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Connections @ the intersections. "Surveillance functions ceaselessly. The gaze is alert everywhere." Michel Foucault.

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Applied theory? New publication

WGSS second year PhD student, Ingrid Meintjes, is first author of a research paper published in the Journal of International Development, titled “ Creating Capabilities through Maternal Mental Health Interventions: A Case Study at Hanover Park, Cape Town”. The paper is based on her work in maternal mental health care provision for low-resource communities in South Africa. DOI: 10.1002/jid.3063​

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sjsci:

“Understanding what intersex means also helps with understanding what it doesn’t mean. Our bodies are natural and normal and healthy; while some health problems are associated with some forms of intersex, simply being intersex isn’t a health problem in and of itself.”

—

As someone that spends a majority of my time and work in healthcare and sexuality, words cannot describe how much I love this article written by Claudia about being intersex. It is spot on with a lot of talking points I use both in presentations and in online courses that I write. Intersex can be a topic that confuses many just because of all the different forms of development and either chromosomal, hormonal, or internal/external genitalia development. This article helps take away the confusion, both through personal story telling and factual/accurate knowledge. 

-Ryan

Claudia Is Intersex, Let’s Talk About It | Autostraddle

(via ryansallans)

“What needs to be fixed is the way we view intersex in our society, and the cosmetic medical procedures we’re subjected to without consent. ”

(via projectqueer)

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Dominant paradigms: sexual differentiation & intersex

As a feminist scholar new to the 'hard' sciences, I'm learning about sexual differentiation in a neuroscience course. I'm fascinated in how we come to know what we know (and how we come to NOT know...) and am intrigued by the metaphors and paradigms embedded in scientific education.

For example, as a foetus, undifferentiated gonads become testes through a particular activation pathway (involving SRY). Female gonads are the 'default' position, so it goes. Here again, we hear echoes of our first biology lessons: the 'active' sperm, the 'passive' ovum. The testes are activated to differentiate, and if nothing happens, if the switch is not 'turned on', you're left with ovaries. Mine is an embarrassingly simplistic summary, yes, but the bottom line is that there is a way in which paradigms are taught and transmitted through that bastion of objectivity: science.

New research is starting to question this very issue, and a recent article by S.G. Tevosian (2013) reviews new thinking related to early sexual differentiation vis-à-vis ovarian development; that is, there is ovarian development, not just a default ovarian situation failing the trigger which prompts the development of testes. Ovarian development is not a default position. It too experiences activation pathways, quelle surprise! 

These results ... reinforced the notion that ovarian differentiation engages more than one pathway and that all of them would have to be simultaneously disabled to shift the balance towards the male fate… (Tevosian, p. 40)

As my own research focus is the health and quality of life of intersex persons, or what in science is problematically termed 'disorders of sex development' (DSD), it is interesting that studies in DSD are the areas that are helping researchers to think about 'normal' sexual differentiation. 

And for me, this comes full circle: in thinking about the genealogy of intersex, critical theorists, scientists and gender scholars have argued in various ways that 'intersex' is a trope deployed to bolster and verify 'normal' sex. The perceived abnormality of intersexed bodies reinforces the solidity and normality of female-male sexed bodies (Swarr, 2012). But, the inconsistencies of sex do not make room for the intersex as much as intersex strengthens the ‘boundaries of femaleness and maleness’ because it ‘highlights their inconsistencies’ (Swarr, 2012). 

The late 'discovery' of different pathways of sexual differentiation is an example of how preconceived notions of sex permeate the kind of questions we ask and the answers these limited questions can provide. 

Iain Morland (2006), a theoretician on matters of intersex and a self-identified intersex person, encourages us to move beyond a ‘truth seeking’ science, to asking different questions (Roy, 2012). If science is about truth-seeking, we would do well to remember that the practice - that is, the scientific method, was born of a confrontation with 'ambiguously' sexed bodies. In these diagrams, we can see a shift from sex assumptions in science (male differentiation is active, female is passive) to new thinking about sex differentiation, which, once more, returns us to a foundational trope in scientific thought: intersex.

Image: Traditional paradigm from William R. Rice, Urban Friberg and Sergey Gavrilets (2012) Homosexuality as a Consequence of Epigenetically Canalized Sexual Development. The Quarterly Review of Biology. 87(4): 343-368

Image: ovarian development as activated versus being a default position, from Tevosian, S. G. (2013) Genetic Control of Ovarian Development. Sexual Development, 7(1-3), p 34.

And that leaves us with the question, if intersex is so fundamental, why is it so obscure, why is it that we have so little research about the intersex situation beyond 'corrective' surgeries at birth or psychological treatments, as opposed to wellness and quality of life research for intersex persons, as intersex persons, through their lifetime?

Want to know more?

https://genderedinnovations.stanford.edu/case-studies/genetics.html

Tevosian, S. G. (2013). Genetic control of ovarian development. Sexual Development, 7(1-3), 33–45. doi:10.1159/000339511

Swarr, A.L. (2012) Sex in Transition: Remaking Gender and Race in South Africa. Albany: SUNY Press.

Schiebinger, L. (2004) Nature's Body: Gender in the Making of Modern Science. 2nd Ed. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

Repo, J. (2013) The Biopolitical Birth of Gender: Social Control, Hermaphroditism, and the New Sexual Apparatus. Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 38(3): 228-244.

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Pop quiz: what disease exacts a greater mortality in the developing world - AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria or cancer?

We need drug trials, but, the complex terrain negotiated between research populations, pharmaceutical companies and the range of agencies constellated in global public-private partnerships does require our attention. 

Reading Melinda Cooper's article: Life (un)Ltd: Feminism, Bioscience, Race, prompts me to ask questions about the type of drug trials being conducted (for what diseases?) and where they are conducted (the developing world?).

I thought I'd check in on recent developments in drug trials in my home country, South Africa - a popular destination for infectious disease trials. I came across this interesting article (dated October 2013 - read it here: http://www.hst.org.za/news/costs-keep-cancer-drugs-out-developing-countries), which is not about infections diseases, but cancer. I was startled to learn that cancer is taking more lives than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. Having worked in the HIV/AIDS movement, I have been very aware of the toll that AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria have taken on South Africans - these three illnesses being so intimately linked in many ways. But it appears cancer is a forgotten disease, not only in South Africa, but according to this article, the developing world generally. 

Cancer, however, is taking more lives than these three killers combined. Cancer kills 7.1 million people every year, and 80 percent of these deaths occur in LMICs.

...

“Some of these countries cannot even afford the medications that higher income countries have been using for 20 years,” said Dr. Gilberto de Lima Lopes, assistant professor of oncology at Johns Hopkins University. 

What does this say about the drug industry? Does it challenge arguments, such as those made by Cooper, since cancer would be a more profitable disease to tackle vis-à-vis the larger 'market' of affected people? Are there assumptions involved as to the type of diseases affecting different populations? Cancer drugs are affordable in the developed world, but not in the developing world. AIDS trials are conducted in the developing world, but not (as much) in the developed world. Is AIDS the disease of sex and deviance, while cancer is an affliction of the innocent?  Thoughts?

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Science as culture...

Abou El Ella, S. S., Tawfik, M. a. M., Ellahony, D. M., & Anees, N. M. (2012). Cytogenetic and molecular study in intersex. Egyptian Journal of Medical Human Genetics, 13(3), 281–289. 

A close reading of this scientific article reveals the seamless integration of assumption into the presentation of original scientific data. This article is an example of intersex science that fails to interrogate approaches and assumptions that may affect the research project’s material findings and import. It is thus also an example of Kavita Philip's argument that science is a form of cultural (2004: 24). Furthermore, it shows the epistemic agency of the scientist, and the reality that knowledge creation is never benign, and its effects of no ethical import (Repo, 2013; Roberts, 2011; Reardon, 2005; McWhorther, 2004). 

The most evident assumptions relate to the given nature of intersex births as abnormal, and the implied necessity of medical intervention to ‘correct’ the abnormality. The research presented is envisioned to improve the ‘genetic counseling of DSD cases’. Determining the ‘causes of DSD’ is discussed in the framework of ‘risk factors’, which must be managed appropriately to prevent (the assumed) psychosocial maladjustment of the affected child. There is no doubt as to the meticulousness of the study, however, it is a salient example of research conducted in the service of normitivization. Sex assignment is deemed an imperative and discussed with respect to ‘diagnosis, genotype, genital appearance, surgical options, need for lifelong replacement therapy, potential for fertility, views of the family, and sometimes circumstances relating to cultural practices’.

Genital anomalies are estimated to occur in 1 in 4,500 births. The most common cause of ambiguous genitalia in the new- born is congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) – 1 per 15,000 live births. CAH appears to be more common in those of European Jewish, Hispanic, Slavic and Italian descent. The ability to diagnose Developmental Sex Disorders (DSD) has advanced rapidly in recent years. In most cases today, clinicians can promptly make an accurate diagnosis and counsel parents on therapeutic options [1]. The ultimate goal in any management strategy is to provide a framework that will allow the affected child to develop into a well-adjusted psychosocially stable individual who identifies with and is happy in the assigned sex [2]. Factors that influence sex assignment include diagnosis, genotype, genital appearance, surgical options, need for lifelong replacement therapy, potential for fertility, views of the family, and sometimes circumstances relating to cultural practices [2–4]. The aim of this work was the genetic study (both cytogenetics and molecular genetics) of DSD cases with special promi- nence of Karyotyping and DNA extraction, PCR, gel electrophoresis, SSCP and automated DNA sequencing for both the SRY and the CYP21 genes and genetic counseling of DSD cases and determination of the causes and/or risk factors in each case.

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What's so POST about COLONIALISM?

This week, we're thinking postcolonial thoughts with Kavita Philip (Civilizing Natures: Race, Resources, and Modernity in Colonial South India).

Philip writes that practices and institutions that set up a mutually reinforcing dyad between colonialism and nineteenth century science have, in many instances, been carried over by postcolonial states, 'along with the foundational assumptions of scientific modernity', into structures of post-independence government and popular culture (pp 2-4). 

Challenged to think about my own approach to 'postcoloniality' as a South African, a white woman, and a scholar grappling with notions of the sexed body, 'other' bodies, in spaces thought of as 'other' (e.g. Africa), I came across this site: http://zeroanthropology.net/about/

Zero Anthropology is about interrogating what is arguably one of the 'colonial' sciences. In its most basic sense, it is

a project of decolonization, growing out of a discipline with a long history and a deep epistemological connection to colonialism. The aim is to transform anthropology into something that is neither Eurocentric nor elitist. 

It is about 'unthinking' anthropology, and 'opening up' anthropology. 

If anthropology claimed the world for study by Europeans and Americans, ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY is (also) about “the world” reclaiming anthropological knowledge for its own self-understanding, self-expression, and self-identification, or better yet, recognizing that it always had “anthropological” knowledge of its own.

Here is an approach, by a group of diverse scholars and thinkers, which does not try to dismantle, but interrogate colonial epistemological foundations and find what radical possibilities these offer for generative, productive and transformative outcomes today. It is an interesting approach, which works at while recognizing, rather than only critiquing and shutting down, the challenges inherent in any of our approaches to knowledge and/or representation. 

It’s About Neocolonialism

We all struggle with these overlapping, mutually complementing cognate terms that refer to mutually reinforcing processes, terms such as imperialism, colonialism, and neocolonialism. We’ve been through this already, in the first part of the Zero Series (to be continued, I promise). The sense one gets of neocolonialism from all of the above, scattered across blogs, YouTube, and Twitter, and spread among commentators and repeaters from Canada, Trinidad,  Curaçao, Afghanistan, and Australia–is that neocolonialism is internalized and localized, a variant and complement of global imperialism. It’s what makes imperialism work, at the local level, a way of articulating two distinct arenas and fields of interest. The prime actors in the neocolonial setting are not necessarily foreign (though they can be, in the case of imported experts, visiting IMF delegations, and over-sized foreign embassies), nor are the nation-states in question any longer formal political colonies (in terms of tissue thin charters and conventions). They are now post-independent, in more ways than one. The critique of neocolonialism is about a vision of self-rule that is more like management of locals on behalf of foreign interests, with some locals of course benefiting immensely from such arrangements. Ultimately it is about the continuation of colonialism by other means, a force felt, observed, and spoken about worldwide.

Read more here

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Growing up poor and stressed impacts the brain in adulthood

This week, an article in Science Daily discusses further evidence that our socio-economic realities have material impacts on our health as adults. As we saw in the film Unnatural Causes, findings like these unravel the mythic notions of racial difference in health, pointing to the myriad interwoven social environment which impacts on our overall wellbeing.

Read more here: Science Daily

Image: Childhood poverty impacted how much the two regions of the prefrontal cortex (as shown in orange circles) were engaged during emotion regulation. (Credit: University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine)

This article also reminded me about work by a colleague in South Africa. Prof Mark Tomlinson develops a theory of 'toxic poverty' which has a range of implications during pregnancy: for the fetus, the child after birth, as well as the pregnant woman. Prof Tomlinson's work shows the social causation pathways of mental distress among pregnant women (that is, 'toxic' poverty) and the impacts of this particular cause of mental distress. Depression or anxiety can lead to compromised caregiving capacity, which in turn has repercussions for the child. 

The image below shows the brain sizes of 2 different 3-year-old children. The one on the left is an average sized brain for a 3 year old. The image on the right is of a child who had experienced extreme neglect. This is another example of how socio-economic experiences can shape biological difference. 

A summary of Prof Tomlinson's upcoming article can be read here: http://blogs.health24.com/blog/2013/08/

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Darwin & Gender

A new research endeavor delves into Darwin's private correspondence to reveal a man quite different from the public persona, who we can easily argue was 'no feminist'. Dr Philippa Hardman, Research Associate on the “Darwin and Gender” project*, says that their research 'shows that his views on gender were a lot more complex than has been acknowledged in the past.'

Henrietta Emma Darwin (Charles Darwin's daughter)

“As a published scientist, Darwin usually reflected and reinforced middle-class, Victorian gender ideology, which saw women as domestic creatures who should look after children and the home. In his letters, though, we encounter a world of private thoughts and actions, which defied those ideals.”

* The research is the work of  the “Darwin and Gender” project, funded by The Bonita Trust, and part of the Darwin Correspondence Project based at Cambridge University Library, which for the past four years has been studying the full range of Darwin’s writings on gender - including those which were never published (the research consults Darwin's letters as a primary source - they have located more than 15,000 he either sent or received). The results of the project include resources for both school and university students, which are available via the website, and in a new film, Darwin’s Women.

Read more here.

What do we make of the apparent schism between Darwin's 'public' and 'private' personas? Were these strategically adopted? 

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Queered Science: Eradicating Misogyny in the Scientific Community

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Thinking about difference in science as 'different scientists' - Dr Ben Barres, an openly trans scientist, is on a mission to end gender discrimination in the sciences as it operates against minority genders. 

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Why Are There Still So Few Women in Science?

Hint: The answer has more to do with “The Big Bang Theory” than with longstanding theories about men’s so-called natural aptitude.

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In order to learn how to respond to difference differently, movement must be made by neuroscientists, neuroethicists as well as feminists from seeking to secure a position of transcending 'truth' to one of shared perplexity and 'immanent critique'.

Roy, Deboleena (2012) Neuroethics, Gender and the Response to Difference. Neuroethics. 5:217–230.

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Blue Stockings Mag: Currently Crushing On Anne Fausto-Sterling

“Scientists who do deny their politics—who claim to be objective and unemotional about gender while living in a world where even boats and automobiles are identified by sex—are fooling both themselves and the public at large.”

~ Anne Fausto-Sterling Myths of Gender

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Neuroscientist and my classmate :) Katherine's work is fascinating!

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The work of Prof Deboleena Roy, of Emory University's Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexualities Studies. I find her work fascinating, transformative and bursting with radical potential. 

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Queered Science: Eradicating Misogyny in the Scientific Community

Dr. Ben Barres, an openly trans scientist, is on a mission to end gender discrimination in the sciences.

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Syndemics

A syndemic is defined as “two or more epidemics . . ., interacting synergistically and contributing, as a result of their interaction, to excess burden of disease in a population” (Singer & Clair, 2003, p. 425). Initially introduced by anthropologist Merrill Singer, the substance abuse, violence, and AIDS—or SAVA—syndemic was conceptualized as inextricable and mutually reinforcing connections between three conditions that disproportionately afflict those living in poverty in U.S. cities (Singer, 1994, 1996). Our model posits a syndemic intersectional approach, locating gendered lived experience and expectations within broader societal structures (Circle E) that define and con- strain personal decisions, behaviors, actions, resources, and consequences. A syndemic intersectional approach pro- vides a critical framework for understanding and building the conditions that create and sustain overall community health (Egan et al., 2011). 

From:

Gail E. Wyatt, Cynthia A. Gómez, Alison B. Hamilton, Dellanira Valencia-Garcia, Larry M. Gant, and Charles E. Graham (2013) The Intersection of Gender and Ethnicity in HIV Risk, Interventions, and Prevention. New Frontiers for Psychology. 68(4): 247–260.

  My ? : The syndemic approach is an interesting and pragmatic way of 'doing' intersectionality in health research. However, note how this article lays out a definition of gender, but skips right over what it means by 'ethnicity'. We may slide from 'race' to 'populations' to 'ethnicity' but the difficulty to define the underlying notion of racial difference remains...