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SEXING THE BODY. The title immediately grabbed my attention, and I just had to read
this book. However, it wasn't long before I discovered that the extra fine, small print
used in this book along with all the technical language kept putting my brain to sleep.
Despite the fact that every time I opened up this book I wound up snoozing, there were a
few points of interest that caught my attention along the way.
Fausto-Sterling's chapter on "Should there be only two sexes" is
fascinating. She describes people who are intersexual, a part of both sexes, and argues
for the addition of this category to the two that we have currently in our society.
Because the infants born with visible combinations of both sexes are generally altered
before they ever leave the hospital, a few of them have problems with their sexual
assignment. The author suggests holding off on the surgery until they are older and can
make the decisions themselves.
Another area that is particularly amazing is how, in the field of science, a single man
can have so much influence on women's health. In one instance, Fausto-Sterling quotes Dr.
Robert A. Wilson: "The stigmata of Nature's defeminization included a general
stiffness of muscles, a dowager's hump, and a vapid cow-like negative state.''
Postmenopausaul women, he wrote in the Journal of the American Geriatric Society,
existed but did not live. On the streets, "they pass unnoticed and, in turn, notice
little." It makes me wonder just how many women he interviewed to arrive at that
conclusion. Also interesting is Fausto-Sterling's explanation of "more children from
the fit, less from the unfit --- that is the chief issue of birth control, Sanger wrote in
1919." Here all along I was led to believe that birth control was being used to
control the ever expanding world population.
Throughout her book, Fausto-Sterling uses many charts, pictures, drawings, and cartoons to
clarify and add information to her writing. One of the most fascinating things I found in
this book is the author's description of how people see themselves in their mind's eye.
The author uses the Möbius Strip, a flat ribbon twisted once and then attached end to
end, which shows a band and ants crawling along a topological puzzle --- the ant can
continually travel on this strip without ever getting anywhere.
Although this book has a total of 473 pages, the actual reading part is only 255 pages,
with the rest devoted to the author's meticulous notes, in which her scholarship and
research are evident. Once you wade through the scientific and technical jargon, you will
find that this is an interesting and important research book on the sexing of the body in
our society. How do we study gender and sexuality as part of a development system, and
what specifically do we mean by environment? Despite how much we know about sex, there is
still a lot we don't know about our own sexuality and how it develops in an individual,
rather than on a universal level.
--- Reviewed by S. H. Seppo
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