Sex and Gender Essay -- Anatomy Papers

Sex and sexuality Arianna Stassinopoulos wrote in the 1973 book The Female Woman It would be futile to attempt to fit women into a masculine pattern of attitudes, skills and abilities and opprobrious to force them to suppress their specifically female characteristics and abilities by keeping up the pretense that there are no differences between the sexes (Microsoft Bookshelf). In her rehearsal we see a cultural feminist response to the dominant across-the-board feminism of the 1970s. Liberal feminism de-emphasized gender differences, claiming that women were the equals of men and that this would be perspicuous if only they were offered the same opportunities as men with no special privileges necessary. On the other hand, cultural feminists such as Stassinopoulos claimed that womens unique perspective and talents essential be valued, intentionally emphasizing the differences between men and women. A troika type of feminism, post-modernism, is represented in Sexing the clay by Anne Fausto-Sterling. Post-modern feminism questions the in truth origins of gender, sexuality, and bodies. According to post-modernism, the emphasis or de-emphasis of difference by cultural and bounteous feminists is meaningless, because the difference itself and the categories difference creates are social constructions. Fausto-Sterlings post-modernism, however, depicts this social construction in a unique manner she attempts to illustrate the role of science in the construction of gender, sex, and bodies. In doing so she discusses three main ways in which science aids in the social construction of sex first, fresh surgical technology allows doctors to literally construct genitalia second, socially evaluate biases affect the way scientists design, carry out, and analyze ex... ...heories of performing gender to wangle this point, Fausto-Sterling is able to point to concrete scientific experiments and explain where they go wrong. And adept can conclude from Fausto-Sterlings boo k that not only do we do gender, we also do sex and bodies as well. Works CitedButler, Judith. Performative acts and gender make-up An essay in phenomenology and feminist theory. 1998. Excerpt from K. Conboy, N. Medina and S. Stanbury, eds. Writing on the Body Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory (401-17). NY Columbia University Press, 1997.Fausto-Sterling, Anne. Sexing the Body Gender governing and the Construction of Sexuality. NY Basic Books, 2000.Stassinopoulos, Arianna. The Natural Woman. Sexing the Body Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality. Entry found under gender. Microsoft Bookshelf 2000. CD-ROM. 2000.