#fausto-sterling

[nouveauthomas]

Anne Fasto-Sterling

[helloundefined]

Gender is a complex thing

[anthropolos]

Have you read anything by Anne Fausto-Sterling? I recently had to read her book sexing the body for an anthropology of gender class and I would be interested in hearing your opinion on her if you have!

Ugh, wish I have. I’ve seen her stuff cited, and it’s been talked about in classes, but I haven’t personally delved into her stuff. She seems really interested in the relationship between biology and gender, which most social scientists / humanities scholars in queer theory would sprint away from. If anyone wants to comment their own opinions, please do! 

[nic-ley-jjay]

Kessler and Fausto-Sterling on Gender

Kessler’s “The Medical Construction of Gender” begins with Kessler explaining how there is more than just biological ways in determining the sex of babies born without clear male or female genitals. Physicians believe in only two genders male or female and when faced with an intersexed baby they must choose a gender. This increases society’s belief that there can only be two genders, male and female, and there is nothing in between.

Specialist believe that a child can switch gender up to eighteen months of age and as long as the parents do not doubt the gender of the child and the child gets proper hormones at puberty the child will grow up to be that gender regardless of chromosomes. The specialists also believe it to be better to change an infant with a micropenis into a female to avoid problems into adulthood. The biggest problem they seem to have is the time needed to make a proper diagnoses on an intersexed baby is too long, they need to find a way to figure out a course of action faster.

In these situations the parents need to be told that gender is not biological and if your child had to switch genders a birth you must raise them as the new gender. There can be no confusion for the child. Parents are often told not to announce the gender of the baby until a decision is made about the gender by doctors. Society has a huge impact on gender so society must believe the child is the new gender.

Fausto-Sterling’s “The Five Sexes: Why male and female are not enough” also discusses people that fall in between being male and female. Fausto-Sterling writes that there should really be five categories of sex. John Money has stated that intersexed children count for about four percent of births. Fausto-Sterling also mentions that for those who have been raised knowing they were instersexual there have been no record of suicide or psychotic in any of them.

[sexwithgrace]

The Beginning

Anne Fausto-Sterling, renowned sexologist, compares the complexity of sexuality with the complexity of a functioning cell: within itself it is something with a distinct purpose and history, but it is also connected to and dependent on other cells to create an organ within a functioning body. This is how we should look at sexuality. This is also how we must understand gender.

[nocardneeded-blog]

Biologist Anne Fausto-Sterling sets out a developmental systems approach to gender, refusing false dichotomies of nature-nurture and biology-culture