, while finding that their natural gender goes the other way, and they are consequently trapped in bodies that go against nature. She reviews many studies of the medical intervention of intersexuals and infant gender re-assignment, finding dismally few success stories. The second half of the book takes up a variety of topics. Chapter 5, for instance, discusses and dismisses reported differences between the corpus callosum in men and women. In this chapter, Fausto-Sterling goes to great length to explain how the statistics for the corpus callosum studies may be flawed, but it seems she misses a larger point- -are there any behavioral traits that are associated with the corpus callosum anyway? Even if women turned out to have a corpus callosum that was five times as big, on average, than that of men, so what? We don't know enough yet about the function of the corpus callosum to hazard a guess as to what such results might point to, so finding or not finding a difference in size isn't that consequential. Later chapters in the book cover the history of sex hormone studies, hormones and the development of the brain. The book closes with an analysis of the author's own development of a gender identity, and an analogy of gender identity as a set of Russian dolls, where each influence on gender identity, from genetic to hormonal to cultural, fits within the larger context. And then comes 120 pages of endnotes, followed by 70 pages of bibliography, and the index. In previous work, Fausto-Sterling had proposed that there are not 2 but many human genders, including separate categories for each preference of sexual activity. In this book she doesn't exactly argue explicitly for many genders, but she almost seems to assume the idea. She also points out that people's sexual activities may change over time, and thus it may be hard to categorize a person as being throughout life a member of one gender or another. I'm not sure I agree with her on this point. I think it might be more accurate to recognize that are only 2 biological genders, each associated with specific physical and behavioral traits, but that not everyone actually fits neatly into these categories. Indeed, if we have a very tightly defined notion of male and female together with all associated traits, perhaps no one actually matches one gender exactly. But that's not to say that we need to multiply the gender categories- -we just need to recognize and respect each person for who he, she, or even it, is.
|
