"Colorblind" - Counting Crows

One of the things I most enjoy about our class is the variance in perspective that comes from engaging with individuals who study in alternating areas. I, for example, am an English and Creative Writing student; other in our class may be studying Biology, History of Art, Psychology, or another area different than my own.  In Rebecca Jordan-Young’s selection Brain Storm, she describes the term network and how it is used to “describe groups of connected people, and in science studies especially to describe how personal and professional connections among scientists shape the scientific knowledge they produce” (Jordan-Young 8).  We may all be pursuing different areas of academia, but this class is our common link. By meeting each week to discuss Perspectives on Gender, we become a part of a network.

I was particularly intrigued by Jordan-Young’s perception of sex, gender, and sexuality as a three-ply yarn. They are all distinct strands and alone are functional; however, they may be wound together in the formation of a new entity that may be slightly “fuzzy around the edges.” This ties back into the idea of network, of individual people or thoughts that are connected through a commonality. But what do we call this newly formed three-strand yarn that is sex, gender, and sexuality? Do we even need to give it a name?

While not related to our current Act, I thought that this video was interesting and encompassed some of our ideas of being "at home" within one's body. It's a good reminder not to make preconceived judgements on others, as things may not be as they seem (I also just found it really amazing to watch and wanted to share). There's also a behind the scenes video which features some thoughts by Rico Genest, the gentleman featured in the video campaign. Enjoy!

Starting out reading the preface for “Brain Storm” I expected to find out what some common differences are between brain structuring is between people who identify as different genders. As we saw from our readings last week, some women have equal levels of testosterone as men or sometimes even higher levels, so if hormone levels currently present in the brain doesn’t account for gender differences, it makes sense to me that it would be some structural wiring in the brain. Instead I found myself reading about case after case, generalization after generalization, being torn apart. Good points were brought up in both “Brain Storm” (how we gather information, quasi experiments, professional and academic differences/similarities, socialization vs. biology, sex vs. gender) and the critique “Looking for Difference?” (group differences vs. individual differences, assuming universal behavior, heterosexism as the norm, decreased masculinity of gay men, the rigidity of some scientists, inability to reconsider a better explanation for results). However I found myself disappointed at the end of the readings because I just didn’t come away with what I expected to.

Something that particularly resounded with me was on page 271 of “Brain Storm” with the summary:

“The three key concepts are the inseparability of experience and heredity, the importance of random events, and the fact that development is a lifelong process. Outcomes in the cognitive domain, in particular, are always contingent, rather than ultimate.”

Note: S. Yaeger, I wrote this post before I read yours, but I think it relates in many ways to your question about the assertion that intersex people should not be used in the nature/nurture debate.

Both assigned readings for this week (Spanier and Horowitz and Jordan Young) reference the case of David Reimer, who lost his penis in a botched circumcision as an infant, later received sex reassignment surgery. His parents raised him as a girl, giving him estrogen injections and forcing him to imitate stereotypically female behaviors despite his resistance and unhappiness. The book written about this period of his life, “As Nature Made Him,” was one that I was thinking about on Tuesday night during our conversations about sex, gender and sexuality. (I highly recommend this book for everyone in this class! A review of it by Natalie Angier for the NYTimes written in 2000 can be found here). Despite the way he was raised, by late adolescence David identified as a heterosexual male, eventually undergoing a double mastectomy and marrying a woman (he sadly committed suicide in 2004).

This morning, I found the website for the Intersex Society of North America, which includes a chart outlining their recommended approach vs the traditionally use concealment approach.  I included the link below.  Most of the site seems to recomend  allowing the intersex person to decide if tey want surgery, but one thing that struck me is that the INSA points out that they believe that:

"Physicians, researchers, and gender theorists should stop using people with intersex conditions in                                                                                            'nature/nurture' experiments or debates."

I'm particularly thrown by the assertion that gender theorists should not use intersex peopled in debate.  

http://www.isna.org/compare

Our discussion of sex assignment surgery for intersex babies (and our roleplaying excercise) highlighted for me just how intricate an issue it is.  Often, when we discuss issues of sex and gender in class, I think it's easy for us to come to a consensus regarding the best way to deal with a variety of issues because we have the privilege of being in a safe space, with like minded individuals, but a parent of an intersexed child doesn't always have the ability to make a decision based solely on their own ethical judgement.  To that end, I have been wondering what would happen if parents of intersex children began to increasingly elect to not have a sex assigned to their children.  I think that this decision would be one that most suits my ideals, but then we face the question of education for the child and, perhaps more importantly, for the child's community.  Though I think that talking frankly and openly with the child would be a wonderful start, one might also have to consider how to address the child's difference with their teachers, their friends, and the adults who make up their community.  I'd like to think that just being in the pressence of a child who is typical in many ways, yet has atypical genitalia would be fine for most mature adults, I'm not sure.  I'm more likely to think that, while many adults would be open and understanding, some would not be, and that would be enough to make the road forward more difficult for the child.

couldn't resist posting nicholas kristof's op-ed, "occupy the classroom"....
w/ the notation that one of the most interesting signs, @
occupy philadelphia last week,  was one reading "occupy your mind."
meditate on that one...

Hey all.  I know I have spoken at length about my friend who is a teacher in a Philly High School.  I have created this post so that she can comment with a brief introduction and some facts about the school where she is a teacher.  She'll be popping in to share some of her ideas with us!

Given the guided introduction to scientific literacy Kaye provided us on Tuesday evening , hopefully not only the Mawtyrs in the room and on the screen will be interested in giving a close-reading to the recent Science magazine article on The Pseudoscience of Single-Sex Education. Particularly interesting in this regard is Jane McAuliffe's response to the report: that women's colleges "buck the trend" of women avoiding science.....

During this week's class when we broke into small groups and discussed some of the ethics behind modifying the bodies of young children.  Our group came to the conclusion that the most ethical thing to do would be to allow the child to wait until they were 18 to get a surgery if that was what they wanted. I thought that it would be interesting if we explored this idea outside of a western context.  For Instance, would we have the same answers to these questions if we were talking about an intersex kid in a place like Bangladesh?  In other countries, what would be the priority of the parent in making the decision about surgery for their child, the gender identity of the child or the ability to be physically percieved as normal, especially in a place where the gender binary is concrete?  In the United States there is stigma attached to intersexuality but it is far less severe than other parts of the world.  

Again, thinking about our readings outside of a Western context, in examining whether or not women choose low risk jobs, could you even begin to make a similar study in another country?  I don't think it is fair to make these assumptions about testosterone and career choice without looking at statistics in a global context.  There is no way to fully measure how much culture influences these assumptions about testosterone and career choice, but it is obvious that women avoid high risk jobs in other parts of the world because of more than testosterone.