Preview

The Five Sexes, Revisited

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
542 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Five Sexes, Revisited
Sara Doxsey
Anne Fausto-Sterling: The Five Sexes, Revisited
Week 3: (January 24, 26)
Response #1 of 2

The reading The Five Sexes, Revisited was about the misrepresentation of today’s two-sex system in society. The central issue Anne Fausto-Sterling addresses is that there are people born outside of dimorphism and most people do not understand this (pg. 122). The most important point or central argument is that the two-sexes, male and female should no longer be accepted. Instead, five-sexes should be accepted: male, female, “herms”, “merms”, and ferms” (pg. 121). An important fact the author makes is, “…we calculated that for every 1,000 children born, seventeen are intersexual in some form” (pg. 122). This bit of information proves that there are infants born between the sexes male and female. It is important for people to realize that mixed babies are in existence. Anne Fausto-Sterling also shares a story of a born intersexual. “Consider for instance, the life of Max Beck: Born intersexual, Max was surgically assigned as a female and consistently raised as such. Had her medical team followed her into her early twenties, they would have deemed her assignment a success because she was married to a man. Within a few years, however, Beck had come out as a butch lesbian” (pg. 124). It all comes down to society and this story proves it. If the world were more open to these sex issues, then we would not have these issues in the first place. In Max’s case, being born intersexual would not have been an issue in Max’s life. Instead, the doctors chose Max’s sexuality without any consent from Max. Another interesting fact that Anne Fausto-Sterling uses to back up her argument is “The logical structure of the commonly used terms “true hermaphrodite,” “male pseudohermaphrodite” and “female pseudohermaphrodite” indicates that only the so-called true hermaphrodite is a genuine mix of male and female…Because true hermaphrodites are rare – possibly only one in 100,000 – such

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Gender refers to culturally constructed distinctions between femininity and masculinity. Individuals are born female or male but they become feminine or masculine through complex developmental processes that take many years to unfold. For example, women usually look after babies while men are the providers. The evolutionary approach argues that gender role division appears as an adaptation to the challenges faced by the ancestral humans in the EEA. Therefore, the role differences we observe are more a product of our biological inheritance than acquired through socialisation…

    • 973 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Gender Unit Paper

    • 981 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The common theme in the short stories "A Pair of Tickets", "A Rose For Emily", and "Girl" is expectation. Each main character experiences a feeling of expectation from either within themselves, from others, or a cultural norm. Each character feels burdened by these expectations and that can be sensed in the tone of these short stories. These expectations have evident effects on the female characters as it effects their thoughts, actions, and self-realizations. Although each story is significantly different, they all share the same theme.…

    • 981 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Examining gender as a social structure and applying gender roles poses many challenges when explaining the phenomenon of social stratification. Barbara J. Riseman explores many expanses of gender and theories’ arguing the issues and importances a social structure has on gender outcomes. Riseman discusses the four distinct social scientific theoretical traditions that explain gender: individual sex, whether it be social or biological; social structure creates gendered behavior; social interaction and accountability to others’ expectations; and how gender creates inequality and acts on gender as a socially constructed stratification system. Gender is a major slice of every social process in everyday life within every social situation and I imagine that gender accounts for inequalities society has on the opposite sex and it’s that inequality that is dependent on gender within social hierarchy.…

    • 473 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    From the article I have read, this demonstrated the differentiation between the two words “sex” and “gender.” This revealed how many individuals display certain characteristics of what gender they choose to be. Others like to stay in what is considered normal and full of structure because of the ability of being able to reproduce. The article describes how it affects society whether it’s in the personal life and in the work place. We are made to be set in certain gender roles because of culture such as their example of African culture and other cultures who proclaims the ways of how to act, how to dress, and mature and nurtured in the sex they were born with.…

    • 380 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Essay On Composing Gender

    • 866 Words
    • 4 Pages

    In Composing Gender by Rachel Groner and John F. O’Hara, there is the discussion of how society shapes gender and imposes gender roles on children, even before they are born, through simple things such as names and gender-themed baby showers. Many people think of anatomy equaling gender, however it is not that simple. Gender is more than just the boy and girl binary. It is the way that different toys are separated into “girl sections” which are typically all pink and “boy sections” which are typically blue. From an early age, society separates boys and girls by gendering things such as names and products. In 1972, there was an article published by Ms. Magazine, written by Lois Gould, about how it is always a battle for a child to not fall into stereotypical gender roles. Her idea for an experiment of raising an androgynous child could change the way society sees gender, if it were to ever be carried out. It made me…

    • 866 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Biology alone determines whether a person is female or male, not culture, but cultural myths outline the roles women and men play in society. These cultural myths constitute to the lack of differentiation between sex and gender, imposing the idea of nature versus nurture. While one is born either female or male due to biology, one’s culture ultimately makes one into a woman or a man. Society has predisposed images of what it means to be feminine or masculine. These gender roles limit the individual’s potential, making humans into performers that must conform to their “appropriate” roles. Being a man should not rely on appearing dominant, aggressive, or never admitting to weaknesses, nor should a woman’s life depend on her reproductiveness…

    • 970 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Traditional gender roles have existed for many centuries. Throughout the history of humanity among various cultures and eras, there are pieces of evidence and traces of unfair treatment of women. Women have a role of a wife waiting for her husband to return from the war, a mother of the conquering hero or a great scientist, or a daughter who is destined to marry the prince of another country in order to consolidate the alliance between the two countries. Life of a woman was determined by the man, whether it be her father, husband or son. It is not surprising that such a position in society led women to fight. Starting with the suffragettes and finishing with the third wave, feminism has become an integral part of the society. Women opened…

    • 1832 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis Joan W. Scott The American Historical Review, Vol. 91, No. 5. (Dec., 1986), pp. 1053-1075.…

    • 5040 Words
    • 21 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Sexuality and Gender

    • 482 Words
    • 2 Pages

    andYou have just learned how single mothers in poverty and the school uniform debate would be analyzed using the three sociological…

    • 482 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Everybody in today’s society experiences gender throughout his or her life. However, as a female, I have personally always been affected by the social construction of gender in my day-to-day life, whether I was aware of it or not. Gender is such a prominent aspect of life for everyone that we barely recognize the effect it has on us, especially when it’s constructed within our own families.…

    • 565 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Gender and Men

    • 319 Words
    • 2 Pages

    If ever there was an idea custom-made in a Jay Leno monologue, this was it. Females can play sports just like men, maybe even better. Isn't that like how females can make this country better if they were president? Whatever happened to gender equality?…

    • 319 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Night to his day

    • 858 Words
    • 4 Pages

    First of all, she talks about how we determine gender for each individual by the time he or she was born. The moment an infant was born, their sex was determined by genitalia. The infants will be taught by their sex whether to be a “masculine or feminine”. According to Simone de Beauvoir said” One is not born, but rather becomes, a women; it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature. Which is described as feminine.”(Page 57, para 3). This statement is very true to the extent in which our society was build or “constructed” the gender system. In my opinion, our gender roles was taught rather than we decide our own gender. I was taught to be a male and do things what a man should do. Judith Lorber also describes the different between in male and female roles and how the society hold each individuals responsible for their designated gender Male and female act differently depend on their culture but their roles are very similar. Female will do all the housework and male will be the breadwinner. By taking out the biological sex, everyone in this whole world is the same. We are just “doing gender” every day to portrait and follow the expectation from the “socially constructed gender”.…

    • 858 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Anne Fausto-Sterling's book, Sexing The Body, she breaks down our views of what most consider the norm. She establishes a clear difference between sex and gender, questions what is considered male or female, and discusses what it means to be deemed homosexual or heterosexual or even in between. She lays it all on the table for everybody to question or criticize.Asking the questions people ask in their head but are too afraid to say making us see not just in black and white but in the uncharted gray area in the middle. Basically she argues that people view things such as sex and gender in a simplified way because of the way society views it and deems it…

    • 119 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Gender Roles In Society

    • 741 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Gender roles are expectations of how a person should act, dress, and talk based on his or her sex. A majority of people conform to these roles at an early age, and will continue to carry these beliefs, often unconsciously, around with them throughout their lives, and these beliefs can affect people negatively. The message that gender roles send is that in order to be part of society, you must fit into the predisposed mold for your gender, or most importantly, what society deems as acceptable. But at the same time, try to incorporate individuality and establish a sense of self.…

    • 741 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Ambivalent Gender Roles

    • 4534 Words
    • 19 Pages

    advertisement (female nurse, male nurse, or masculinity emphasized male nurse), reported their perceptions of the nurse in…

    • 4534 Words
    • 19 Pages
    Powerful Essays

Related Topics