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onceuponatime's review
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
The book mainly tackled the history of sex/the reproductive system and the way it was socialised.
It's a really good reminder that our current ideas about sex and gender aren't absolute either, they're just a moment in a history of the future.
It was also a good reminder, as a trans person, that my body is not created "as perfection" by god or evolution, so it bares no meaning in that regard when we seek to change it in some way.
Some general ideas:
The nature of sex is the result not of biology, but of our needs in speaking about it. Through history, the idea of the one sex was predominant. Mapping men on female bodies (creating essentially one sex) was the norm (with many different systems, which were often not coherent in of themselves), and it was done following the already present hierarchical two gender ideas, amplified by the lack of actual knowledge of how conception works.
Another thing I found interesting is how for the longest time orgasm of both partners was seen as a must for conception to occur, and clitoral orgasm was thought as the only orgasm.
It's a really good reminder that our current ideas about sex and gender aren't absolute either, they're just a moment in a history of the future.
It was also a good reminder, as a trans person, that my body is not created "as perfection" by god or evolution, so it bares no meaning in that regard when we seek to change it in some way.
Some general ideas:
The nature of sex is the result not of biology, but of our needs in speaking about it. Through history, the idea of the one sex was predominant. Mapping men on female bodies (creating essentially one sex) was the norm (with many different systems, which were often not coherent in of themselves), and it was done following the already present hierarchical two gender ideas, amplified by the lack of actual knowledge of how conception works.
Another thing I found interesting is how for the longest time orgasm of both partners was seen as a must for conception to occur, and clitoral orgasm was thought as the only orgasm.
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