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A review by pero_tefi
Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality by Anne Fausto-Sterling
4.0
This was such a big brain book I am afraid I didn't properly get a lot of the sciency and biological explanations, i'll try my best. Mostly I think I went into this book unprepared cause I swore it would be a mostly social theory book and whoop in came the medical/biological part slapping me in the face. It was still interesting though, reason why I continued reading.
So, Anne Fausto-Sterling uses her career as a biologist to enter and explain the acts of "sexing the body". By doing this her main thesis becomes one of the way sex, the supposedly biological and fixed objective identity of the baby, is still something inherently social as most definitions are found with a biased point of finding differentiation. In other words, the only reason we know what male and female look and how they are divided is because we assimilated a social distinction and searched for "objective" proof of that difference. The first chapters speak about the external evidence we use to make this difference, and the existence of intersexuals that present the grey area for this supposed polar. The amount of times I gained proper knowledge of the subjetivity of science in these chapters is amazing, gaining the clear arguments to go against the close minded about the manipulation of sex and gender investigations based on personal and socio-temporal beliefs. Fausto-Sterling does a good job presenting every way in which these beliefs changed with time and, as such, the way information and science changed with it.
And yet, it's a 4 stars. I am sorry but chapters 7 and 8 went so completely over my head all I remember is that they were hormones, but my art history ass could not fucking get any of the technical words and explanations. Also, chapter 8 about rat experiments, like I get it but also why did you have to exist I only got more confused.
Either way, a very good and interesting read, I learned a lot, I hate society, goodbye.
So, Anne Fausto-Sterling uses her career as a biologist to enter and explain the acts of "sexing the body". By doing this her main thesis becomes one of the way sex, the supposedly biological and fixed objective identity of the baby, is still something inherently social as most definitions are found with a biased point of finding differentiation. In other words, the only reason we know what male and female look and how they are divided is because we assimilated a social distinction and searched for "objective" proof of that difference. The first chapters speak about the external evidence we use to make this difference, and the existence of intersexuals that present the grey area for this supposed polar. The amount of times I gained proper knowledge of the subjetivity of science in these chapters is amazing, gaining the clear arguments to go against the close minded about the manipulation of sex and gender investigations based on personal and socio-temporal beliefs. Fausto-Sterling does a good job presenting every way in which these beliefs changed with time and, as such, the way information and science changed with it.
And yet, it's a 4 stars. I am sorry but chapters 7 and 8 went so completely over my head all I remember is that they were hormones, but my art history ass could not fucking get any of the technical words and explanations. Also, chapter 8 about rat experiments, like I get it but also why did you have to exist I only got more confused.
Either way, a very good and interesting read, I learned a lot, I hate society, goodbye.