Books like Myths of gender by Anne Fausto-Sterling

Judith Lorber examines gender as a social institution, dissecting paradoxes that challenge the binary view of sex, the cultural construction of women, and the persistent inequalities in family, work, and power.

"Is it a boy or a girl? Our automatic first question about a new baby reveals how profoundly we believe that sex difference is natural and inborn, and how fundamental sex is to our conception of human identity. But, in fact, biologist and cultural critic Anne Fausto-Sterling shows in her new book that the answer to this seemingly basic question is more complex than we realize. In her probing critique of scientific, medical and popular understanding of sex, Fausto-Sterling uses an examination of research, medical practice and astonishing real-life cases to shake the very foundations of our ideas about sexual difference.". "Taking her cue from the burgeoning intersexual movement, Fausto-Sterling argues for an end to authoritarian medical interventions in intersex cases. Ultimately, Fausto-Sterling urges us to re-imagine more than just our labels for the parts and processes of the human body."--BOOK JACKET.

"In describing and explaining the sexes, medicine and science participated in the delineation of what was "feminine" and what was "masculine" in the Middle Ages. Hildegard of Bingen and Albertus Magnus, among others, writing about gynecology, the human constitution, fetal development, or the naturalistic dimensions of divine Creation, became increasingly interested in issues surrounding reproduction and sexuality. Did women as well as men produce procreative seed? How did the physiology of the sexes influence their healthy states and their susceptibility to disease? Who derived more pleasure from sexual intercourse, men or women?" "The answers to such questions created a network of flexible concepts which did not endorse a single model of male-female relations, but did affect views on the health consequences of sexual abstinence for women and men and on the allocation of responsibility for infertility - problems with much social and religious significance in the Middle Ages. Sometimes at odds with, and sometimes in accord with other forces in medieval society, medicine and natural philosophy helped to construct a set of notions that divided significant portions of the world - from the behavior of animals to the operations of astrological signs - into "masculine" and "feminine." Even cases that seemed to exist outside the definitions of this duality, for example, hermaphrodite features or homosexual behavior, were brought under control by the application of gendered labels, such as "masculine women.""--Jacket.

A college textbook that assembles voices—from classic to contemporary—to analyze gender differences and domination across disciplines, highlighting the sociocultural, psychological, and legal aspects of sex role and gender identity.