Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality

by Anne Fausto-Sterling

Book Overview

This award-winning classic examines the construction of sexual identity in biology, society, and history.
Why do some people prefer heterosexual love while others fancy the same sex? Is sexual identity biologically determined or a product of convention? In this brilliant and provocative book, the acclaimed author of Myths of Gender argues that even the most fundamental knowledge about sex is shaped by the culture in which scientific...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0465077145
• ISBN13: 9780465077144
• Release Date: November 2000
• Publisher: Basic Books
• Length: 496 Pages
• Weight: 1.12 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 5.2" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Understanding Gender Through A New Lens

Anne Fausto-Sterling's account of all genders and sexes (not just male/female, but everything in between) provides a humanitarian outlook which demonstrates just how far our culture will go to enforce gender dichotomies. About one in 5000 births results in an intersexed (ambiguous genitalia) infant. Most of the time doctors assign a sex to these babies, believing they could never grow into well-adjusted adults with ambigious sex organs. Yet, these surgeries usually include the removal of some or all nerve tissue leading most post operative intersexed people wishing they had never been touched when they grow older. Some of these stories are truly heart breaking and Fausto-Sterling not only explores the history behind these surgeries, but their impact on the day to day lives of thousands of individuals. Giving voice to a group that's not heard from much in mainstream media, Sexing the Body is a must read for anyone interested in the development of gender identity or social injustice.

opens up the closed doors behind gender "research"

I highly recommend this book.It will liberate you from thenow recent obesession with gender "differences" and you willsee the world around you in a new light.The book is pleasant and does not talk down to the readeras many of the "gender difference" books do.It isn't preachy or arrogant,instead it makes the reader think abouthow the world around them has been so manipulated to keepstatus 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 havebeen labeled.

Leading Feminist Embryologist Takes on Her Own Science

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!

When It Comes to Sex ,...

...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.

Bridging Essentialism and Constructivism

This book is wonderful. Fausto-Sterling does not take sides on the essentialism and constructivism. She argues that biology does matter in determining one's sexual orientation, but at the same time, culture plays a central role as well. In other words, culture and biology interact with one another, in a complicated fashion. It 's an interaction that is dialectical, rather than linear. The author skillfully weaves scientific knowledge with politics and history in a accessable language. Unlike many scientists,whose arguements tend to be ahistorical, she takes into account of history in building her arguements. This work will be interesting for both the scientifically inclined and the theoretically inclined.